No more global warming?

[Vladimir]

Oh great. We don't even fully understand all the factors that affect global warming and now we want to cool the planet down. What happens if we do too good of a job? On one end you have crop failures, on the other you have an ice age. Brilliant.

[Fragony]

In 100 years global temperature has risen 0.6 degrees celcius, measured with 100 year old equipment. No serious scientist would ever take that seriously if this wasn't all fear and piety. Apocalyptoloco's, every generation has them, they need the notion that everything is going to hell, clever businessmen like Al Gore feed on their fear and grow fat. It's always good business to feed on fear.

Famous quote from Dutch Bishop to a feudal lord: 'Ýou keep them poor, I'll keep them stupid'.

[rory_20_uk]

Famous quote from Dutch Bishop to a feudal lord: 'Ýou keep them poor, I'll keep them stupid'.

I thought that was Blair to Brown...

[gaelic cowboy]

In 100 years global temperature has risen 0.6 degrees celcius, measured with 100 year old equipment.

I think you will find that 0.6 degrees is a lot when you take something as large as the Atlantic ocean or planet earth

[Aemilius Paulus]

I think you will find that 0.6 degrees is a lot when you take something as large as the Atlantic ocean or planet earth

Heh, do not worry about Fragony. He is a good ol' loyal chap. Jest stickin' to the party line. Ain't that right, Frag?

I would honestly be surprised if he dared to push the border separating far-right and centre-right at least on a single issue. He is at the former place of course...

But yes, you are correct. Even a half a degree change is rather drastic, considering it is a century average. Also, the global temperature can be measured by modern equipment through the analysis of ice cores. Quite reliable.



Look, I know the statistics are difficult to trust, Frag, and most, if not all conservatives loathe as well as distrust anyone of higher intelligence than them (e.g. scientists, professors, other "intellectuals"), but how does the near-melted Arctic fit in the puzzle of "there is no such thing as the global warming"? After all, when was the last time the Arctic melted so much? Palaeogene? Cretaceous? And seriously, by now, most Young-Earth, creationist, Southern Baptist fundamentalist (my parents go there - the church is not fundamentalist, but the people are) rednecks in my city (Pensacola) accept the fact that global warming is real. Now, they deny it is caused by humans, but I give them credit for their indeed commendable improvement.

[Furunculus]

Look, I know the statistics are difficult to trust, Frag, and most, if not all conservatives loathe as well as distrust anyone of higher intelligence than them (e.g. scientists, professors, other "intellectuals"), but how does the near-melted Arctic fit in the puzzle of "there is no such thing as the global warming"? After all, when was the last time the Arctic melted so much? Palaeogene? Cretaceous? And seriously, by now, most Young-Earth, creationist, Southern Baptist fundamentalist (my parents go there - the church is not fundamentalist, but the people are) rednecks in my city (Pensacola) accept the fact that global warming is real. Now, they deny it is caused by humans, but I give them credit for their indeed commendable improvement.

What a thoroughly worthless statement.

How completely trivial and demeaning.

An utterly inaccurate and baseless ad-hominen attack.

If I was in the habit of reporting posts, (which i have never done in six years here), I would report this for: sheer. rank. stupidity!

GaFL

[Furunculus]

an another note, here a glorious write up of some of the more revealing emails hacked from HadCRU:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...lobal-warming/

[Fragony]

Good, and now feel silly that's the least you can do.

[CountArach]

an another note, here a glorious write up of some of the more revealing emails hacked from HadCRU:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...lobal-warming/

You'll have to try harder than that...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php.../the-cru-hack/

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.
...
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

[Aemilius Paulus]

What a thoroughly worthless statement.

How completely trivial and demeaning.

An utterly inaccurate and baseless ad-hominen attack.

If I was in the habit of reporting posts, (which i have never done in six years here), I would report this for: sheer. rank. stupidity!

GaFL

It was not ad-hominem. I was criticising conservatives. You have to admit, most conservatives harbour a healthy amount of distrust for intellectuals. Why? Perhaps because a great deal of intellectuals are liberal. But surely their science is at least somewaht accurate. And is it a coincidence that so many intellectuals are liberal? Who knows, but you cannot entirely discount me, although it is quite apparent that my post was not entirely serious.

And was it really necessary to bold it all .

Gah, I miss Tribesman. Alright, he should have toned down his personal attacks, but you have to agree, balance is a precious thing. Both Frag and Tribsey must remain in the Backroom, otherwise the equilibrium is in shambles.

AP, I find myself agreeing with you for the first time since you/I joined this forum. I don't think that 'global warming' is an issue either. Personally (As someone living in WI), I wouldn't really mind if it was a few degrees warmer.
(See, I knew you could not have been that bad of a bloke. )

Well, that is nice to know . But I could swear my disagreements with you are only recent, mostly when religion comes in the debate.

[Vuk]

It was not ad-hominem. I was criticising conservatives. You have to admit, most conservatives harbour a healthy amount of distrust for intellectuals. Why? Perhaps because a great deal of intellectuals are liberal. But surely their science is at least somewaht accurate. And is it a coincidence that so many intellectuals are liberal? Who knows, but you cannot entirely discount me, although it is quite apparent that my post was not entirely serious.

And was it really necessary to bold it all .

Gah, I miss Tribesman. Alright, he should have toned down his personal attacks, but you have to agree, balance is a precious thing. Both Frag and Tribsey must remain in the Backroom, otherwise the equilibrium is in shambles.


Well, that is nice to know . But I could swear my disagreements with you are only recent, mostly when religion comes in the debate.

lol, didn't say I didn't like you, just that we never really agree.
I gotta agree that what you said about conservatives is extremely untrue. Yeah, I have met pea brained conservatives who do not care about science, fact, reason, or argument, but I have met at least as many liberals like that (many of them at college no less!). And BTW, a degree does not make you more intelligent than anyone. I have had some of the most mud-dumb professors you can imagine. Even my high-level history courses a baby could do with their eyes closed. A lot of conservative dislike many professors and intellectuals because they think the degree does make them smarter than other people (and I am sorry, a degree boosts neither the size of your intellect or any other asset...despite what many intellectuals think), and they use their position and authority to push their personal beliefs as fact. And seriously AP, so many of the truly are just so mud-dumb it is laughable. I don't agree with you on hardly a thing, I think you do not think through things well some times, etc; you know that. Still though, you know more, and are more intelligent I think than 90% of the professors I have had. I am one of those evil conservatives who do not have a high opinion of most professors (nothing against the profession). I have met some great ones (and brilliant ones). Some of them could not be more ideologically opposed to me, but they are good, smart people who do their best to teach their students and advance learning. I have great respect for good professors like that, no matter what their views are. Unfortunately they are few and far between. Most professors I know just use their position to push a point of view, and quite frankly, half of them are about as reasoning as the average junior high student!

And you ask is it a coincidence that most intellectuals are liberals? hhmmm...considering that majority of people attending college still come from the upper and upper-middle class, and that most people teaching them are trying to push a liberal point of view, nah, I do not think it is a coincidence. You know what I think is sad? The few conservative professors I know completely keep their ideology out of teaching (as they should), but almost all the liberals belittle conservatism when they can, and push their liberal point of view. Seriously, a lot of professors try to make you feel stupid if you are a conservative. No wonder parents worry about their kids being brainwashed. You still wonder why there is an imbalance?

[Furunculus]

You have to admit, most conservatives harbour a healthy amount of distrust for intellectuals. Why? Perhaps because a great deal of intellectuals are liberal. But surely their science is at least somewaht accurate. And is it a coincidence that so many intellectuals are liberal? Who knows, but you cannot entirely discount me, although it is quite apparent that my post was not entirely serious.

And was it really necessary to bold it all .

Gah, I miss Tribesman. Alright, he should have toned down his personal attacks, but you have to agree, balance is a precious thing. Both Frag and Tribsey must remain in the Backroom, otherwise the equilibrium is in shambles.

I disagree. I do not distrust intellectuals per-se, tho i admit to a healthy dose of benign contempt so social-science intellectuals who are always trying to engineer society into what they see as a better model. But i do entirely disagree with your notion that I distrust intellectuals as a broad sweep, perhaps because I am a UK Conservative (by inclination rather than affiliation) rather than a US conservative.

Yes, it was a stupid statement.

I am dimly aware of Tribemans ban-worthy tantrum, but it is not something I have ever followed with interest because the whole warning points system is something i have no interest in employing.

[Ariovistus Maximus]

Oh great. We don't even fully understand all the factors that affect global warming and now we want to cool the planet down. What happens if we do too good of a job? On one end you have crop failures, on the other you have an ice age. Brilliant.

I think he has a point.

This type of thing has happened before, although not in such a big way.

For instance, California's massive wildfires this year were in part attributed to the way that they have instantly extinguished fires in the past.

This meant that the forests never burned, which meant that the natural "cleaning" process never took place, which meant that lots of debris gathered on the forest floor, which built up kindling until they weren't able to stop the fires any more because they grew so fast!

I think perhaps that the unintended consequences of playing with nature on that scale may be very dangerous.

But then I'm no nobel-laureate expert. :D

[Furunculus]

nobel laureates are a devalued currency at present.

[drone]

Releasing large quantities of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere is exactly what volcanoes do in large eruptions. So, like I said before:

And all this work and fuss will mean nothing the next time some random volcano in the Pacific Rim blows it's top and spews enough ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to cool the planet down by a couple of degrees.

Of course, the downside of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere is acid rain, but beggars can't be choosy.

[Vladimir]

Of course, the downside of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere is acid rain, but beggars can't be choosy.

Exactly! You can't make this dumb up. Who would of thought of polluting the upper atmosphere with this stuff 20 years ago?

[Xiahou]

Oh great. We don't even fully understand all the factors that affect global warming and now we want to cool the planet down. What happens if we do too good of a job? On one end you have crop failures, on the other you have an ice age. Brilliant.

I think an ice age might lead to some crop failures too. Probably a few more than warming would, actually. :yes;

According to new polling less people think there is strong evidence of warming and just over a third think any warming is man-made. Also, people who think it a serious problem have dropped by 9%, with people who think it's no problem at all gaining 6%.

[Fragony]

Good thing for these lemmings that there's an ice age is comming up, they can be absolutely terrified again. How are you going to educate your parents about the ice age? AND DON'T YOU BUY THAT.

forgive me Gaia for I have consumed, god help us all.

[Furunculus]

Global Fools Day:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10...ate_fools_day/

[Fragony]

Hehe oh really http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...-change-belief

Kudo´s for this secular judge

[Furunculus]

oh god, yet more evidence that CO2 isn't having the impact it has been accused of previously:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ear...n-dioxide.html

does this mean that computer models predicting catastrophic climate change could be wrong, or that spending trillions controlling anthropogenic CO2 would be a complete waste of money.............................?

[Beskar]

oh god, yet more evidence that CO2 isn't having the impact it has been accused of previously:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ear...n-dioxide.html

does this mean that computer models predicting catastrophic climate change could be wrong, or that spending trillions controlling anthropogenic CO2 would be a complete waste of money.............................?

It will take them twenty years of todays computer processing to accurately forecast the weather in twenty years time.

Make of that as you will.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Everyones world is going to end one day anyway, global warming or not. Nothing to worry about. Roll with the punches; longer summers, more pool parties, less snow to shovel - or not.

[gaelic cowboy]

Everyones world is going to end one day anyway, global warming or not. Nothing to worry about. Roll with the punches; longer summers, more pool parties, less snow to shovel - or not.

Reminds me of the Bill Hicks line about how non smokers die everyday