Politicians using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a tried-and-true strategy. Paint the idea green and a natural catastrophe became political fodder for former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.
Kerry appeared on MSNBC on February 6 to discuss storms that have killed at least 50 people throughout the Southeastern United States. So, of course, Kerry used the platform to advance global warming alarmism.
What an ignorant, self-serving ass.
Clearly, this was a manifestation God’s wrath for all the morons voting for McCain.
Related: Despite Warnings, Tornadoes Kill 55
John McCain, same thing really. He says though if we waste trillions of dollars changing the proportions of stuff in the air and it turns out to be stupid then all we will have done is left a cleaner world for our babies. I don’t think he listens to himself.
I’ll bet Kerry thinks of himself as more intellectual, rational, and scien-terrific than, say, Pat Robertson.
I thought it beyond the realm of possibility but, Jean Kerry is even more of a douche nozzle now than he was in 2004.
Yeah, he really doesn’t disappoint, does he. You know if we were just smart enough to elect him and Edwards in 2004, there would have been no killer tornadoes or hurricanes, the blind would be able to see by now, and people like Chris Reeves would be running marathons. I guess we’re just short sighted morons.
I’m a graduate student in atmospheric science. I believe global warming is real. However, as far as I know, no researchers even claim that tornadoes are being increased by it. In fact, if I had to speculate, I’d guess that global warming will decrease severe weather, since the warming is concentrated in the upper troposphere and tends to limit the instability needed by supercell thunderstorms need to grow. Global warming may wreak havoc with climate in various harmful ways, but blaming it for tornadoes is not far removed from blaming it for crop circles, or 9/11.
It’s still too early to put in the tomatoes. They’d freeze and then where would you be?
Thanks, Nathan. We tend to believe in global warming, too. We just don’t believe that the anthropogenic component is as great as the one-worlder pols would like for us to believe.
I don’t believe in it. I might kinda sorta acknowledge it. I believe in things like the power of music to transform the lives of inner city children and in the miracle of compound interest. Weather is mostly just weather. I like it when it rains.
Not exactly.
Well, maybe He was multiply motivated.
What about rain at 35 degrees, happy? Trust me it sucks. It sucks bad. 3 straight days of cold, pounding rain. But, you’re spot on in the “weather is mostly just weather” comment. Alas, that’s all it is. I acknowledge global warming, too. I just fail to see the wealth re-distribution component of it that the left salivates over. What Dan said.
Geez, happy, it sounds like you’ll believe in “the miracle of compound interest”, but you don’t acknowledge it. What are ya, a commie?
And Dan? What about global cooling? Or how’bout Global effing-climate change? Don’t we believe in that?
Jeez, have we given up all our beliefs? Next thing, you’ll tell me that Republicans are (in the process of) nominating a progressive for president – and calling him a conservative.
Jeez. I didn’t know this was so controversial.
Whatever gave you that idea?
well happy im pretty scient…the consensus in the scientific community….(expect the science whores bought out by the leftists) is there IS global warming…which is probably cyclic and completely unrelated to homo sapiens sapiens use of carbon-based technology.
except
in a more visually pleasing metaphor…i guess we are like ants trying to manipulate a toothbrush.
See I acknowledge that, nishi. Used to be it was kind of fun not to sometimes. Mostly now I just say that the things people are proposing to deal with global warming are not the sort of things people would propose if they believed in global warming. It works pretty well.
Really big ants? Like carpenter ants? Or bigger? Like those tropical army ants? Cuz if you’re thinking about those little ants we get in the bathroom, I don’t see them even moving, much less manipulating a toothbrush.
Just saying.
high hopes, jdm
very good, happy, very good response
high apple pie in the sky hopes
/giggles
First, I want to note that my explanation above was incomplete. While global warming likely decreases dry instability, it may slightly increase moist instability–the kind needed for convection and thunderstorms. This is still unsettled, and in any case, it’s certainly ridiculous to blame a tornado outbreak on carbon dioxide.
Re: #15, Consensus is not evidence for either side. I for one don’t care if the consensus blames humans or the Sun, or giant thermally conductive flying pigs for global warming, and I don’t care who is being funded by whom. I only care what is actually responsible for the observed increase in temperatures. The theory behind the idea of anthropogenic global warming is sound, and accounts for fluctuations in solar output. Climate models for the distant future are unreliable but improving. Anthropogenic global warming is probably happening, and our government should be concerned about it’s impact.
There’s a big difference, though, between the climate phenomenon of global warming and the political phenomenon of Global Warming. The political version is full of nonsense from people like Kerry and Rush Limbaugh. Whatever climate change is happening is happening gradually, and leftists would be wise to banish thoughts of drowning coastal cities and scorched cornfields from their minds. “The Day After Tomorrow” will most likely have about the same weather as the day after yesterday. Conservatives, conversely, would do well to acknowledge that the chemicals we dump into the environment are bound to affect it. The issue may not be drastic, but it’s real. Unfortunately, such moderation doesn’t jive with the inflammatory, bumper-sticker style politics both parties have fallen into. More’s the pity. Let’s all try to elect more adults to public office.
Please tell me more about the giant thermally conductive flying pigs. I find the idea strangely compelling.
Carbon dioxide is not a chemical. It’s what plants breathe. Trees. They love the stuff. Also, colanchos.
Nathan, I’m not a climate scientist, but I used to be more or less where you are.
Then I had a realization.
The thing that really set the hysteria off was the Mann “hockey stick”. Forget the rampant falsification involved; the original data came from tree rings. Trees, you see, grow better in warm conditions, and even better when there’s a bit more CO2. So here we have a species (us), that lives or dies on agriculture, concluding from the pattern of tree rings that an oncoming session of better conditions for plant growth is gonna be a f*ing disaster.
Sorry. It’s not an accident that DNC also stands for “Does Not Compute”.
Regards,
Ric
“Conservatives, conversely, would do well to acknowledge that the chemicals we dump into the environment are bound to affect it”
And most of them do, Nathan.
They capture energy from the Sun via the thermoelectric effect, and unlike women, their farts really do smell like roses. They make a batch of the world’s most succulent bacon every time they convict a criminal, and their songs sound like Gregorian chants filtered through a kazoo. They’re distant, porcine cousins of the creatures described here.
What I don’t get is how it’s the people who have the most fervid insistence on everyone now right now believing in evolution are the people who have the least faith in it.
Trees, however, don’t make good thermometers. I’ve had gyroscopes that make better thermometers than trees.
Mmmmm. Gyros.
Ric,
I’ve got my doubts about the famous “hockey stick.” To keep this short, I’ll just note that the temporal resolution of temperature and CO2 measurements is much greater in recent decades than in the distant past. Hence, a spike in both variables like the one we’re currently experiencing could have happened thousands of years ago too, and we’d never know it. Thus, when people use the hockey-stick graph to show that the warming now underway is unprecedented, they’re claiming something that the evidence in question cannot establish.
I also agree with you that the effects of climate change will not be uniformly bad. A modest rise in temperature might actually make the Earth more hospitable. The danger lies in unchecked emissions of greenhouse gases, or in the unknown effects of possible thermal feedbacks in the (very complicated) climate system. For example, we might reach a tipping point where rising temperatures could trigger the release of sequestered greenhouse gases from natural reservoirs, further increasing temperature. In an unlikely–but, unfortunately, not demonstrably impossible–extreme case of this, the Earth could become much like Venus, with a hellishly hot atmosphere almost entirely composed of greenhouse gases. Such a cataclysm is astronomically unlikely, but it still behooves us to investigate the matter thoroughly and take whatever steps are necessary to avoid the possibility.
As far as I know, nobody has solved the very complicated problem of teasing out the manifold effects of greenhouse gas emissions. We have some preliminary results suggesting that a few Kelvins of warming over the next century is possible if we don’t curtail output of greenhouse gases. My own area of research is the Martian atmosphere, so I’m certainly not up to speed on the latest developments. I just know that we shouldn’t dismiss the idea of political action to reduce emissions out of hand.
You can make a pretty good gyroscope out of thermometers. Trees make better accelerometers, though.
Regards,
Ric
Happyfeet,
I love your comments on this site, but I have to inform you that C02 certainly is a chemical. So is O2, which is what we humans breathe. Both are crucial, but that doesn’t mean more is necessarily better.
CO2 is a chemical. So is dihydrogen monoxide, which is not only the deadliest greenhouse gas but frequently causes ugly deaths when ingested in quite modest quantities.
I demand the immediate convocation of a world-wide convention to ban dihydrogen monoxide. We shall have to provide a few reserves of the stuff so fish can reproduce, but this deadly chemical must be eliminated from American life. Think of the children!
Regards,
Ric
Well I mean if you want to get technical about it.
Nathan – How much faith can people really put in the AGW theory when the basic temperature time series are so tightly controlled by leading proponents of the theory and it seems like each time more data gets released for examination, problems are found with it? In other settings, tightly controlled, nonreproducible data, hysterical criticism of outsiders are classic symptoms of fraud.
I personally try to avoid consuming more than several glasses of that dihydrogen monoxygen stuff myself every day. I really try to avoid having to pay for the bottled version.
Such a cataclysm is astronomically unlikely, but it still behooves us to investigate the matter thoroughly and take whatever steps are necessary to avoid the possibility.
If it is astronomically unlikely, it doesn’t behoove us to do anything. Money and time are finite and we could use those thing to study something more probable, like zombies or demon possession. *Snort*
It’s bullshit. No one even knows for sure if “The Earth” is actually warming or not!
No one actually even knows the ‘basal’ temperature of the earth to determine if there is any current warming or cooling!
That’s why The Scare isn’t even called ‘global warming’ anymore–the scaremongers know that the data doesn’t support a conclusion that there is any warming at all–now it’s called “Climate Change”.
Apparently it’s not good change, like: “Obama Change”.
It’s not a physical phenomenon–it’s just scaremongering for votes and tax dollars. “Global Warming” doesn’t exist anymore than “Witches” did in Colonial America, but the social phenomenon is identical.
(Yes, I am an engineer. Yes, I do work with Phd Climatologists and Meteorologists as well as other space and atmospheric scientists…)
Hey, Witch Hunters in New England could tell you the signs and symptoms of demon posession.
They could tell you the demon doing it and the different manifestations of it.
They had an extraordinarily rigorous science of Witch Recognition and Hunting–Demon Banishing and Preventing Posession.
They were experts in it and there was consensus among the clergy about what caused it and how to treat it.
And it was Completely Untrue. We are doing it again: People do this kind of thing in uncertain times. It is human nature.
The only difference is that our fears manifest themselves scientifically now rather than religiously–rather than our Fragile Soul being in jeopardy, it is our Fragile Earth that is in jeopardy.
Take any article on Global Warming and “Find and Replace” “Global Warming” with “Demon Posession”; “Emissions” with “Witchcraft” and “The Planet” with “Your Soul” and you’ll understand the pure bullshit we are up against.
Again.
Greay – Thanks. Well said.
daleyrocks,
There probably is some fraud. Certainly, Al Gore and John Kerry are guilty of high-jacking science for political ends that are at best dubiously related to it. No doubt some scientists have been chasing $$$ instead of answers, and published questionable results. But there is also good science. Basically, CO2 absorbs at some of the same infrared wavelengths that the Earth radiates at, and re-emits the energy in a random direction. Sometimes the re-emission is downward, so the Earth and the atmosphere wind up warmer because of it. There are many complications, but this is the basic motivation for thinking that, all else being equal, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will translate into a warmer planet. The magnitude of that change, and the question of whether all else really is equal, are still unsettled, but the theory is fundamentally sound. The fact that leftoid wackos have latched onto something doesn’t quite make it automatically wrong.
Not counting the multiple appearance of cases of actual, verifiable fraud — such as the aforenamed “Hockey Stick”, which was invented specifically to eliminate the Medieval Climactic Optimum from the record, as avowed by its proponents. It is less easy for them to eliminate Leif Ericsson, Angkor Wat, and Chaco Canyon from the historical record.
Mars and Venus are interesting in that respect. Both have atomspheres consisting almost entirely of carbon dioxide. Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as the Earth is, and receives a bit less than 40% of the insolation as a result — but it has sixteen times as much carbon dioxide and nothing else. A Greenhouse Effect is not notably present on Mars… the concept of “runaway greenhouse” is based on Venus, where the assumption is that it once had much more water, which was boiled away by the heat. Still, the sulfuric acid clouds are quite high up, at around the one Bar level (it’s 90 Bar at the surface), and they don’t seem to be dissipating all that fast. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just assume that both planets had less water to start with? Water appears to come from the outer System in the form of comets, and comets hit quite randomly, it seems. If proto-Earth got smacked by a water-rich comet at low enough speed that it didn’t just dissipate immediately (a very low-probability occurrence) and the others either didn’t get such an input or hit too hard, the difference can be accounted for quite easily.
Regards,
Ric
who is off to bed now…
Gray,
There’s a certain amount of fear-mongering out there that does indeed reek of Cotton Mather. I just hope we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The witch hunters may have had elaborate, rigorous methodology, but they weren’t reasoning logically from true premises. You can derive ridiculous things if you make the right assumptions, if you confuse the fundamental and the superficial, if you take spurious associations to prove causation. And some global warming proponents do these things.
Show me how the determination of radiative forcing by certain gases, based on their spectral properties, involves any bad assumptions or incorrect reasoning and I’ll recant it as I would the burning of witches. But I contend that the noted similarity between witch burning and global warming is a superficial comparison of (often lamentable) rhetoric that neglects the heart of the matter.
but they weren’t reasoning logically from true premises.
The entire propoganda arm of AGW, and their complicit scientist, act in the exact manner that you are defending here.
No, Nathan, the theory is not fundamentally sound–it’s just easy to comprehend.
Even here in the NY Times they are wondering if the cost of decreasing CO2 levels is worth it, given that the cost of adjusting for warm temps is probably lower than the vaunted remedies we’ve been hearing.
If increases in CO2 levels caused the earth to warm, the climatological record would show it, but in fact, C02 levels trail temps by 800 years or more.
Furthermore, the disaster forecasts are based on a theory of runaway positive feedback loops that will occur once we hit a future “tipping point,” i.e., when we get Too Much Carbon Dioxide and things spin out of control.
But Earth’s atmospheric CO2 has been as high as 7000 ppm, compared to today’s ~380 ppm. There was no positive feedback loop then, so there won’t be one now. Here’s why.
And the consensus is an illusion for a thousand reasons. Or maybe 50,000 reasons, if you like.
There is probably some fraud.
SOME??? Take a look at this take-down of of Mann’s infamous Hockey Stick. I am not even a scientist, and even I know that you shouldn’t splice instrument data onto a proxy data series, especially when that proxy data hasn’t been calibrated against instrumentation.
Nathan, if you’re an engineer, you probably will understand this kind of thing better than I, because it all has to do with statistics and junk.
But it doesn’t take long, after reading McIntyre’s audits, to see the incredible accumulation of Bad Data and the epidemic of scientific malfeasance at work here. There were several glaring errors in Mann’s 1998 hockey stick, but despite these easily correctable errors being pointed out to him, he still repeats them in report after report.
And the people who take tree-ring samples, ice cores, and sediment cores have this strange little habit of Not Releasing Their Raw Data for peer scrutiny. Is that science? Is that “some” fraud?
Or is a clear sign that a hoax is being perpetrated on the public thus to consolidate more power for the global socialists among us?
BTW, Al Gore first created a company to invest in alternate energy, then he went around preaching the evils of hydrocarbons. Political ends? More like filthy lucre, see, and why no one calls him on it is one of the most scandalous things we’ve endured this century.
Classic political agenda. Get a tragic event, go help and shake some poor victim’s hands to tug at the public’s heart. But, it is true though that this is another effect of global warming. To politicians: stop all the babbling and work on it already. Same message to the public.
Nathan – Thank you for the response. You dodged the temperature time series data though. Why do Hansen and his crew construct a black box around the raw ground station observations and the massaging subsequently done to those observations to come up with temperature data? Why does their temperature data keep getting revised to show less and less 20th century warming after it has been exposed to scrutiny? Given these revisions and lack of certainty around the data, is it really fair to say there is an established trend of warming anymore?
What is the optimum earth temperature in your view Nathan – are we below it or above it?
Show me how the determination of radiative forcing by certain gases, based on their spectral properties, involves any bad assumptions or incorrect reasoning
The radiative forcing of CO2 is not the only factor that affects global temps, nor is it even the most important. There are dozens of other mechanisms at work, including the fact that there is no actual “lid” on the earth as there is with a greenhouse (which heats up because of lack of convection, which the earth has in spades), the fact that nature has far more negative feedback loops than positive, and the fact that ocean currents such as El Niño track more closely with climate change than industrial combustion.
Here’s a scientific observation on feedback loops:
Rats. The blockquote tags don’t work the way God intended. (Jeff??!?!?!?)
Here is the feedback loop thing again, this time with all the paragraphs:
[P]ositive feedback dominated systems can be stable as long as the feedback percentage is less than 100%. … First, there are many catastrophists that argue that climate IS in fact dominated by feedback over 100% — anyone who talks of “tipping points” is effectively saying this. The argument about instability making stable processes impossible certainly applies to these folks’ logic. Further, even positive feedback
I take it back, Jeff; there was a less than ;lt& symbol in the text that mucked things up. And I’m too anal to let it be:
[P]ositive feedback dominated systems can be stable as long as the feedback percentage is less than 100%. … First, there are many catastrophists that argue that climate IS in fact dominated by feedback over 100% — anyone who talks of “tipping points” is effectively saying this. The argument about instability making stable processes impossible certainly applies to these folks’ logic. Further, even positive feedback less than 100% makes a system highly subject to dramatic variations. But Mann et al. are already on the record saying that without man, global temperatures are unbelievably stable and move in extremely narrow ranges. It is hard to imagine this to be true in a climate system dominated by positive feedback, particularly when it is beset all the time with dramatic perturbations, from volcanoes to the Maunder Minimum.
To some extent, climate catastrophists are in a bind. If historic temperatures show a lot of variance, then a strong argument can be made that a large portion of 20th century warming is natural oscillation. If historic temperatures move only in narrow ranges, they have a very difficult time justifying that the climate is dominated by positive feedbacks of 60-80%.
The point to remember, though, is that regardless of likelihood, the historical temperature record simply does not support assumptions of feedback much larger than zero. Yes, time delays and lags make a small difference, but all one has to do is compare current temperatures to CO2 levels 12-15 years ago to account for this lag and one still gets absolutely no empirical support for large positive feedbacks.
Remember this when someone says that greenhouse gas theory is “Settled.” It may or may not be, but the catastrophe does not come directly from greenhouse gases. Alone, they cause at most nuisance warming. The catastrophe comes from substantial positive feedback (it takes 60-80% levels to get climate sensitivities of 3-5C) which is far from settled science.
What an ignorant, self-serving ass.
Cosi, cosa.
Sorry guys. I’m late.
So can I still dump my used motor oil in the creek? And GO ROMNEY!
What I don’t get is how it’s the people who have the most fervid insistence on everyone now right now believing in evolution are the people who have the least faith in it.
Evolution is so yesterday, hf, the cool kids are going to intelligently design the future.
Show me how the determination of radiative forcing by certain gases, based on their spectral properties, involves any bad assumptions or incorrect reasoning and I’ll recant it as I would the burning of witches.
Yeah, the data ‘correction factors’ added to to the temperature data to take into account the locations and variables of the recording stations and methodologies.
I, and so can you, can make a perfectly scientific and supportable argument for correction factors that show the earth is actually cooling.
By even studying the spectral factors of the various gasses to see what is causing the warming, you have already begged the question of whether it is warming or not.
Who cares about the greenhouse gasses? the. earf. isn’t. even. warming!
The witch hunters may have had elaborate, rigorous methodology, but they weren’t reasoning logically from true premises.
Sure they were. There reasoning was entirely resonable and consistent with their system based on observable phenomenon.
To believe in “Global Warming”, you have to believe in a “Global Temperature”.
There is no such thing as a “Global Temperature”. The earth isn’t even warming.
Shit: “Climate” and “the atmosphere” may not even be deterministic systems.
Even if you could adequately characterize the current state, there are some equally probable numbers of end states. Maybe large numbers of equally probable end states….
Well, Gray, not only do you have to believe in a “Global Temperature” you alaso have to make the great leap of faith and believe in the “Correct Global Temperature.”
This is my problem with this whole shebang as a non scientist: Who determines what the proper average temperature should be? Plus, the concept of turning our economy upside down in an ultimately vain attempt to “stabilise” or “ameliorate” climate change doen’t seem like a particularly smart thing to do.
Duh! The Davos People!
Heh, Dan.
Last Sunday I had my 7- 11 year old Junior Choir members lining up to practice a song. The discussion, somehow, moved to vacationing in Florida when one of the boys piped up, “I don’t want to go to Florida. It’s going to all be underwater, you know!” Gobal warming choruses followed.
I thought I showed remarkable restraint by not breaking out in tears.
Bully for you, BJ!
“Radiative forcing” is an oxymoron. Theoretically, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means that it’s a thermal feedback mechanism, not a thermal forcing function.
I could have a decent regard for global warming enthusiasts if they’d just learn a modicum of systems modeling.