Today's Seattle Times editorial "Climate change heats up"
Virtually all regions of the state and its economic sectors dependent on water will feel the consequences of global warming.And in the news section: "A booming year for local ski areas"Washington is already living with declining snowpack and earlier peak stream flows.
the wild winter weather that wreaked havoc on roads and power lines over the past 2 1/2 months has brought heavier-than-normal snowfall to the region's mountains, translating into a windfall for area ski resorts.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 22, 2007 09:26 AM | Email This
The timing of the article shows how isolated the elites and unisex society are. It won't be long before we humans are trying to play God with the weather. In other words, we have to have the exact amount of rainfall, snowfall, heat days, cold days, ad infinitum. The only way to do that is to play God.
Just let it be!!!!
Posted by: swatter on January 22, 2007 09:21 AMOr do you just make silly remarks like this to throw red meat to your readers?
Posted by: Bruce on January 22, 2007 09:39 AMhttp://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-snow14jan14,1,5203677.story?coll=la-travel-headlines
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8MQE0DO1.html
"French and Swiss ski operators have been struggling to keep ski slopes covered, and organizers of the World Cup races this week in northern Italy have turned to helicopters to provide snow. Trees and rocks also prevail on many East Coast ski runs and in Montana and Utah.
By contrast, the fierce storms that have bedeviled the Seattle area with flooding, high winds, widespread power outages, bitter cold and yes, also some snow, since November have been a bounty for the region's ski resorts."
Good grief.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on January 22, 2007 09:58 AMBut, we can still have the debate about global warming, if you wish; only at another time. Right now, it is fun to poke fingers at the inept Times.
Posted by: swatter on January 22, 2007 10:10 AMYou'd better guarantee that his sensitivities won't be rudely disturbed by any unseemly questions about his recent homily on global warming.
Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore by Bjorn Lomborg (who wrote the 'Skeptical Environmentalist'). At first Gore agreed, then chickened out when he found out that Lomborg's questions wouldn't lead to the puff piece that Gore feels he's entitled to.
Gore, like other environmental theocrats, is hardwired to transmit, not to receive, and can't defend his GW pronunciamento against any competent high school debater - let alone Bjorn Lomborg.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on January 22, 2007 10:15 AM1) Your knowledge of statistics is, well, pathetic
2) You know about statistics but like to create fear and uncertainty when you know the data is against you
3) You really believe global warming is not happening and to heck with all the data that shows you are wrong.
In any case, we learn much more about you through your continuous moronic postings on this.
Posted by: StefanisWrong on January 22, 2007 10:28 AMYour 9th grade PROFESSOR?
Very impressive. What COLLEGE did you attend for high school?
Perhaps you need to take a deep breath...and look at facts once in a while. The stuff you post is obviously made up....
Posted by: StefanisWrong on January 22, 2007 10:38 AMhttp://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-me-lopez21jan21,1,1161441.column?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true
Posted by: JDH on January 22, 2007 11:07 AMYou are good, you are right, you found me out. I created the entire Yahoo site with money from Big Oil, so I could write that silliness about the moon as a way to discredit Al Gore's, Global Warming. I admit it. In fact, I have it on good authority that every single person who does not believe Global Warming and all related Doomsday predictions, is in fact, on Big Oil Payroll. Every one of us Neocon nut jobs, and every single Global Warming denying scientist, etc.
It's all another giant conspiracy created by Karl Rove, right after he finished his successful demolition of the World Trade Centers and subsequent blame on Muslim Terrorists.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 22, 2007 11:19 AMThat's beautiful, Hank. You've captured the essence of liberalism in a nutshell.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on January 22, 2007 11:19 AMI mean, Al Gore is a partner in an investment company for "green" products. So, of course he wants to stir fear about Climate Change.
But even more interesting are companies like Agribusiness which stands to make $$$ from biofuels. For example, I think Barrack Obama has already been exposed as a tool of the corn growers.
Another group that is seeing its lunch being eaten is, of course, Big Oil. More heat, warmer weather means less sales. Also, autos run more efficiently in warm weather. The recent call for "change" by CEOs has got to be tied to someone seeing the decline in need for heating oil.
As far as my opinion, I think most people on Earth will benefit from climate change. But that is an opinion that is never spoken in major media.
Posted by: John Bailo on January 22, 2007 11:24 AMwhy don't you pick on the ceo's from bp, alcoa and duke energy?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/22/AR2007012200458.html
Posted by: dinesh on January 22, 2007 11:34 AM"It must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions," said Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy. "The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now."
from the article cited previously.
Posted by: dinesh on January 22, 2007 11:41 AMOne need read no further than the second paragraph of the article you linked to understand the CEOs' motivation:
' "We can and must take prompt action to establish a coordinated, economy-wide market-driven approach to climate protection," the executives from a broad range of industries said in a letter to the president.'
1) "economy-wide"; translation: "Nothing is stopping us from taking action now, but we don't want to do anything unless the pain is shared."
2) "market-driven"; translation: "Make it mandatory, but in a way that is business-friendly."
Posted by: ewaggin on January 22, 2007 12:04 PMi wonder what lefty put a gun to his head to make the ceo of duke state that "the science of global warming is clear?" he must be some crazy, looney, commie, pinko lefty nutjob destroying shareholder value and scheming to make people live by his rules and wear a burka.
Posted by: dinesh on January 22, 2007 12:09 PMYou see, there is a belief in principle, not titles. So parading some CEOs that support a liberal point of view is meaningless. Just like Soros and Buffett who made billions in the most capitalistic ways advocate making it harder for others to do the same. These CEOs are free to believe what they wish.
BTW BP has not been doing that great since they have gone on this green kick. And their actions, like letting the Alaska pipe line maintenance slack off, speak far louder than their GW rhetoric.
Posted by: Right said Fred on January 22, 2007 12:11 PMC'mon, where is your sense of humor? Stefan's tongue is obviously planted firmly in cheek.
But why isn't the Times using stark dichotomies like the one Stefan pointed to, to educate their readers about what global warming is, and what it isn't?
Things like, is it a trend, or a cycle? Is human activity contributing to it, and if so, how much?
Posted by: ewaggin on January 22, 2007 12:23 PMbut in this day an age, when seemingly all 'authoritative sources' speak out of both sides of their mouths, such inconsistencies are not uncommon.
that said, the comments to this (and other climate change threads) are even more funny. to read them, one would think it would be easier to find reputable, organized bodies disputing the larger themes of man-made climate change. unfortunately, my internets aren't that powerful b/c my google can't find such organizations and scientists.
Posted by: dinesh on January 22, 2007 12:32 PMIndeed, I did read all of the article before commenting.
As I said before, nothing is stopping these individuals from acting, and if they truly believe in the PC version of global warming (that g/w is not part of a natural cycle, and that humans are responsible for it), why are they waiting to take action?
Actions speak far louder than words, and would be a much more persuasive argument than this self-serving letter.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 22, 2007 12:33 PMDid you mean, snow and mountains?
There is certainly no shortage of snow in the Mid-west.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 22, 2007 12:35 PMIt only makes sense if their argument that the climate is heating up is based on observations of the weather, that when the observations prove them wrong that we comment on it.
But what really gets me is how they're predicting both warming and cooling (see Kevin Costner's movie) - seems like they need to have all the bases covered.
Posted by: thecomputerguy on January 22, 2007 01:54 PMi respect the presumed efficiency of the corporate model. more often, however, people and their foibles introduce the friction, or inefficiency.
but, again, why don't you guys make fun of duke's ceo. he says that the science on global warming is clear.
i'm still waiting for a link to a respected organization of scientists who debunk climate change science. heck, i am waiting for a single name of a prominent scientist who challenges the field of climate change science.
you sceptics have not delivered on that one. but you do make some funny comments about it.
maybe if george "the decider" bush flip-flops and decides that progress in climate change isn't good enough, you guys will be more open minded about the topic? hmmmmmm.
Posted by: dinesh on January 22, 2007 03:33 PMRecently, we've experienced freezing temperatures in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and large areas in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas - and ice-storms from Denver to Kansas City.
This morning I awoke to read about snow in TUCSON!!
Could one of you leftist, apocalyptic Trolls kindly tell me how all of these data points fit into your Global Warming models.
Can't wait for the answers - thank you.
-JP
Posted by: Jefferson Paine on January 22, 2007 03:44 PMThe main international scientific body assessing causes of climate change is closing in on its strongest statement yet linking emissions from burning fossil fuels to rising global temperatures, according to scientists involved in the process.
In fresh drafts of a summary of its next report, the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that it is more than 90 percent likely that global warming since 1950 has been driven mainly by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and that more warming and rising sea levels are on the way.
A panel formed by, (big surprise!), the United Nations. The panel that was instrumental in developing the Kyoto Protocal.
And reported in the New York Times, that bastion of fair and balanced reporting.
No leftist bias there, eh Bruce?
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on January 22, 2007 05:09 PMFrom the post:
"I personally cannot in good faith contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound,"
"...at any time there are spots in the world with any particular meteorological condition..."
Well, sure...but the same spot, at the same time?
Is the Times unaware it's contradicting itself, or is it just that its belief in the religion of human-caused global warming is so fervent that it doesn't care?
Posted by: ewaggin on January 22, 2007 08:32 PMThe data recovered from various geological sources indicate that many cycles of warming and cooling have occurred in both the recent and distant past.
So, if warming is human-caused, as per your reference, might one reasonably ask what caused warming before humans were burning fossil fuels?
Measuring warming is one thing; laying it at the feet of humanity is quite something else.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 22, 2007 08:52 PMBill@42, how do you measure scientific consensus? Do you care?
Posted by: Bruce on January 22, 2007 09:09 PMYou can ignore science if you wish. But the fact that other factors can cause climate change is not an argument against the scientific consensus.
Posted by: Bruce on January 22, 2007 09:19 PM> "OK folks. I'm starting a lottery. You can select what time my apostle David Mathew's first post will appear on this thread."
Yawn!! There's no need for me to engage in another argument with people who have already lost.
Posted by: David Mathews on January 23, 2007 04:30 AMI know, because I was there.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on January 23, 2007 06:32 AMI know several businessmen that use the local Chambers, Development Councils, Transportation Social Groups with names, etc., who form a group, give it a name, come up with something outlandish and publish as a matter-of-fact. And what is more funny, the members of the committee or organization all belong to the same others, so you then have several organizations supporting one thing or another and make it look in the press as having overall consensus.
Just think about it for awhile, Bruce. I don't like it but it is the truth.
So, no, I don't believe your unnamed group is 'respected'.
Posted by: swatter on January 23, 2007 07:05 AM
Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
It snowed in SoCA in 1949 too. Prior to that the last recorded snowfall was late 1800's.
I'll check my clippings from '49 and see if Al Gore, Sr chimed in about the weather. Come to think of it Al The Elder may have been too busy then creating the family fortune with his bud Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum fame.
Posted by: Tyler Durden on January 23, 2007 10:45 AM"Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact."
this is also interesting:
"Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures."
it would seem, therefore, that the article you cite does not support the proposition you set forth. there is a huge difference between stating increased sun activity "is responsible" for climate change (as you do) versus increased sun activity "contributed" to climate change along with "higher levels of greenhouse gases" (as the article does).
keep trying. the internets has lotsa information. you should be able to find something to support your position.
Posted by: dinesh on January 23, 2007 02:05 PMhttp://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20400748-25717,00.html
Posted by: JDH on January 23, 2007 03:50 PMIs it your position that to question "scientific consensus" is to "ignore science"?
Not too many years ago, the "scientific consensus" on stomach ulcers was that they were caused by excess acid. In 1982, two MDs from Australia suggested that most stomach ulcers were due to bacterial infection. This was criticized and ridiculed for the next several years, because the "scientific consensus" was that no organism could survive in the stomach.
Luckily for ulcer sufferers, Marshall and Warren didn't kowtow to "scientific consensus", and in 2005 won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work on the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and peptic ulcer disease.
Bruce, you state that "the fact that other factors can cause climate change is not an argument against the scientific consensus."
In fact, it is an argument against the "scientific consensus". I would agree that it is not proof that the "scientific consensus" is wrong, but that misses the point.
When a claim is asserted, the burden of proof falls on the party making the claim. For the claim to be proven, all arguments against it must be rebutted.
In this case, proving that a single cause is responsible requires that all of the other causes can be accounted for and eliminated.
Is "scientific consensus" able to do this?
If so, then "scientific consensus" should have a comprehensive theory that covers all of the causes of global warming and cooling, and accurately predicts the timing and severity of changes, both past and present.
Does "scientific consensus" have such a theory?
If not, then skepticism is entirely justified, and epithets about ignoring "scientific consensus" are nothing more than attempts to stifle dissent.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 23, 2007 08:51 PMhe decides, you listen.
Posted by: dinesh on January 24, 2007 09:07 AMWalter E. Williams
Posted: January 24, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) warned that "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." The Weather Channel has taken up that task with its series "It Could Happen Tomorrow."
The Weather Channel started its "It Could Happen Tomorrow" series in January 2006. The program includes episodes where a tornado destroys Dallas, a tsunami destroys the Pacific Northwest, Mount Rainier erupts and destroys nearby towns, and San Diego is devastated by wildfires.
They omitted a program showing a meteor striking my house, for it, too, could happen tomorrow. Of course, any one of these events could happen tomorrow, but I'm reminded of a passage in Shakespeare's "Macbeth," where after Macbeth listens to the predictions of the witches, Banquo warns him that "Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest consequence." That is, gain our confidence with trifle truths to set us up for the big lie.
The big lie, conceived by the Weather Channel in cahoots with environmental extremists, is to get us in a tizzy over global warming, and they're vicious about it. Heidi Cullen, Ph.D., the Weather Channel's climatologist, hosts a weekly program called "The Climate Code." Dr. Cullen advocates that the American Meteorological Society strip their seal of approval from any TV weatherman expressing skepticism about the predictions of manmade global warming, according to a report by Marc Morano, communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.
Dr. Cullen has had a lot of help in demonizing skeptics of catastrophic manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News "60 Minutes" correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to "Holocaust deniers," and former Vice President Al Gore calls skeptics "global warming deniers." But it gets worse. Mr. Morano reports that on one of Dr. Cullen's shows, she featured columnist Dave Roberts, who, in his Sept. 19, 2006, online publication, said, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards - some sort of climate Nuremberg." (See the Morano report.) He didn't say whether the death penalty should be administered to those found guilty of global warming denial.
The environmental extremists' true agenda has little or nothing to do with climate change. Their true agenda is to find a means to control our lives. The kind of repressive human control, not to mention government-sanctioned mass murder, seen under communism has lost any measure of intellectual respectability. So people who want that kind of control must come up with a new name, and that new name is environmentalism.
Last year, 60 prominent scientists signed a letter saying, "Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. ... Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary."
They added, "It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas." These scientists have probably won The Weather Channel's ire and might be headed toward a Nuremberg-type trial.
You appear to be intelligent and well-informed, but most of your comments consist solely of snide remarks and name-calling.
If you are unwilling (or possibly unable, though I suspect this is not the case) to contribute anything substantive to this discussion, is there any worthwhile purpose served by continuing in this fashion?
Posted by: ewaggin on January 24, 2007 11:37 AMI agree with the first 2 sentences, but your 3rd sentence doesn't logically follow, and is not my understanding of the scientific method.
To "prove" that man-made factors cause a great deal of climate change, one needs to show the cause-and-effect and rebut objections, which scientists have done to my satisfaction if not yours. One does not need to show that no other factors can also cause climate change. Obviously, many factors affect climate, and it would be impossible to ever list "all" possible causes in such a complex system.
Do your comments mean that you now agree that my third sentence does logically follow, given my use of the qualifer "single cause"?
I will proceed on that assumption.
I do agree with your statement (@66) that "...it would be impossible to ever list "all" possible causes in such a complex system." My phrase "all of the other causes" was intended to refer only to the set of known causes, and I should have stated that explicitly.
Your objection that "No one says that a single cause is responsible..." is reasonable, but debatable.
Indeed, as you say, "...such a claim would be preposterous."
So, what claim is being made?
From 40:
"...linking emissions from burning fossil fuels to rising global temperatures..."
"...it is more than 90 percent likely that global warming since 1950 has been driven mainly by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases..."
From 48:
"But scientific consensus is that the specific substances that man has added to the atmosphere have caused most of the (relatively drastic) warming in recent decades and will cause much more warming in the future."
From 68:
"Most scientists do say that humans' carbon emissions are responsible for the vast majority of warming in recent decades and coming decades."
Terms such as "mainly", "most of", "relatively drastic", and "vast majority" are weasel words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_words
Statements using these terms avoid claiming that human activity is the sole cause of warming. They also avoid mentioning the other causes, and providing the data required to put the various causes in perspective.
How much? What percentage? Relative to what?
Human activity is 95% responsible? Then (with reference to my comments @59) show me a theory of global climate change that's nearly comprehensive, and a model that's 95% accurate.
Human activity is the most responsible of several causes, at 25%? In that case, I would be satisified with a much lower standard of proof. But that would mean that the other causes combined were 75% responsible, and would put matters in a rather different light.
To the extent that human activity is responsible, what solutions are proposed? If no accurate model exists, how can the efficacy of various alternatives be evaluated? Should we then simply throw trillions of dollars at the problem, in hopes that it will go away?
A meaningful discussion of this issue begins with specifics. Invoking (see Wikipedia link) some unassailable "scientific consensus" doesn't cut it.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 25, 2007 11:34 PM