66 Comments

1. Insufficiently Sensitive:

Al Gore deflected ‘chickenhawk’ criticism of his Vietnam days by spending about five months in Vietnam, writing stories. He’d paid his military dues, supposedly. A non-infantry job no doubt arranged for him by Democratic higher-ups. Most of us in the military had to serve full terms of gruntitude, lacking such godfathers.

Now cometh one Al Gore, having spend a few days with a few scientists (let’s stipulate that, though it may be questionable). And thereby having paid his scientific dues, he’s an authority on one of the most complex areas of scientific study? Remember, that boy took very little science at St Alban’s, little at Harvard, little at Vanderbilt, and his mediocre to dismal grades therein clearly showed that his interests were elsewhere.

But I think his Divinity School career (aborted though it was) is key to his involvement in the Great GW Jousting Match. His ‘Earth In The Balance’ likely was inspired by an apocalyptic book he encountered in a class there on theology and natural science. Now that there’s a new theology of Global Warming (including heretics to persecute, as the Royal Society does in attempting to curtail research grants to real scientists who don’t recite Gore’s catechism), he can ‘make a difference’ from on high without all the struggle and effort of acquiring enough science to be economically viable at it himself.

All he needs do is join the hip kids (as he did as a Harvard sophomore) and hang out and issue pronunciamentos and slick flicks in line with the herd mentality of GW. Oh, and run an immense house and fly his jet through the atmosphere without a care in the world – except maybe to urge by his propaganda that more Democrats be elected.

Mar 25, 2007 - 1:31 pm 2. Andy Freeman:

It’s actually irrelevant whether there is warming (or cooling, or no change), let alone whether it is man-made.

The only relevant question is “what should we do?”

Mar 25, 2007 - 1:45 pm 3. Joshua Macy:

I’m puzzled by Andy’s comment…how can it be irrelevant what the facts of the matter are when it comes to the question of what we should do about them? Is there some hidden one-size-fits-all answer that I’m just not seeing?

Mar 25, 2007 - 1:54 pm 4. Barry Dauphin:

Big Al has been interested in this and convinced of it for many years, so he isn’t a Johnny-come-lately to the issue. That said, he’s still a preachy doofus. And when he says that the earth has a fever, his metaphor evaporates the second he can’t answer– What is the normal temperature of the earth?

He will then grope for some other metaphor, and he will have to be asked, So what is the best temperature for the earth? He won’t have an answer.

Mar 25, 2007 - 2:14 pm 5. Terrye:

A friend of mine saw him on the Weather Channel the other day talking about this and they guy said to me {in all seriousness} “Gore has lost his mind. What the hell happened to him?”

Mar 25, 2007 - 3:20 pm 6. Buddy Larsen:

Today, even Pope Benedict is speaking out of the need for some emergency European population growth–it finally becomes a spiritual concern.

Yet not very long ago, almost no time at all in generational time, The Club of Rome had President Carter–and the Democrats–teetering on the edge of full policy-initializing crisis mode, to plan for a future that turned out to be the very opposite of the facts we see today.

Was Jimmy & the Clubbers’ moral reaction just an irrelevant time-logging harmless “let me help you with the scare I’ve mongered” politics?

Or did its “population bomb, coming famine” politically-colored junk science actually contribute to the situation on which the Pope (and many others, notably Mark Steyn) now sounds the alarm?

Mar 25, 2007 - 3:29 pm 7. Jim Rockford:

Roger — you should not be concerned with Global Warming. Since regardless of how much Man is involved politically there is nothing to be done about it.

Consider: if GW has a large man-made component, reducing it will require large amounts of CO2 reductions in the atmosphere. Now imagine telling China and India they must remain poor. Now imagine telling Americans to give up their cars and houses. Now imagine telling Europeans to give up their cars and houses.

While the GW priesthood ala Gore keeps their mansions and jets and limos and everything else.

It’s a non-starter. China won’t give up their coal. They don’t care. They’d rather be richer than poorer. So too, India. Americans are not going to live in mud in the woods either. Nor is anyone going to give up all authority to a new GW priesthood, which is the heart of the matter.

GW is all about the Al Goreacle priesthood, promising us new age salvation if we only abjure our worldly goods (and do what the priests tell us).

As a practical matter, Kyoto merely shifts polluting activities from nations with strong regulatory regimes (USA, Canada, Europe) to weak ones (China, India, third world). Net result: increased pollution.

REAL progress on pollution will require slow, steady reform and lots of dull, boring, and difficult work the way it is whenever anything significant is accomplished. No Goreacles need apply.

Mar 25, 2007 - 4:26 pm 8. Larry J:

The Earth’s climate has been changing throughout geologic time. Ice ages come (global cooling) and go (global warming) as a matter of course. Most of these happened before there were human beings, much less SUVs. Is the climate changing today? Almost certainly. Are human beings responsible for any of that change? Debateable, IMO.

So what do we do? We adapt, just as humans have adapted to every other instance of dramatic (or even slow) change. If modern humans can’t adapt to change as well as our caveman ancestors, we don’t deserve to survive. Change is seldom painless but it is inevitable.

Mar 25, 2007 - 4:47 pm 9. Barrett:

Jim,

From a practical perspective, I am essentially with you on GW. Regarding Kyoto, it just shifts the costs of third world pollution onto us. (Great deal – eh? I wonder what bonehead came up with that defining idea.)

However, I would like to understand the science better. The more I learn, the more I find that the scientific debate is far from over. It’s nothing like the game, set and match dogmatism from Mr. AlGoreacle.

No one can quantify the impact of human activity on GW. No one can build a model sophisticated enough to take in all the variables to get the five-day forecast right much the less the 50 to 100 year forecast right.

Natural variability probably has more to do with climate change than anything else IMO.

Mar 25, 2007 - 4:58 pm 10. Buddy Larsen:

That acting job in the congress the other day was for the purpose of sending the “fevered Baby” alarm-image out into soundbite land and into our limbic brains.

Aww, a little baby, so helpless, so in need of protection. And FEVER! So scary for a baby to have.

What, are you heartless? A CHILD abuser?

DO something–ANYthing–even if it’s wrong–but HURRY hurry hurrrrry!

Mar 25, 2007 - 5:19 pm 11. Captain Hate:

Weird Al’s whole life has been conflicted starting with his beloved father being one of the biggest bigots in the Senate. I’m not sure if that led him to start coming up with whoppers about his entire life that were extreme even by Clinton standards, like his mother singing him labor lullabys that were written long after he was a child. Like Kerry, another arrogant child of privilege, he has an extremely high opinion of his cognitive ability despite no tangible evidence of it. His performances during the 2000 debates were indications that he was wound a bit too tight and nothing that’s happened subsequently provides evidence to the contrary. Using family tragedies in speeches at political conventions is too creepy for me. Every time I see him on camera I just want to look away.

Mar 25, 2007 - 6:00 pm 12. Richard Nieporent:

When I heard Al Gore’s comment comparing the earth to a child with a fever I literally cringed. I could not believe that even Al Gore would be arrogant enough to treat Congress and the American public as if they were a bunch of kindergarten children. South Park did a perfect parody of Al Gore with their ManBearPig episode. The amazing thing was that it was done before he testified before Congress. However I guess it is not too difficult to make fun of Al Gore.

Mar 25, 2007 - 6:21 pm 13. MikeD:

Roger,

I think your commenters here have summarized the present argument (and situation) well. As a doctored geoscientist I claim no particular prescience, only an appreciation for the much longer geologic time frame, perhaps a greater appreciation for the variables involved, and a cognition of the number of times throughout history that “science” has gotten it rather wrong. I’m quite certain that the globe has recently “warmed”; it doesn’t surprise me. I would even argue that there is probably some anthropogenic contribution. That said, science (and particularly fear-mongering politicians) have no idea of the magnitude or the consequences of such activity. We simply do not know, and more recent scientific insights regarding CO2 being a consequence of temperature increase rather than causative beggers the issue even more.

But Larry J is absolutely correct. There is no global political solution to the problem–it transcends our ability to impact it. Only an egomaniacal fool would posit such a stance. The Goreacle, whether considered the high priest or the emperor of GW, increasingly appears to be wearing increasingly transparent robes–and very likely none at all. Whatever the future climatic/environmental condition, human kind will have to adapt, just like the species has since Lucy scampered around the plains of East Africa. I wouldn’t worry about GW if I were you, I would worry about large numbers of imbeciles following Al Gore and Laurie David and telling you how you should live your life.

Mar 25, 2007 - 6:30 pm 14. Cap'n Billy:

So you want an environmentally friendly vehicle, eh? And a cheaper one to operate? Well, here is what one university publication (from Connecticut, no less!) says about the Hummer vs. the Prius.

Mar 25, 2007 - 7:50 pm 15. TM Lutas:

Andy Freeman is, in a sense, right when he says the details of the situation are less important than correcting it. I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to determine an optimum temperature range and to figure out how much our economy shrinks the farther from the range we get. At a certain point, the cost of adjusting temps (up or down) is below the cost to the world economy and we might as well save the planet and get richer while we’re doing it.

Notice that this attitude does not resolve the who/what caused it debate. The effect could be entirely solar and we’d still intervene in world climate when it is profitable. This is a perfect wedge issue on the right because the religious greens need economic cover but their economics can’t become too good otherwise you end up advocating geoengineering and not much caring about whether somebody fires up a bbq grill or otherwise emits CO2. Those who are worried about the future would welcome a planetary thermostat and polluting activities could simply be taxed to launch an extra sunshade to counteract their warming effect.

Mar 25, 2007 - 8:12 pm 16. bigger:

I have to agree with Joshua regarding Andy’s comment — everything depends on what exactly is happening, although whether or not anything can be ‘done’ about global cooling, global warming, etc., is debatable.
The problems which arise from ‘doing’ Kyoto involve wasting enormous sums that could be spent better on Malaria control, providing clean water to the third world, or just buying an SUV rather than a polluting Prius. We know from past temperature regimes the effects of global warming and global cooling. If the Russian solar physicists are correct and we are about to enter (starting around 2010) a new Maunder Minimum and thus a new Little Ice Age, we need far more energy very quickly, and should be prepared for global famines as happened in 1315 with the onset of the Little Ice Age. If world temperatures do indeed rise 2 degrees C., then we can worry about two harvests a year in Scandanavia and the threat of a new infestation of Danes (as happened in the Viking Age.)Personally, I’m willing to live with more Danes.

Mar 25, 2007 - 8:16 pm 17. BD:

Andy:

If you’re including “Nothing” in your universe of “What should we do?”, then you’re asking the right question.

Issue #1: “Is the globe warming?”

There are quite a few folks who think it is. We can entertain the idea for now …

Issue #2: “How much?”

The predictions here are really, really wild – they’re all over the lot.

Issue #3: “Will it do harm?”

Only recently has there been any discussion of the historical record. It seems there have been periods in human history where temperatures were higher than the current gloom & doom types are predicting … and yet we’re still here.

Given the wildly divergent predictions, it’s not clear cut.

Issue #4: “Is there a ‘man-made’ component?”

Once again, only recently have we begun hearing voices complaining about the focus on Carbon Dioxide … Algore, et al. are blaming CO2 for warming, yet (apparently) there’s historical evidence that CO2 levels rise AFTER it gets warmer, not before.

If that is, indeed, the case, then CO2 cannot be “causing” warming, any more than the death of any individual “causes” his or her own birth.

Issue #5: “If there is a ‘man-made’ component, can we do anything about it?”

Before we get to “what?”, we need some reason to believe changes by mankind can affect any ‘man-made’ component. IF IT CAN’T, then we ought to spend our time & treasure working on adapting to a warmer environment – anything else would be a waste.

Issue #6: “If we can do something about it – is it worth it?”

This is the ‘cost-benefit’ analysis …

IF there is man-made warming and IF we can take it out and IF we’re all going to die (for example) unless we do, then (seems to me) the effort is worthwhile.

IF there’s man-made warming but the impact will be ‘mildly negative’ at best, then our focus should be on ameliorating those effects, not on wiping it out.

And IF there’s man made warming and there’s not a thing we can do about it (or the man-made portion is negligible or natural warming will overwhelm any reduction we might be able to effect), then we ought to focus on adapting, not “eliminating” warming.
re a man-made component?”

Mar 25, 2007 - 8:31 pm 18. leishman:

So, to all of you on either side of the issue, I have a basic question: What, exactly, is the IDEAL temperature of the earth? Or, if you wish to hedge your answer, then What, exactly, is the ideal temperature RANGE of the earth?

Before answering, please consider that fifty thousand years ago, during the last ice age, most of what is now the upper half of the U.S. was covered in hundreds of feet of ice. Is this the IDEAL temperature? Or, to pick a more recent time, it was cold enough in England during the “little ice age” that the Thames froze in London enough to allow a winter ice festival. On the warmer side, Europe had some of its greatest cultural development–and prosperity–during the time of Rome (0 B.C.E.) and the Medieval Warm Period (population growth, Gothic cathedrals); both of these periods were warmer than the present day.

Much like family members arguing over the thermostat setting in the living room, much of the debate on global warming centers on what setting is best, and for whom.

The “science” brought to this issue is in its infancy, and not of much help to us in 2007. The politicization of science cuts both ways. For every “denier” scientist beholden to “big oil”, there is a “supporter” scientist who is posturing to keep the next grant coming.

And as to the “consensus” and “beyond debate” sentiments, the history of science is replete with “consensus” which was dead wrong–just ask Copernicus or Galileo.

Mar 25, 2007 - 8:42 pm 19. Buddy Larsen:

Let’s just put a huge surtax on all energy, then subsidize it via rebate and tax credit on say MWF for the even-numbered addresses, and TTS for the odd. Sunday everybody stays in bed. Better yet, raise all taxes to 100%, and give everyone a gov’t job doing whatever they’re already doing. And give Al Gore a deed to the planet and the title “Jupiter” or “Ramses” or something, if and only if he’ll STFU for awhile.

Mar 25, 2007 - 8:43 pm 20. Pierre Legrand:

How about we send all jackasses who want to seriously modify our economy to fix a natural event to bed with no tv. Getting sort of tired of the constant drumbeat of chicken littles…always looking for the next crisis to give meaning to their pitiful lives. They are like a bunch of 14 year old girls whose lives are always filled with crisis.

Whats even more hilarious is we actually have something serious to worry about (anybody see a terrorist around) and they ignore those guys or worse imagine that when Bush isn’t busy heating up the climate he is remote piloting planes into the WTC.

Enough already with the Global Warming…sheesh as if we pitiful humans have a say in the climate. What? Are you going to put carbon black on the ice to heat up the earth…ooops sorry wrong crisis…that was the ICE AGE Crisis….now we have a proposal to add dust to the air.

One think that will kill us are those jackass scientists trying to “cure” Mother Nature.

Mar 25, 2007 - 8:59 pm 21. Buddy Larsen:

What the world needs is tar & feathers for Al Gore.

Mar 25, 2007 - 9:17 pm 22. Andy Freeman:

> “Is there a ‘man-made’ component?”

Irrelevant.

Suppose that we found out that the sun was going to fry us. That would be natural, but we should still do something EFFECTIVE about it.

Suppose, on the other hand, that we find that man is driving temperature up by 2 degrees and the result is that greenland will be green again and grapes will grow in england and little else, but that we’d have to go back to the stone age to stop it. In this case, “do nothing” is correct.

In other words, knowing what’s happening and why is important only as part of helping us understand what we can do. Neither the status quo nor “nature” is privileged.

Mar 25, 2007 - 9:53 pm 23. Buddy Larsen:

…and that’s nothing personal against Al Gore. It’s just business. As sober & responsible town leaders used to know, back in the non-wired horse & buggy days, any alarmist huckster who wanted to ride into town and scare the folk into buying his toxic snake-oil, should have to figure tar & feathers into his risk/reward calculation.

Mar 25, 2007 - 9:59 pm 24. Buddy Larsen:

“truth or consequences” is the proposition that built civilization.

Mar 25, 2007 - 10:02 pm 25. AST:

When GW first came on the scene, it reminded me of an article I had read in Discover magazine about the nature of computer models, pointing out that a model is basically someone’s theory until it can be verified by reality. What struck me at the time was that the GW projections were based on complicated computer modeling of the earth’s climate, including the atmosphere, the oceans and the continents. To model a dynamic system with so many variables, especially when so many of them are not all that well understood, seemed the height of hubris, especially in light of the claim by chaos theorists that a butterfly flapping its wings could eventually result in a hurricane somewhere else (admittedly silly, but repeated ad nauseum in the popular media).

The point is that there are so many influences that can tip a system that is constantly shifting in response to millions of inputs, how can anybody accurately predict what it will be like in 50 or 100 years? Add to that the obvious attraction of GW to environmental alarmists, not to mention fundraisers and the fact that the theory can claim to be proven if the earth actually does get warmer or if we enter a new ice age, and the BS alarms never cease.

Al Gore’s acceptance as the chief advocate for the theory is just the latest of the triggers to those alarms.

Mar 26, 2007 - 1:41 am 26. HA:

Of course global warming is anthropogenic. Al Gore invented it!

Think of it is “algorepogenic” global warming.

Mar 26, 2007 - 3:10 am 27. Peg C.:

Larry C. pretty much expressed my view – humans adapt or else. I’m not at all worried. I’m far more worried that Al Gore and his hysterical ilk will cause all invention/progress/scientific advancement to cease than I am that “Global Warming” will cause life on earth as we know it to end. What bunk. These Hollywood sanctimonious jet-setters are making me go THE OTHER way. I am now starting to hoard incandescent lightbulbs and stop worrying about any fuel I burn or meat I eat. There is no way I am going to sacrifice one iota for their arrogant lecturing. No way.

The piece in the NYT about the couple living without toilet paper and supposedly making zero impact on the environment told me all I need to know about the motives of the envirocommunists. They will not be happy until they have robbed Western Civilization of every priviledge and earned luxury that we enjoy. I am serious: scr@w these people. This issue has ceased to exist for me.

Mar 26, 2007 - 4:13 am 28. Henry Bowman:

The planet is warming, slightly. A portion of it may be anthropogenic. However, it is very unlikely that the anthropogenic portion has anything to do with carbon dioxide. That is Mr. Gore’s BIG LIE. The anthropogenic portion, if it exists, is more likely related to land use changes, which are substantial.

What can be done about it? (1) Adapt to the changes. (2) Wait a few decades, when things will likely cool off again.

Mar 26, 2007 - 4:44 am 29. AlanC:

AST and all…

The problem with computer models of a dynamic system have to do with timing (along with everything else). This is where Chaos theory can come into play.

Imagine a simple dynamic system of a child on a swing.

IF you give them a big push as they hit the bottom of the arc on the way down, you will stop them dead (and possibly break your wrist).

IF on the other hand you give them that very same big push just as they reach the top of the arc on the way back, you will dramatically increase the size of the arc / height to which they travel.

Same system, same event, two totally opposite results. Now, who believes that we understand the global climate system well enough to time that intervention?

Of course this assumes that man can actually have an effect. Change the system from a child on a swing to a train and see what effect you’ll have….other than bleeding a lot.

Mar 26, 2007 - 6:43 am 30. Esbiem:

So, the martyrdom of Al Gort, er Gore excuse me, continues unabated, keep it up. This moral crusade of his should go down in history as his final undoing, “should” being operative word here. Undoubtedly the left will canonize him for his folly and St. Alfonzo will live out his golden years in the air conditioned comfort of his carbon offsets. How many trees will he have to plant in order to offset his lifestyle, maybe he owns a significant amount of stock in Big Lumber, giving him cover for his hypocrisy. Visit http//elgintyrell.com/2007-03/070322.html for today’s photorial “suffering the slings and arrows of the prophet: The Martyrdom of St. Alfonzo”

Mar 26, 2007 - 6:54 am 31. Insufficiently Sensitive:

“I have a basic question: What, exactly, is the IDEAL temperature of the earth?”

That question is irrelevant to anyone but a control freak. Sure, it uses the same assumptions that Al Gore and the UN ’scientists’ do (that some desperate human activity must be invested in an attempt to ‘regulate’ the fluctuations in the earth’s temperature), but those assumptions also include the primacy of an unelected elite who shall instruct the rest of us in what to give up. In short, the greed of said elites for control of our lives is unsurpassed.

MikeD above nailed it beautifully. The thought of enviro-priests politically mobilizing a large following of unquestioning converts to scourge us sinners is a hell of a lot more threatening to mankind than climatic variations observed over geologic time.

Bjorn Lomborg also nicely summarized the difference between chicken-little GW activities, and other measures more sure of success in benefiting large populations by simply cleaning up water supplies. The horrifying aspects of this debate are the mindless attacks on him by nominally ’scientific’ publications such as Scientific American – obviously now wholly controlled by a political clique with religious faith in One Answer to the GW question, and obsessed with religious fervor in scourging heretics who exercise the skepticism that once was the pride of science.

Mar 26, 2007 - 8:40 am 32. LarryD:

FYI (Hat tip to this American Thinker article) Astute Blogger posts about a paper on real, measured, CO2 levels during the period 1920-1960+

Mar 26, 2007 - 8:50 am 33. promoguy:

Don’t mean this as any disrespect to our good friends in Eastern Europe, but sometimes when I listen to his screams and those on the left about global warming, I really yearn for those good olds of “iron curtain” & Berlin Wall.

/just saying.

Mar 26, 2007 - 10:05 am 34. Buddy Larsen:

Yup–Comrade Gore would’ve fit perfectly with those brick-shaped fedora-wearers atop that high stone wall above Red Square on those May Day parades. Oh, the Power! Oh, the Glory!

Mar 26, 2007 - 10:41 am 35. Buddy Larsen:

Michael Barone chimes in.

Mar 26, 2007 - 11:37 am 36. fred:

I would note a recent book by Messrs. Avery & Singer with the “says it all title”: Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years.

Mar 26, 2007 - 12:03 pm 37. Rhod:

Close, Buddy. With his up-coming campaign of “persuasion” and attempts to exclude contrary evidence from the public debate, he’s more like Herr Gorebbels.

Mar 26, 2007 - 1:40 pm 38. dclydew:

I think that we might consider Gore and “Global Warming as Politics” as discernible symptoms of a greater problem. That is, the problem of involving politics in areas where politics shouldn’t be involved. Politics shouldn’t be debating global warming, because it is a scientific issue, not a political one. Politics shouldn’t be debating which drugs a doctor should or shouldn’t offer their patients. Politics shouldn’t be debating the brain dead state of some poor citizen and what should be done about their ‘life’. Politics shouldn’t be debating “when life starts”. Politics shouldn’t be debating “Did dinosaurs exist, did Noah exist, does God exist”. All of those are scientific, metaphysical or subjective issues… not political ones.

When we look at the ‘issues’ that really divide our nation today… its not hard to see a pattern. The most divisive issues appear to be the least political issues. Sure there’s some division over the current War and how its being run, implemented etc. Sure we have some political issues about which rights should be expended in the fact of security concerns. However, among sane people these debates often have valuable points on both sides. The non-political debates rarely have valuable points on both sides and more often have to do with imposing the beliefs of some onto the rest of the nation.

Thus we find ourselves politically divided on “major issues” that have little to do with the business of government.

Mar 26, 2007 - 1:58 pm 39. David:

I pretty much agree with MikeD, but as an astrophysicist, I think the human does not rise above the noise of other factors (the sun primarily, but I recently read an interesting article on cosmic rays and warming.

Mar 26, 2007 - 3:41 pm 40. Tinker:

Gore, with his hysterics, may have helped to reveal the dark side of the pro-GW crowd – the holier-than-thou, “all farm animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, “I’ll be proud to lead you into the purity of the Stone Age” attitude that is forcing even most of the pro-GW crowd to cringe and to making many pro-GW scientists remind the world of the uncertainties of the science.

Gore has sucked into the debate a huge surge of public skepticism which can only, in the long run, keep the entire debate on the uncertainties of the science on front burner of the political process and public perceptions. Had he been more subtle, he would have been infinitely more dangerous. Instead, he and his ilk opted for a Global Warming “Tet offensive” before they were ready to fully impose their vision on us all. Only now, we Americans are the ones on the front lines and there’s no fall back position for us.

Thanks Al!

Mar 26, 2007 - 4:09 pm 41. jdwill:

dclydew,

I think you are on the edge of something crucial to making sense of todays political climate.

My two cents.

I think a lot of the fervor in AGW circles comes from a near-Luddite rejection of our modern globalizing world and frankly, I can feel some sympathy for this. I feel a pang for the time when the natural world was bigger, more mysterious, and man was more the underdog.

I think many of the issues that make no sense for politics are some portion of society rejecting life; life as they perceive it out of control and terrifying. I think there are issues from ‘right’ and ‘left’ that qualify as this rejectionism.

However, their proposed solution is to roll back mankinds use of energy faster than technical changeover can adapt, and that’s more than I can agree with. Someone mentioned Bjorn Lomberg upthread. I highly recommend him and some research into the Copenhagen Consensus. You have to decide if you support humanity, and support it growing. I think this is the dividing line.

Another group that don’t qualify for the above group, but are pushing AGW theory are the scientists that are heavily invested in it. This is not to say they are simply on a payroll, or swindlers, but my opinion is they have succumbed to something like target fixation. They started with a good prima facie hypothesis about CO2 and somewhere along the way, they began filtering out contradictory data with too heavy a hand. Ego is not accounted for enough in the analysis of this debate IMHO.

I have frequently read the AGW supporters sites and wish they would show a little more humility in the face of such a monumental problem as forecasting the climate on a hundred year scale.

Mar 26, 2007 - 4:18 pm 42. Buddy Larsen:

dclydew is dead right, even if his name is unspellable. Proper political questions are answerable by who gets/gives how much of what, when.

What we have today–dead-end issues insoluble except by something other than compromise–is I think the natural result of a couple generations of judicial activism. As in so many things, the do-gooders have well-illustrated for us the workings of irony in the public sphere.

Mar 26, 2007 - 4:49 pm 43. Luther McLeod:

Very informative comments. Smart and common sensible. My two cents. The only constant is change. In everything. No exclusions. Never has been. Changing light-bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent is a ridiculous gesture in the overall.

You can call me an absurdest thinker. But I do see the GW alarmist shriek as defining a view of the future. Forward or backward. Backward in this case.

In two billion or so years we are all crispy critters. We either get off this planet and out into the galaxy or we all die, and our words with us. The Universe will not care. And, perhaps, will not even exist without us. Anything that detracts from that effort is too me, Luddite.

Gorhoe, in my humble opinion, is looking for any cause that might make him relevant. In any sense. Though I do believe he would prefer obeisance to some Utopian past. A past which has never been. But, of course, a past in which he lived high on the hill and did not have to make personal sacrifice in keeping with his pontifications. Secure in his sanctimony.

Mar 26, 2007 - 6:51 pm 44. Barry Dauphin:

I think global warming accelerated with everybody starting drinking all those lattes–I mean steamed milk of all things!

Mar 26, 2007 - 7:33 pm 45. Buddy Larsen:

that would explain “Star”bucks. Obvious attempt to mislead us about GW, just to peddle their damn corporate greed coffee.

Mar 26, 2007 - 10:20 pm 46. AlanC:

dclydew is dead right, sort of.

The REASON that politics is involved with all this is that the LAW is involved in all this which means there’s MONEY involved in all this.

Why are there so many lobbyists? Cause the government hands out billions for everything. The more money in more areas the more political involvement. So dclydew, are you ready to call for getting government out of all scientific areas? ;^)

Make the government a whole lot smaller and politics gets out of science.

The one thing where politics HAS to be involved is the definition of when life begins and when it ends. The first unalienable right is the right to life. If you don’t know what that is, how do you define it?

Personally I think that question is the one that should (but won’t) end the abortion debate. Life begins when there are vital signs (heart beat, brain wave, etc.) which would in a comatose person keep one from removing life support.

Make the beginning criteria align with the ending criteria.

Mar 27, 2007 - 6:50 am 47. dclydew:

So dclydew, are you ready to call for getting government out of all scientific areas?

Yes. It is my political position that the federal government has value in the areas it was intended to be useful for, National Security/Defense, Interstate Commerce, and a guarantee of protection under the Constitution. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less.

The one thing where politics HAS to be involved is the definition of when life begins and when it ends.

I disagree. The only way that we can answer that question is with metaphysics. I think your position (life beings with brainwaves/heartbeat) seems a decent one and one that I don’t disagree with. However, some religiously inclined individuals state that life starts with the first divided cell, or ends only when the body dies. If we allow government to create labels, then we risk those labels being the Will of Some People.

The government can barely handle national defense, I don’t think we should trust it with Metaphysics as well

Mar 27, 2007 - 1:17 pm 48. jdwill:

We either get off this planet and out into the galaxy or we all die, and our words with us.

Luther,

Concur 100%. And 2 billion years remaining is not likely. A geologist tells us some scary bedtime stories:

http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2006/06/geophysics-for-common-man-pt-2-fun.html

and concludes:

The answer for survival is to get off this damn planet.

Earth is a fine *starter home* but the problems with it are beyond repairing.

Mar 27, 2007 - 3:16 pm 49. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

One major problem with the AGW folks is that they are suppressing dissent within the scientific community, even going as far as to relabel skeptics as “deniers” with the holocaust connotations.

I personally know reputable research scientists in the field who will not let their name be associated with skepticism, even though their research strongly supports the skeptic view.

There are several major problems with the science: the models cannot, even in theory, handle the problem because of mathematical chaos (except via indirect routes that are not reliable); even without chaos, they are so coarse gained that major processes such as convective storms (hurricanes, thunderstorms) are not even modeled – just accounted for by parameters; the knowledge of important systems, such as ocean circulation sensitivities, is in its infancy; the calibration – models’ ability to model the past – is poor because the data about past parameters is much worse than the AGW folks would lead you to believe – it is very sparse, often very indirect.

For example, a detailed dendrochronological study (tree rings) may tell you how well a few trees grew in a spot on earth over some period of time. Does this measure temperature? How many other effects can modify tree growth when you have a very small sample of trees?

While real science is being done, even those scientists who are pro-AGW are careful not to call their models “predictive” – but rather to say they measure “sensitivity.”

Go spend a few trillion bucks on that!

It is not an accident that many of those vocally opposing the AGW hysteria are *senior* scientists in the field. This is because only those emeritus or close to retirement dare risk their funding, and the attacks of their peers, by going public with their skepticism. There are plenty of climate scientists “in the closet.”

If a skeptic receives any funding from an oil company or other business, he is automatically considered corrupt. But we don’t hear that about the majority of scientists who receive funding through mechanisms that have been corrupted by the political hysteria associated with the subject.

A mention of global warming improves one’s grant getting ability, to the point that people in vaguely related fields skew their studies to global warming effects – to get the money. Hence a shrew specialist, or whomever, may be submitting grants studying the effects of increased temperature on shrew diversity – sucking up some GW bucks.

All of this corrupts, deeply corrupts, the scientific process. It is as if the anti-evolution forces controlled not just the teaching and publicizing of the issue, but the actual selection of research to be done and the selection of which results are to be published – power that group has never had.

The most important point, which is finally starting to emerge (all right, I’ve been periodically grumping it for a few years) is that there is very little we can do, if anything, to modify the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere – if that turns out even to be important. However, we can spend vast funds trying. The Kyoto Fraud..errr.. Treaty would have delayed “projected” global warming by 6 years in 100 years – in other words, it’s effect would not even have been measurable. And that’s if everyone played along, and China and India didn’t become large carbon users, etc, etc. It would have cost trillions which would have (via transitive effects) led to harm and death for the poorest on earth.

There are good national security reasons for the US to try to find alternatives to middle eastern oil. This is an effort worth investigating, although it may turn out to be cheaper to just use military power – who knows. There are no good reasons for dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions if they are costly (such as the corn ethanol fraud).

If you want to have the good green feeling, go without toilet paper. But stay home where we can’t smell the consequences of your righteous behavior.

Mar 27, 2007 - 6:02 pm 50. Luther McLeod:

jdwill

Thanks for seeing my far off into the future point. We are so short sighted I think. It is not about us, it is about homo sapiens and the long haul.

John Moore, good stuff. But we all know this has nothing to do with global warmering. Facts will not disturb the believers.

Mar 27, 2007 - 8:09 pm 51. Barrett:

dclydew,

“So dclydew, are you ready to call for getting government out of all scientific areas?

Yes. It is my political position that the federal government has value in the areas it was intended to be useful for, National Security/Defense, Interstate Commerce, and a guarantee of protection under the Constitution. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Let’s get back to a true libertarian view of government. Let the spending decisions be made locally. Get off the big government, socialist train and get back to personal responsibility.

Mar 27, 2007 - 9:32 pm 52. Buddy Larsen:

It’ll take a massive, long-term, whole-hearted effort. The Collective has been very very busy inside our minds & institutions. A row of Reagans, a six-pack, one after the other.

Mar 27, 2007 - 10:10 pm 53. Neo:

This all boils down to the George Carlin snint about saving the Earth.

“Save the Earth ? Screw you. Save us.
The Earth will be here when we’re all dead and forgotten.”

Mar 27, 2007 - 11:04 pm 54. AlanC:

dclydew,

I agree with the libertarian small government model too, but you miss the point about the abortion debate and it’s relation to the end of life debate and the importance of it to libertarian principles.

The first right is the right to life. To enforce that right you have to define what life is; when it starts; when it ends.

Don’t forget your Monty Python…..”I’m not dead yet!” Bam.

For society to work it needs an agreed upon definition of the beginning and end of life.
The more technology can do, the harder that gets.

Mar 28, 2007 - 4:30 am 55. dclydew:

For society to work it needs an agreed upon definition of the beginning and end of life.

Really? I thought we as a species have had many working societies over the past 10,000 years or so and I don’t recall any government defining “life”. Except perhaps the Jews through the Moasic Law. But that only underscores my point.

Defining when life starts and stops can be based on science or metaphysics. If its based on science, then its a theory, if its based on metaphysics, then its a religious/spiritual belief. Neither of these are appropriate bases for government laws.

I think we’d be much better off to quit arguing about ‘when’ life starts and stops and let each state determine for themselves if they will permit abortion and ‘pulling the plug’. Let each state define for themselves the situations where these options are ok and not ok. Let the citizens vote.

If people don’t like it they can move, there will surely be very liberal and very conservative states. After 20 years or so, we’ll probably see some models working and other models failing. Those that fail can be modified, those that work can be models for other states.

We don’t need to debate arbitrary definitions of ‘life’, we need to honestly face the real issues and quit sensationalizing them.

Mar 28, 2007 - 6:07 am 56. AlanC:

dclydew,

I think you’re missing a very important point about government, law, political philosophy, meta-physics, etc.

The great cry in the ’60s was

“You can’t legislate morality!!!!!!!!”

This is of course pure poppy-cock. What is a law against thievery but a legislation of morality? There have been cultures where thievery is perfectly ducky. What about a law against rape? Same thing (see Pashtuns today). Or how about murder? What is a law against murder but the societal imposition of morality?

Should some states allow murder? Would that be okay by you, as long as they voted for it of course?

You quickly will find that you devolve into a discussion about the source of rights. And, if you start with the premise that rights exist, that, my friend, is nothing but religion and meta-physics. Otherwise you’ve got the law of the jungle where might makes right, mob rule, etc..

But enough of wasting Roger’s bandwidth on this OT. I think we’ll either agree to disagree or move to mail.

Mar 28, 2007 - 7:31 am 57. dclydew:

Alanc,

I agree! If you’d like to continue you can shoot me mail at my name at theinvisiblecollege.com

Otherwise, have a great day and thanks for holding a sane debate as opposed to ranting

Mar 28, 2007 - 8:00 am 58. Saint Kansas:

If the Vice Prophet used the same techniques he used on Capitol Hill to try to sell you a used car, you’d walk away quickly with both hands on your checkbook and never look back. “What do I have to do to put you in this crisis today?”

P.S. Here’s a rewrite of Al’s movie’s theme song.

Mar 28, 2007 - 11:37 am 59. Kirt Griffin:

Manmade global warming has always been about CO2. They tell you to look at CO2 in days of old through Ice cores. See how stable it is.

Of course it’s stable. That is what you get when you use ice core samples. It is also low. This is all explained in a recent paper by Jaworowski.

Was there another alternative to ice cores? Yup there was. There are 90,000 air sample data points since 1812 illustrated in a soon to be released paper by Ernst Beck. CO2 readings in the mid 500’s were common in the 1800’s. !940’s had readings in the 400’s.

The whole story of AGW is just that, a fairytale.

Mar 28, 2007 - 3:14 pm 60. Buddy Larsen:

It’s as if Al has discovered climate change, and thinks that the rest of us are so stoopid that he can capitalize on it, that he can make something off the weather. Hell, I guess he IS doing it. getting away with it. Must chortle himself to sleep at night, up there in his castle.

Mar 28, 2007 - 5:14 pm 61. ajacksonian:

jdwill – My thanks! Those are the merely cyclic things that will happen in North America that I consider to be the top 5 problems that we haven’t even started to address… and one #1 has global fallout both figuratively and literally.

I did look at global warming previously, and as a geologist, find much higher correlation with plate tectonics and continental configuration than with carbon dioxide for global temperature. About 70 million years ago the continents started to move faster, due to unknown factors in the core of the planet and heat transmission. That had the effect of speeding up crustal movement, which allows the less dense continents to ride higher than the oceanic crustal material. That rise in the continents drained the large, shallow seas over much of them into their deeper basins, thus changing the stored energy system of Rock 3 from the star Sol.

This single change also started to move Antractica into a polar position, which is very rare in Earth’s history and gave it a heat sink which drastically altered the heat retention system of the planet: It got a permenent cold place to let heat escape into space. Global temperatures started to fall due to these things.

Other effects are also seen, like increased volcanic activity due to subduction of oceanic plates. Apparently more ‘hot spots’ started to appear and give the planet more volcanos that way, including some of the megacaldera makers that started to show up around that era.

At Continental plate boundaries that were colliding, seas got squeezed out and when the continental crusts hit, they got squeezed together. The Himalayas are *still* growing upwards due to the Indian sub-continent pushing into Eurasia. The Rocky Mountains were also effected by this, as seen by the embedded river systems of the Green and Colorado rivers.

A final kicker was a nice sized boloid about 10km across hitting the planet. It was not a good time to be an organism over 15 kg in size as you would not make it through that event, at 65 million years ago. Since then, having lost those lovely, warm heat retaining, shallow seas, having the thermostat pushed down by the boloid and having a nice, new heat sink, Rock 3 has experienced glacial periods with intermittent warming times, that have high variability within a cool temperature range. That is typical of interglacial periods: rapid swings in temperature, globally, but within a confined range that is generally warmer than the glaciation period, but much, much colder than the previous Cretaceous period.

Can we get back to those balmy days of 70 million years ago with only changing carbon dioxide? And methane? And water vapor? Probably not… those all reached maximums in the Carboniferous when carbond dioxide was around 7,000 ppm and calcium carbonate rock deposited via chemistry and animal activity, like with foraminfera. You see a *lot* of coal beds and calcium carbonate beds from this timeframe, both indicative of taking carbon *out* of the atmosphere. Our current 300 ppm +/- 15% is a long way from those hazy, lazy days of high methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor… all of which saw a relatively stable global temperature 14 degrees higher than it is now. Actually, once the continents aren’t moving fast and we have vast, shallow seas and low volcanic activity, that seems to be the regular temperature of the planet.

That higher energy from the core is released through these mechanisms, but it doesn’t much impact climate which is guided by these factors which are a way of releasing heat. Such pretty volcanos, though! But not worth it for the hot gasses that cool extremely quickly, hot extruded material which cools quickly and the hot particulates that cool very quickly.

Want to raise the temps? Stop the plates from moving after re-uniting Gondwanaland and getting Antarctica out of the deep freeze. And then flooding most of the continental lowlands as they slowly settle down and behave themselves. Like NOLA, but with 1 km more water added. Then you get nice, shallow seas retaining energy from the sun and higher global temps. Of course the Rockies turn into ‘coastal areas’ but well worth it for stable temps and removing glacial periods.

Bad planet!

As for us that live on the crust, the long term forecast is: sudden temperature swings, with a relatively narrow temperature band for some short duration and then sudden, long-lasting cold spells with 1.5 km high continental glaciers and the temperate zone shifting to the equator during those times. Check the 5 million year forecast to find out when this will end and the good old days return…

Mar 29, 2007 - 6:02 am 62. jdwill:

ajacksonian,

Wow, and thanks! You write very well. That gave me a good glimpse of the background to recent Myr scale climate. It helps put a number of things I have been reading about (particularly coal) in perspective. Have you ever met, or are you, in fact, perhaps Michael Crichton? ;-}

This thread is likely dead, but I am curious what you might think of this paper by Dr Daniel H Rothman:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/99/7/4167.pdf

which has a graph in Fig 4 that correlates inferred CO2 levels over 500 Myr with known cool periods.

I am inferring from this graph/paper that there is not a good correlation for long scale climate between atmospheric CO2 and warm/cool periods. In fact we seem to have been reducing atmospheric CO2 long term (I am not sure how to scale the papers CO2 ‘pressure’ to your CO2 ppm).

Also, it looks like we are in the early stages of the current warm cycle, assuming the long term geologic factors you presented don’t shift that much – and – assuming that CO2 is not a dominant climate driver. We should have 10-15Kyr remaining before the next ice age if the dominant drivers remain consistent.

Which is good for us as an ice age would be much harder to adapt to than a 2-4 degree warming, even one that increased sea level by 3-5 meters.

Mar 29, 2007 - 8:47 am 63. jdwill:

ajacksonian,

Whoops, I should have read your global warming link above first. You had already answered most of my questions.

Mar 29, 2007 - 9:18 am 64. Buddy Larsen:

Anecdote, outside my door, the alkaline soil is only a few inches deep over the old Texas Inland Seabed. I kick up old Cretaceous marine shellfish fossils everytime I go for a walk. Now, I’m nearly 2000 feet above sea level, and several hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico, in the central Texas hill country, AKA the Edwards Plateau, which was formed by the uplift of which jacksonian speaks, and which now outcrops (as “the topography”) that old seabed.

Mar 29, 2007 - 10:41 am 65. Buddy Larsen:

Point, that’s a lotta change in a short time, in just one little area. I wonder if Al & the acolytes grasp the overall implication.

Mar 29, 2007 - 10:46 am 66. ajacksonian:

jdwill – Indeed I did, but thank you for asking!

One of the great benefits of geology is that it teaches you not to overlook things and to really examine your data to make sure you understand what it is telling you. And even if you can figure out what the data *is* telling you, then you have to fit it within the processes that can get it to that condition. So one may have the absolute low-down on the data, and say that it has a high degree of correlation, but not having the process behind it will make the hypothesis fail. Wegener was right in his hypothesis of continents not being in fixed positions, but without a process he was derided for the idea. In the 1950’s the WWII submarine warfare data for the Atlanatic would show anomolies in magnetism that were exactly repeated on either side of the mid-Atlantic ridge… that led to the International Geophysical Year and the final bringing together of plate tectonics for the movement of continents and explaining anomolies that had shown up for nearly a century in every other proposed mechanism.

Uniformitarianism reigned supreme, save for these little things known as ‘extinction events’, which required a re-thinking of climate and climate change and volcanism. But even all of *that* still left anomolies as the echelon analysis (think of insurance industry actuarial tables for how many individuals in a given age cohort are left over time) for the sauropods indicated that the extinction event at 65 MYA was really drastic as by standard analysis there would still be megafauna in large numbers wandering around today. Throw in a father and son team looking at the boundry clay that no one wanted to analyze for *decades* and suddenly the evidence points to a non-uniformitarian event for the planet, but a perfectly understood and uniformitarian event for the solar system: an asteroid hit the planet. Happens all the time, although *size does matter*. Then the anomolous data starts to fit, like the single lineage of forams that got through the event while their multitudinous cousins did not. So is uniformitarianism *right*? Depends on the time scale and size scale. Global warming? On the time scale since the beginning of life on Earth, well, its pretty chilly now and the chaotic interglacial temperature change regimes all point to the fact that something will happen to suddenly bring temps down again. Not enough thermal resources to keep things warm…that is because of those deep oceans that don’t change temperature much, as opposed to those vast, balmy, shallow seas of 70 million years ago. Those were the days!

Check your long range forecast for details, and expected longevity of current plate movement.

Apr 1, 2007 - 8:40 am

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