One of the hobby horses of this site has been my recurring critique of “meaning” as a function of interpretive consensus (itself a rather lazy extension of meaning as a function of convention) — an epistemological maneuver that I’ve argued is incoherent outside of its end game, which is to control narratives, and in so doing, to seize power by way of deciding and policing identity claims.
To some, such structural linguistic concerns are either too arcane or too “theoretical” to bother with; but if we look closely at certain disputed policy battles, we’ll see those questions of structural inevitability come into play in ways that, should we fail to recognize the gambit, can materially affect the entire global economy and work to arbitrarily redistribute powers otherwise derived from the global free market.
And nowhere is that more clear than in the field of “climate science” and its global political aspirations:
David Berlinski, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, views “climategate” as an “unexpected gift” to skeptics that shows “Big Science in its natural state.” Climategate follows on the heels of other scientific scams that reach back to the Club of Rome in the 1970s that warned pending doom.
“The overwhelming consensus is, as it always is, utter nonsense because it is in the first place an illusion,” he wrote in an email. “There are very many scientists who dissent from global warming. And it is utter nonsense because it is based on nothing more than a trend line. No one has the faintest idea what the trend represents or whether it will continue or whether even the trend itself was based on data so fudged as to be meaningless. The latter, I think.”
“What is at work deep down is a delusion as striking as various Zulu beliefs and no more credible,” he continued. “To wit, that because there is something that might for the sake of convenience be designated as the global atmosphere, there is as well a science of the global atmosphere, one in which for various initial conditions of the GA, laws of its evolution might be adduced from which explanations and predictions would flow. There is no such science; there are no such laws. To be sure one can say with easy confidence that the GA is determined by fundamental physics.”
Consensus science, insofar as the consensus being appealed to is enforced by bracketing dissenters as “denialists” or pseudo-scientists (leaving only assenters as “authentic” “climate scientists”), is just another iteration of consensus “meaning” being used as a will to power by those who seize control of an identity group narrative.
As in all interpretation, if the intent of the interpreter is privileged, what we have isn’t interpretation at all. It is creative writing. And the narrative of that process is manifest in the kind of climate “science” that, during its ascendancy, has for the last two decades materially impacted public policy, and by extension, questions of liberty.
Understanding the why is every bit as important, I maintain, as is railing against the how — even if certain pragmatists are content to focus the bulk of their energies on the latter, and write any examination of the former off as a rather feckless (pseudo-) intellectual pursuit.
By the “how,” do you mean focusing on the data fudging, dubious “peer review,” and outright false data?
Because there’s a dynamic here that’s not present in lit crit: with the latter, there is no difficulty in presenting the for-real printed text. There’s no arguing whether these words were set down in this order by this author.
With science, you interpret data rather than words, and there can be trouble in obtaining “true” data as a starting point. With climate science, not only is the interpretation dubious, the underlying data is itself in question.
It’s akin to the false statements that were attributed to Rush Limbaugh to prevent him from investing in the St. Louis Rams.
So instead of assigning their own meaning to the text of Curious George, irrespective of the authors’ intent, the global warm-mongers are producing a phony text, attributing it to the authors, and then deriving “the only logical conclusion” from the text.
Which, that makes sussing out the statistical trickery and data-fudging quite important, as it uncovers the actual text that was obscured by the fake one.
Steve McIntyre may be an agnostic regarding AGW, but his work in teasing out the true data has been invaluable. The rest of us, on the other hand, are pretty clear about the why. Showing the falsification of data lends credence to the why.
The “author” here is physics, essentially — signified in raw data describing what is and was, to the best we can collect it. I had a sentence in the first draft that said as much, but I don’t want to push the metaphor too much.
Michael Crichton weighs in on the merits of consensus in science from beyond the grave.
I’m not sure there’s any consensus about the why. I’ve seen everything from a Soros inspired conspiracy to impose World gubbmint on us to Maggie Thatcher inventing it to whup Arthur Scargill and his miners to a load of useful idjits following the grant money which got bigger and attracted more idjits and so on.
All of these things, and more, undoubtedly played a part but there seems to have been a perfect storm of apathy, ennui and self-denigration involved which has led so many of us to embrace the self destruction of Western Civilisation or at least to wallow in the circus of doom in which a disaster is to be welcomed.
Or to put it another way:
“For God’s sake, Jesus! Get a move on with the Armageddon thing, willya!”
(Or for the less Dispensational among us: “Harder Miss Whiplash! Harder!”)
Apologies if this has been linked to recently. This is one of those things that should be read every six months, imho.
“A perfect storm of apathy…”
Interesting concept Kevin.
I think the “why” is simple: you give people power over others, without proper oversight, and some of them will turn out to be thugs. Given enough time the thugs will take over.
See Stalin, Josef.
They’d been very successful at shifting the burden of proof, but now the climate pansies have the burden again. And they’re floundering.
My take on the how question would just add a few wrinkles to what has already been said. If you are unscrupulous, it would be very possible to simply cherry-pick data to support your conclusions. No falsification necessary. I guess that’s really obvious, though, but I’m in one of my “obvious” moods.
The answer to the why question is quite important, and not well-examined in public because it would be so much more damaging to the progressive agenda. Greater minds than mine have already pointed out that we can look over time at these various climate scares of one kind or another and deduce that the motivation is to control people and to control the flow of money. Poor nations embrace all this crap, in the cases they do, because they know they can get money from the U.S. (and to a lesser extent, other western nations) as a result. The fact that the developing nations such as China and India are telling the climate scare-mongers to go piss up a rope tells you that it’s something only wealthy (or at least recently wealthy) nations can afford to even consider.
I think pounding on the “why” question is an important thing to do, because the motivations of these people must be exposed, constantly.
Why it gives Princess Lindsey a chubby is another good why I think.
“Apologies if this has been linked to recently. This is one of those things that should be read every six months, imho.”
Probably one of the most used citation from my Big Book Of Quotes.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Get a grip. Have a cupcake.
Yum, green velvet.
Shaka Zulu!
To stay true to my incipient reductionism, I say “why ask why?” Lies are lies. Expand the credibility gap. Though this is my own onion patch-it’s not mutually exclusive of efforts to probe the motivations.
As a native son of the Palmetto State, I find Lindsey G vaguely nauseating.
History, and historigraphy, has a similar problem. The text may or may not be an accurate description of the past events it claims to represent. And that doesn’t have to follow from a dishonest witness. Especially as, once upon a time, history was not intended as an accurate description of past events, but, especially bibliographical accounts, as in illustration of an archetype.
It’s a little more tricky than that, in that the empirical data themselves may be unsound. Merely relying on surface temperature data would be unsound if the temperature records are from badly compromised (i.e. increasingly urbanised) recording platforms. At the very least we have to establish which surface temperature records are reliable, before we can ascribe any faith in our ability to model the system. In other words, validation or ground truthing of the model may not actually have been performed.
All this is quite separate from questions on the role of CO2 in warming, and especially distinct from oceanic forcing on atmospheric CO2 levels.
bibliographical should be biographical.
once upon a time I could type…..
Could also be that even if all the problems were fixed, that all tha individual record just don’t add up to a description of the whole. They describe that area perfectly well, but one area’s records have no particular bearing on any other.
Not least because the raw data (what there is of it left) has nowhere near the 1/10-degree (or better) accuracy needed to even detect the tiny trend signal, if there is one beyond the base natural warming. End of the last ice age and all that. Now THERE was a signal…
Too much noise, temp readings ludicrously insufficient.
Of course, RTO, the hemispheres have had diverging climates in the past, that is quite true.
From a scientific perspective, how is everything.
Science is how.
Science is a methodology.
What they have done isn’t science.
How or why hardly matters to me in light of so what.
I’m thinking higher co2 levels and another couple of degrees are likely to make things better.
Them telling me we need to stop the warming makes no more sense than me saying we need to increase the global temperature for the good of mankind.
Of course, if I did prove my case to Al Gore, I’m sure his solutions would remain the same…
The remarkable blind faith in “science” that one sees among the left is mirrored by their unshakable faith in the utility of policy analysis. Progressive policies will produce wonderful results if a whole series of things go exactly as hoped and there are no unforeseen occurrences. Unfortunately, we are beginning to see a divergence from even this level of foolishness, such that things no longer need to be demonstrated using science or good policy analysis, but simply have to be called scientific or analytical — and more importantly, reach the right conclusions — for them to become indisputable truth.
Even Orwell didn’t foresee that kind of philosophical abuse in 1984 – in his Newspeak Appendix, he does mentions a form of Newspeak used by those bound to deal with concrete realities of numbers and the physics of the material world. As Winston note, freedom is the power to say that 2+2=4.
Them telling me we need to stop the warming makes no more sense than me saying we need to increase the global temperature for the good of mankind.
It actually makes less sense to me.
The prospect of a cooling trend disheartens me for more then a warming trend did.
Although it wouldn’t have been any more then a lucky guess, I was kinda hoping their substantial warming trend would be right.
There’s more uninhabitable land that’s uninhabitable because it’s too cold, then there is because it’s too hot.
And although it’s habitable, nobody calls North Dakota paradise.
But from an understanding how we’re using science to establish and enforce progressive ideology, why matters more.
So what is a destination paved by why and how.
So what is the name of the “crisis” that demands answers now, definitely influencing how, and reveling why.
Unfortunately, we are beginning to see a divergence from even this level of foolishness, such that things no longer need to be demonstrated using science or good policy analysis, but simply have to be called scientific or analytical — and more importantly, reach the right conclusions — for them to become indisputable truth.
It’s always been that way. They have no faith in either. They have faith in authority.
Their certainty is not placed on the science itself, but on the Ph.D.s of men who call themselves scientists. Same thing in the policy analyst arena. The ‘experts’.
Progressivism in this country and others has always since it’s start been fundementally technocratic.
And it’s never been based on any actual merit. Things like eugenics never had solid merit. And their goals were all value judgements. The science never told them that more efficient was better, nor did it define the purpose which you’d measure efficiency against.
Orwell made perhaps a mistake on that part. In 1984 the Party continues (with unmentioned sucess or failure) to try to progress in some manners, such as science. Beyond just new ways to oppress the hell out of people. Supposedly. All he ever describes is them inventing new ways to oppress the hell out of people. All the engineers, scientists, scholars and such are all wholesale devoted to developing more thorough methods of control. He seems to assume (or at least assume they assume) society needs things like mathematics or science.
But societies truly don’t need them at all.
I think Rand had their character at least nailed closer. Many of these people would not mind going back to ancient Egypt, so long as their position remained the same and they were holding the whip, they’d totally dig that.
It does not matter if we have a functional cotton gin or not, if we’ve got ample slaves. You don’t need a microwave if you don’t have to cook for yourself. In fact, microwave food kinda sucks.
When was the steam engine invented?
Wrong – over 2,000 years ago.
The ancient greeks had invented it. Well, they invented a steam device that would be called an engine if only the definition of ‘engine’ didn’t require it to do work. They never put it to work. It could have, but they never had it do anything besides make sound and fury for idle entertainment. They had slaves. Why bother?
To make it actually be practical and productive would have been actually distasteful to them. A desperate and undignified act that would have been the symbol of a man who was low enough to actually have need for money.
Once we’ve reached the end of history what use is further progress? Orwell knew that much – once they reach the top they knock over the ladder.
It isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a bandwagon, and a variety of people hop aboard it for a variety of reasons:
1. Politicians:
a. Saving The Planet is a nice, non-controversial cause to get behind.
b. They love to cast themselves as the noble heroes who avert certain disaster.
c. They especially love issues that permit them to exercise greater control over economic activity.
2. Enviros:
a. Fanaticism provides an extraordinary head rush like you can’t get from something that the liver eventually metabolizes.
b. Nothing like an ecological Armageddon to prove to the doubters that they’re wrong, wrong, wrong.
3. Climate Scientists:
a. Doomsday sells book deals, rock-star status, and all that sweet grant money.
b. Being on the IN with a hot new clique provides the satisfying crunch of your hated opponents’ skulls under your sneakers.
c. Did I mention grant money? By the truckload?
4. Al Gore
a. Having been thwarted at the polls, he gets to recast himself as Teh Goracle, which is even better than president because you don’t HAVE to show up at any press conference you don’t want to.
b. Accountability is for luuuuusers.
c. First. Carbon. Billionaire. EVAR.
d. Malignant narcissism.
5. Industry
a. Label it “green”; increase your sales.
b. If you happened to buy Enron’s wind turbine franchise and you’re the leading manufacturer of curly bulbs, you could make a veritable killing, but I can’t think of any company that fits that description.
6. Media
a. Doomsday sells. ‘Nuff said.
7. Gubmint Regulators
a. The nobility thing at 1b.
b. The fanaticism thing at 2a.
c. The accountability thing at 4b.
But from an understanding how we’re using science to establish and enforce progressive ideology, why matters more.
Hrm. I don’t dispute the overall importance of the why… but I can see why scientists would skip it. It’s not in their purview.
My only problem with the statement is, that’s not science. We’re not using science to establish and enforce progressive ideology. They’re not using science… just the word.
I disagree. It’s a conspiracy that allows for — and in fact courts — a bandwagon. A consensus bandwagon determines and polices meaning. Kind of an epistemological tautology.
The first rule of the tautology club is the first rule of the tautology club.
I think a lot of the problem these days is that there’s too many scientists. In the old days, you’d have maybe one well read guy who did the theorizing on a given topic, say electricity, then you’d have a whole mess of amateurs running experiments to test the theory and writing about it with friends. Now, the scientist starts with the theory, applies for the job or grant, then spends a lot of time and money creating experiments and data to prove it true. When he does this, the guys who hired him or gave him the money, have to back him up, or they look like assholes. Why? Because it’s not their own money they are spending anymore.
So if I’m a biologist, I can declare myself a rhinosaurusologist and write a paper that asserts that rhinosauruses are the last of the dinosaurs because…well, just look at the bastards!… then the State university I’m at gives me my own “Institute of Zombie Dinosaurrology (rhinocerosology), Room 206” and a six-figure salary with lots of bennies, two trips to Africa a year and all the TA tail I can nail… I can guaranty that no one is ever going to call me a fake. Not in public, anyway. That would embarrass the Dean, the Administration, the State Gov’t, Congress, and most of the TA’s who spent their late Sunday evenings telling me that it was really very nice and would I please come out from under the sink?
a six-figure salary with lots of bennies, two trips to Africa a year and all the TA tail I can nail…
Man, I would love that gig. You know who’s hiring?
RTO, is that how you’d interpret Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars? It’s clearly not what we’d consider history today, yet, confusingly to me, it appears that his characterizations remain dominant. Perhaps that’s because I read too much pop history and not enough scholarly history. Or, perhaps it is that others have figured out how to separate some of the wheat from the chaff while I simply grin and enjoy it like a really old copy of People magazine.
they just screwed up cause they made up a sciencey thing what makes for really really silly movies
these ones are like Contact bad
If anybody is hiring, let me take this opportunity to lay out my theories on Anthropogenic Continental Drift (ACD) theory…
You see, during the period of Pangea, the tectonic plates were whole. Then fatasses driving SUV’s through McD’s cracked them up and now they’re spiraling around slamming into each other makin earthquakes and shit that kill the Haitians.
I believe the only solution to prevent further tectonic fracture and continental drift is for the UN to regulate the geographic location of every human on the planet.
Only with more, you know, sciency terms. And graphs. And numbers. That’s the part I need the money for.
I kinda liked The Arrival cause of the way the critter walked looked really cool
scampered, really
“Only with more, you know, sciency terms. And graphs. And numbers. ”
Don’t forget a geographical angle.
You want to do your research in an appropriate place. *cough* Miami Beach*cough*
People magazine is a good comparison. Twelve Caesars is not biography. I have heard it, charitably, called memoir. I call it gossip.
I disagree. It’s a conspiracy that allows for — and in fact courts — a bandwagon.
By “conspiracy” I mean all the entities that I named in my last getting together in a smoke-filled room and deciding how this will all play out.
Which, if someone wrote “Protocols of the Elders of AGW” we could get some momentum on that.
If anybody is hiring, let me take this opportunity to lay out my theories on Anthropogenic Continental Drift (ACD) theory…
Too late for you: Joy Behar and some other chick (Medea Benjamin?) already attributed the Haiti earthquake and the tsunami to AGW.
“Consensus” science came about, ironically, because the watermelons (not a racial reference!) wanted to be able to push their agenda away from the accountability of politics. Unfortunately for them, science has its own accountability that turns out not to be any more sympathetic to the Gaia-ists (not a sexual orientation reference!) than Grandma and Grandpa Yokel out in flyover country are.
Thus, to the yokels they portrayed their agenda as scientifically proven, while to other scientists they portrayed skepticism as politically dangerous.
The “why” of it remains simple, if I might borrow a phrase: the will to power. By hiding from the body politic, and initially succeeding in intimidating the science community, they were able to exercise their power unsupervised, and the thugs — if they weren’t already in charge — took over.
Any successful conspiracy depends on a bandwagon effect of sorts to keep the lower echelons in line, since fear of punishment has serious limitations and will eventually become counter-productive. And in the case of AGW that’s ultimately what happened, because as has been said many times of late, the whole point of science is skepticism, which works against the bandwagon effect.
Could be the one that runs ads on how much they always admired, treasured, and follow the spirit of, Ronald Reagan. To get electricity generated by his spinning in the grave no doubt.
my taxes are going to pay to rip out your drywall?
sod off I think
The only answer that effectively explains the AGW Affair is the one that has the twins Money and Power.
There is the French phrase ‘cherchez la femme’ but Money and Power will get you to la femme faster than you can say ‘Jack Robinson’.
Especially as, once upon a time, history was not intended as an accurate description of past events, but, especially bibliographical accounts, as in illustration of an archetype.
I remember a passage in I, Claudius (which of course is itself a novel, not a history) where Claudius observed that there were two distinct types of history — one that was intended to lead men to truth, and another that was intended to inspire men to virtue.
I am thinking we might have to start our own, SW.
How about a Department of Heterodoxicology? Nobody has one of those yet, I’ll bet.
#24 BRD:
IIRC, a phrase that used to be written (and treated seriously) was ‘scientific socialism’. At this late date we can laugh at that, and but wonder that there are still people who treat something so obviously stupid seriously. And fear when they grab power.
#29 dicentra:
Holy Mackeral! That is the best explanation I have ever read! Send that on!
How about a Department of Heterodoxicology? Nobody has one of those yet, I’ll bet.
As long as there’s trips to Africa, a six figure salary and TAs to nail, I’m just the guy you’re looking for. Hell, I’ll even learn how to spell it.
To get electricity generated by his spinning in the grave no doubt.
You know, we hook up the cadavers of the founders plus Lincoln and Reagan and Churchill et al., all our energy problems are solved.
Of course, the downside is the left has to stay in power for it to work.
I’m gonna vote no, then.
I can only speak for myself. I can remember as a child. Watching all the cars belching smoke from their exhaust pipes. Watching factories with smoke rising from their chimneys. Going to see a coal-fired power plant and seeing the tall smokestacks pumping out how many tons of CO2 a day?
Long before AGW became an issue in the media. Long before I’d even heard of it, I used to worry about it. How can be keep burning all that stuff and dumping the exhaust into the atmosphere? Aren’t we burning up the oxygen? Aren’t we putting more and more carbon dioxide into the air? Where’s it all going?
And then, two more things: Understanding that the rate we are burning stuff keeps increasing. Industrialization, global economic growth. More and more coal powered electricity plants. More and more cars. Everywhere all around the world the same story. Economic output keeps rising and the rate of burning stuff keeps increasing. Then seeing the Mauna Loa data, somewhere, years ago in a science magazine. Yes. CO2 is increasing. Over decades.
So now the environmental movement starts up in the late 20th century. And I’m getting the message, and I know the CO2 level of the Earth’s atmosphere is steadily rising. I fitted a simple model to the Mauna Loa Data some time around 1980. Yes, it is increasing at an approximately exponential rate (plus a background constant). The model fits the data acceptably well. The simple model is: There was an ancient historical background level. And then an exponential global rise in combustion, caused by global economic growth, is causing it to rise. It all fits.
I don’t know about the magnitude. I don’t know what percentage of our theoretical output is actually ending up in the atmosphere, but the picture looks exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect if some of our output is permanently staying in the atmosphere. A simple model looks very, very plausible.
And note: All of this, well before I’d ever heard of global warming as a movement. Just a niggling suspicion that it had to be a problem at some point in the future, if it was true.
And then the final component. The early missions to Venus. Our growing understanding of just how astonishing Venus’s atmosphere is. The density, the acidity, the stunningly high temperature. Venus is hell. Carl Sagan explaining it on Cosmos. The greenhouse gas effect.
So by the early 1980’s all of the pieces are there. I and I presume, the scientific community at large, are primed with all the components we need for the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
So what’s the bottom line? Do I believe it? Do I believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming?
Yes and No.
The science is probably right. Broadly.
I can quibble about the details – but I still believe the science.
However, it ain’t going to happen.
Why?
Because of This. This chart.
In the last 10 years I have watched the trend emerge, and I no longer believe we’ll still be using more and more fossil fuel by the 2020’s.
Around 10 years from now, the threat of global warming will go away forever.
Venus isn’t hell it’s just Venus. It’s a whole nother planet in my opinion.
I’ve been to Moana Loa. In fact I was on the big island in the middle of February. You know what the problem with using Moana Loa data is? It’s on an island with an active volcano. Yep. An island that has an active volcano. As it happens, that’s somewhat problematic when used as a descriptor for the rest of the world. Seeing as how the rest of the world is neither an island, nor does it tend to be in close proximity to an active volcano. So there’s that.
Keid.
Researching whether the CO2 we’re dumping into the atmosphere is accumulating is entirely valid.
Researching whether that accumulation is or can have an effect on the global climate is entirely valid.
Observing that Venus’s hellish atmosphere consists mostly of CO2 is not to be ignored.
However.
Science is not science unless the scientific method is followed, and “plausibility” has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
It was plausible that rockets could never reach the moon in a vacuum.
It was plausible that light waves could propagate only in a medium, such as ether.
It was plausible that the universe never began, it was just always here.
And all of those plausible hypotheses are wrong.
Your early suspicions carry exactly zero weight as far as whether AGW is a genuine phenomenon. All that matters is whether:
• The data sets are complete and accurate
• The analysis of those sets are mathematically valid
• Other scientists have been able to replicate the results
Oh, and also whether we have the capacity, currently, to even understand the workings of the atmosphere, let alone how CO2 affects it.
no o2 goes to co2. yes. plant food. plants produce o2.
Makewi,
The trend has been confirmed by other data collected worldwide. It’s just that Mauna Lao dataset is the longest continuous series.
oxygen isn’t even flammable
how about argon?
Oh me, oh my, there’s a light in the sky!
That can only mean one thing, little green space varmints!!
Flee, Miquette, flee!!!
tainted evidence is still tainted evidence regardless of it’s longevity
Mr. Locke would sort this.
Around 10 years from now, the threat of global warming will go away forever.
Threat? Global warming is a positive phenomenon regardless of how it happens. The other option is a big ball of ice. Which the earth has been.
And even when it’s not fully encased in ice, the ice ages are terrible for humanity. Imagine living the life of an eskimo but in the Yucatán.
The science is probably right. Broadly.
If the house is built on sand, the house is unstable, regardless of how much you like the house.
They’ve been lying to us for a long time, Keid. Lying. The CRU e-mails were just the tip of the iceberg. Those of us who have been following the skeptic community have been aware of the bullying, the concealment of data, the invalid data sets, the bogus analyses, the rigging of the “peer review” process, the denial of tenure and grants, and all manner of patently unscientific behavior.
Riddle me this: What scientist who values scientific truth wouldn’t pitch a fit at An Inconvenient Truth being shown to schoolchildren throughout the world?
Answer: No truth-valuing scientist. Instead, they boarded the gravy train that Gore set in motion, despite the fact that almost none of the assertions in that film are accurate.
Keid,
Someday you’ll want to learn about the trees. Shame it hasn’t happened before now.
Also, even if you can show that CO2 is increasing, that says nothing about the cause and nothing about the effect.
You ARE aware that — exactly contrary to what IAT baldly asserts — the Vostok ice core shows CO2 rising AFTER temperature, lagging 800-1200 years.
Although it is true that correlation doesn’t equal causality, you cannot have causality without correlation.
Temporal correlation, that is. Cause can’t occur after effect.
Lets talk about CO2 fairy tales…
Mr. Locke would sort this.
The dead one or the other dead one? I mean the dead one what died a long time ago or the dead one what wants to leave the island and everyone knows he isn’t who he is?
Ric… Our Ric… Mr. Ric Locke person…
This guy, I think.
hey that’s a spoiler I’m on season 1 episode 8
Also, Keid, does it not strike you as overly convenient that CO2 has been singled out as the culprit? CO2 being the inevitable product of all combustion, including cellular combustion?
In the mid-1970s, James Hansen testified before Congress that auto emissions were causing global cooling. He was a ranting lunatic then who changed his tune when the temperature did.
Lee’s link is worth following. It’s got that chart showing how CO2 doesn’t correlate with temps at all.
Keid
My point is that using Moana Loa as a further data point, or another data point, or the largest data point, is problematic enough due to it’s unique situation that it’s largely worthless.
Because if they really wanted to worry about atmospheric gases turning us into Venus, they shoulda oughta looked at water vapor.
But there’s no politics in that. So….
hey that’s a spoiler I’m on season 1 episode 8
Spoiler? Oh, I don’t think so.
You can’t believe how much changes between now and then.
“Lee’s link is worth following”
Gee…thanks…
it helps to have it around
Anyways, have fun with it people, but that’s why I’m a global warming believer who doesn’t believe it’s going to happen in real life. GTG
happy easter Mr. A
Except for the warming part, AGW has been robustly confirmed.
I know people who have the same feeling about Tinkerbelle.
Such. A. Crock.
That fucking graph of solar tech costs is a perfect example of the insanity of AGW by the way.
For one, it completely ignores half the issues with solar. How much does it cost you to run your lightbulb with a pedal bicycle? VOILA! I’ve solved our energy dependancy problem.
For two… OH MY GOD! When I woke up this morning it was 54 degrees. By NOON it was 60 degrees! That’s an increase of 6 degrees in just 6 hours!
If the temperature continues rising at this rate, by the end of next week it will be 228 degrees!
By june it will be over 2200 degrees, the oceans will boil and the atmosphere will light on fire!
can quibble about the details – but I still believe the science.
What science?
However, it ain’t going to happen.
Why?
Because the theory is a crock and earth is getting colder.
You’re on season 1 of LOST?
That’s a bit behind but I almost envy you having the whole thing in front of you. It seems like a whole different show.
I only have 6 episodes left.
At any rate – That’s not John Locke.
“Because the theory is a crock and earth is getting colder.”
Right after it gets warmer. Right before too.
Weather is like that.
it got tedious after they gave the hobbit a second flashback… I thought one per seemed fair…
You don’t like it?
Between flash backs, flash forwards, and flash sideways probably 1/3rd of the whole show is flashes.
flashing is tedious… and all the actors look like tv people… but I’ll soldier on
Anthropogenic Global Warming is neither anthropogenic nor global nor warming.
. Yes. CO2 is increasing. Over decades.
Over geologic eras, not so much.
At any rate – That’s not John Locke.
Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.
flashing is tedious
It’s called character development. I found the flashbacks fascinating. Especially the first one about Sawyer.
How much does it cost you to run your lightbulb with a pedal bicycle?
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle once made themselves highly unpopular at an “alternative energy faire” by suggesting that an exhibit featuring one of those would be much more authentic if they rounded up a black man, dressed him in rags, put him on the bike, and had an overseer standing by him with a whip.
Stupid fucking hippies want to bring back slavery, is what it amounts to. If you don’t think slavery/serfdom/peonage would come back in the world they want to make, you’re living in a dream world. The guy pedaling the bike might not be black. Might not even be a man — recall that factory treadmills powered by children were popular in the good old days. But it’d be somebody.
Venus’s hellish atmosphere is hellish not only because of the near-100% CO2, which we’re never going to have, but also because it’s about 100 times more dense than ours.
The only way we could even come close to being a cooler Venus is if someone figured out how to extract all of the CO2 from carbonate rocks. Maybe not even then.
The notion that we are on our way to becoming a Venus-like hell is a fundamentally retarded one.
Oh, and regarding Keid A’s nifty chart: when we get to the point where solar is cheaper than coal, the process of making solar cells will be so fundamentally Gaia-poisoning that it’ll be verboten.
Count on it.
There seems to be a fascination with atmospheric CO2 as a temperature driver; here are some papers (in no particular order) that may be of interest:
Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming
Role of deep sea temperature in the carbon cycle during the last glacial
The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and global ice volume over the past 420 ka
Slarti,
The notion that we are on our way to becoming a Venus-like hell is a fundamentally retarded one.
It would be if anyone ever suggested such a thing. Current models predict a few degree K rise by 2100.
But after Venus, people worried about greenhouse, is all I’m saying. It prepared the ground for AGW theory.
the process of making solar cells will be so fundamentally Gaia-poisoning that it’ll be verboten.
Two comments:
1. We could be talking tiny quantities here. Some of the most important cost-reducing techs exploit either nanotech photovoltaic inks or thin films or both.
2. Also I expect USA will not lead in manufacturing. US econuts are irrelevant to rest of world.
Interesting papers Silver Whistle.
I also think it’s possible the Earth will cool, Entropy.
My scenario: Once solar makes possible ultracheap energy, we will start to massively desalinate seawater, make the deserts bloom for agriculture, and suck so much CO2 out of the atmosphere – with all the new biomass – that massive global cooling will result. We could be forced to start burning coal again. LOL.
Dicentra I think we can learn a lot by testing atmospheric climate models on past Earth conditions and also other planets. The final proof would be to observe it happening on Earth in a large unmistakable signal. Do we want this? My point remains. The concern is misplaced. It will never happen. Economic reality and nanotechnological energy revolution will intervene first. Decades not centuries. World solar capacity grows average ~40% per year, doubling every two years. Project this 30 years.
Also please note people. Huge increase in Natural Gas reserves in last few years due to horizontal shale fracturing and coalseam gas. Natural gas prices have plunged. We could replace coal with Nat.Gas and slash CO2 in ten-twenty years. Natural gas also useful for baseload/standby until storage technology perfected. Nanotech will help here too.
Interesting, yes. What do they indicate to you?
Venus is also 24 million miles closer to the sun.
Solar cells, even if they achieve grid parity in power generation costs, will still never reach grid parity in generation reliability.
Because of all the people on Venus?
Nothing on their own SW. Climate science community has to assess all the facts. I am not a climate scientist. Out of my depth. In general I am aware that climate models are constantly evolving as we find new tests for them.
LBascom, on the timescale of that chart all sorts of factors impinge on climate. Plate tectonics and geophysics. Solar output. Earth-moon orbital dynamics. Biological evolution. It’s very complicated.
RTO Trainer.
Short term natural gas is best bet for backup to renewables I think.
NG is much larger reserve than previously thought and considerably cleaner than coal.
I’m OK with nuclear too, but don’t believe it will be major new influence outside Asia.
Long term technology will solve storage problems I believe, once the advantage of cheap generation-capability of solar, drives market.
The greenhouse mechanism on Venus is believed to have been triggered by loss of primordial sea due to photodissociation of H2O & loss of hydrogen. Geochemical factors led to runaway greenhouse. IIRC.
@ 93:
Van der Leun linked a while back to this shelter in Detroit that uses the homeless on stationary bikes to generate their power.
RTO Trainer,
I just recalled, this could be an option for storable energy. The general approach of photochemical power is very interesting.
“LBascom, on the timescale of that chart all sorts of factors impinge on climate. Plate tectonics and geophysics. Solar output. Earth-moon orbital dynamics. Biological evolution. It’s very complicated.”
Complicated? Heh. Indeed.
What it does show however, is that the current CO2 level is not high by historical standards, and higher levels are not a negative and not a direct indicator of temperature trends.
But by all means, believe in Tinkerbell if it makes you feel useful.
Nothing on their own SW. Climate science community has to assess all the facts. I am not a climate scientist. Out of my depth. In general I am aware that climate models are constantly evolving as we find new tests for them.
I’m sure that a layman would be able to pick out a salient point from each paper, Keid A, but your mea culpa is refreshing. Fair dinkum, mate. I don’t suppose you’d care to have a go?
What it does show however, is that the current CO2 level is not high by historical standards, and higher levels are not a negative and not a direct indicator of temperature trends.
The chart is far too low resolution.LBascom. The correlations between CO2 and temperature span decades or centuries not millions of years. On longer timescales other factors dominate.
I can’t be bothered to indulge you SW. Ask a real Climate scientist.
I would need to do a literature search and a real background study to assess it.
Honestly why don’t you go to a climate science blog and ask them?
There are real experts who could address your concerns.
Have you tried? What did they say?
I can’t be bothered to indulge you SW. Ask a real Climate scientist.
I would need to do a literature search and a real background study to assess it.
Honestly why don’t you go to a climate science blog and ask them?
There are real experts who could address your concerns.
Have you tried? What did they say?
That’s quite amusing, Keid A. In response to Lee, you just stated
The chart is far too low resolution.LBascom. The correlations between CO2 and temperature span decades or centuries not millions of years. On longer timescales other factors dominate.
On that question alone, I point you to the Mudelsee paper. You would only have to travel to the fifth sentence of the abstract for some clues on that one. Still not game for a go? Or is passive/aggressive the debating style you prefer?
I point you to the Mudelsee paper.
It’s still only a thousand years lag,
LBascome’a chart spans 600 million years. Even the Sun’s output changes on that timescale. The day was much shorter. The moon was closer. The tides were higher. The continents were in different positions, the atmosphere had a different compostion. Not just CO2. Life emerged onto land on that timescale.
It’s still only a thousand years lag,
Proving that you missed the point completely. The Mudelsee paper makes it quite clear that, for the last 420,000 years, there has been a consistent lag of ca. 1,000 years between temperature variation, and subsequent CO2 levels. Does this still not suggest anything to you?
What it suggests is that on a thousand year timescale CO2 is driven by climate?
So? Dynamic interactions can be different on different timescales because there are multiple mechanisms. You’re talking about some sort of longer-term feedback effect.
Why do I have to speculate what it is, when you could ask a real climate scientist? Go to a CS blog and ask them.
What it suggests is that on a thousand year timescale CO2 is driven by climate?
No. What it suggests is that for the last half a million years at the very least, atmospheric CO2 has lagged behind increases in temperature. Including the last 1000. Including the whole of the last interglacial, and those interglacials that preceded the current one. That it has happened repeatedly over geological time, indicating present CO2 levels might be related to warming events ca 1,000 years BP.
I am seriously dubious that this is likely, given the scale of the exponentially accelerating CO2 level. You would have to test it against a multivariate model and see if the rise is constistent with the known temperature changes of a thousand years earlier.
Do you know that if you subtract the exponential trend from the Mauna Loa data, you can see the shorter term variations? Well one of the interesting details that comes out is that you can see the glitch caused by the fall of the USSR. The drop in CO2 output was so vast as the Soviet economy imploded that you can see it in the Mauna Loa data.
Once again what do the real Climate Scientists say when you confront them with this?
I can’t be bothered to indulge you SW. Ask a real Climate scientist.
Keid, “a real Climate scientist” does not do real Science. I suspect that in practice you are of the same nature, a “Post Normal Scientist”. That is, a propagandist.
And another thing, it’s just incredible to me that the scale of human CO2 output could be absorbed entirely into the vegetation or oceans or whatever, without any increase in atmospheric concentration.
What would drive the absorption to the new equilibrium, if not the increase in atmospheric concentration?
What you are suggesting violates all the laws of physical chemistry.
And another thing, it’s just incredible to me
Who cares what is “incredible” to you?
Then you tell me JPeden.
What causes the oceans or the plants to absorb the extra human CO2 if not the rise in the atmospheric concentration?
How do you persaude the plant to absorb the extra CO2?
How does it know to do that if the atmospheric concentration doesn’t go up?
Steady on J. Peden, I’m sure there are some out there who don’t share Keid A’s tsutcheppenish with CO2. If Keid A had bothered to skim those papers I linked, he would have seen that, as per Martin & Archer, post-glacial rises in temperature control the solubility of CO2 in seawater, which, inter alia, controls a large amount of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. As Zeebe et al. point out, this elevation in atmospheric CO2 has been shown to be incapable of causing previous temperature elevations – indeed, these forcings seem to be much more problematic to model than current "consensus" would have it. This is hardly settled science.
CO2 levels haven’t been this low since about 250 million years ago.
Your questions make no sense to me. Greenhouses routinely use 1000ppm CO2 levels in order to promote growth. Oceans are a gigantic CO2 sink vs temp. and also store CO2 as limestone. Your own body has a CO2 conc. of about 56,000ppm.
Climate Scientists are not doing real Science.
Look I am not doubting that there are feedback effects on a thousand year timescale. This is not a problem.
And by the way no one has ever suggested that CO2 rise explains 450 thousand years of climate history. There is the Milankovic orbital effect IIRC. I am sure there are many other effects, ocean currents, sunspot minima whatever.
But none of the excludes the reality of the current rise and the likelihood that it is anthropogenic or largely anthropogenic.
this thread has too many flashbacks
I’m outie
Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it put on Speedos.
Can’t resist:
But none of the excludes the reality of the current rise and the likelihood that it is anthropogenic or largely anthropogenic.
Who cares? At CO2 levels of around 200ppm, plant growth becomes problematic.
CO2 is rising, temp. is not, x ~15yr..
Keid, why am I neither bothered nor surprised by this disjunction, while Climate Scientist Kevin Trenberth is so bothered he figures there must be more hidden heat somewhere or that the current instruments must be inadequate = a “travesty” for CO2AGW?
Because his CO2AGW postulate is wrong, that’s why.
CO2 is not a pollutant.
J.Peden.
Well we’re not exactly 200ppm. I don’t think we were at 200ppm before the current rise.
I don’t know why the temperature stopped rising. I have read a number of theories. But I don’t believe that it can last. If you keep pumping out CO2, at some point it is going to start rising again, maybe suddenly. Something might be buffering it.
To say CO2 is not a pollutant is semantic quibbling. We have a vested interest in the current distribution of conditions. Change is disruptive.
If you’re a Canadian you might say bring it on. If you live in Australia where we have had unprecedented droughts and large part of the continent is normally above 40C then you might more nervous about warming.
I also say who cares? Because I believe that the rise in CO2 will end shortly, because the falling price of Solar will inevitably drive everything else off the market sooner or later. What happens when solar is one tenth of the price of coal? I think it could get that low with thin film, printed nanotech cells.
Even natural gas is going to cut CO2 as we shift from coal.
It sure is nice to see zono’s firstborn check in.
“What causes the oceans or the plants to absorb the extra human CO2 if not the rise in the atmospheric concentration?
How do you persaude the plant to absorb the extra CO2?
How does it know to do that if the atmospheric concentration doesn’t go up?”
Well, the first two questions are opposite of the third if I’m reading you correctly, but here’s the thing with the first two.
Plants grow more in direct proportion to favorable conditions for the plant to grow.
Sheesh! I gotta point out that a larger plant can absorb more CO2?
This is not close to deep thought…
And?
Keid, you have no idea what you are talking about. Zero.
I’ll give you one last chance: because the ipcc’s Climate Science is not real Science, GW has not been proven to be a net disease. Fossil fuel CO2 has not been shown to be an etiologic agent producing GW. The alleged cure to the ipcc Climate Scientists’ alleged CO2AGW “disease”, draconian or lesser cuts in fossil fuel use, will in fact produce a disease entity easily worse than the alleged GW disease. Just take a look at the underdeveloped Countries, Keid.
Then repeat after me, Keid, “The Alleged Cure is Worse Than the Alleged Disease…..”
China and India have made their decision to embark upon a massive fossil fuel electrification program based upon the above logic.
As a matter of fact, the ipcc has excluded underdeveloped countries such as China and India, totalling 5 billion of the Earth’s ~6.7 people, from having to follow its own “cure” to its allegedly disasterous disease.
Even the ipcc does not believe its own “science”.
Get those speedos on, Keid.
And?Then…
Anyone else hungry?
Anyway, I’ll be offline for a few days.
It’s been an interesting experience.
I think I understand it now.
Including Nishi’s problem.
Good thing is, the events of the next few decades will prove who was right.
They certainly were.
Good, Obamadinner’s here.
Yum, rats and children.
You’ve got ventriloquists
Well, if you insist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baked_beans
sCOTLAND oUT oF oCCUPIED aMERICA !!!
Sure. But that doesn’t stop the inflamed “runaway” rhetoric, does it?
“Current models predict a few degree K rise by 2100.”
Uh-huh. And three days ago they said it was going to rain today.
It didn’t.
How familiar are you with that big fucking ball of fire in the sky? Solar activity. Sunspots. You could Google it.
Help me!
I’ve fallen in with Photorealists and I can’t get up!
Good thing is, the events of the next few
decadesmillenia will prove who was right.ftfy
I think I understand it now.
Including Nishi’s problem.
Ewwww.
Interesting.
Other than SW’s cite of Kid A, and the utterance itself, the letter string “[zono]” appears in only one other place.
Kid A’s use of the string “astonishing.”
Up until now.