The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment of the Committee on Science, Space & Technology is holding a Hearing this Wed on “Policy Relevant Climate Issues in Context.” Witnesses:
- Bjorn Lomborg
- Judith Curry
- William Chameides
Now you know what has been keeping me so busy lately. This promises to be an interesting hearing. It is particularly interesting for me personally, since I have a connection with both Lomborg and Chameides.
Bill Chameides preceded me as Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech; he is currently Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. While I have never met Bjorn Lomborg, several years ago we wrote dueling op-eds for the Washington Post.
The Hearing will be webcast live, no idea if it will be archived. I will post my testimony on Wed once the hearing starts, along with the other links.
I just submitted my written testimony, I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, although there is such a short amount of time you have to prepare that it is difficult to really polish and tighten it. Working on my oral comments now.
Should be interesting.
p.s. I am making every effort to be non-normative :)
Good luck.
Good luck indeed, and don’t go wobbly on us. Keep a little uncertainty monster in your briefcase…. :-)
Well done Judith. It is great that you are being heard. I hope your input is well received.
I look forward to hearing details of Dr. Curry’s input, in particular as it relates to Dr. Jennifer Francis’ recent work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xugAC7XGosM
tonyb and others should be interested in the historical Arctic ice extent reconstructions between 25 and 30 minutes into this. “Skeptics” probably won’t be happy with this new information.
Thanks for a balanced, sensible, ‘scientific’ and labor intensive approach to what you do. I (and I expect many) have learned more from you than you may expect.
BEST WISHES for this week!
Congratulations. I would favor skill over luck; it comes across much better.
Thank you, Professors Bjorn Lomborg, Judith Curry, William Chameides, for your efforts to restore integrity to government science.
Here’s wishing you success – not just for the future of science – but also for the future of civilization!
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
“the future of civilization”
I agree Oliver that that’s what it’s all about.
Thanks, Paul.
Formation of the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945 brought many benefits to society – reduction in the threat of nuclear annihilation, nationalism, racism, etc. – but hiding information on the source of energy (E(/b>) [1,2] stored as mass (m(/b>) in cores of
a.) Heavy atoms like Th, U, Pu
b.) Planets like Jupiter and Saturn
c.) Ordinary stars like our Sun
d.) Galaxies like the Milky Way
Prevented world leaders from being able to meet the basic needs of society.
1. ”Neutron Repulsion”, The APEIRON Journal 19, 123-150 (2012): http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V19NO2pdf/V19N2MAN.pdf
2. “Yes, the Sun is a pulsar,” Nature (submitted 12 Dec 2012): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Yes_the_Sun_is_a_pulsar.pdf
Facts are facts:
“Global Warming refers to an obscure statistical quantity, globally averaged temperature anomaly, the small residue of far larger and mostly uncorrelated local anomalies. This quantity is highly uncertain, but may be on the order of 0.7C over the past 150 years. This quantity is always varying at this level and there have been periods of both warming and cooling on virtually all time scales. On the time scale of from 1 year to 100 years, there is no need for any externally specified forcing. The climate system is never in equilibrium because, among other things, the ocean transports heat between the surface and the depths. To be sure, however, there are other sources of internal variability as well.
“Because the quantity we are speaking of is so small, and the error bars are so large, the quantity is easy to abuse in a variety of ways.”
~R. S. Lindzen
Precisely, and well-said!! As a retired NASA manned aerospace engineer involved with decision-making where unintended consequences could be fatal, I am embarrassed that our politcal leaders are so ready to make sweeping public policy desisions in the face of so little firm understanding of causes of constant variations in global average temperature. Who or what is experiencing a well-defined problem in terms of temperature deviating in a harmful way form the norm of the last 10,000 years? If we aren’t deviating from the norm, why do so many believe we have a global warming “problem”?
And, given that global average temperature trends have not followed atmospheric CO2 concentration trends of the last 15 years, why do so many believe that CO2 is a “problem”? We need to precisely define the problem in terms of a harmful deviation from a norm (which I don’t see has happened yet), and determine the true root cause of the “problem” before trying decide what to do about the “problem”. CO2 control won’t control global warming due to natural phenomenon that seems to have dominated climate behavior for the last 15 years, and I suspect for the last 150 years as well.
Yes sir Dr. Doiron…that global warming craft ain’t gonna fly.
I agree and like I have said before, if we built and repaired aircraft with the robustness of climate science we would end up with endless smoking holes in the ground.
Erie H. You give them too much credit. They would not get off the ground and would never make smoking holes in the ground.
Even Lindzen is confused by the Orwellian speak. Global Warming (GW, the Orwellian) refers to the global warming since the ~mid 20th century – before that any postulated anthropogenic (mostly CO2) influence is basically ZERO. That’s the consensus attribution.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/files/2010/05/natural_anthropogenic_models_narrow.png
Global warming (the real one) refers to any global warming at any time scale and at any point.
The past 150 years is just (roughly) the length of the instrumental temperature record.
Please do be careful, Judith.
We certainly wouldn’t want to see any “activism,” “normative science,” etc. creep in to your testimony.
Please not to worry, Joshua. I’m sure there will be plenty for you to kvetch about.
Moi? Kvetch?
Howard meant to say whine like a little sissy.
Please, Don Don.
Don –
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g115/hootie39/comments/hump-day/dog-humping-leg-hump-day.gif
Why aren’t willard and Joshua called to testify. I’d pay to watch that.
==================
Very classy, joshie. Your holier and smarter than thou facade is drooping, joshie. Pretty much confirms my opinion of you, don’t it. Let’s see what the little monkey comes up with next. I jerk chain, joshie jumps. Too easy.
Nice contribution to the topic Don …. NOT!
Looking forward to it.
It is interesting to read how Judith’s views have evolved as more reliable information has become available since 2007. I suggest that everyone read what she wrote in 2007 vs. what she seems to believe today.
My thoughts, exactly. I bet it wasn’t easy carrying the entire policy world on her shoulders back then. Hooray for non-normative science.
Will we be witnessing an epic battle of the uncertainty monster vs. Washington demigods? Perhaps the Colosseum was a better venue.
Rob Starkey
Yes.
There appears to have been a transition.
Devout followers of the IPCC creed will attack our hostess for not being consistent.
But then: “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, as Emerson wrote.
And having an open mind to new data and information that is out there is what science (as opposed to religious dogma) is all about.
Max
Judith– In my opinion, your explaining why your opinions have changed since 2007 would help policy makers to understand how the science has begun to move beyond our initial fears. I hope you will help policy makers to understand how the actions of the USA are not what is going to drive the world’s CO2 growth curve and at a time of very limited financial resources that most ‘mitigation stratagies are not cost effective.
Rob Starkey,
Unless, of course, the USA applies its enormous intellectual knowledge and its capacity to innovate to give the world low-cost alternative to fossil fuels. Doing so would allow the world to decarbonise in a ‘No regrets’ (economically beneficial) way. USA could do this by, for example removing the regulatory blocks that make small nuclear power plants far more expensive than it could and should be. Thankfully, USA has started the process by last November selecting the first of the small modular reactor designs they will take through to commercialisation.
However, this is only the start. There are many designs than need to be allowed to compete in the market. At the moment the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) needs 5 to 10 years to take a design through its regulatory processes. It costs around $1 billion and NRC can take only about three designs through the process at once. This is an enormous thrombosis in the arteries of progress. The US President could free up the process. He could direct that NRC be revamped so its regulatory role is more like that for civilian aircraft design and operation.
This is the first of the small modular nuclear power plant designs that is now going through the process: http://www.babcock.com/products/modular_nuclear/
Here are some others waiting in the queue: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
Your point is OT Peter, but I doubt the President has that authority. The first question is how much of the NRC procedure is mandated by law, which only Congress can change. Beyond that the NRC would have to revise and rescind many of its regulations. I see no pressure for any of these changes at this time.
@peter lang
The US already has the best of the best in small reactors. What do you think we use on nuclear powered ships and submarines? Technology developed for the military has a long illustrious history of eventually finding commercial application. Enormous sums of talent and money flow into the military industrial complex. You really need to come to grips with the fact that what we got now is already the best that money can buy and there’s simply no panacea sitting there bottled up by bureaucratic red tape. Nuclear reactors are hideously expensive to build and maintain. So much so that all reactors currently in operation were built either by governments or under the auspice of government regulated monopoly where the possibility of operating losses was not borne by the builders but rather by the consumers. This is economic situation is encyclopedic knowledge. You’re in denial, Peter Lang.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
David Wojick,
The US President has more power to persuade and influence the direction USA takes on an issue like this than any other single person or position in the world. If just one major anti-nuke group then decided to change sides, the change in public opinion could change rapidly (e.g. a decade).
I agree there is no pressure to make the change at the moment. But there is strong pressure from many groups to cut global GHG emissions. These CAGW alarmists can’t have it both ways. The world is not going to substantially cut GHG emissions by 2050, or whatever targets they choose, without largely decarbonising electricity and eventually most fossil fuels. We are not going to replace fossil fuels without a large component of nuclear power. And it has to be the whole world, not just the developed countries. USA has more capability than any other country to make this possible. That’s the reality.
The blocks are not physical. They are public perceptions (an irrational phobia against nuclear power). They can be changed. They do change. We got over our fear of aircraft crashes even though about 1000 people are killed per year in commercial passenger aircraft crashes. In the same way we will get over our fear of nuclear accidents (which are few and their real consequences are small compared with the effects of pollution from other industries which we accept as acceptable for the benefits they provide).
IMO, the US President (if not this one then the next one) can do more than any other person on Earth to lead this change.
I wouldn’t be surprised if floating reactors come to be made in China, as well as Russia. They seem to have a lot of plus points.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station
David Springer,
I replied to your comment on the Open Thread: http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/03/open-thread-weekend-10/#comment-300481
Nuclear is not cost-effective, and never will be, the more of its currently hidden costs become internalised.
Renewables such as Wind and Solar on the other hand are already cheaper than any fossil fuels, so the “no regrets” decarbonisation you speak of it already upon us.
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Renewable-Energy-is-already-Cheaper-than-Coal-and-Gas-in-Australia.html
Some people are just a bit slow at grasping change when it occurs.
DS,
Since you didn’t follow the link to this, I’ll repost it here:
David Springer,
@ March 5, 2013 at 10:51 am on the “Forthcoming congressional hearing” thread
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/04/forthcoming-congressional-hearing/#comment-300355
Small nuclear power plants on ships cost $1,200/kW. The large land based derivatives in the developed countries cost $5,000/kW. In China and Korea they cost about $1250 to $2,050/kW. Why do you think there is such a large difference in the cost between nuclear power plants in developed countries, nuclear power plants in China and Korea (for basically the same design such as the AP1000 and APR1400 – BTW, only a small part is due to local labour costs) and small nuclear plants on US Navy ships?
I suggest the main reason is commercial competition is blocked by excessive regulatory restrictions (regulatory ratcheting caused a facto of eight cost increase up til 1990 and more since: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html). Such constraints apply to no other industry.
If competition was allowed, the costs of small modular nuclear reactors would come down. At a cost reduction rate of (say for example) 10% per doubling of capacity this small LWR http://www.babcock.com/products/modular_nuclear/, (which is derived from navy ships) would supply electricity at the same cost as a new coal plant (Australian costs) by the time 2.5 GW is in operation world wide, half the cost when 180 GW is in operation and a quarter the cost when 1500 GW is in operation. That is assuming no real cost increase in the cost of coal generation.
However, if the many other designs could be developed and compete in a properly commercial manner, without requiring $1 billion and five to ten years for NRC approval to build even a demonstrator, the costs of nuclear power would come down even faster.
That is what competition does. The best designs win out in the market place and they keep improving. But we are blocking that progress, and have been for 50 years.
There is massive room for cost reduction of nuclear power and effectively unlimited fuel available. One indicator of this is that nuclear fuel, when used in light water reactors, is 20,000 times more energy dense than fossil fuels, and up to 2 million times more energy dense if used in breeder reactors. The room for cost reductions is far greater than with any energy source we have used to date. But progress is blocked by irrational fears.
If we really want to decarbonise, nuclear power will have to supply a major part of the world’s energy.
Rob, Judith has often acknowledged that she is a climate scientist rather than a policy adviser or advocate. I suspect that she will quite rightly stick to her scientific last, and if asked questions on policy will do no more than clarify the science relevant to the question.
DS,
Nuclear power plants on ships cost $1200/kW. The derivaties on land in the developed countries cost $500/kW. In China and Korea they cost about $1200 to $2000/kW. Why do you think that is?
Probably should have put my earlier comment here.
As far as I am aware, most ship bound reactors are built small in order to supply little more than the requirements of the vessel.
Before LA becomes willing to trial Russian/Chinese reactors floating offshore, costs could come down quickly. And more quickly afterwards.
Correction: $500/kW should read $5,000/kW
Off the top of my head
1) no cooling towers
2) no storage ponds
3) no permitting or red tape
and the biggest reason
3) no comparable cost accounting between the two
I’ll need a link to the source of your figure for the military reactors because I don’t believe for a NY minute that the figure you cite is accurate. If it were it would be the first item in history procured by the US military that costs *less* than the commercial version.
I forgot to add no transmission lines, transmission towers, or acquisition of rights-of-way for same.
As I suspected, the Congressional Budget Office says that oil would have to be from $140 to $323/bbl for nuclear power to be cost-effective in destroyers and other large surface craft. So I’m going to have to know the source of what appears to be a ridiculously low cost per kWh of capacity.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454
…and Wind costs $80/MWh, compared with $143/MWh for coal.
Why on earth would anybody who pretends to be concerned about economic imperatives waste time even considering Nuclear?
Craig Thomas,
I don’t know where you get your figures from but they are certainly not comparable. See Figure 6 here http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf to compare capital cost, cost of electricity and CO2 abatement cost so mostly renewable and mostly renewables systems. A mostly renewables system that can meet the requirements of an electricity system is about three times more costly than a nuclear system. See Figure 5 for emissions from each system and Figure for the comparison of transmission costs.
Follow the references if you want to see the sources for the figures. See this http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/ for more on the renewables and for a downloadable Excel spreadsheet you can use to input your own figures and run sensitivity analyses.
David Springer, you’ve listed a pile of factoids, none of which is presented on a properly comparable basis and without context. It’s not worth responding.
Craig Thomas
You mention wind power cost and then ask
Could it be because nuclear plants run 90-95% of the time but wind only blows “jes’ right” around 25% of the time, and not necessarily the same time that folks need electrical power?
Think about it.
Max
Craig Thomas
Why wind power cannot compete without the subsidy:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/12/21/why-its-the-end-of-the-line-for-wind-power/
Max
Good luck. Did you arrange to have the heat turned off?
Open the windows, let the sun shine in.
===============
No, I’ve arranged for a big snow storm :)
Lol, impressive connections.
Wednesday, Mar 6 – Washington, DC – Updated: Mar 4, 2013, 3:06pm EST
Windy Blowhards (mid 60s but some older than zirconia) morning and afternoon — heavy at times — Chance of being snowed expected and heavy at times.
Judith Curry
Looks like you might get that “big snow storm”
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/high-impact-snowstorm-headed-for-mid-atlantic-15687
Take your woollies.
Max
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/03/04/winter-storm-midwest-midatlantic/1961753/
You are not kidding about the big snow storm. WOW!
We very much need for congress to stop the EPA from doing too much stuff that is going to damage the Economy and Energy Production and Power Generation before the science about climate really gets understood better.
Tell congress to not let the EPA do stupid stuff soon.
on the climate central story they write:
Heavy snowstorms are entirely consistent with climate change projections. They seem to understand this but they really don’t seem to understand this.
Scientists expect that major snowstorms will continue to occur as the climate warms, in part because warmer air and ocean temperatures will increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. That added water vapor could fuel unusually heavy snowstorms, such as the blizzard that buried parts of New England under 40 inches of snow in early February.
Yes, it snows more when oceans are warmer and that is why it really cannot get hotter than the bounds of the past ten thousand years. This really does happen in every warm time. They kinda seem to understand this but they really don’t seem to understand this.
‘Snowquester’, heh. Snowquestion?
==========
Read this story about snow in Japan. When oceans are warm, it does snow more and that does help set the upper bound on Earth Temperature. It is snowing and it is cold in many places around the Northern Hemisphere.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2013/03/20133494031661710.html
The center of the storm should be blowing through DC about the time of the meeting.
I agree with the substance of both Rob Starkey’s comments. Even if you decide against the hearing as the place to outline whatever contrasts there are between Curry 2007 and Curry 2013, I’m sure your readers would be grateful to know the what and the why of them.
I did an interview at C-A-S a few years ago (before I started CE) that pretty much covers this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2010/04/27/curry-the-backstory/
Now, now, don’t hide your inclination by truncating the data.
====================
Judith Curry
The Keith Kloor “Backstory” gave a more balanced overview than the Scientific American article by Michael Lemonick a few months later.
But these are both over two years old.
And a lot has happened in the meantime.
Max
PS Best wishes for a good tip and another great job testifying (and remember that you are entering the “land of spin”)
Judy, the three articles at Collide-a-Scape are great reading, some people who question your attitude here might benefit from reading them, even though they reflect where you were three years ago, as kim (jokingly) chides.
Go for it, Judith! :-)
Wonderful. I know you will do a fine job. Looking forward to listening to the webcast.
Good.
Judith Curry
Great!
Keep it “non-normative” (= facts rather than “stealth advocacy”, Lackey) and you’ll do fine as you always have.
Max
Here is a preview of Dr. Chameides’ performance:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/non-climate-scientist-cli_b_173422.html
Again, a case of truncating the data four years before the present. That 2009 edition of Bill Chameides may not have all the innovations of the new model. All five of his points have undergone critical review.
========
Not to mention Nov 19, 2009 and FOIA!
Best wishes, Judith.
Knowing you are testifying gives me confidence that the Committee will get a very balanced presentation on the issue. USA Today had a puff piece on the ravages of Global Warming last week that all should see for an example of over- hyped and inaccurate journalism, especially about sea level change. I wonder if any of the Committee members will bring that up.
USAT is doing a whole series of these climate trash pieces. I guess it is their turn.
TESTIMONY OF PATRICK J. MICHAELS TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, NOVEMBER 17, 2010
{Excerpt}
Figure 9. Only a tiny minority of respondents (16%) agree that the IPCC is ―an effective group of government representatives, scientists, and other experts‖. 84% agree, however, that it is ―a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda‖ (Questions 4 from a Scientific American on-line poll, downloaded November 12, 2010).
This stems from the very nature of modern science, which is treated largely as a public good, to be funded by taxpayer dollars. But, like other tax-supported entities, science also competes within itself for attention to its disciplines and problems. In the environment of Washington, the most emergent or apparently urgent subjects receive proportional public largesse. With regard to incentives, no scientific community ever came into this House of Representatives and claimed that its area of interest was overemphasized and that funding should be directed elsewhere. This is normal behavior.
However, an implication of this behavior is that the peer-review process is also populated by a community of incentivized individuals. The test of this hypothesis would be in fact if that literature were demonstrably biased…
It’s rare for a voice of reason to be heard in Washington these days. Of course, the vast majority won’t be listening, but still…..
We’d probably all be better off outsourcing governance to China. At least then we’d have a partner with as great an interest in maintaining the value of the currency as all of those in this country who worked a lifetime and saved for their retirement knowing full well the government was running a ponzi scheme on the people. But, now that the government is robbing all the savers to keep the sting going just a little longer… Welcome to Greece and Californianomics.
One voice of reason, two opportunists.
I suppose that’s an improvement for that venue.
Judith,
Best wishes for your testimony to Congress. Couldn’t have chosen a more relevant participant. We all look forward to hearing your testimony and seeing a transcript at the blog. I first saw you in a Discover article with you and Mann. You were impressive there and have been ever since. Your rational discussions have been a welcome addition.
This is a complex issue and I am not confident that the confidence of some participants is supported by the science. 15 year pause is important. Models that vary from the observations are signs of trouble in theory. Yet Mann continues to truncate or substitiute data instead of objective measures. Good luck in the hot arena of Congress. Turn up the AC.
Scott
It’s not that complex. For the last 100,000 years the Earth was locked in an ice age punctuated by brief periods of warming called interglacials, which is the only reason we’re even here to notice it.
The Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary Ice Age, with the last glacial period of the Quaternary having ended approximately 10,000 years ago with the start of the Holocene epoch. (wiki)
In the words of Henrik Svensmark, “enjoy global warming while it lasts.” We need to ask ourselves why our government pays scientists to purposefully reject easily accessible observational evidence in favor of a belief that is based solely upon unverifiable computer models based on programs written by schoolteachers who hate everything for which America stands to arrive at the conclusion that Americans are causing the Earth to overheat by producing too much CO2 . Svensmark asks us consider “history and recent research” and “take a closer look,” as follows:
“Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.
“But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger.
“It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.
“The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result…
“That the Sun might now fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. So when Nigel Calder and I updated our book The Chilling Stars, we wrote a little provocatively that we are advising our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.
“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel argued at the recent UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that the cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years. His explanation was a natural change in the North Atlantic circulation, not in solar activity. But no matter how you interpret them, natural variations in climate are making a comeback.”
(While the sun sleeps, Translation approved by Henrik Svensmark)
That was interesting. Where is it from?
Scott
See–e.g., “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change,” by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder
The star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth…
http://agbjarn.blog.is/blog/agbjarn/entry/946551/
> I am making every effort to be non-normative :)
+1
Judith, I met Lomborg once. He’s a great guy, charismatic, brilliant speaker, able to clearly convey a complex story without notes. A bit like me in my (long past) hey-day.
Hey, Faustino, giving yerself the verdict? :)
> I met Lomborg once.
Does it mean you met his bicycle too, Faustino?
No, willard, he probably left it in Denmark rather than cycle to Brisbane.
I thought he was a more principled man than that, Faustino.
Good for him!
Naw. But Ah dangnab near run over it with mah 4×4 pickup.
(Them bikes on the road is worse’n chickens.)
Judith, Best of luck in your descriptive endeavors.
JC
ever recognising
uncertainty
ever making
every effort
to be
non-normative
many
appreciate.
Beth
Me too!
Max
The tone and content of the Washington Post op-ed doesn’t augur well for your efforts to avoid normative science on Wednesday.
That was then. This is now. Judith had a few more active brain cells six years ago :-)
And a less sophisticated synaptic array.
==========================
That was 6 years ago. Curry’s position is different now. It took her several years to adopt what I was saying 7 years ago. So far I haven’t needed to change my views at all. I’ve just added detail.
Author Dave S. below is moi. Enjoy.
Global Warming: Here We Go Again
July 7, 2006
Posted by Dave S. under Global Warming, Intelligent Design
There’s a lot more of me on climate change there from there. It’s all just as good. Starting a few articles down on the following category search it’s mostly me doing the global warming stuff.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/category/global-warming/page/3/
The author with the initials DLH on that blog is none other than our own David L. Hagen, by the way. We go back a ways now. In internet almost like forever! :-)
“The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves but wiser people are full of doubts.”
Bertrand Russel,
Scott
Two ls, Scott:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/RussellForBloggers
Yes, willard, I also encountered Russell, he gave a talk at LSE when I was there. But, at 95, he was well past his peak. He was one of my heroes until I discovered Vipassana.
Why would Vipanassa change your mind about Sir Bertrand, Faustino?
I myself am contemplating Tai Chi, which appeals to my warrior spirit.
willard, Russell depended (brilliantly) on the rational mind. Shortly before my first Vipassana course in 1972, I reached a point where I thought I’d gone as far as I could (in terms of understanding self, human suffering etc) with the rational mind, that there must be something more. My first course changed my life. I found that the rational, so-called conscious mind is a very small part of the whole, that all of the significant action occurs in the so-called sub-conscious or unconscious (but in fact always conscious) mind, that you can link to that mind by observing with detachment sensations that arise on the body from moment to moment, that through this process you can develop experiential understanding and eradicate deep-rooted complexes, freeing yourself from carving an aversion and allowing you lead an harmonious life, good for you and good for others.
I felt sorry for Russell, that, with his tremendous mental capacity, he had never discovered this technique, which he would I thought have mastered, and would have taken him far beyond his reasoned philosophy to a deeper and more useful understanding.
I don’t wish to go on here, but a good intro is “An Ancient Path” by Paul R Fleischman (the highly-regarded psychiatrist rather than the children’s author of the same name).
“craving” rather than “carving,” perhaps your reference to your warrior spirit affected me.
I prefer carving, but I don’t think it makes much difference, Faustino. Sorry for mispelling Vipassana, btw.
Thank you for your story. It made my evening.
I kinda liked ‘The Universe in a Single Atom’ by that vagrant refugee.
=========
Kim, the Buddha was not, of course, a Buddhist and did not found an organised religion. The words “Buddhism” and “Buddhist” first appear in Indian literature about 500 years after his death, around the time that his main teaching, of the Vipassana technique, was lost in India. So when Buddhism moved into Afghanistan, and from there to central Asia and the Far East, it was an organised religion which lacked the Buddha’s main teaching.
The Dalai Lama and my teacher, S N Goenka, first met in, I think, 1971. HH the Dalai Lama was so impressed that he asked Goenka to teach three ten-day courses to his senior lamas at Dharamsala. To do Vipassana, you have to put aside existing practices for the ten days. The DL understood this, but the lamas at the first course were horrified, and refused. The DL then sent them a very stern directive, following which they practised as instructed by Goenka.
Tai Chi? Don’t make laugh. Try USMC.
Nice Really nice Faustino
Faustino. Good stuff! I also don’t believe that the rational mind will get us out of trouble. Lateral and intuitive thinking is the only way.
Bertrand Russell – philosopher 1872 – 1970 was brought up here at Pembroke Lodge by his grandmother
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qRIHbguPaJM
Visit and have an afternoon tea and cake in the cafeteria or on the terrace, I’m regular there.
vukcevic, I visited that very spot in 2007 (and perhaps years earlier), but didn’t know the Russell connection. I got to Darwin’s cottage in 2011, magic.
Judith, I wish you the very best in your presentation, speaking truth to power is your forte.
w.
Her fifte, even!
The ants go marching three by three, hurree, hurree.
The ants go marching three by three, flurry, fury.
The ants go marching three by three,
Down to the Congress for testimony,
And they all go marching;
Tread heavy on history.
==================
… ants uprising,
snow clouds on the horizon,
the pathetic fallacy.
Then Judith presents
at the climate congress
experts’ testimony.
Sound of thunderous applause … oh, and thunder.
Whoever it was on the committee who wanted Lomborg ought to get a gold star on their report card.
Good luck with this. Personally, I regard all public congressional hearings as free press for grandstanding blowhard “public servants” but I sincerely hope yours goes well. Expect at least one of the cads to treat you and your testimony as an opportunity to score red meat points with some constituency or another and try to laugh it off (silently, of course).
+1.
+2 with the caveat that Lomborg, a Dane with no vested interest in the CAGW cash cow, is the exception which proves the rule.
…just the ‘skeptical’ cash cow. ;)
Hardly.
J.Curry (WaPo editorial) Oct 10, 2007 Concluding line:
But I have yet to see any option that is worse than ignoring the risk of global warming and doing nothing.
Wow. The worst policy choice on the table is preferable than doing nothing? That was 5.4 years ago. Does that still hold?
We have safely done next to nothing, unless you count the hundreds of billions wasted in the last half decade. Perhaps we can safely do nothing more economically in the next half decade.
======================
+1
And I wish Judith well and a thunder snow storm to interrupt the hearing!
kim
Ah does nuthin fer twenty bucks an hour (but ifn Ah had a gumment job Ahd do it fer $100,000 a year plus expenses).
Max
Judith
Congratulations on being asked to present the real science with all its uncertainties and systemic errors.
I encourage emphasizing the essential corrective principle of Science that the predictions must match future evidence – or else be replaced by models that do better.
The current systematic error of models running hotter than the evidence by factors of two or three is a huge embarrassment to climate science. That NASA now has “climate scientists” warning of catastrophic global warming over models that show such abysmally poor highly skewed performance is absolutely amazing to engineers brought up with the vision example of NASA leading the world in engineering quality.
See Team of Ex-NASA Scientists Concludes No Imminent Threat from Man-Made CO2
The Right Climate Stuff TRCS
SUMMARY OF PRELIMINARY REPORT
The Right Climate Stuff Research Team JANUARY 23, 2013
Quality Assurance: Verification & Validation
NASA has excellent world class expertise on software verification and validation. I encourage you to challenge Congress to direct NASA’s quality assurance team onto the global climate models to raise them to international best practice in science and technology, from their current poor performance.
See: NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility, home of NASA’s IV&V Program.
NASA’s Quality Program
NPARC Verification and Validation
The normative direction is steered by the Chair who is skeptic Rep. Lamar Smith. I suspect he will steer it towards the no-action-is-needed norm, and has found committee members who will support that norm. Chameides might bring an opposite opinion, however, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. His writings are more warmist-favoring in terms of the science, but I have not seen him provide his own opinion on policy in a short search of his stuff, so it is not clear he will say anything on that.
Judith,
All the best with your presentation. I hope a You tube video can be released. I’d really like to participate in helping it to go viral.
Confucius say scientific worldview influence many small minds.
validated the fact that the world is warming
Of course we have been warming. We just came out of the little ice age. Warming was expected. That still does not indicate we will get warmer than the bounds of the past ten thousand years. We still have a lot of margin.
We have a lot of margin if the ‘hockey stick’ is a fraud. The real question is, what came first, the fraudulent ‘hockey stick’ or the fraudulent scientist?
my comment did not nest right, it was for the Muller story below
It’s interesting to note that at (least one of) Chameides’ previous congressional appearances was during the course of a November 14, 2011 Waxman-Markey hearing billed as:
Congressional Climate Briefing to Push “End of Climate Change Skepticism”.
Although the “official” name of the hearing appears to have been:
Congressional climate science briefing: “Undeniable Data: The Latest Research on Global Temperature and Climate Science”. And, for the record, look who got top billing in that cast of characters:
My impression of Chameides’ closing remarks, at the time, was that he was shifting from all-climate-change-all-the-time to jargon that was more reflective of the impending “biodiversity” message of doom and gloom. IOW perhaps he was preparing to jump from IPCC dogma to the new improved dogma of its then waiting-in-the-wings sibling, IPBES.
I wonder what Chameides will have to say this time around – and which hat(s) he might be wearing.
But that aside … I, for one, am certainly glad to hear that this forthcoming hearing will feature Dr. Curry … rather than an encore performance from born-again-skeptic-no-more merry-go-round-rider, Muller.
The topic, “Policy-Relevant Climate Issues in Context”, certainly sounds more promising (at least to my ears) than a “Briefing to Push ‘End of Climate Change Skepticism'”.
All the best, Judith.
We’ll soon find out if Chameides understands that a warmer world sustains more total life and more diversity of life.
==========================
This comment is for the Muller story. it nested above and not below. I am trying again.
Muller validated the fact that the world is warming. He didn’t know that?
Of course we have been warming. We just came out of the little ice age. Warming was expected. That still does not indicate we will get warmer than the bounds of the past ten thousand years. We still have a lot of margin.
Good luck, may you meet some intelligent Congress critters.
You are referring to staff, I take it?
When it became obvious the warming signal embedded in all of the data was such a very small part of total variability, that is the very moment when the AGW hypothesis became political science because politicians were better equipped to resolve any would-be signal.
Enjoy yourself!
Came across this blast from the past yesterday:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/archive/pr0310.html
CfA Press Release
Release No.: 03-10
For Release: March 31, 2003
20th Century Climate Not So Hot
“Cambridge, MA – A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.
“Smithsonian astronomers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, with co-authors Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and David Legates (Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware), compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. Their report, covering a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators, provides a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years.
“”Many true research advances in reconstructing ancient climates have occurred over the past two decades,” Soon says, “so we felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies from the last 5-10 years and look for patterns of variability and change. In fact, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Medieval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the medieval warmth.”
“Soon and his colleagues concluded that the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1000 years, nor is it the most extreme. Their findings about the pattern of historical climate variations will help make computer climate models simulate both natural and man-made changes more accurately, and lead to better climate forecasts especially on local and regional levels. This is especially true in simulations on timescales ranging from several decades to a century.”
A decade further on…
… and, very little has changed–for example, the Left hated Bush because he didn’t sign a treaty that no one would have observed and would have accomplished nothing for humanity and would have had disastrous consequences for the US if it had been signed and enforced.
Bread turned to roses in his basket.
============================
Before getting too exotic about “climate”, a mighty flux we can barely define let alone understand, why not start with policy for everything that can go wrong.
Where I live, over a decade or two you will face all possible climatic extremes. In the 1890s, when you weren’t getting baked you were getting drenched. Then came the Federation drought and fifty whole years of rain deficit over an enormous area of Australia. (I know, I know, we’re not supposed to mention that rainfall increased after 1950, but how are our climate luvvies going to post-fill the gauges for, say, 1902. You can’t smooth and adjust that stuff like it was a temp record.) In the seventies, you would have faced drought and fire, but you were more likely to face storm and flood. The opposite was the case in the nineties. Now is more like the seventies. But when I say “like”, that’s as far as it goes.
In the current barbarous and anti-scholastic regime of Publish-or-Perish, there is a demand for neat patterns mechanistically set by forces with bumptious acronym names (so sciency!). Of course, these “forces”, PDO, ENSO etc are just very loose sets of observations, handy as far as they go. Australia, for example, had no significant El Ninos in the parching 1930s, and the devasting heat of 1938-9 was a La Nina season! Please don’t give me a quick explanation. Come back next century when you know something. Above all, do NOT publish.
Peer review this for some climate policy. People build one of the world’s great cities near sea level in a notorious hurricane region, then dump rubble in the main river mouth to make more real estate…(to be continued, by real climate scientists, with any luck)
Now we know why you have been so dusy. It most be an honour to appear before a Congressional Committee. Congratulations.
It would be of little use appearing before a Parliamentry Committee in Australia As in most democracies, our representatives aee not required to have any prior qualifications, in particular most do not have science qualifications so would be unable to ask the searching questions necessary to assess the accountability of scientists.
But Alexander Biggs we in Oz have Climate commissar
Tim Flannery, THAT must count fer something,. :^(( ____/ /
Flannery, of course, as an anthropologist, is uniquely qualified to be our top man in climate science.
Given we’ve just had three Aussies post, I’ll pass on the news that over two completed innings, Australia scored less than one of the Indian partnerships – 370 to 368. Not that I’m a gloating Pommy Indophile or anything. But I did get 18 years of stick while Australia ritually thrashed England.
Faustino’s comments on cricket are clearly off topic, and I hope the mods…well, I won’t tell anyone how to do their job.
I have some sad news for those who like their YouTube satires deadpan. Timmy is no longer an official Prius Person, and his Toyota videos have been pulled. This does not mean that our Green Betters have disowned the Count of Geothermia. It’s just that no corporation, however massive, can keep filling that endless chaff-bag which is Tim’s need for money, attention and making jet-trails. It’s now mostly up to you, Australian taxpayer. Panasonic can help, but they, unlike Australia apparently, have to make ends meet. Panasonic have some solar panels on a roof in Tokyo where Tim, after jetting in, poses for photos…but that won’t sell many rice-cookers.
His real first name is Flim, not Tim.
‘The Count of Geothermia,’ mosomos? Lol. say, in the
comedy nomenclature, yer giving Max a run fer his money!
(U’ll have WEB Hub after u he dislikes climate clowns.)
R u planning a comedy scenario on ‘OZ mad as hell?’
BC
AB, as in Flim-Flammery, I assume. I much prefer Tim-Tammery, definitely on the side of the consumer.
Tim Flannery is a eminant Australian scientist, but I am not aware that he has made a personal contribution to climate science. To have done so, he would need to done research in one ot more of the following fields: Infra-red radiation, theoretical or ecperimental vibration modes of molecules with 3 or more atoms, theoretibal or experimental quantam mechanics, atmospheric physics, large mathematical models.Climate science is a new science and we still have a long way to go to predict future climate with confidence..
Flannery’s book “The Weather Makers” is like unto holy scripture in warmist land especially amongst those warmists who are biologists including paleobiology. It’s been characterized as ‘The Silent Spring’ of global warming.
Yer excused Faustino )
(I have the franchise fer pardons.
Gifts of quality wines acceptable.)
Thanks, Beth, but I neither consume (heart medication excepted) nor supply drugs. mosomoso, I will consider myself bam-booed-off, aka modded, no more cr*ck*t updates.
Faustino, asterisking won’t help. You need to drop the subject. Beth knows where you live, and I can find out.
I’m no hipster, some would say I’m the opposite, but I don’t mind a bit of irony. Timmy’s trough-swilling and jet-trailing is pretty delicious stuff in a climate guru, especially one who likes his waterside real estate. He’s the kind of guy who can jet his carcass across the globe to attend a dinner…then question the food miles of his avocado entree.
But the topic here is policy, and Australia’s climate and environment go-to policy guy is Ross Garnaut. For those who love their irony, I would urge them to research Ross Garnaut’s work in the field of POLLUTION. After that, you may decide that Australia has become one big blob of irony, as we gouge more and more carbon in the form of coal to fund more and more carbon reduction.
mosomoso, just to continue something I have going with willard, I have to say, yes, I know Garnaut, though it’s a long time since I last spoke to him. Prior to his boarding the CAGW band-wagon, in fact.
You do know, I take it, that if you add carbon to your irony, it steels you against adversity.
May the nanotubes be with him, and provoke a Damascene conversion.
===============
mosomoso
Is Phlandery a phony?:
That was naughty of you to go OT and the disgraceful way that the Aussies played in this series so far certainly has no place in this thread!
Faustino
One of you Oz denizens will have to explain the game of cricket to me. I’m told it has some similarities with (US) baseball.
In baseball, not much happens over a fairly long time period, and in the end the score is 2:1.
In cricket, not much happens, also over a fairly long time period, but the score ends up 350:250.
Inflation or positive feedback?
Max
Cricket, Max?
Herewith:
Cricket has some strange terminology owing ter the fact it
began as a sport on the village green with villagers, male,
of all shapes and sizes competing.Consequently it has field
positions fer long off, short leg, short square leg, and fine
leg. Anyone a bit slow off the mark was accommodated at
silly point or silly mid-off.
Bein’ a shared commons, sometimes a milk-maid wandrin’
across the commons ter fetch the cows home got bowled
over … this is how the term ‘tragedy of the commons’ arose.
It’s a very historical English game , cricket! I dunno how they
play it!
Cricket: a game for two teams.The side that is in first goes out one by one.the side that isn’t in goes out and tries to get the side that is in out.when the side that is in is out, its their turn to get the side that’s in out.This sequence is then repeated. See? Simple! I I’ve skipped the scoring part so I don’t confuse you.
Thx, kneel, now I git it, crickit, a simple game really :)
It’s also the best game in the world, and usually Australia is best in the world. Anyone who doesn’t play cricket has no real world experience and is not competent to comment on any topic.
Kneel, Cricket is very simple compared with base ball:
http://www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/whos.html
A kind of Cricket Test or ordeal by crickit, Peter Lang?
Like me father used ter say… Other than that, he was
an open minded kinda guy, tho’ not too fond of leftish-liberal- progressiveness and ideation removed from empirical feedback … preferred the field ter isolation in a cloud tower.
Beth the serf.
Beth, did you get your wisdom from nature or nurture?
Peter,
That’s a generous comment to one of the minnows,
guess something rubs of from nature and nurture
fer all of us, some more than others. Jest about ter
watch ‘Mad as Hell’ a really funny and non – partisan
commentary on politics and life, and it’s on the ABC!
Beth.
Sorry Beth can’t stand Shaun Micaliffe! :(
Max, it’s genetic. If you’re not born with it, you’ll never get it. Sadly, the great majority of the world’s population can not share the joys of this great sport. But cricket is far more subtle and complex than baseball. Having dissed some Aussies, I’d better say no more about North American “sports.”
Remittance man.
Climatology is like science but not… sort of like cricket is to baseball.
Well, there’s a lot of inside baseball to climate science, which the Steve McIntyres of the world reveal, and the William Connolleys obscure.
===============================
I’m not sure how cricket has made it on to the agenda but, having played a bit, I’d be happy to bring my gear along to a game or session in the nets. Maybe we can organise a sceptics/deniers vs consensus science match sometime in the Brisbane area?
I’ve also played baseball too, which some claim did originate in England incidentally, but I do have to say I prefer cricket. It’s not a difficult game to understand. It’s not a game for wimps, a cricket ball is harder and heavier than a baseball. Having one fly past your face from a fast bowler at 80-90mph is bit scary.
But IMO the skill of a good spin bowler is what gives cricket the edge and this guy is just about the best there has ever been:
temp, baseball was instituted by British soldiers in the North American colony.
If we ever get to play cricket against each other, I must give you fore-warning of my bowling, best described as slow right-arm rubbish.
Good luck Judith, we badly need your guidance. I am preparing a short story to explain how bad the situation is in France, with IPCC and Greenpeace providing the two top consultants (Jean Jouzel and Bruno Rebelle, respectively) to The French minister of Ecology (Delphine Balto).
Only in the Western world is the weather no longer free.
Kim entertaingly wrote:
The ants go marching three by three, hurree, hurree.
The ants go marching three by three, flurry, fury.
The ants go marching three by three,
Down to the Congress for testimony,
And they all go marching;
Tread heavy on history.”
And word went forth in formic, congress will Judith inform it.
We hope the acid truth engraves a lasting image.
================
Anty Judith will certainly see to it….
The ants have found the fount of the green cornucopic picnic.
===================
…speaking truth to termitey.
May the walls of climate alarmism tumble at the blowing of the unicorn’s antler.
===========
The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment of the Committee on Science, Space & Technology is holding a Hearing this Wed on “Policy Relevant Climate Issues in Context.”
Here is what I would like to say if I could speak at the hearing.
Earth is always in radiation balance, or nearly in balance and headed toward balance. The quick response to day and night and the quick response to summer and winter indicate that. The warmest hour of the day usually lags the longest hour, but it does reach a max and start down, unless a front or some weather system interferes. The warmest day of the year does lag behind the longest day, most years. It reaches a max and starts down.
Manmade CO2 does influence this radiation balance. The basic physics does show this. Manmade CO2 has likely caused us to warm a little faster. The major problem with radiation balance is that it does not have a set point. We get hotter because we radiate less and we get colder because we radiate more but there is no actual thermostat that turns cooling on and off.
Earth temperature responds like a system with a thermostat. Earth temperature bounds back and forth above and below a set point. As in a house when the Air Conditioning system is on or off. The sun warms the house until the set point is breached and then the AC comes on until the temperature goes below the set point. When Earth is warm, it almost always cools. When Earth is cool, it almost always warms. We could take the almost out of this. Sometimes events modify or delay or rush the next change, but the next change always has happened. We go back and forth over the set point. Of all the many drivers of Earth temperature there is only one that has a thermostat with a fixed set point. The data shows that it snows more when oceans are warm and it snows less when oceans are cold. I strongly believe that the temperature that sea ice melts and freezes is the thermostat of earth. When sea ice is frozen on top it snows less than enough to maintain ice volume and extent and ice retreats. It snows less than enough every year to replace the ice that melts. This allows ice to retreat and allows albedo to decrease and earth warms out of every cold period. When the oceans get warm and the sea ice melts, it turns on the snowfall and enough snow falls every year to more than replace what melts. This is Ewing and Donn Theory from the 1950’s. The oceans are warm now and we can see evidence that the snow is falling. Of course we are warmer than we were 100 years ago, we just warmed naturally out of the Little Ice Age. Manmade CO2 may have brought it a little quicker, it is reasonable to think it should, but warm oceans cause massive snowfalls that establish the upper bound and send us to cooling that will turn off the AC again when the oceans are cooler and the sea ice freezes again.
Congress must keep the EPA from ruining our Economy and Energy Production with measures that don’t have any significant influence on Earth Temperature or Sea Level or Extreme Events.
The science is not settled. They must be held in check while we check the Theory.
Herman A. (Alex) Pope
Retired Aerospace Engineer
MSC – Manned Spacecraft Center (1963)
BS Engineering Mechanics VPI/Virginia Tech 1967
NASA – Johnson Space Center (to 2007)
How does one get 4 deg C warming from the following GMST pattern?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:4/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22
If I could push that graph back another 130 years, I might be able to convince myself I knew something. But if I did, and if I had the choice, I’d go with what we did and are doing. I’d choose warmer.
Every time.
=======
BTW – Judith
I don’t know if you’ll get the chance to speak to any of the committee members individually, but in case you do, I think that you might want to talk to Representative Paul Broun about “normative science.” By way of relevant background, I thought you’d find these comments from him instructive:
Democracy in action, love it or leave it. Sen. Boxer’s climate claims are just as extreme in their way.
Heh, the intolerance of some people.
========
David –
I’m not, not for one second, suggesting that we “leave it.” I completely agree that it is democracy in action. I note that your statements about advocacy have been very consistent in that regard. It is one area where, IMO, your logic is more consistent than what I see from quite a few other “skeptics.”
My point is that we should acknowledge the selectivity in how some folks (you excluded) – no doubt on both sides of the debate – approach defining where and when “normative science” and “activism” exist, and where and when they are harmful.
I applaud political activism in a democracy. It is the engine that drives so many societal benefits. I note mosher’s point that the reality of benefits from activism does not mean that we shouldn’t place activism under scrutiny. But an important step towards that goal is to open up to the tendency that we all towards selectivity in how we approach/define these issues.
kim –
Braun is certainly entitled to his opinions. I would not have it any other way. I applaud his openness. I do not think that his beliefs are all….lies straight from the pit of hell. We all have our beliefs, and our entitlement to have beliefs is the backbone of our success as a country. That success enables me to have a material standard of living that exceeds the vast majority of people who share this planet with me, and an even vaster majority of people who have ever lived.
That said, with regard to debate “activism” and “normative science,” I have seen much selectivity. Braun’s comments (comparing scientific evidence to “lies straight from the pit of hell,” and Judith testifying before a science committee of which Braun is a member, are relevant to that debate.
I believe in capitalizing Hell.
=======
Well, the normative and activist nature of his intolerant views on science are interesting indeed.
Given Judith’s interest in scientific activism and normative science, I wonder what her perspective is about testifying before Braun and perhaps other Congresscritters on the committee who espouse views similar to his.
It will be interesting to see if she has anything to say about any of that…
kim
Good idea – may keep you out of it.
Max
David Wojick
Is this the same Sen. Boxer that proclaimed there would be 170 million unemployed Americans as a result of the sequester reductions in the US Federal spending increase?
Max
(The lady has a problem with “numbers”).
Neat gimmick she’s got; buttonhook a ‘$’ to that ‘#’ and someone close has no problemo.
=========
Not getting your point Josh…So what’s wrong with that?
Depending on what “that” refers to, I didn’t say/don’t think there is anything “wrong with [it].”
My point is related to pervasive attribute of selectivity in the debate about what is or isn’t activism and “normative science,” and where and when they are harmful.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/04/forthcoming-congressional-hearing/#comment-300314
Jesus, what an activist.
====
True to Tribal Form, Liberal Weenie Joshua attacks Christianity.
Andrew
Andrew –
I am not attacking Christianity. I would suggest that your misreading betrays “skepticism” as opposed to skepticism.
I have no particular predisposition towards Christians or holders of any other particular belief. I respect many Christians that I know, and I deeply respect the power of their faith, and the power of faith more generally.
That said – Braun’s beliefs and his role on a science committee are relevant to a debate, that Judith initiated, about the impact of “activism” in science and the impact of “normative science” on policy formation.
If you’d like to debate that, I’m game.
Joshua,
Congress is full (literally) of non-scientists of all political stripes who do not think or speak scientifically. You cherry-picked a guy to criticize because he espouses Christian beliefs. Pretty obvious. But then it’s you.
Andrew
Just by way of a testimonial –
My older brother died in November. He was a remarkable many in many respects. And some aspects of his unique character promoted a negative judgmentalism in many of the people he encountered throughout his lifetime.
He was deeply religious. He studied the New and Old Testaments and many other religious texts with an amazing passion and intensity. As a part of his studies, he regularly, for decades, gathered with various Christians – sometimes in groups and sometimes individually – to study together the Bible and other religious texts.
Since my brother’s death I have learned much more about his life. One area of his life that I have learned more about is the richness of the relationships he formed with various religiously-oriented communities, and with various individuals who very much appreciated spending time talking with my brother about sacredness, about faith, about religious doctrine, about god, about spirituality. Many of those communities and individuals have strong Christian beliefs. Many of those Christians have come to me to tell me how much they valued my brother’s “savant-like” ability to quote scripture, with a quality like that of someone who has a photographic memory, completely in context and with deep meaning and clear reflection.
Since my brothers death, I have come to see qualities in those Christian communities and individuals that speaks to what I consider to be the highest order of the human spirit. Their generosity, their aspirations to a higher plane of existence, their focus on integrating spiritual qualities and values, their ability to step out of the mundane and profane day-to-day fog that fills our lives, has been deeply moving to me. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity those Christians gave (shared, actually) with my brother for creating community. I have a hard time expressing just how truly grateful that I am to them.
I certainly feel no desire, none, nada, zilch, niente, bupkis, inclination towards attacking them or their beliefs.
Please think through what may have caused you to wrongly interpret my comments.
Andew –
In a sense, yes. I cherry-picked Braun’s comments – because they are very relevant to the selectivity in how Judith approaches the questions of scientific “activism” and “normative science.”
It has nothing, nada, zilch, niente, bubkis, to do with “attacking” the Christian attribute of his beliefs*. This is about Judith’s approach (and that of some other “skeptics”) to these issues. Again, I will note David W.’s approach to these issues as being notably different, and in that difference, much more logically consistent.
* In fact, I would say that the intolerance and scientific ignorance reflected in his beliefs is entirely non-Christian, but that is another matter.
Let’s stop beating around the bush……embryology is ‘ lies straight from the pit of hell’?????
Fundamentalist nutter.
Sorry – belongs here:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/04/forthcoming-congressional-hearing/#comment-300347
Joshua entertains Michael and a crowd by sacrificing Christians to the lions.
=============
@Joshua
Broun’s dayjob is now a member of the United States House of Representivies not a scientist. Curry’s position is that scientists be non-normative. I don’t think she expects the same of politicians. In any case normative science is that science which is infused with hidden policy preferences. Broun wears his policy positions on his sleeve. So he’s not hiding anything. An example of a hidden policy preference would be the atheist or misanthrope who doesn’t profess to having those beliefs for political reasons yet holds those beliefs and is biased by them. By definition evangelistic Christians such as Broun are not quiet about their beliefs. They wear their hearts on their sleeve so to speak.
Science is agnostic on religion for the most part. I might be tempted to tell Broun when he goes off about a young earth, “Well that’s the machines running The Matrix want you to believe” and/or my favorite “If the earth is really 10,000 years old God sure appears to have taken extreme care in making it look billions of years older. Why would God give me a rational mind if He didn’t expect me to use it? Non sequitur.”
Joshua
You write (bold by me):
Since when is our hostess a “skeptic”?
You seem to make a distinction between “skeptics” and skeptics, where the former are simply irrational “deniers” by your definition.
Judith, like all honest scientists (who remain untainted by the political pressure to practice “normative science”) is a skeptic – rational skepticism is an integral part of the scientific process (see Feynman et al.).
But you apparently identify her as a “skeptic”, i.e. an irrational “denier”.
Are you really sure that’s what you wanted to write?
Or dis you simply screw up again?
Max
manacker –
and
First, you have never seen me call anyone a “denier”
Second – Sometimes I use the term “skeptic” as a general term – that might refer to both skeptics and “skeptics.” Sometimes I point to “skepticism,” specifically. (You might recall a few times when I’ve done that in reference to the arguments you’ve made.) So, sometimes I might refer to someone as a “skeptic” without arguing that the are distinguished from a skeptic.
Third, any “identification” that you see me making of Judith is purely an artifact of your overactive imagination. Although, no doubt, you have seen me question some of her positions, you have never seen me characterize her in as a “skeptic” as distinguished from a skeptic, let alone as a “denier.”
Once again, manacker, we see in your argumentation evidence for why I do refer to many of your arguments as being “skeptical” (as distinguished from skeptical).
@ Springer –
My impression is that her position is that scientists she doesn’t agree with be non-normative and non-activist.
I think it is selective for her to consider herself as non-normative and non-activist. I consider her definition of terms to be based on selective reasoning.
(BTW – It’s always amusing to watch science-oriented conservatives spin themselves dizzy trying rationalize theocrats like Broun. Thanks for the chuckle.)
Josh, me boy.
You stepped into a pile of your own “doo-doo” when you referred To
After having ranted on about how “skeptics” are different from true scientific skeptics.
It was a silly slip.
Admit it, and let’s move on.
Otherwise you are stepping back into the pile and tracking it all around.
Max
“Joshua entertains Michael and a crowd by sacrificing Christians to the lions.” – kim
Maybe kim could explain how that isn’t fundamentalist nutjobbery?
Oh, but it is. Well, perhaps ‘pagan nutjobbery’ is more apt.
===============
I think that if Judith is able to speak to individual committee members, she shouldn’t waste her time with Broun/Braun, but with those who have shown some openness to evidence and reasoned debate.
I suspect he might have very interesting questions about climate.
===============
Kim, when I see your name, I always think of Kipling’s cross-cultural urchin in Lahore. Are you referencing that or not?
Arrows, arrows, everywherows.
Where’s the river from whence the bows?
===========
“Seek everywhere as I go – for the place is not known where the arrow fell.”
Enigmatic as ever.
Joshua
Sounds like US Rep. Paul Broun has found his “dogma of choice” in the Bible.
Others have found it in the IPCC Summary reports.
As the French say: chacun à son gout.
Max
spellchecker removed the û in “goût” (and gave me gout instead). Ouch!
Webby
Mu “business” here is exposing phonies.
Watch out, buddy!
Max
“Braun is certainly entitled to his opinions” ?
I was just wondering about that. Is anyone “entitled” to think anything they like? No matter how obviously wrong and unscientific, such that the Earth is only a few thousand years old?
Most Christians don’t have a problem with the ideas of Evolution and accept that stories of Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark etc are just Biblical fables.
If anyone does believe in the literal truth of Noah’s Ark, can they explain to me how flightless birds like the Kiwi bird from NZ and the Dodo from Mauritius somehow made it across thousands of miles of ocean to get a ride on the Ark and then someone managed to make it home again afterwards.
Maybe people are “entitled” to believe such nonsense but maybe the rest of us are “entitled” to believe they are delusional to the extent of being mentally ill.
should be “….somehow managed to make it home again afterwards”.
tempterrain,
As a Catholic, I worry just about as much about the historical accuracy of the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah’s ark, as Richard Dawkins worries about our complete lack of knowledge of the multiverse in which he invests his faith. I don’t lose any sleep over it.
Dawkins is entitled to believe in the multiverse without any evidence, but maybe the rest of us are entitled to believe he is…. Nah, I just can’t be as condescending as you. I don’t think everyone who disagrees with me is stupid, or evil, or mentally ill, or all three. Not even you.
Broun is an M.D. That’s a pretty tough academic row to hoe. Blowing off his beliefs like they can’t possibly be true takes an enormously arrogant personality. Is that what you’re doing Joshua, dismissing his beliefs as the rantings of a delusional?
Here’s the deal, if one accepts an omnipotent creator then that creator can create a universe de novo in any apparent state. I liken this to creating a computer-based simulation of reality. We can set our starting parameters to any point in history that we want. Our articial universe might have been started an hour ago but it may have a consistent internal history of billions of years.
I’m not at all sure this requires omnipotence but rather just a computing device with the processing power of a human brain and artificial sensory feeds with channel capacities in visual, audio, olfactory, and touch similar to that of the average human being. In other words everything we experience and think we know could be a construct.
I have no means by which to determine how likely it is that perceived reality is a construct. Everything I know is delivered to me by my senses and I know my senses are limited. All I know for sure is that it is a logically consistent possibility that the universe and all its apparent history could be a construct. Welcome to digital physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_universe_theory
” Blowing off his beliefs like they can’t possibly be true takes an enormously arrogant personality…”
Well they can’t possibly be true, can they? What’s arrogant about saying that?
In other words everything we experience and think we know could be a construct.
Never mind that Earth supposedly didn’t exist more than a few thousand years ago, the universe itself may not have experienced 5 seconds ago according to this line of thought. Your posting, and this one too, is just another construct.
It’s obviously a lot of nonsense and any rational person can’t really believe its possibly true.
Top shelf theoretical physicists like Wolfram, Zuse, Tegmark, t’Hooft, Wheeler and many others beg to differ with your assessment. This is just very likely over your head and you’d rather believe the universe is just a big accident. In that case your thoughts are mere accidents too, like a trainwreck, and *that* I can believe as the resemblance is just too compelling to ignore.
Probably my last posting sounds a bit Richard Dawkinsish, and I’m not in complete agreement with him on questions of religious toleration, but he is certainly right on most issues.
Your argument isn’t difficult to follow. You are saying that it is possible that some omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being deliberately created the world in such a way as to mislead us in thinking that it is much older than it actually is. You may think that. Its just absurd to the rest of us.
One man’s absurdity is another man’s simple test of faith. What gross appendages are albatrossed around the neck of reality? For ever, ever more.
=============
tempterrain, if you think that is not possible, you’re as close-minded as any religious person. The inability to recognize a legitimate, logical explanation is not something I’d promote.
Last Tuesdayism may be silly, but it is perfectly logical. Only a fool would think otherwise.
Yes “Last Tuesdayism” is silly. But, no its not at all logical.
Has this supposed falsification of the geological record been made by the same God who proclaims that he is source of all truth? Just asking the question shows the logical inconsistency.
Only a fool wouldn’t be able to see that.
Wow. Last Tuesdayism doesn’t say anything about its god. Basing your entire rebuttal on a complete non-sequitur is pretty bad. It’s almost as if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
After giving it some consideration, I’ve decided I should have said Last Thursdayism, not Last Tuesdayism. Last Tuesdayism is a more complex belief system, and it isn’t as good a parallel. I said Last Tuesdayism because it’s the one I (pretend to) subscribe to. It’s a fun root for philosophical discussions, and I think it is a better fit for the state of the universe than Last Thursdayism.
Understand, some people take their joke religious beliefs very seriously. And they generally know what they’re talking about, unlike tempterrain.
Brandon Shollenberger | March 9, 2013 at 1:39 am |
You can’t spell Thursday without hurTs, but you can’t spell Tuesday without sueT.
A profound religious difference to be sure.
BS,
In your case it isn’t a question of “almost”.
This sub- thread is discussing Dave Springers comment ” Blowing off his beliefs like they can’t possibly be true takes an enormously arrogant personality.”
You’ve obviously lost track of what’s going on. “His beliefs” are those of fundamental Christianity which, as I understand, it does involve a God.
We now know many things about climate change than were known back when climatists first took sides against modernity. For example, we now know that about 40 percent of global warming is due to the impact of cosmic rays –i.e., more or less that the Earth races through on it’s journey around the Sun that is moderated more or less as a consequence of more or less solar activity — and, having nothing to do with atmospheric CO2. In other words, climate change due to changes the Earth’s albedo due to the resultant change in low cloud cover is far more significant than IPCC models have ever allowed for –i.e., what the IPCC once considered to be the impact of human activity on climate change must now be significantly reduced.
“We conclude that the contribution to climate change due to the change in galactic cosmic ray intensity is quite significant and needs to be factored into the prediction of global warming and its effect on sea level raise and weather prediction,” Rao, UR. Contribution of changing galactic cosmic ray flux to global warming, Current Science, 100:2 (25-Jan-2011)
” For example, we now know that about 40 percent of global warming is due to the impact of cosmic rays”
It’s not just young Earth creationists who are delusional!
“Genetic science, including genetic engineering, will improve nutrition and end malnutrition, improve crop yields, reduce the environmental impact of farming, and make people and the environment healthier.
“Many activist campaigns designed to make us fear useful chemicals are based on misinformation and unwarranted fear.”
~Patrick Moore, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout…
Congratulations! Let’s hope the hearing is not canceled:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/emergency-responders-brace-for-winter-storm-in-dc-baltimore-areas/2013/03/05/c8e58eb4-8586-11e2-a80b-3edc779b676f_story.html
Everyone here in fantasyland is nervous because of the paralyzing snows that have occurred elsewhere. Fighting the snow and cold wind will be a nice touch, but extreme events are the new green mantra. You might mention this having done research on it.
A Nature Trick?
Irony of
the pathetic fallacy
playing out
outside
wildly,
while inside
the congress
testimony
is given
soberly, non –
normatively, non –
referencing what
is happening
outside.
Precisely. If we just stopped driving cars it would stop snowing, or so they say.
Snow flakes are no longer a heavenly manifestations even by those whose comfort and security is courtesy of the taxpayer? That’s very sad.
Welcome back!
Sock it to ’em!
In regard to uncertainty (a main topic of congressional testimony), none of the Climate Etc comments so far are as cogent and well-reasoned as Naomi Oreskes’ recent remarks at the AGU:
Prof. Oreskes’ understanding is of course illuminated by an appreciation that global-scale corporate entities — like Big Tobacco and Big Carbon — are utterly lacking in both human consciousness and a human moral sense, and therefore in similarly seeking maximize shareholder value, given similar economic incentives, global-scale corporations engage in distinctive patterns of astro-turfing, doubt-pedaling, and politician-buying … practices that over decades have led to legal conviction on multiple counts of large-scale and sustained racketeering.
And of course, Big Carbon’s inexcusable practices of weaseling and doubt-pedaling in congressional testimony are entirely familiar to students of history!
Isn’t that plainly obvious, folks … and pure common sense?
Judith Curry’s journey to Washington will take her to the heart of Big Carbon doubt-pedaling, influence-buying, and astro-turfing!
Oops … did someone refer to… “distinctive patterns of astro-turfing, doubt-pedaling, and politician-buying …”?
Frodo and Samwise versus Sauron in Mordor had it easier than scientists versus corporate interests in Washington DC!
Come clean now — is this Naomi? Is that you behind all those smilies?
Fan, pertinent abstracts there, thanks. Politics amplifies uncertainty in policy-relevant science, and scientists have to be cautious of separating this amplifying noise factor from the basic scientific uncertainty which is smaller than the public perception of it.
Fanny
OK. Let’s summarize the Oreskes blurb you quoted.
“Uncertainty” in the science of our planet’s climate, according to Oreskes, is not a result of “ignorance” (huh? – isn’t “uncertainty” on anything the direct result of “ignorance” about that thing?) but rather
– a response to the social context (of climate change)
– a political strategy to delay policy action.
Hmmm…
Then, out of the magic hat comes the “tobacco industry” rabbit.
Ouch!
A load of rubbish, Fanny.
Max
I’m hoping CurryJA uses some of Girma’s graphs. All of them on display would be fantastic.
JCH
Girma’s graphs or Fanny’s smileys?
Gimme Girma’s graphs every time.
Max
It is interesting to see people saying “go get ’em” or “please don’t dissemble” and “watch out for fundi X” or “don’t forget to mention Y”. For me, knowing that Dr Curry will be testifying is all I need to know since Dr Curry has proven her integrity to science and dedication to the error bars and the scientific method. Thus, I need only urge for God speed and safe travels. Oh and watch out for the pit of despair.
I’m hoping for a de-funding of UN-sponsored pseudoscience and public education at the federal level–hundreds of billions if dollars just slip through the fingers of the federal bureaucracy without a trace like sands through a bottomless hourglass.
Judith, 10 a.m. Wed in Washington is 1 a.m. Thurs in Brisbane (currently 3.22 a.m. here). Do you have any idea of the running order and timing of the hearings, as I might try to catch the webcast?
Here’s me in an article I wrote in2007 discussing Lomborg’s position.
I haven’t kept up with Lomborg much but I trust he’s not done any back pedaling in the intervening years because when you’re right you’re right. I can’t say that about any of the panel members on this hearing. At least not in 2007 I couldn’t. My opinion hasn’t changed about Chamedies. He’s a true blue diehard CAGW cheerleader. I’ll let you know if Curry’s stock has risen much in my book after I see her presentation. I expect Lomborg will steal the show in any case and that’s a good thing.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/times-forget-climate-change/
David Springer
?
IMO, it is because the ranking is basically correct. OTOH, climate change is the perfect vehicle to transport the interests of misanthropes and opportunists, regardless the merits of concern.
Further case-studies in global corporate-sponsored doubt-pedaling, influence-buying, and astro-turfing:
Hmmm … so is this how operations like Heartland/WUWT serve the interests of global Big Carbon?
By throwing “sand in the gears” of public understanding and/or effective public energy policy … through systematic practices of doubt-pedaling, influence-buying, and astro-turfing?
The world wonders!
Context: Obama is working through the EPA to shut down the coal power industry – all over environmental alarms – that are NOT supported by objective science.
See: The moratorium is known as “new source performance standards,” which the EPA issued because it declared carbon a dangerous pollutant under the clean-air laws of the 1970s. These standards say that all future power plants running on fossil fuels—coal or gas—must not emit more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.
Even the most modern, efficient coal boiler emits 1,800 pounds, while combined cycle natural gas turbines come in barely under that threshold. To adapt what Henry Ford said about the color of the Model T, utilities can build any plant they like as long as it runs on natural gas. . . .
The rule for existing sources, now under development, would work like this: Because coal and gas are combined in a single category, the EPA would cap an average rate of, say, 1,400 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. In this hypothetical, that would allow a utility to run one coal plant and one gas plant—but the average would decline over time. As it fell, the utility would need to switch to more gas and retire coal.
The uncertainties Curry is raising is critical to expose this power grab with seriously harmful increases in electricity prices and reductions in grid reliability.
Food for testimony:
This is the sort of solid-science, data-grounded, quantitative-predicted, likelihood-quantified, non-normative-value result that Judith Curry seeks to testify regarding!
Of course, with 88% of Congress re-elected on a two-year cycle, perhaps its not easy for Congress to rationally contemplate long-term scientific consequences?
Even if it means much of Florida, Lousiana, Maryland, etc. are slated to be submerged?
“Therefore, our results imply that to avoid significantly elevated sea level in the long term, atmospheric CO2 should be reduced to levels similar to those of preindustrial times.”
Thanks Fan for a fine example of ‘normative science’.
Gosh … John Carpenter, I can’t accept your thanks, because your assertion wrong-on-the-facts!
Without the (crucial) first clause, the assertion *would* be normative …
… but *with* that crucial clause, the science becomes entirely objective (obviously)!
After all, there are *some* life-forms that would *love* to see Florida submerged (again), eh?
Isn’t that obviously true, John Carpenter?
“Isn’t that obviously true, John Carpenter?”
Well no, firstly because I’m sure extinct species are not capable of *loving* or any other emotion or thought. Secondly, no because the 68% confidence level is not an obvious true either.
I am not able to access the full text, so without reading the methods and analysis used I can only comment on the information provided in the abstract, which is sparse. The authors suggest a policy solution of returning CO2 levels to preindustrial concentrations as the solution to the problem. That is a ‘normative science’ position. The authors are promoting a position of ‘pre-industrial’ levels of CO2 as the preferred concentration. They say their findings back up this position, but this is an advocacy position. Its advocacy because it is not an attainable goal. GHG concentrations are not going to return to pre-industrial levels for perhaps centuries. They know this to be just as ‘likely’ to be true as the confidence level of their results. If the authors took a more traditional scientific viewpoint, they would have suggested more attainable solutions or adaptive measures, not a blanket statement of a non-attainable goal with only their ‘likely’ certainties of being correct. Doesn’t that seem obvious to you Fan?
The Weather Channel reports a 100% chance of precipitation in Washington, DC tomorrow. It is gratifying to see anything other that death and taxes being so certain there — even if it’s only predicting the weather a day in advance.
The Hearing Charter is now posted
https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-113-SY18-20130306-SD001.pdf
So Curry the key scientific witness, Chameides, the social one, and Lonborg the economic one. Onward, Climate Soldiers, hearing together.
====================
Judith Curry
Sounds like a good outline agenda.
Will be very interested in seeing the results.
Thanks for keeping us all up-to-date.
Max
do good & thanks
My take on these questions
1. Policy-relevant issues. The US must maintain a lead in areas where climate change will impact the future. This includes the Arctic where things are changing fast from both defense and resource viewpoints, and alternative energy industries where opportunities for the US to be competitive depend on government support, otherwise we will be importing alternative energy technologies, car batteries and such. Changes in agriculture also need planning for to avoid having to import more than we do now, and to make sure farms continue to have sufficient water for productivity. Other things relate to resilience to droughts, floods, storms which require infrastructure and financial planning for emergencies.
2. Climate change and extreme weather links. This can only be statistical. What were 100-year droughts or floods may become 10-year events, same with heat waves. Resilience needs to be improved for such step-ups in frequency. The thing to emphasize is that the statistical frequencies are changing fast, and it is in some way meaningless to talk about 100-year events in a changing climate, so even planners have to find a new way to talk about resilience.
3. Uncertainties. In light of the above two, uncertainties are dangerous only if they delay critical action for the US to maintain competitiveness in a changing world or to fall behind in resilience to natural disasters. Uncertainty should not result in paralysis or a wait-and-see, or an after-the-fact, response attitude.
Key word in all this: Maintain competitiveness and resilience in a rapidly changing world. Policies need to encourage and facilitate this, and not hinder it.
I just want to be the first person to say “normative ideation”. Call me shallow, but that’s important to me. Let me also be first to say “non-normative ideation”. Ahhhh…
Hot world ideation is a serious disorder found only in the West that is driven by the global warming apocalyptic content of mass media which imbues viewers with the notion that the world is a hotter and more intimidating place to live than it actually is, and prompts a desire for more protection than is warranted by any actual threat. Hot world ideation is one of the main conclusions of the anti-humanism movement of the UN-IPCC. Additionally, murderous examples of failed socialism — as witnessed by large segments of Leftist-liberal Utopians from the safety and comfort of Western civilization — has created a global psychosis, causing people to turn on the traditional morals, principals and ethics that otherwise would sustain their spirits and help prevent them from succumbing to self-defeating nihilism and helplessness. Individuals who do not rely on the mainstream media and who understand the floccinaucinihilipilification of all the cabinets full of worthless global warming junk science have a far more accurate view of the real world, are better able to more accurately assess their vulnerability to present and future weather conditions, and better prepared to deal with all the myriad vagaries of life over which they have no control–even if it means getting their hands dirty. Global warming realists don’t fear the hand of man and appreciate life in the modern world and tend to be nicer people with a life and a wide and healthy variety of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles free of hypocrisy, superstition and ignorance.
Luv it, Wag. I’ll bet I can make it one sentence if I try.
=====
how ’bout “post-normative ideation”?
AGW theory has become a fuzzy post-normative ideation of post-industrial Western science with little input from the societies south of the equator. Achieving and maintaining political power is all that is left that drives the global warming narrative: Economic Socialism is Dead so, Long Live New Age AGW Socialism! The world’s poor are poor because they apparently have too much energy. Although the sun is NOT responsible for global warming, a technology like solar cells is apparently is perfectly adequate to fulfill the world’s future energy needs. Imagine. And, who knew? The rich are rich because they do not pay enough for energy. By equalizing the distribution of energy, the Leftists and liberal Utopians looked forward to replacing inequality with uniform poverty. But, the emerging capitalist countries like China, India, and Brazil are all quickly moving on. The East is learning to just let these Priests of Deception jabber on in the darkness of Plato’s prison cave. The East now knows that they don’t know or care what these talking hypochondriac hypocrites are talking about. The East also has learned that there is an upside to the madness: like 20th Century Western media, the only real power the Left has is its willingness and ability to diminish and marginalize the West.
Didn’t think of that. I see that “pro-normative ideation” has been said a bit already. I wonder what that is? (Don’t tell me.)
The prob with these high fashions in verbiage is when they hit the specials bin in K-Mart. A few years ago, if you thought someone was a tosser, you referred to their “cognitive dissonance”. Now, you can be sitting at the footy and some drunk roars about the ref’s “cognitive dissonance”. Same thing will happen to “normative” and “ideation”. Right now, their smug factor is nearly as high as when you quote Daniel Kahneman (the current ultimate in smug). But in a few years time you’ll be at the footy and some half-cut drongo will yell:
“That ref’s ideation is completely non-bloody-normative. Hook the bugger!”
But “Nature can’t be fooled“ …
… and she’s speaking to us plainly, eh Wagathon?
Perhaps we should listen to her?
Because you know, she *does* have the last word.
Fanny
Finally, we agree!
Nature will have the last word (not James E. Hansen or other politically motivated doomsayers)
She is already whispering to us that CO2 is not driving our climate (see past 10-15 years).
And WHO KNOWS what she’s going to tell us next?
Stay tuned.
Max
kim It’s a discombombulated sentence, but…
Pols set agenda with taxpayer megabucks, which drives scientists to support agenda with fear-mongering predictions, which gives pols justification for extracting more taxpayer megabucks, which…
(A self-powered perpetual motion machine)
Max
Another blast from the past. This time from James Hansen
http://www.prisonplanet.com/a-little-known-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen-%e2%80%93-that-failed-badly.html
And from:
http://www.real-science.com/james-hansens-global-warming-epiphany
James Hansen’s Global Warming Epiphany
Posted on March 3, 2012 by Steven Goddard
“In 1999, the world’s greatest climatologist thought the US had cooled dramatically since the 1930s, and that 1998 was much cooler than 1934.”
http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ScreenHunter_109-Mar.-03-08.49.jpg
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/1998changesannotated.gif?w=500&h=355
“It turned out that the millions of temperature records collected over the previous two hundred years by thousands of individuals, either had to be ignored or adjusted to show warming. Hansen and Karl determined that they could see the past, and that they were smarter and wiser than everyone else in US history. (The fact that they were also global warming activists seeking funding did not in any way bias their corruption of the data set.)
“More recently, Hansen has determined that everyone who lived in the capitals of Greenland and Iceland for the past 150 years were also stupid, and that he needed to rewrite their history as well.”
However, in the year 2000 Dr. Hansen and Tom Karl had a global warming epiphany, and took it upon themselves to rewrite all of US history and produce a warming trend – which no one else had ever seen. etc.”
Amusing juxtaposition of Hansen standing by all he said in the Reiss interview in 2001 and Hansen’s 1999 paper where he says:
“Yet in the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country (Figure 2). ”
Whither U.S. Climate?
By James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Jay Glascoe and Makiko Sato — August 1999
No wonder he had to overload the air conditioning system by opening all the windows prior to his speech to congress in 1988 when he kick started the global warming scare, when US temps were showing cooling since the 30s.
Myrhh, your post somehow didn’t include even one link to an original Hansen scientific article, or even one in-context Hansen quotation!
Why go to the extraordinary trouble of such scrupulously selective cherry-picking, Myrhh?
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 5, 2013 at 7:15 pm | Reply
Myrhh, your post somehow didn’t include even one link to an original Hansen scientific article, or even one in-context Hansen quotation!
Why go to the extraordinary trouble of such scrupulously selective cherry-picking, Myrhh?
You’ve probably had a long day.. I gave the link to Hansen’s original paper as posted by Steve Goddard in his piece and the quotes are direct from the paper, here it is again on that NASA page link:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
Science Briefs
Whither U.S. Climate?
By James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Jay Glascoe and Makiko Sato — August 1999
……..
“Yet in the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country (Figure 2). ”
………
Reference
Hansen, J., D. Rind, A. Del Genio, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, M. Prather, R. Ruedy and T. Karl 1991. Regional greenhouse climate effects. In Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climatic Change (M. Schlesinger, ed.). Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe and M. Sato 1999. GISS analysis of surface air temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 104, 30997-31022.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, A. Lacis, M. Sato, L. Nazarenko, N. Tausnev, I. Tegen and D. Koch 1999. Climate modeling in the global warming debate. In Climate Modeling: Past, Present and Future (D. Randall, ed.), pp. 127-164. Academic Press, San Diego.
Manabe, S. and R.J. Stouffer 1995. Simulation of abrupt climate change induced by freshwater input to the North Atlantic Ocean. Nature 378, 165-167
Russell, G.L., and D. Rind 1999. Response to CO2 transient increase in the GISS coupled model: Regional coolings in a warming climate. J. Climate 12, 531-539
Contact
Please address all inquiries about this research to Dr. James Hansen.
Gee … both of those predictions came true!
Thanks Myrrh, for providing strong, objective, verifiable evidence for Climate Etc readers that James Hansen is an *outstanding* scientist!
Do yah think Hansen’s recent prediction of “acceleration of sea-level rise this decade” will come true too, Myrrh?
`Cuz the most recent tranche of satellite data may show early signs of that acceleration … and this would be yet another “win” for James Hansen’s climate-change science, eh Myrrh?
So gosh … maybe NASA should give that guy Hansen a promotion and raise? Thanks Myrrh!
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 5, 2013 at 8:47 pm |
Myrrh posts a link to Hansen’s 199 prediction:
Gee … both of those predictions came true!
Thanks Myrrh, for providing strong, objective, verifiable evidence for Climate Etc readers that James Hansen is an *outstanding* scientist!
You don’t really believe that, do you? Temperatures have been declining for the last 16/17 years, and hurricanes and so on less prevalent.
This paper proves he’s been telling porkies, and, do take a look at what Steve Goddard has to say about Hansen changing temps to fit his pushing of the AGW global warming narrative. He’s not a scientist, the upside down Tiljander is such a funny example of his unconscionable behaviour as a man let alone his agenda to corrupt science data for his anti-coal rants. (Which big oil and nuclear set out to destroy and so their funding to set up CRU, cheap affordable energy for the masses being destroyed by them through the high taxes and restrictions on coal and on the continued destruction of the industry begun by Maggie Thatcher, fuelled by the emotional energy of the useful idiots greenies.)
There’s no science there Fan, instead we have proof after proof of data manipulation and other science frauds by Hansen and his cohorts for the Cause, here an example:
What’s inadequate is Hansen et al’s integrity, to be screaming disaster scenarios on the lie of global warming on the public stage, while he and his cabal of non-scientists know damn well that they are lying, as shown in little read papers and in the emails. And shown most assuredly by their continuing practice of corrupting data records.
“Yet in the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country (Figure 2). ” Hansen
What a tangled web. Whatever Hansen and these people are they are certainly not scientists, outstanding con men certainly, they’ve proved that.
LOL … Climate Etc readers are free to read James Hansen’s predictions of August 1999 and then verify for themselves that Hansen’s 1999 predictions have come true (yet again!).
So gosh … James Hansen is pretty good at scientific prediction, eh Myrhh?
That’s the spin-free plain-and-simple truth … ain’t it?
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 6, 2013 at 6:50 am | Reply Myrhh froths “We have proof after proof of data manipulation and other science frauds by Hansen and his cohorts for the Cause …”
LOL … Climate Etc readers are free to read James Hansen’s predictions of August 1999 and then verify for themselves that Hansen’s 1999 predictions have come true (yet again!).
So gosh … James Hansen is pretty good at scientific prediction, eh Myrhh?
That’s the spin-free plain-and-simple truth … ain’t it?
Would you put your money where your mouth is..?
From my link above:
Would you bet everything you own on Hansen being right? How many years is 2013/2012 from 1988/1989? Within twenty years is gone, would you still bet “within thirty years”?
I’m sorry to see that you think the EPA temperatures are unbiased in support of Hansen, do you know they fund CRU? Which was set up to tamper with temperature records..
http://sppiblog.org/news/partial-list-of-cru-funders
And for some background: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020304/climategate-peak-oil-the-cru-and-the-oman-connection/
Of course, there are overlapping agendas here, a lot of reasons for jumping onto the bankwagon of global warming, but the bottom line is that the subject is full of science fraud and this inevitably catches out the unwary.
http://polarbearscience.com/2013/03/06/stirling-and-derochers-sea-ice-trick-omitting-facts-to-make-polar-bears-appear-endangered/#more-1540
Has an example about polar bears, and by the way, has something to say about Mann and Hansen.
Difficult to bring such fraud to book because “science” likes to think itself above such self-serving agendas, but it happens. Trying to search for the missing NAS 1995 report on a previous discussion, I came across this:
February 26, 2013
An Interview With Marshall Sahlins
“The Destruction of Conscience in the National Academy of Sciences
by DAVID H. PRICE
Last Friday, esteemed University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins formally resigned from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the United States’ most prestigious scientific society.
Sahlins states that he resigned because of his “objections to the election of [Napoleon] Chagnon, and to the military research projects of the Academy.” Sahlins was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991. He issued the below statement explaining his resignation:”
continued on: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/26/the-destruction-of-conscience-in-national-academy-of-sciences/
JC has put up posts on the AGU, and we have ample evidence of other erstwhile august science bodies dancing to the global warming meme, who put this all in place? As Delingpole says, this is a scam decades in the making.
Are some in these institutions fighting back? NASA has released decreasing water vapour levels over the last years, why have they been sitting on this for so long?
That story being covered on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/06/nasa-satellite-data-shows-a-decline-in-water-vapor/
Where the years of AIRS data of carbon dioxide in the Upper and Lower Troposphere?
Send them my best regards, Judith.
I hope somebody can archive it for us. I would welcome an opportunity to see and hear what kind of questions they ask.
Oops. Almost forgot. If President Obama stops-by, say Hi to to him from me.
Unless they put a golf course in at the halls of congress the chances of finding Obama there are nil.
Heh, check out Gohmert’s Amendment to HR 933.
============
@Kim
Poetic. Nice find.
An amendment from Deep in the Heart of Texas I might add.
Breaking News… LOL … now the hot-heads at WUWT are demanding that James Hansen be fired.
Hmmmm mebbe them WUWT folks ain’t never heard of the Streisand Effect?
More seriously, is WUWT trying to intimidate … scientists like Judith Curry?
What scientist(s) are the WUWT folks gonna go after next?
Judith, this is a good occasion to state your views bravely and plainly … without regard for the abusive bluster of denialist “know-nothings”!
Please know that you have many supporters in this!
And thank you too, for hosting this outstanding forum of Climate Etc!
I think he should be gently mocked. But I quite like his hat.
http://agbjarn.blog.is/blog/agbjarn/entry/946551/
wrong link
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250×250/35650552.jpg
Heh, just as Lewandowsky is doing the conspiring, Oreskes is doing the intimidating.
========
Asking the Obama administration to fire Hansen is like asking (OK, I’m gonnna go Godwin here) the German government of 1942 to fire Leni Riefenstahl. Or for you progressives, it’s like asking George W. Bush to fire Karl Rove.
Why would you fire someone who is doing exactly what you want him to do?
Well FOMC, it is the Streisand effect. Hansen has brought attention to the incongruities of his science.
GaryM, what happens in your Reich-oriented worldview if James Hansen’s science is right?
The world wonders!
The farce will be with us.
And it looks like my plea for crayon funding for fan was just in time. It seems he is down to just his red. Or is that pink? Donations for a new blue crayon for fan can be made by Paypal to http://www.colormeprogressive.com
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 5, 2013 at 7:45 pm | Reply
“Breaking News… LOL … now the hot-heads at WUWT are demanding that James Hansen be fired.”
I was demanding that on WUWT years ago. It’s nothing new. Please try to keep up Sidles.
Speaking of normative doom-sayers, The Australian 5/3 an article
by Paul Ehrlich yet again.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/world-commentary/birth-control-vital-to-fight-global-disaster/story-fnfi3iga-1226590250502
Population disaster is IMMINENT. Global warming naturally, (though
it’s non- natch,) the solution as yer can guess:
‘A popular movement is needed to direct cultural awareness
towards providing the ‘foresight intelligence and planning that markets cannot supply…’
‘Can humanity avoid a starvation-driven collapse? Yes, we can,
although we currently put the odds at just 10%.’
Funny how Ehrlich disregards his past failed, dooms-day
predictions, funny how he fails ter learn from his past failure
and continues along the same old confident, I-know-the-future’-
pathway. Funny that he still gets published and people believe
the failed prophet, instead of giving him the sack!
When a salesman sells snake oil, the result is irrelevant. If the dupe gets worse, he should have bought more. If he gets better, the snake oil worked. If he stays the same, he would have gotten worse without it.
For Ehrlich’s snake oil, he just keeps changing the expiration date.
GM, one day the snake oil may be too rancid ter sell. ..this is
an observation, kinda of the homespun kind, not a prediction.
BtC
Funny how Ehrlich can so accurately assess our prospects of avoiding disaster. If he’s correct – 10% – the odds are so against us, why bother, let’s just eat, drink, be merry, fornicate and go out on a wave of rapidly-increasing population.
People still listen to Ehrlich. My jaw is slack.
NW, here’s a great reply in today’s Australian newspaper:
IT was interesting to read in the population doomsday warning by Paul and Anne Ehrlich that 870 million people are hungry and a further two billion may suffer micro-nutrient deficiencies (“Birth control vital to fight global disaster”, 5/3).
In a world of seven billion souls, that means four billion of them now eat pretty well. That was the entire world population when, as a child in the 1970s, I first heard it claimed that the human race had outgrown the world’s capacity.
What I didn’t know then was that economic growth would enable many more of those four billion to produce something tradeable, even in years when their crops failed, and that a flexible system called global trade would distribute surpluses more efficiently than aid agencies could ever dream of.
Or that starvation is most common not in wild, ungoverned countries but in kleptocracies such as Eritrea where starting a business or improving a farm’s productivity costs more in taxes and fees than it’s worth.
Nor did I know that the human will to have children burns most ardently on the margins of survival. That those margins can be pushed further out but never erased, enabling yet more souls to be born; souls who will dare any odds – in the face of governments that stifle them and academics such as Paul and Anne Ehrlich who deny their right to exist – and the more opportunities they have to produce and trade goods, the better their chances
Who says Congress has lost its sense of humor?
Dr. Judith Curry
Summarize your views on the most important policy-relevant climate science issues facing decision-makers. What are the key areas of agreement and disagreement? What is the state of the science and associated strengths and weaknesses on key policy relevant issues, such as attribution, modeling and observations, and climate sensitivity?
Describe the state of the science on the linkages between climate change and extreme weather. Include a discussion on the key uncertainties of these connections and describe how such uncertainties are treated in the public discussion of extreme weather events. What is needed to reduce misconceptions surrounding this scientific discipline?
Include a broad discussion of uncertainties within climate change science, specifically addressing challenges and opportunities related to decision-making under uncertainty, including how such uncertainties are conveyed to policymakers and the public.
Dr. William Chameides
Discuss the state of climate science and summarize your views on the most important climate science issues facing decision-makers.
Describe future projected impacts of most concern in the United States with regard to climate change, and actions the federal government can take to address future impacts.
Provide a discussion of scientific uncertainties in climate science and the how decision makers can account for uncertainty in crafting climate-related policies.
Dr. Bjorn Lomborg
Summarize your views on the most important policy-relevant climate issues facing decision-makers. What are the key areas of agreement and disagreement?
Describe the strengths and weakness of various climate change-driven policies currently in effect around the world, and the costs and benefits of potential mitigation options under consideration here in the United States. How could limited Federal resources be better allocated to address climate, environmental and human health issues facing the U.S. and other nations around the world?
It’s a bit like sandwiching a kindergarten teacher between Sarah Palin talking about “Evolving Education Needs for a Competitive America in the 21st Century,” and Mr. Bumble on “Nutrition for Children”.
This should be entertaining indeed!
(See, now _that_ would be ad hom, were I arguing with the points made — which I can’t do until they’re made public tomorrow. As it is, it’s just rude. Apologies to our host.)
Bart R
Realize your post was supposed to be funny, BUT:
Judith Curry is arguably one of the most qualified climate scientists who does not have a hidden agenda and, therefore does not practice “normative” (i.e. agenda-driven) science. She has written papers on the subject and is very qualified to explain any uncertainties that may exist in the science to the lawmakers
Bjorn Lomborg is an economist (not a climate scientist) who has accepted the premise that AGW will cause a warmer climate, but who has raised questions whether “mitigation” actions are an economically sound way to go. He’ll stick to his strength – the economics.
Don’t know William Chameides, except that he is not a climate scientist, is Dean of Duke’s School of Environment and has written various op-eds to “set the record straight” on climate change (parroting the “consensus” view of IPCC), against “fracking”, etc. So I suppose he will stick to the party line without bringing anything new regarding the science.
It should be interesting and informative. The US Congress needs to be informed before considering any policy actions and this is the best way for that to happen.
Even people outside the USA will be interested in how this comes out, as can be seen from the bloggers here.
Max
Between you and Sarah Palin you’re outgunned.
Wagathon | March 5, 2013 at 9:58 pm |
Sarah Palin ain’t here.
And oh look. Discussion and exchange of ideas followed.
“Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid. Apparently it’s those who ask `Whatever happened to global warming?’, rather than those who predicted `no more traditional British winters’, who need to have their heads checked. Because what they don’t understand – ignoramuses that they are – is that heavy snow is also proof that our planet is getting hotter, and that industrialised society is to blame, just as surely as the absence of snow was proof of the same thing 10 years ago.” ~Brendan O’Neill, ‘The icy grip of the politics of fear,’ 4-Jan-2011
Wagathon | March 6, 2013 at 12:17 am |
Yeah.
The UK really worked itself into a tizzy over the whole snow-free straw man a decade ago. Its media can’t forget how much success it had selling the whole no snow thing, even making people forget that the original claim had to do with weather in a thousand years or ski slopes in a hundred.
Imagine anyone so unskeptical as to forget the original facts and buy into the UK media’s frenzied imaginings.
Though, yes, there were scientists drawing wrong, fanciful and far-fetched conclusions, misunderstanding nuance and just plain guessing.
For instance, traditional British winters have become a thing of the past far sooner than expected. The current patterns of extremes and floods are markedly untraditional, and becoming moreso. Sure, there’s snow still. But show me the Brit who says, “Ah, yes. This is exactly like the snow of my childhood.”
Brendan O’Neill’s a talented, persuasive writer. Shame he wastes his talent on propaganda.
Yeah, you ‘gotta love those childhood memories, like back when a glacier covered Scotland (before thickness was measured in feet) and when gramps burned books in the winter to stay warm (oh wait… that was in 2010).
“… traditional British winters have become a thing of the past far sooner than expected. The current patterns of extremes and floods are markedly untraditional, and becoming more so.”
Bart, England is lucky to have the CET and other interesting records and writings, so people can make judgements about their great-great-etc grandparents’ childhoods.
For “untraditional” cycles and episodes, pick any few decades. I won’t bore you with details you can find yourself, but if you think anything recent to be unprecedented, please let me know. I’m interested in finding precedents to “unprecedented”. Usually, there are too many of the bloody things.
Also, if you can find a period when climate had the “stability” many claim to be seeking, let me know. I can’t find a single era anywhere when things weren’t a bit nasty and liable to be different from one’s fondly remembered childhood. I’m sure that people in 1540 were alarmed to be crossing the Thames and the Seine on horseback or on foot, while no rain fell on Rome for nine months and all Europe was a giant potato crisp. I’m sure they wondered what happened to all the “traditional” cold and flooding of a couple of decades before.
Mind you, the last six years here on the midcoast of NSW haven’t been too bad: one nasty heatwave, some cool and overcast summers…but compared with what Gaia usually dishes out, all pretty mild. But that’s just one corner of Oz.
Oh, no need to point out the lack of satellite records for things like the Arctic Ice melt after Waterloo, or the Big Freeze of the later 19th century, or the Arctic thaw of the early 1920s. I have no intention of cutting myself off from the human and physical past because Napoleon or Henry VIII failed to launch satellites. I can still work stuff out.
mosomoso | March 6, 2013 at 3:34 am |
No, no. By all means, bore me with details of measurements of the jet stream above the UK from the time of Dickens. I’d be truly entertained by those records.
And why pin on me the claims of others?
Do I claim there had been stability at some point?
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87932&filetype=pdf
No. I point out that anyone in the UK with memory long enough knows the weather of the past three yearis unlike any in their experience or in the reminiscences of their forebears.
Sure, the climate — global and regional — has had natural changes at all times up to when humans began to dominate the changes in climate. And regions — especially such tiny ones as the UK — often vary more rapidly than the globe as a whole. But when a ship runs aground, it is not unreasonable to look to the actions of the drunken fool at the wheel.
Since about 1960, the following unprecedented changes have arisen, among many others we are lucky enough to have documented:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/mean:179/mean:181/plot/best/mean:41/mean:59/isolate:119/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:5/mean:7/normalise/scale:-1.0
Synchrony of solar forcings and temperatures, which we reliably trace through CET and sunspot records for well over a century, abruptly ended
Divergence from AMO and PDO influences.
Divergence of temperature trends from “no CO2” model behaviors.
Increase in water vapor content globally.
Receding glaciers and summer sea ice levels.
Increase in deep sea temperatures.
Sea level rise of about half a foot.
And, oh yeah.. global warming to the point even the thoroughly haphazzard and improvised weather records built for other purposes can demonstrate it.
What is unprecedented is that the atmosphere in half a century has put on such a vast and undeniable display as to render even the most wilfully blind incapable of denying the patent influence of human industry and neglect on the climate.
‘Industry and neglect’.
And behold; it’s warmer than it wuz!
=========
”
What is unprecedented is that the atmosphere in half a century has put on such a vast and undeniable display as to render even the most wilfully blind incapable of denying the patent influence of human industry and neglect on the climate.
”
Bart:
You wrote that on Climate Etc.
Maybe you were being ironic.
“a vast and undeniable display”
Squiggly Lines Everywhere!
Andrew
heinrich | March 6, 2013 at 10:22 am |
..and on a morning when even ordinary weather stymied Congress. Maybe I was being sekrit doubly ironic?
mosomoso wants reports from a decade or two to show precedents for the current weather extremes in a little corner of the globe; in virtually every part of the globe the number of extremes in the few months since the most recent report exceeds the number of extremes in any prior decade or two. The irony.
Your thirst for knowledge is commendable, mosomoso!
Everywhere in the world, gardeners, hunters, and bird-watchers are seeing … with their own eyes … unmistakable (and well-documented) evidence of accelerating warming!
Any apprehension you may have, regarding a “conspiracy” of scientists, will be allayed because these observations comes from ordinary citizens who care personally about Nature.
So now you can be rationally assured that climate change is real!
That’s mighty comforting, eh momoso?
What is the evidence base for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)?
Amazingly, it doesn’t exist.
What we do have is a relative few number of AGW pseudo scientists who are dedicated to isolating one lone factor from a complex dynamic multivariate system. They do this to add what they think is the needed gravitas to push their simple-minded one-dimensional preconceived notions and anecdotal opinions about their view of the world
Sorry Bart. I was responding to your own very pointed comment:
“… traditional British winters have become a thing of the past far sooner than expected. The current patterns of extremes and floods are markedly untraditional, and becoming more so.”
Your words. Nobody else’s.
If you don’t think one should discuss that little corner of the globe, or adduce it into an argument, you might want to refrain from comments such as the one above. In fact, you would be wise not to be too specific about references to the past beyond the usual blurry and unverifiable stuff like:
“in virtually every part of the globe the number of extremes in the few months since the most recent report exceeds the number of extremes in any prior decade or two.”
Number those “extremes” while they’re fresh!
The CET is most awkward for the New Man at Year Zero, isn’t it? In fact, it amounts to several centuries of debunking climate exceptionalism. So shift to “the globe”, where there’s no CET. If I were so impertinent as to mention the months in N. America between the Long Island Express and the great cold and heat waves following into 1936…you’ll find the area too small. The fact that “Superstorm Sandy” didn’t even have a category at landfall (please compare to Long Island Express) won’t matter if you keep saying “super”.
The Arctic Ice thaws of 1817, 1922, 1958 etc etc? The re-freezes thereafter? You’ll want to see the sat photos. The great blizzards of N. America like 1888? You’ll believe only sat photos. The Great Colonial Hurricane, the 1821 NY and Long Island Hurricane? Photos please. Of course, we do have the awkward sea level measurements from the late 18th century on – where all the substantial decadal rises occurred occurred prior to 1870 – but if you just keep talking about SLR maybe nobody will notice that. Maybe that awkward sat measurements of increasing summer ice in Antarctica can get lost somehow, if one talks only of the piece of Antarctica that’s melty.
If things get too awkward, there are always the old blurry stand-bys like “frequency” and those unicorns called “norms”. Just sciency enough for the serfs, but nothing that can be disproven (or proven).
It wouldn’t surprise me if the world has warmed since the mid-19th century, or that this is the warmest period (with blips) since the MWP. There’s solid evidence for that, and no doubting a MWP that favoured the Song and whose waning prejudiced the Ming.
I have no idea about future climate – which is something I have in common with you and everyone else. I just don’t want to be living with a bunch of Medieval technology and Green Fetishism when that old hag Gaia refuses to respond to good intentions and the fat temple offerings left on the altars of GIM and Goldman Sachs.
As a conservationist, I love seeing natural resources (eg water, coal) and hard money conserved and put to prudent use. As a thrifty, bush-dwelling redneck, I know no other way. The Lysenkos of climate are all about waste. Let’s wipe the green goo from our brains so we can once again feel like progressing (as opposed to progressive) humans.
To a “fan of etc”.
Thank you for the asterisks and displays of colour. You’ll be pleased to know that I don’t doubt either an overall warming from the latter half of the 19th century, and an upward trend in temps since a cooling in the mid 20th century (after Arctic temps plunged in the 60s and ice increased to very high levels in the 70s). I live in the bush and agree that there have been many signs of warming for people as diverse as wine makers and bird watchers, especially through the 1990s.
Not only do I believe in climate change, I believe that climate IS change. For example, the climate changed profoundly in my region of Australia after 2006, bringing back dominant oceanic winds even through winter and early spring – previously dominated after the 70s by inland winds in those seasons – and even through the El Nino of 2009!
This change has been dramatic and unmistakeable. Our brief heat wave of this year collapsed so suddenly that even I was surprised. (I’m too sensible, I hope, to call any shift “unprecedented”.) We have since reverted to the moist cool summer conditions of the previous year (which was the coolest in my memory.)
PDO flipped, as around 1950? I don’t believe in using loose observation sets as simplistic climate mechanisms, but there’s likely something in that.
What amazes me is – get this! – the people who talk about climate change are the last ones to notice it when it actually happens. I’m not kidding. Why is that? They wouldn’t notice a real climate shift if it sat in their laps. After a few years, of course, and just when things are likely to change again, they’ll start learnedly discoursing about it and telling us what it all means, and how we’re heading into a freezing New Dalton or whatever they’re calling CAGW this month. Educated dopes, eh?
mosomoso | March 6, 2013 at 1:00 pm |
And what a generous reading I see given to my reply, hanging every possible (and at times impossible) ambiguity, shading of meaning and nuance that just wasn’t there to it, turning on its head every sentence fragment you could find a way to twist, turn or spin..
If you don’t think one should discuss that little corner of the globe, or adduce it into an argument, you might want to refrain from comments such as the one above.
Clearly, as I engaged about that little corner of the globe, I welcome discussion with goodwill toward a rational end. I even cited a study (see the link provided in the paragraph you so sneer at) from and about that little corner of the globe. So, drop the ad hom.
In fact, you would be wise not to be too specific about references to the past beyond the usual blurry and unverifiable stuff like:
“in virtually every part of the globe the number of extremes in the few months since the most recent report exceeds the number of extremes in any prior decade or two.”
Number those “extremes” while they’re fresh!
See, the study from 2009 was pretty good at enumerating extremes. A peer-reviewed enumeration of the fresher counts by knowledgeable and dedicated professionals such as the caretakers of the CET record will, naturally, be a few months more. So drop the demands of impossible perfection.
The CET is most awkward for the New Man at Year Zero, isn’t it?
By all means, translate this into American. Is it a reference to Newman’s millennium party on Seinfeld? Some allusion to the 1962 classic post-apoc horror film with Ray Milland and Frankie Avalon? What?
In fact, it amounts to several centuries of debunking climate exceptionalism.
You keep saying this, despite substantial evidence of increase in rate of exceptional extremes. Despite a 3:1 ratio of warm extremes over cold extremes in the CET record developing since the 1960’s. Despite the expectation that on such a long record rate of new records ought diminish asymptotically toward zero, but instead is increasing. How is that? Drop the argument by assertion and the unfounded premises.
So shift to “the globe”, where there’s no CET. If I were so impertinent as to mention the months in N. America between the Long Island Express and the great cold and heat waves following into 1936…you’ll find the area too small. The fact that “Superstorm Sandy” didn’t even have a category at landfall (please compare to Long Island Express) won’t matter if you keep saying “super”.
See, this argument of yours is mere straw man. I shifted to the globe because the globe is more reliable as a larger statistical set, and is the topic of global warming and global climate change as a result of well-mixed anthropogenic global emissions and land use changes. You’re seriously pretending the most damaging weather event to ever hit New York wasn’t a big deal?
Your case is simply seeking to inflict Simpson’s Paradox where it isn’t, arguing spuriously on claims you cannot sustain with numbers, but instead handwave in glittering generalities as opposed to citing and linking to even one report, as I have done.
The Arctic Ice thaws of 1817, 1922, 1958 etc etc? The re-freezes thereafter? You’ll want to see the sat photos. The great blizzards of N. America like 1888? You’ll believe only sat photos. The Great Colonial Hurricane, the 1821 NY and Long Island Hurricane? Photos please. Of course, we do have the awkward sea level measurements from the late 18th century on – where all the substantial decadal rises occurred occurred prior to 1870 – but if you just keep talking about SLR maybe nobody will notice that. Maybe that awkward sat measurements of increasing summer ice in Antarctica can get lost somehow, if one talks only of the piece of Antarctica that’s melty.
I’m the last person to suggest that all data and all records form a linear march without exception in a goosestep toward doom. Is there natural variation? Absolutely. Is the documentation of the details of that variation sufficient to draw much conclusion? In case after case, the most careful reconstructions from historical data suggest, as does BEST, as does the Arctic Sea ice reconstruction cited by Dr. Jennifer Francis in the presentation I linked to elsethread, as does well-scrutinized compilation after compilation of proxies and reports, that the best explanation is we are seeing an increasing rate of extremes, and while not all extreme records in all places for all dates are exceeded (what an astounding result, if it were so!), that the rate of extreme records falling is rising.
If things get too awkward, there are always the old blurry stand-bys like “frequency” and those unicorns called “norms”. Just sciency enough for the serfs, but nothing that can be disproven (or proven).
Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait. “FREQUECY” is too sciency for you?! FREQUENCY!? You really think it’s a unicorn to find a norm, a standard deviation, a mean, skewness, confidence interval? You’re rejecting utterly the mathematical constructs of rate and statistics? And you expect anything you’ve written associated with that remark to be taken seriously?
It wouldn’t surprise me if the world has warmed since the mid-19th century, or that this is the warmest period (with blips) since the MWP. There’s solid evidence for that, and no doubting a MWP that favoured the Song and whose waning prejudiced the Ming.
This MWP you speak of.. When did it start? When did it end? What day of the week? What month? What year? What decade? Where did it happen? On what specific evidence do you say so? How many people did the Ming rule over? The Song? What were their principle crops and trade goods? You speak as if you were referring to things you could be certain of. And what is the basis for this certainty? A bit of scribbling in some language neither you nor I read translated by someone who died long since? And you expect to be taken seriously?
I have no idea about future climate – which is something I have in common with you and everyone else. I just don’t want to be living with a bunch of Medieval technology and Green Fetishism when that old hag Gaia refuses to respond to good intentions and the fat temple offerings left on the altars of GIM and Goldman Sachs.
I have no idea about future bus* stops, while engaged in intense philosophical discussion denying I’m on a bus with a group of drunks similarly cheered by the idea that denying the bus we’re on is a bus.. but the bus driver assuredly has some kenning of the route and the stops. (*Or whatever word you use for bus in the UK these days.)
You seem to mistake me for some sabot-throwing Luddite.
Well, friend, you need to be reminded that burning coal is the medieval technology, and burning oil is a terribly dated and wasteful use of the raw material of plastics and pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals and fertilizers modern technology relies on; there’s no green gaia-worshipping pagan superstition in my arguments, and its a shameless straw man that makes you sound as if you are so panicked at the thought of giving up your filthy old smokestack for something newer, better and cheaper that you’ll resort ad homs and smears of the most desparate and transparent sort.
As a conservationist, I love seeing natural resources (eg water, coal) and hard money conserved and put to prudent use. As a thrifty, bush-dwelling redneck, I know no other way. The Lysenkos of climate are all about waste. Let’s wipe the green goo from our brains so we can once again feel like progressing (as opposed to progressive) humans.
Lysenko. Tell me what you know of Lysenko and Lysenkoism. Did you have family who died because of Lysenko? Did you parents or grandparents lose friends and colleagues to it? Do you have the least personal connection to this word you so baselessly and incomprehendingly throw about? How dare you.
You lost me at, How dare you.
Oh, but I do wish to give up my filthy old smokestack. Australia is the world’s second largest exporter of coal and largest exporter of coking coal. Would you believe that, thanks to the green fungus across our collective brain, we burn our own coal in dirty, aging clunkers, while imposing a new “carbon tax” that has made us celebrated among the pensive classes of the West, and ridiculous to true conservationists?
You would not believe the carbon Australia wastes in the name of carbon reduction. And because the alternatives aren’t alternatives, we just keep burning, and the coal power plants just get older and crappier. We need, of course, to do a Merkel: talk green but dig brown. And, like Germany, we need to build new, efficient “smokestacks”. Some piddling carbon taxes and some gesturing at more frivolous “alternatives” will keep the luvvies quiet, as China has learned.
Coal is a marvel, it is chocolate sunshine, and it is to be treasured. Billions of homes powered reliably and abundantly without flame or smoke! (As a cornucopian, I want others to have what I have. If I can have indulgences and whims, so can they.) We won’t be needing coal forever, because human ingenuity will come up with something better, but I hate to waste a crumb of the gorgeous stuff.
As to this hipsterish disconnection from the human and physical past, little can be done to remedy that malaise. They want numbers and data? Alas, see what they do with the numbers and data they have!
Imagine not drawing conclusions from 17 years of data – wisely! – while happily drawing conclusions from 34 years of data, or a few years more or less. When one is talking not about dance crazes…but about the climate!
Imagine concluding that a trend will continue, because it has continued.
Imagine being impressed by a record broken, but not by a record standing.
Imagine being incurious, even evasive, about the great climatic events and evolutions of the past which are so apparent from so many sources. And yet to claim an interest in climate! Gawd, just start with the CET. Or if you have to have numbers only, check out those Australian rainfall records from the 1800s onward, numbers which nobody has yet been able to fiddle. Read yourselves rich.
You can compute, collate, calculate? That’s great. Now learn to think.
mosomoso | March 7, 2013 at 3:54 am |
Oh, but I do wish to give up my filthy old smokestack
Wish? Doesn’t count as evidence, and as we’ve seen on your argument’s track record, goodwill is scant in your writing, so skepticism of your wishes is warranted.
Australia is the world’s second largest exporter of coal and largest exporter of coking coal.
And it has kangaroo, dingo and koala.
Would you believe that, thanks to the green fungus across our collective brain, we burn our own coal in dirty, aging clunkers, while imposing a new “carbon tax” that has made us celebrated among the pensive classes of the West, and ridiculous to true conservationists?
It appears your understanding of brains, fungi, pensivity and conservation vary so widely from the convention that no, I cannot vest belief in your premise. Would you care to make less radically untenable claims instead?
How do you export this coal, and then burn it in your old clunkers? Or do you mean you exported your old clunkers and then enabled their continued use by exporting the coal too? Or are these old clunkers outside Austrailia’s control, and the price of coal unaffected by Australian export policy? How helpless a victim Australia surely is in all this. Is green fungus a euphemism for money? Are you saying someone’s been bribed to discourage investment in new clean technology? Or are you throwing word salad at us meaninglessly?
You would not believe the carbon Australia wastes in the name of carbon reduction
And if you hadn’t wasted so much of my time with fabulism and bad faith claims, I might be ready to invest some goodwill in this claim in your convoluted premise here.. but, not so much given the track record of the argument you’ve put forth in this thread.
And because the alternatives aren’t alternatives, we just keep burning, and the coal power plants just get older and crappier.
Alternatives aren’t alternatives. Up is down. Blue is red. If you’ve got a problem with your Australian coal power plants, then find some solution for it, but don’t comingle different ideas as straw men. Your complaint was medieval technology would somehow magickally arise from acting to reduce CO2E.. when what you meant was current technology would continue under Australia’s current carbon tax. I’m no expert in Australia, so you’d have to explain to us as if nothing in Australia had been noticed by anyone in the rest of the world ever, how that happened. So far, it appears voodoo has caused it according to your telling.
We need, of course, to do a Merkel: talk green but dig brown. And, like Germany, we need to build new, efficient “smokestacks”. Some piddling carbon taxes and some gesturing at more frivolous “alternatives” will keep the luvvies quiet, as China has learned.
Or, hey. You could be honest and use some science.. I know such concepts as ‘frequency’ and ‘norm’ are hard for you, but let’s try this:
Australia has next to no need of brown sunshine. It’s overwhelmingly supplied with the real thing, and has some of the best conditions for building solar collectors which — in their latest multi-junction, hybrid, mass produced form — at last count were comparable to coal without counting emissions into the mix. Won’t work for chilly cloud covered Merkel Land, but why would you care?
Coal is a marvel, it is chocolate sunshine, and it is to be treasured. Billions of homes powered reliably and abundantly without flame or smoke! (As a cornucopian, I want others to have what I have. If I can have indulgences and whims, so can they.) We won’t be needing coal forever, because human ingenuity will come up with something better, but I hate to waste a crumb of the gorgeous stuff.
A cornucopian and a conservationist? My, but that’s a contortion by any stretch, as they’re opposites.
How gullible do you think us? This isn’t brown sunshine you’re blowing up our backsides. It’s pure snake oil. How many billions of homes are there in the world? How many could be reached by this miracle brown stuff under your medieval technology? Neither flame nor smoke, and yet sulphates and aerosols and CO2 emissions abound.
As to this hipsterish disconnection from the human and physical past, little can be done to remedy that malaise. They want numbers and data? Alas, see what they do with the numbers and data they have!
Imagine not drawing conclusions from 17 years of data – wisely! – while happily drawing conclusions from 34 years of data, or a few years more or less. When one is talking not about dance crazes…but about the climate!
Imagine being able to tell the difference between noise and signal. Imagine taking pains to avoid cherry-picked, inappropriate, invalid innumerate conclusions. Imagine being able to do — it’s a stretch for you, I know — math.
Imagine concluding that a trend will continue, because it has continued.
Yeah, you’re not really coming off as John Lennon here. Your version of trendology is so twisted as to bear no semblance to the real thing. Have you been reading Girma?
Imagine being impressed by a record broken, but not by a record standing.
Imagine being incurious, even evasive, about the great climatic events and evolutions of the past which are so apparent from so many sources. And yet to claim an interest in climate!
Yeah. Mr. Incurious. That’s my nickname. Placed in context, studied for root causes where such can be reasonably explained, these extremes you claim for your argument repeatedly are shown to stand as evidence against your own claims. And you do not speak to the evidence, except to dismiss it as too sciency. How gullible do you think readers of CE are, to bear such insults to their intellectual abilities?
Gawd, just start with the CET. Or if you have to have numbers only, check out those Australian rainfall records from the 1800s onward, numbers which nobody has yet been able to fiddle. Read yourselves rich.
You can compute, collate, calculate? That’s great. Now learn to think.
Mmmm. Gotta love me some of them Australian rain cherries.
Regardless of your skills at thinking,( which based on the evidence of your arguments is convoluted, incomplete, biased and relies on foregone conclusions and wilful blindness), Garbage In, Garbage Out. And your insistence on only inputting garbage to your brain and filtering out anything you deem too sciency.. pretty much tells us all we need know of that.
The thinking of reasonable readers is that someone Down Under is yanking their leg.
.. And look what took fifteen minutes to find:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/extremes/trendmaps.cgi?map=CDDs&period=1900
Ample evidence contrary to your assertions.
…all the dots a lot ‘littler’ since 1970… did you notice that?
Wagathon | March 7, 2013 at 10:46 am |
When did I gain you?
Was it between Sarah Palin and FREQUENCY?!
It assuredly wasn’t up to Palin.
Are you pretending you had a Road to Damascus, and then my taking offense at someone so baselessly abusing a real thing by made-up misapplication of the word to something so patently dissimilar popped the balloon for you?
Or are you just pretending?
It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to gain. I’m not looking for followers of me.
I’ll settle for followers of reason, and for honest exchange of ideas.
You might even say, I dare you.
We all should settle for nothing less than less hypocrisy from academics who are busy taking government handouts to stab the productive in the back.
Wagathon | March 7, 2013 at 10:58 am |
…all the dots a lot ‘littler’ since 1970… did you notice that?
Between 1970 and Dec. 2011?
How do you think the dots are doing now?
And did you notice their distribution and direction, relative frequency?
See, we expect dots to get generally smaller over time, as extreme counts get harder and harder to exceed all other things being equal in a system in equilibrium, statistically. Compared to the statistical expectations, the dots don’t perform like a complex system with small or no external forcings; the dots perform like a complex system with large external forcing. That is to say, large external forcings predictably lead complex systems to visit extrema with greater frequency. And the observation matches this prediction of Chaos Theory.
Aren’t they closer to that big continent to the south that has been gaining in ice thickness for decades…?
I see our Climate Etc. crayon blogathon for fan paid off. Not only is the blue back, but he has added a nifty green highlighter.
Way to go fan!
He might be test marketing a product for spreading AGW alarmism to kindergarteners.
You said thickness, I know, but let’s look a moment at the extent surrounding that continent to the south, and its dots:
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/ajw/Sea_ice/zwally_et_al_2002.pdf
The interannual variability of the annual mean sea ice extent is only 1.6% overall, compared to 6–9% in each of five regional sectors. Analysis of the relation between regional sea ice extents and spatially averaged surface temperatures over the ice pack gives an overall sensitivity between winter ice cover and temperature of 0.7% change in sea ice extent per degree Kelvin. For summer some regional ice extents vary positively with temperature, and others vary negatively. The observed increase in Antarctic sea ice cover is counter to the observed decreases in the Arctic. It is also qualitatively consistent with the counterintuitive prediction of a global atmospheric-ocean model of increasing sea ice around Antarctica with climate warming due to the stabilizing effects of increased snowfall on the Southern Ocean.
Oh hey, look. There’s a trend predictably attributable to AGW. Sure, it’s the opposite direction of the Arctic trend (also attributable to AGW), but that’s because there are entirely different conditions.
And even just within the Antarctic, there’s another contrary trend to the general Antarctic trend, but also perfectly consistent with the influence of AGW:
The Bellingshausen/Amundsen Seas (B/A) sector is the only sector other than the Weddell Sea with substantial multiyear ice. The region has been noted for its thick and impenetrable ice pack that has caused ships to be beset for several months during winter. However, the extent of multiyear ice decreased substantially during the summers of 1989–1994, as reported by Jacobs and Comiso [1997] and Stammerjohn and Smith [1997], the latter identifying the effect as part of an opposing climate pattern. The ice extent in the region was found by Jacobs and Comiso [1993] to be strongly correlated to surface temperature, which has been shown to be on the rise in the Antarctic Peninsula [e.g., King, 1994; Stammerjohn and Smith, 1997].
Boggles the minds of those who reason from effect to cause, as those who observe that objects generally fall toward the Earth, ergo the Earth is the center of the universe.. But we aren’t that limited in our reasoning skills, so we know sometimes AGW directly warms and thaws and melts, and sometimes AGW causes currents and intensities to change with a follow-on effect that cools and freezes.. and we can measure those currents and intensities to confirm the influence of AGW. Which we see has been done.
Or perhaps you prefer http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~kostya/Pdf/Seaice.30yrs.GRL.pdf since you’re so fond of GCMs:
This hemispheric asymmetry is not inconsistent with some GCM simulations in which CO2 concentrations were increased gradually [Manabe et al., 1992; Cavalieri et al., 1997]
But as to thickness, even as recently as 2007, http://www.utsa.edu/lrsg/Antarctica/SIMBA/publications_abstracts/WorbyGeigerAckleyetal_icethcknsJGR2008%5B1%5D.pdf reveals just how challenging and limited our documentation of detailed Antarctic sea ice thickness is for the period you refer to. Until GRACE, and even after GRACE until kinks in the GRACE methodology were worked out, we didn’t have great data on thickness. So you’ll excuse me if I exercise some skepticism on the dots in the Antarctic thickness record before this century.
So, you’re saying increased glaciations when hell freezes over is a predictable quixotic reaction to increased global warming… interesting!
Here’s what started it off:
“… traditional British winters have become a thing of the past far sooner than expected. The current patterns of extremes and floods are markedly untraditional, and becoming more so. Sure, there’s snow still. But show me the Brit who says, ‘Ah, yes. This is exactly like the snow of my childhood.’”
Here’s where I should have realised:
“This MWP you speak of.. When did it start? When did it end? What day of the week? What month? What year? What decade? Where did it happen? On what specific evidence do you say so? How many people did the Ming rule over? The Song? What were their principle crops and trade goods? You speak as if you were referring to things you could be certain of. And what is the basis for this certainty? A bit of scribbling in some language neither you nor I read translated by someone who died long since? And you expect to be taken seriously?”
I should have stopped when asked what day of the week.
Although it was 1000 years ago the Medieval Warming Period is not something that you can conveniently forget or just sit there and say nothing when it is statistically forgotten by government hacks like Michael Mann. Ah yes…those really were humanity’s halcyon days. I’m sure all Leftists would rather live there, then, than now in evil America that is just now clawing its way out of the grasp of capitalism toward the promise of a liberal Utopia that Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Franklin D. Roosevelt told us about.
Here’s a brief lecture that surveys some of the information we have about climate from proxies for the Holocene:
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~jean/paleo/Lectures/Lecture_15.pdf
While in some places the quality of the data is slightly less for 10,000 years ago than for 1,000 years ago, there’s so much more of it and the differences generally so small that we can far more reliably discuss the whole range than just the supposed MWP blip.
If your thesis is natural vs. anthro variability, why so focus on the smaller and worse-documented MWP when there’s plenty of other natural variability to refer to? Whole continents have radically changed many times in the course of the Holocene due climate. Why pick on a near-mythic MWP that barely shows up in the proxy record (if at all)?
Where exactly on this line does your MWP start and end? (There’s no denying there’s a blip upwards in the ensemble of proxies, that includes 1,000 bp, but it surely does not match well the general description of medieval, and it’s puny compared to AGW and even slightly cooler compared to the majority of the Holocene before it.)
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn23247/dn23247-1_1200.jpg
The level of funding for climate science is often disputed. The HoR hearing briefing says that one Federal program supports $2.6bn annually in climate change research:
“U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) — coordinates and integrates Federal research on changes in the global environment and their
implications for society. Mandated by Congress as part of the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (PL 101-606), USGCRP oversees 13 agencies supporting approximately $2.6 billion annually in climate change research.”
Faustino,
I have read a report that says >$100 billion (I don’t recall the exact figure) has been spent so far on climate research and policies to control the climate. I don’t have the link to hand.
I also saw this one by Jo Nova where she says US alone spent $79 billion up to 2009: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf
I cannot vouch for the report.
One Australian telling another Australian about an assertion made by a hack Australian blogger on what the USA spends their money on.
Is this penal colony envy?
WHT,
Do you have a better figure?
Have you read the report, checked the cited sources, checked the calculations?
Or are you just a troll?
Peter Lang
Don’t expect any concrete figures from Webby.
That’s not his strength.
Max
Peter Lang | March 5, 2013 at 10:58 pm |
So.. all you have is Jo Nova, who has been repeatedly called on to provide details and breakdowns of her claims and has never once obliged, and whose statements about her claims when visited and drilled down into show up double-dipping, SWAG and inclusions of such things as ‘education’ and ‘UN fees’ and the complete funding of the EPA, where the climate portion of the alleged costs is fractions of a percent?
Faustino provides actual bona fide figures, and you still would rather go with fiction?
And even then, when the $2.6 billion figure is drilled down into, one finds much of the spending goes to climate change research by oil and coal companies disputing the science.
Seems a bit dishonest, to me.
Though I agree, there ought be no spending of taxpayer money for this research. The lucrative emitters of CO2 ought bear the price of all research, as without their emissions, we can now say we’d have far less need of the science of the phenomenon for which they are responsible.
JC
• Summarize your views on the most important policy-relevant climate science issues facing decision-makers. What are the key areas of agreement and disagreement? What is the state of the science and associated strengths and weaknesses on key policy relevant issues, such as attribution, modeling and observations, and climate sensitivity?
• Describe the state of the science on the linkages between climate change and extreme weather. Include a discussion on the key uncertainties of these connections and describe how such uncertainties are treated in the public discussion of extreme weather events. What is needed to reduce misconceptions surrounding this scientific discipline?
• Include a broad discussion of uncertainties within climate change science, specifically addressing challenges and opportunities related to decision-making under uncertainty, including how such uncertainties are conveyed to policymakers and the public.
1. Resilience
2. The limits to climate variability are unknown in any realistic timeframe. The time frames of instrumental data are couple of hundred years at the outside. Outside of that there are proxies showing change in ENSO – a global climate effect – over thousands of years. We certainly have not experienced personally the limits of natural climate variability. So a bit hard to tell what is non-natural.
3. Climate models are deterministically chaotic and the output can be probabilistic but not deterministic. Go figure?
Dr. William Chameides
• Discuss the state of climate science and summarize your views on the most important climate science issues facing decision-makers.
• Describe future projected impacts of most concern in the United States with regard to climate change, and actions the federal government can take to address future impacts.
• Provide a discussion of scientific uncertainties in climate science and the how decision makers can account for uncertainty in crafting climate-related policies.’
1. Lacking openness and transparency.
2. Decadal to centennial long tendency to drier conditions in the US.
3. Responses – soils and soil carbon, agriculture, conservation, low carbon energy sources, aid, population and development, health and education, safe water, sanitation,…
Dr. Bjorn Lomborg
• Summarize your views on the most important policy-relevant climate issues facing decision-makers. What are the key areas of agreement and disagreement?
• Describe the strengths and weakness of various climate change-driven policies currently in effect around the world, and the costs and benefits of potential mitigation options under consideration here in the United States. How could limited Federal resources be better allocated to address climate, environmental and human health issues facing the U.S. and other nations around the world?
1. Food and water, governance, health, education, etc – Millennium Development Goals – lift aid as committed to 0.7% of GDP. Technology innovation and prizes.
2. Achieve cost effective outcomes – Copenhagen Consensus.
There are about 15 Western Hemisphereans in the world for every 100 humans so with the Fall of Western Civilization, brought about by the self-defeating nihilism of global warming alarmism, there will be perhaps a small, dead thud that won’t carry far.
The most vociferously advocated climate change driven policies are global carbon pricing, legally binding international agreements (like Kyoto) to targets and time tables and with penalties. None of these will succeed. This should be clear by now given
1. the total failure of the past 20 years of international climate policy negotiations under the UN, and
2. the fact the world can’t even agree to free trade, If we cant agree to free trade where the benefits for virtually all countries greatly exceed the costs, what chance have we of agreeing to penalty schemes like carbon pricing and Kyoto regimes where everyone is a loser. And not just a small loser but a massive loser. Australia’s ETS would cost $10 for every $1 of projected benefit. But the benefits wouldn’t be achieved unless the whole world commits to a global carbon pricing scheme and then maintains it in unison for >100 years. What chance?
At 50% participation (that is 50% of manmade GHG emissions from all GHG gasses from all sources in all countries) the global cost would exceed the benefit (using William Nordhaus’s figures, Ch 6, pp116-122, http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf ). Break even is about 62%. At 50% participation, the cost penalty for the participants is about 250%. What chance is there of such an agreement ever being signed, let alone maintained for >100 years. And Nordhause has made no allowance for the compliance cost. Consider what the compliance cost would be as smaller and smaller emissions sources are included. See the comments by engineer Grahame No.3 here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13578&page=0 regarding his experience with trying to determine the GHG emission from his 6000 paint products in a medium size paint manufacturing business. (His comments are enlightening and humorous. This is the real world. His comments are towards the end of this thread).
What chance is there of the world agreeing to a global carbon pricing scheme?
Rishard Tol calculated the chance of the Doha round of UN climate conferences (COP18) being successful was just 2.3%. http://www.voxeu.org/article/global-climate-talks-if-17th-you-don-t-succeed. He also shows that it was known an predicted back in 1991, applying game theory, that the world would not agree to carbon pricing or international agreements that make the world worse off.
Richard Tol and Bjorn Lomborg collaborate frequently. So, Bjorn Lomborg knows all this.
If not too late, Judith might like to ask Bjorn for a comment on what chance he sees of the world agreeing to carbon pricing or target and times tables for GHG emissions reductions.
LOL … Peter Lang, ain’t that like asking F. W. de Klerk about Nelson Mandela’s election chances? Or asking Queen Victoria whether India’s independence movement was viable?
As Ghandi famously said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Ain’t it evident, to pretty much everyone, that James Hansen’s scientific world-view has advanced pretty far down Ghandi’s path to global victory, eh Peter Lang?
Fanny
The answer to your question to Peter Lang is, “NO”.
Got it?
Max
Richard T. was in a very interesting conversation with Bernie Lewin a week or so ago @ the Bish’s, particularly concerning the manipulation of the economic forecasts, back in the day. Personally, I pardon R, for he thought the science settled.
=======
Kim,
Thanks for alerting me the Tol conversation on BH. I missed it.
I agree with your pardon. I feel Nordhaus has also been caught out by assuming the science is settled. Both Tol and Nordhaus have done a great job in presenting the costs and benefits analyses in a way the average person can understand.
Nordhaus has clearly defined his assumptions. It is unfortunate having defined the academics assumptions necessary for the analyses, he did recognise they are totally unbelievable in the real world, and go on to state that carbon pricing cannot work in the real world. Instead both he and Tol advocated carbon pricing as the least cost way to fix the climate for far too long IMO. Nordhaus still maintains that position although he makes plenty of statements which show how unrealistic it is.
Kim,
Can you give me a link to the Tol article on BH. I can’t find it.
It’s ‘The Price of Life; the IPCC’s first and forgotten controversy’ on 2/26/13 and it is authored and commented upon by Bernie Lewin.
==================
Kim,
Thank you. Got it. V. interesting discussion. Very interesting exposure of the politics in IPCC.
We must stop the bleeding; and, stop spending other peoples money. There is no gain here. Time to put in on hold–give a couple of decades. For now, it’s a dead horse. Climatists need to indulge their interestes on their own time and dime. “Relative to the variability in the data, the changes in the globally averaged temperature anomaly look negligible.” ~R. S. Lindzen
Judith,
Just tell it like you’ve told us when you get before the Congressional hearing Judith and you’ll be right.
Just say that uncertainty about the effects of increased GH gas concentrations in the atmosphere is about twice as much as the IPCC has acknowledged previously.
Where they would put climate sensitivity in the range of 1.5 – 4.5 degC , you’d increase that range to 1- 6 deg C
Therefore it makes perfect sense to assume its very much at the lower end of the range at 1.0 degC and there no need for any climate mitigation policies at the moment.
Shouldn’t take you long to say that.
PS And if any smart -alec Democrats ask you any awkward questions, like pointing out that you’ve changed your tune in the last few years and were at one time of the opinion that you “have yet to see any option that is worse than ignoring the risk of global warming and doing nothing”, don’t glare at them as if they were nothing at all, but just smile and answer the question you’d wish they’d asked rather than the one they had actually asked.
If they point out that you haven’t answered the question claim you in fact have, and, and say you’ll explain it in another way but you’ll be basically just rephrasing what you’ve already said.
Remember that politicians don’t use phrases like “in the future” it’s always “going forward” with them. They don’t have ‘discussions’ about any particular issue, instead its ‘conversations’.
Patrick Moore–global warming alarmist ‘heretic’–came to see it all so clearly: Scratch an old hippie and you get a recycled old commie cloaking anti-capitalism in green robes.
As Moore said in his, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: “A lot of environmentalists are stuck in the 1970s and continue to promote a strain of leftish romanticism about idyllic rural village life powered by windmills and solar panels. They idealize poverty, seeing it as a noble way of life, and oppose all large developments. James Cameron, the multimillionaire producer of the most lucrative movie in history, Avatar, paints his face and joins the disaffected to protest a hydroelectric dam in the Amazon.”
Dead right!
Leftish 70’s romanticism’s dependent on living in restricted
areas where Goldilcks conditions prevail … northern coastal
settlements of Australia, warm, nice surf, soft sand, occasional
work … The Utopean back ter the golden age only applies ter
limited scenarios (against a back drop of affluence.) Wouldn’t
work if too many seek the back ter nature lifestyle. The dream
is not the reality ( Jest love the sound of that surf … cry of the
gulls … cry of the wild …
I’m surprised Curry allows cranky nonsense like this on her blog.
Wagathon posts all sorts of nonsense, but I don’t see it as any worse than nonsense like this. I think Curry just figures readers can ignore things they think are nonsense.
That, or she doesn’t want to take the time to filter out all the crackpottery that goes on on her blog. There is plenty of it from all sides.
Did you ever stop to consider that it is your reality that is different from actual reality. Now we know much more about climate change compared to what was known back when climatists first took sides against modernity. For example, we now know that about 40 percent of global warming is due to the impact of cosmic rays –i.e., more or less of them that the Earth races through on it’s journey around the Sun (as the solar system hurtles through the galaxy), that in turn are moderated more or less as a consequence of more or less solar (magnetic) activity. In other words, having nothing to do with modern man’s atmospheric CO2, climate change is due to changes the Earth’s albedo, which is the result of changes in low cloud cover, which we now know has a far more significant impact on the climate than IPCC models ever allowed for (i.e., in a nutshell: cosmic ray intensity varies and so does the Sun’s magnetic activity and over time higher solar activity means fewer cosmic rays which results in fewer clouds and leads to more global warming because less of the Sun’s energy is reflected away… and, vice versa).
Craig Thomas
The fact that your comments haven’t been removed shows that “Curry allows cranky nonsense on her blog”.
Leave the thoroughly discredited MBH “shtick” (with its “hidden decline”) in its grave.
It really only makes you look silly to try to resuscitate it after all this time.
Even IPCC dropped it as a centerfold attraction in TAR to relative obscurity in Ch. 6 in AR4 WGI, even though IPCC liked the conclusion reached from it so well, that they kept that in AR4:
But, hey, what about all those independent studies from all over the world using different paleo methodologies, all showing that the MWP was a bit warmer than today?
And what about the historical record from the entire civilized world at the time, also pointing to a warmer climate?
And what about the actual physical evidence, such as Greenland farms buried in the permafrost or carbon-dated remains of ancient trees recovered under receding alpine glaciers, high above the present tree line, etc.?
IPCC has systematically ignored all studies, which show a slightly warmer MWP and colder LIA prior to the modern record, and have substituted the discredited “shtick” (and a few “spaghetti copy shticks” that popped up after it was discredited).
Ouch!
Max
The Medium is the Message.
When we see comments like that of Craig Thomas understand well that this is what all schoolteachers really, really want so badly to do and that is hide the truth. Public-funded academia stopped being about learning and even global warming a long time ago.
JC
Please ask for me how AGW advocates came up with 4 deg C warming from the following global mean surface temperature pattern since 1850?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:3/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22
Thanks for all your work JC.
Oh, and while you are there, Judith, ask the climate luvvies how come that sea level rise they bang on about started around the late 18th century, with all the biggest decadal rises occurring between then and the 1860s. From Napoleon I to Napoleon III, as it were. Ask ’em about that one. Oh, and ask ’em about the Royal Society’s first big Arctic Melt kerfuffle – in 1817! Also…
Nah, that’ll do. I know you’re busy. Good luck!
Breaking news at Scientific American:
Good on `yah, Bora Zivkovic! Good on `yah, Scientific American!
LOL … and now Anthony Watts/WUWT editorials are frothing with outrage at Scientific American‘s plain-spoken truths … WUWToutrage that is just plain ludicrous, in view of the longstanding Watts/WUWT practices of notoriously abusing, selectively censoring, seeking-to-fire, and unilaterally “outing” dissident points-of-view!
Is it any wonder that the world’s STEM professionals are finding the Watts/WUWT anti-science anti-rational pro-abuse pro-firing brand of skepticism to be utterly abhorrent?
What will be the Watts/WUWT reaction to the congressional testimony of Judith Curry et al? Very plausibly the actual testimony scarcely matters … because we can reasonably foresee the main outlines of the Watts/WUWT response may already have been cherry-picked, and that astro-turfing organizations may already be standing ready to spread these memes!
The readers of Climate Etc owe appreciation and thanks to to Bora Zivkovic and Scientific American, for standing against anti-science, anti-rational, anti-democratic practices.
+1
Michael’s precious little dropping. Fan’s tailfeathers are awhirl.
========================
No one does vapid like kim.
Oh, this is fun. Hearing has been postponed owing to the weather, all federal offices are closed today. BTW, it is raining, no snow yet. Now I am stuck in DC, trying to get through to my travel agent to see if I can get out of DC before the weather really gets bad.
At least you have warning of the bad weather – Vicky Pope of the Met Office didn’t have a clue that her flight to the global warming fest at Cancun would be cancelled because of snow…
Sorry ter hear the Hearing’s postponed, Judith. Pesky weather,
hope u make it out of DC ASAP!
Best regards,
BC
Judy, That is not bad weather it is good weather. Rain is good. Snow in DC in March is great. Saudi arabian and the Sahara lakes and rivers dried out about 10,000 years ago forcing hunter gatherer nomads to capture animals at the dwindling water sources and also irrigate to grow wild grains. Hence the dawn of civiliation in the area.
Lots of us are supportive of your efforts to bring reasonable discussion to the political arena. Thanks for your continuing efforts and hard work.
Scott
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:-0.08/detrend:0.04/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/offset:-0.03/detrend:0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:4/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.015/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/offset:0.015/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982
The GMST has a secular (long-term non-periodic variation) component represented by the monotonic curve obtained from the 61-years moving average GMST.
The GMST has a cyclic component of 60-years period represented by the 21-years moving average GMST.
The cyclic GMST was at its peaks in 1880’s, 1940’s & 2000’s and at its trough in 1910 and 1970.
The amplitude of the Cyclic GMST decreases with increase in the moving average period and is zero for moving average period of 61 years. This means that a moving average period of 61 years smoothes out all of the transient GMST and in this case the GMST Trend becomes equal to the Equilibrium GMST.
The decrease in the magnitude of the cyclic GMST with increase in the moving average period shown above suggests changing the averaging period in the definition of climate from 30-years to 61-years.
All the oscillations relative to the secular GMST are transient and should be excluded when analyzing the climate. As a result, the whole climate of the 20th century may be completely defined by the Secular GMST curve (Purple curve). Note that there was no change in shape of the Secular GMST before and after mid-20th century, which indicates a single climate pattern existed in the whole of the 20th century.
And, in addition to the oscillations, connoting at least some degree of regularity, there is all the chaos too–e.g., the changes in the amount of cosmic rays that bathe the Earth as it dashes through the leftovers of busted stars is like having a galactic gravestone fall on your toe. You can’t ignore that, right? Assuming they even care there is only one sane and rational answer as to why Climatists fail to take account of it: because there is not enough computing power on Earth to recon with it so climatists simply put that variable, and the negative feedback of more low clouds as well, on ignore. That makes for more simple GCMs but leads to simple-minded GCMs that cannot even ‘predict’ the past.
America is the greatest thing that ever happened for the cause of individual liberty. A world without America is the inhuman Kafkaesque world the Left of global warming alarmism is fighting to bring about where it rains lollypops and if you don’t believe it’s raining lollypops you’d better just keep your mouth shut about it.
Wagathon,
Well in a way I wouldn’t totally disagree but you have to look at the American revolution in the context of its time. It, like the French and earlier English revolution, was part of a class struggle between the emergent capitalist class and the older feudal system.
Individual liberty was an important concept then. It still is. In fact it was more than conceptual it pragmatic. To the merchant classes, a person’s religion, race, sex, or sexual orientation is, or should be, quite irrelevant. Capitalism doesn’t want issues that trouble some of the more conservative minded of its allies to get in the way of the serious business of making money. So, to that extent, causes such as racial equality and gay rights which are seen as left issues are also supported by those of pro-libertarian , pro capitalist inclination. America still has some way to go on some of these issues and is lagging behind Europe, but its getting there.
Where the American “revolution” has lost its way, IMO, is the conflation of individual liberty with the “liberty” of large multi-billion corporations to act in the way they please. They are at least as powerful as the old aristocracy who, of course, liked their “liberty” to do as they please at the time of the revolution. The concept of “liberty” isn’t quite a straightforward, or as absolute, as some on the present day right would have us believe. There is a clash of “liberties” in the 21st century just as there was a clash of “liberties” in the 18th century.
Wag,
Well in a way I wouldn’t totally disagree but you have to look at the American revolution in the context of its time. It, like the French and earlier English revolution, was part of a class struggle between the emergent capitalist class and the older feudal system.
Individual liberty was an important concept then. It still is. In fact it was more than conceptual it pragmatic. To the merchant classes, a person’s religion, race, sex, or sexual orientation is, or should be, quite irrelevant. Capitalism doesn’t want issues that trouble some of the more conservative minded of its allies to get in the way of the serious business of making money.
The American Revolution was a class struggle? So Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin et al. were members of the bourgeoisie? Somebody has been getting his history lessons from Martha, who thinks ideology began with Marx.
The French Revolution better fits that description, which explains in part why it devolved so quickly into butchery and then dictatorship. The American revolutionaries felt themselves limited by that annoying religion thing. The French, being oh so much more sophisticated, saw no such limits on the power of the state. When “liberte egalite fraternite,” like “fairness” and “for the children,” are defined by those in power, well, things don’t always turn out so well.
“The American Revolution was a class struggle?
Largely yes. It can’t be understood in isolation, as Americans vs British. But only as a part of what was happening on a worldwide scale at the time. Many of the colonists who weren’t born in Britain sided with the British Crown. Other of the colonists who maybe did have British family connections sided with the revolutionaries.
So the conflict was more along the lines of a civil war than is generally acknowledged. IMO.
Part 2 ( I’ve had to split this up. Not sure why)
The American revolution was fought against those who were also very attached to their own liberties as well as those who wanted them. The English aristocracy were very used to doing as they pleased. You have to ask yourself about the role of large multi-billion dollar corporations in US society who also like their own liberty. Is that liberty more akin to the liberty of the old aristocracy or individual liberty? Present day US society doesn’t tend to make any distinction but, I’d say, maybe they should.
Corporations may be persons legally but thinking of legal entities as have personal freedom is a non-starter: corporations have fewer rights than trees and fetuses.
Corporations are just people organized to conduct an enterprise. Usually commercial, sometimes not. And corporations in the U.S. do have constitutional rights – free speech, due process, protection from unlawful searches and seizures, and free association being a few.
Wagathon.
“corporations have fewer rights than trees and fetuses.”
Is this true? They have the right to offset all their purchases against tax. They can move their funds around the globe to make it appear they don’t make any money in the USA or any other country they choose to. Can you do that?
GaryM,
“Corporations are just people organized to conduct an enterprise.”
So was the English aristocracy and monarchy. So is /was the Mafia. ;-)
Its also interesting to compare the US Declaration of Independence, which was a much more radical document talking about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness etc with the later written US constitution, where that’s all dropped.
Its apparent, in the constitution, that the US ruling class at the time were concerned about the emergence of a new monarchy, and a new aristocracy, and the emergence of democracy in the US. To that extent they were a much more progressive class than the British ruling class, but they were still an elite social grouping. They were still an identifiable class within American society. They’d needed the support of the common people to fight the war to throw out the English ruling class, who’d previously been a problem to them, so had held out promises which they weren’t quite so keen to keep later on!
Its interesting that their anti democratic sentiments have recently been rediscovered by the US right. How many times were we told, in all sincerity, by various prominent US spokesmen, that the Cold war was a struggle for democracy in the world? Those comments don’t sound quite so sincere now.
tempterrain,
You have been listening to Martha, and your former progressive history profs (if you ever studied history) too much. But you show the typical confusion of most who view history through a marxist lens.
The Constitution didn’t “drop” anything from the Declaration, they were two different documents with two different purposes. The Declaration was aspirational, the Constitution was functional.
Funny how you have gone from declaring the American Revolution was “a class struggle between the emergent capitalist class and the older feudal system,” now it is an effort by the American “elite social class,” which somehow transforms the Revolution into a class conflict. You need to go to back and relearn your class struggle nomencalture.
And whether the American Revolutioon was a civil war or a revolution is irrelevant to whether it was a “class struggle.”
If you want to regurgitate marxist historical revisionism, you ought to at first learn the lingo.
Finally, the Constitution was not anti-denocratic. You are thinking of the increasingly centralized European Union. The Constitution was designed for one central purpose, to avoid the centralization of power that leads inevitably to totalitarianism. Whether a genetic elite (king or aristocracy) or a self appointed progressive elite, the Constitution makes it difficult for any one organ of government to acquire too much power. Because once you centralize the power, the coming of a Napolean or Stalin becomes inevitable.
Which is of course why progressives wanted to make it a “living” constitution, and now want to do away with it altogether.
GaryM,
There’s no reason why the US constitution couldn’t have been written in the same radical style as the Declaration of Independence. From my observations , I would say that there isn’t a clear understanding, by Americans, of the differences between the two, and why there is that difference. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is, in fact, not in the US Constitution but I’d say the popular perception would be that it was. Just as matter of interest, try asking your friends and neighbours and let me know if I’m right in saying that.
“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”
“Pursuit of happiness” became property because happiness is aspirational, property is functional.
There is no contradiction between the Declaration and the Constitution, no matter what you read by Noam Chompsky (sic). There was a failure to implement the “all men are created equal” aspiration, because the elitists of those days, the ones who believed their superiority did not just allow them to control the lives of their lesser humans, but to own them outright, would not ratify the Constitution if it outlawed slavery.
GaryM,
There does seem to be a general discussion in America on whether its a democracy or a representative republic. The two terms aren’t mutually exclusive of course, and to understand why there is a difference according to popular perception, needs some historical understanding. IMO
All revolutions tend to acquire an elevated mythical status over time and the American one is no exception.. Maybe some would have seen it to be righteously pure, at the time, but there were many pragmatic and less than noble motivations at work also.
There were many causes of the American Revolution, but generally for the US ruling class at the time there were three principal aims. They sought self-government. They sought to rule the colonies themselves, of course, to further their own interests. Incidentally, they sought also to protect the institution of slavery which is conveniently forgotten today. (This had been threatened by a legal ruling in Sommersett case). Land speculators, including such notables as George Washington, sought to seize Indian land, which the British were reluctant to sanction.
They needed help to win. Their own rhetoric about freedom and equality led to widespread demands for the right to vote. ie universal suffrage. In other words, the people began demanding democracy. Even the slaves demanded to be freed and be allowed to vote. Shock horror!
After the defeat of the British, a centralised, national government was seen by George Washington and others not as a way of extending freedom and the right to vote, but as a way of maintaining control . They wrote several anti-democratic provisions into the U.S. Constitution. Slavery was institutionalized. The Senate was not to be elected directly by the people; rather Senators were to be appointed by state legislatures. The President was not to be directly elected by the voters, but elected through an electoral college. The Supreme Court was to be appointed. Only the House of Representatives was elected directly.
More important to the “democracy or republic” debate, the U.S. Constitution left the States to decide who could vote. This meant white men of certain status in most cases. So, on the whole, the first US federal government that met in 1789 was a republic with minimal democratic representation. Of course its now a republic with a much greater degree of democratic representation. The constitution has been amended many times, to achieve this, so to that extent it is a “living constitution”
Its up to Americans to democratically decide whether their constitution should be alive or dead, I suppose! I’m not American so perhaps I shouldn’t express an opinion on which one I would prefer.
GaryM,
Our comments seem to have crossed. You say There is no contradiction between the Declaration and the Constitution,
Well “contradiction” wasn’t a word I used. But is it a fair word?
The Declaration, but most Americans think it’s in the Constitution itself, says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Note this isn’t an aspiration. This is claimed as a “self-evident” fact.
Th Constitution then euphemistically describes a slave as “”person held to service or labor” but doesn’t outlaw the practice of slavery. Some men are allowed to vote but others. So, men turn out to be no quite so equal after all and
That does sound like a contradiction to me.
tempterrain
The “contradiction” to which you refer is most likely in semantics and differences between time periods.
Even enlightened 18th century individuals like those who formed the US, were of different opinions on what constituted a “man” (in “all men are created equal”).
For those, who were slaveholders in the southern states, a slave was not a free man, therefore not a “man”.
(What they thought of Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, etc. is another story.)
Fortunately, times have changed (in most of the world) since then.
And, despite the inherent racist beliefs of that time period, the Declaration of Independence remains an inspiring document, as was the Magna Charta of an earlier time.
Max
tempterrain,
I’m not interested in teaching a course on constitutional law and history here, so I won’t bother addressing your muddled exposition point by point. I will thank you for informing me of what most Americans think, and what the founders thought. Although your belief that there is a debate supposedly going on as to whether the U.S. is a republic or democracy is hilarious. I’ll give you a hint why. “Representative republic” is redundant. I’ll leave you to figure out why on your own.
I will just point out this one example that demonstrates, rather clearly, that you don’t have a clue about the history you are trying so hard to revise.
“Land speculators, including such notables as George Washington, sought to seize Indian land, which the British were reluctant to sanction.”
The British were reluctant to sanction the seizure of Indian lands? Seriously? Seriously? Where do you think the British got what became the thirteen colonies? On Ebay? Why do you think they fought the French over Canada? The British unwilling to sanction the taking of the territory of others? Tell the Irish, the Scotts, the French, shoot just about any country or people in the 17th and 18th centuries. There was this thing way back then, you may have heard of it. It was called the British Empire.
I’m getting dizzy from shaking my head over the nonsense in your comments, so I will leave it at that before I fall off my chair.
But hey, at least you aren’t trying to claim the American Revolution was a class struggle any more. Which was what started this whole discussion.
GaryM,
You question that the British were reluctant to sanction the further seizure of Indian lands with the remark “Seriously?”
Yes, Seriously.
You need to read up on the Proclamation of 1793
http://www.ushistory.org/us/9a.asp
After Britain won the Seven Years’ War and gained land in North America, it attempted to prohibit American colonists from settling west of Appalachia or even from “purchasing” land in these regions. Wealthy colonists, including George Washington, resented this and ignored the proclamation.
It is well recognised to be one of the underlying causes of the War of Independence and explains why the majority of Native Americans sided with the British during the war.
While we’re on the subject of debunking American myths it is worth mentioning the Pligrim Fathers. The Pilgrim Fathers escaped persecution in England, leaving in 1620 and arrived on Plymouth Rock, ultimately to found a free state which complied with their ideals of religious toleration. Everyone knows that, don’t they?
Er, no, it wasn’t quite like that !
The Pilgrim Fathers did originate in England, where they were certainly discriminated against as non-conformists. They moved from to Leiden in Holland some thirteen years earlier in 1607. However, once there, they wanted to take action against those, especially their children, who were integrating too well, as far as they were concerned, into a liberal Dutch society. They had managed to maintain their cultural identity in England they were persecuted but the tolerance of the Dutch was, ironically, more threatening.
It was only then they made their decision to move to America . They established their Puritan society, and within fifty years, were happily burning people at the stake! So its really more accurate to say they were fleeing tolerance in 1620, rather than persecution, and wished for the legal right to be persecutors themselves.
tempterrain,
This will be my last lesson correcting your revisionist delusions. If I kept it up, I’d have to send you a bill.
The French and Indian War was about which of the European powers would control what vast areas of land populated by Indians. Britain received a great deal of land claimed by France. Having acquired it, they wanted to be patient in exercising control. They were not, ever, concerned with the tender feelings if the Indians whose lands they had just fought for, and won, from the French.
The Proclamation was a tactical decision, and also one intended to exercise additional control over the the colonists. It was not the Civil Rights Act of 1763.
I cannot tell you how precious I find it that, in your attempts to re-write history, you repaint the most aggressive, most successful, imperialist power of the 18th century as the EEOC of its time. You really suck at the marxist revisionism thing. But you go ahead and keep regurgitating what you have learned as http://www.americasucks.com. I’m out.
GaryM,
“….. concerned with the tender feelings of the Indians……..” and ” It was not the Civil Rights Act of 1763.”
You may be confusing me with someone else. I don’t think I actually said that. I think you may be fairly close to understanding what happened, now, But to spell it out:
The British ( yes, to suit their own purposes) declared large areas of land off limits to the American colonialists. This depressed the value of the land which could only be bought illegally. Wealthy speculators, including George Washington, ignored the proclamation and invested heavily anyway. This gave them a strong financial motivation to have it removed, and thereby see the land value increase. Removing the British was a very effective way of doing that.
Gary M, that was articulate. The federalist process was to limit central power and the progressive instincts are pushing for controls in areas unanticipated by the framers of the constitution. THat document was the result of compromise with heavy reliance on the bill of rights to compensate for the power of the executive branch. Medical controls, gun controls, educations controls and an EPA run wild with claims to need to control CO2.
Scott
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a) Something needs to be done about CO2 emissions..
b) Government can control what is done.
c) What the US does will impact and affect the rest of the world.
Since all three are false, this is just mummery.