"Doh! I just know there ain't no global warmin'! FOX told me so! So I goin' to visit me Aunt Mae in Maine like this for Christmas!"As the Copenhagen Climate Conference continues, global warming skeptics and deniers continue to try to obfuscate the message and postpone any significant change. They have now seized onto the recent hacked emails (from East Anglia University) to try to make the specious case that the whole theory of man-induced warming is in error, and insist the emails prove it is all trickery. As I noted in a previous blog entry this is fulsome codswallop. While the emails did engender a PR problem, they do not undermine the basic science, not in any way. Indeed, the segment of data referenced in the emails represents barely 2% of the total compiled in more than 70 nations contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Those blockheads who insist that the emails signify some major contrarian evidence only need to get off their backsides and venture to places where global warming's effects are wreaking havoc. That includes interior Alaska, with its melting permafrost- causing buildings to wobble in Fairbanks, to the eastern Caribbean islands where massive beachfront loss is occurring and to Florida, where the dengue fever virus has now arrived – thanks to climate change.
The receding Portage Glacier near Anchorage, which I observed in 2005, had retreated hundreds of yards just from its position near the turn of the century. The geophysicists at the University of Alaska - to whom I spoke when I visited the Geophysical Institute two days later, assured me it was a direct result of global warming which is always 3-4F more in the Arctic. When a 150' tower collapsed in Fairbanks the next day, tied to permafrost melt, it put an exclamation point on it. The antecdent Arctic warming was first noted by Prof. Gunther Weller more than twenty years earlier in his studies of ice cores.
Dengue Fever, which I caught while serving in Peace Corps in the early 70s, is nothing to sniff at. It isn't called 'bone break fever" for nothing, and little known about it is that it spreads via the Aedes Egypti mosquito and recent research shows the proliferation is malignant as temperatures rise, and wetness-rainfall increase, as predicted by global warming models. Dengue has now moved more than four degrees north in latitude from the late 1990s. In its most severe form, usually after the third exposure, it becomes dengue hemorraghic fever- and you bleed from every orifice: eyes, ears, urinary tract, rectum, mouth, nose .....and by the second day more than half are dead. It is nearly as bad as Ebola, if only because it is much more widespread.
Unlike some, such as Prof. David Suzuki, I don’t advocate locking up deniers or global warming naysayers – for threatening the lives of billions with their foolish delaying tactics and agnotology. However, I do think that a ‘buyer beware’ alert needs to be appended to all their writings, wherever they appear. The alert needs to be predicated on recognizable criteria showing that they don’t really understand what they are talking about. In addition, every serious writer who claims some pedigree, ought to be subjected to taking at least a basic thermal physics test. Thermal physics is the basis for global warming theory.
Below are a number of the telltale signs of the anti-warming blockhead, following which I present my basic thermal physics test which, up to now, NO warming critic has passed with at least a 70%.
1) They cite marginal scientists or those funded by special fossil fuel lobbies and interests
This seems to be the most common attribute, especially among the lower echelon of warming critics: media thinktank hacks, ordinary semi-educated bloggers, and the occasional low level newspaper or magazine columnist. What these all have in common is adopting the assumption that “one scientist is as good as any other” (Which is also common to the idiots that repeatedly cite the “30,000 scientists” who signed a “petition” declaring manmade warming false, not also stating that barely 1% of these are climate scientists. Many are psychologists, or anthropologists.)
Among the scientists most often cited are: S. Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen and Sallie Baliunas.
Siegfried Fred Singer seems to be a darling amongst the global warming denier brigade. Personally, I doubt if even one of ten thousand blockheads who cite him have even read one of his papers, or can understand what he's written. I am always amused when he gets published in Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, because inevitably he garners about five to six responses each time (published as research letters) which take every one of his claims apart.
An interesting tidbit: In the early 1990s, while officially "on leave" from the University of Virginia, Singer set up the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy with the help of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and with funding support from the Unification Church (also known as "Moonies," followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church).
This is why it amuses me no end when certain Christian Fundies cite Singer as some kind of climate guru, when in effect, they are supporting a guy whose freight is partly paid by the Unification Church.
More recently, Singer was singled out by Sharon Begley, in her Newsweek piece on the global warming disinformation industry (Aug. 13, 2007, ‘The Truth About Denial’, p. 21) noting the corporate media has been especially guilty in its misplaced notions of objectivity and fairness since they:
“qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with ‘some scientists believe’ when the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-induced greenhouse emissions are contributing to warming”.
Thus, as she notes, “the pursuit of balance has not done justice”
Begley also notes (ibid.)
"In April, 1998, a dozen people from the denial machine – including the Marshall Institute- Fred Singer’s group (of contrarian scientists) and Exxon- met at the American Enterprise Institute’s Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 respected climate scientists on media – and public- outreach, with the aim of ‘raising questions and undercutting the prevailing wisdom’”
Meanwhile, Lindzen, one of the leading skeptic scientists, is actually a member of the Science, Health, and Economic Advisory Council of a Maryland-based think tank funded by large fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon. Lindzen is perhaps best remembered for his “water-vapor- negative feedback thermostat” theory which proposed that whatever warming occurred would be negated by a negative feedback cooling effect. Thus, greater warming would lead to a greater condensation of water vapor and increased drying and cooling of the troposphere above 5 km. This process to act as a “thermostat” so global warming could never ever get out of control. Alas, Lindzen had to ditch this pet theory when detailed studies showed it to be poppycock. But this is the kind of poppycock that sells in the denier world. Anything they can latch on to in order to show either: a) no manmade warming is occurring, or b) if it is there are natural mechanisms to control it.
In November 2004, Lindzen was quoted saying he'd be willing to bet that the earth's climate will be cooler in 20 years than it is today. When British climate researcher James Annan contacted him, however, Lindzen would only agree to take the bet if Annan offered a 50-to-1 payout. Seems to me Lindzen is less certain of his skeptic bilge than he portrays. Surely he ought to take an odds even bet!
Sallie Baliunas staked her claim to fame in a 2003 paper (with Willie Soon) purporting to show that warming is nowhere near as severe as portrayed. Of course, to achieve that goal, she had to use some murky statistics - using 50-year intervals instead of the 30-year ones wherein the warming factors are expoosed.
Bottom line, anyone - be it blogger, media maven, or think tank hack - who cites any of these "climate scientists" can be assured of merely recycling memes from the fossil fuel industries, lobbies.
2) They claim that humans are too weak, pathetic and puny to affect a whole planet.
This one embodies just plain ignorance or mayhap, abject idiocy. It certainly doesn't say much for the claimant's level of awareness or consciousness. The history of human efects in the 20th century is a;ready well documented in thousands of journal pages.
For example, a residual global cooling effect emerged in the late 1960s- early 1970s, owing to the concentration of polluting particulates in the atmosphere. This general effect later came to be called "global dimming" because the effect of the particulates was to block sunlight as well as infrared radiation or heat from getting through. Today, we understand that - as efforts to remove these pollutants have proceeded (starting with the Clean Air Act in the U.S.) the effects of global warming have become much more pronounced. This is understandable since earlier the global dimming had MASKED up to two thirds of global warming. Obviously then, removing the hard particulates that subdue warming will unleash it.
Then there was the erosion of the ozone layer in the 70s, caused by enormous inputs of CFCs or chloro-flourocarbons. Each CFC molecule, as the late Carl Sagan pointed out in a 1979 article, was capable of eliminating tens of thousands of ozone molecules - that form the protective barrier against harsh UV or ultraviolet radiation. The type that causes more skin cancers and cataracts. Humans caused this massive ozone erosion, which reached up to 70% of the ozone layer over the South Pole by late 1979- and they repaired it, by eliminating most or all CFCs.
Finally, the "man can't do it" birdbrains forget the acid rain outbreaks in the 1980s when sulphur dioxide (SO2) from factories under the action of a catalyst, caused sulphuric acid (H2So4) to form and fall with rain, wrecking many crops world wide- even in nations that didn't feature heavy SO2 polluting industries. Again, humans caused this havoc - no god came out of the sky and threw magic bolts to do it, and humans solved it. They solved it by regulating SO2 emissions - which one would have thought was common sense.
In the same way, CO2 emissions can be regulated, as well as those of other greenhouse gases.
My point is that humans can and do affect the planet, in neutral, beneficial and harmful ways. Right now the harmful ways are outweighing the neutral and beneficial.
3) It would cost too much and wreck the economy to cut CO2 emissions
This is another load of nonsense. It is especially remarkable since it comes mainly from market worshippers who assert that under any other conditions, capitalism is "flexible" and can find a solution. So why not here? Where is the imagination, the drive? For example, in many European nations, green industries are now driving the economies and assuring higher levels of employment can be sustained. Why not in the U.S.? Maybe, just maybe - because the established energy-hog industries and polluters don't want competition?
Indeed, in The Wall Street Journal - the "bible" of free market capitalism, an article appeared on April 8, 2008 ('Climate Change Opportunity’ ) noting that “Solving global warming will be an added cost – but a bargain compared to the economic costs of unchecked climate change. And fixing this problem will create an historic economic opportunity”
The author goes so far as to say that whoever solves the problem to find suitable sources of clean energy will make a “megafortune”. Indeed, Europe has already shown the way to green profits in many respects. The trick is to get on board sooner than later, because the longer the delay the greater the inevitable costs for transfer in the end.
Finally, let me say I advocate Cheney's "1% solution" - but here applied to global warming. As readers may recall, in the book, "The One Percent Solution", former VP Dick Cheney was quoted as saying that if the chance of an Al Qaeda attack is even 1%, then it means going all out to protect ourselves. It is worth using every resource to get the job done, damned the expense.
Global warming, if the runaway effect kicks in - which is now a better than 50-50 proposition, would basically have ten trillion times the negative effects of the worst imagined Al Qaeda attack, no matter how big. Thus, if the Cheney "1% doctrine" holds for Al Qaeda defense, common sense tells us it ought to hold with even more force for the runaway greenhouse effect.
What?! Spend hundreds of billions to protect against an event that has only a 50% chance of happening? When is THAT ever done???
Every day! It's called buying insurance! Your chance of getting into a car wreck on any given day may be only 1 in 100, but are you going to stop paying auto insurance because you think it's a waste? More to the point, the chance of a massive fire destroying your home is maybe 1 in 200, but are you going to cancel your home insurance because it's "too expensive"? Don't think so! The whole idea is to prepare for events that, while relatively remote, don't wreak ultimate havoc.
Next: My basic Thermal Physics test.
Those blockheads who insist that the emails signify some major contrarian evidence only need to get off their backsides and venture to places where global warming's effects are wreaking havoc. That includes interior Alaska, with its melting permafrost- causing buildings to wobble in Fairbanks, to the eastern Caribbean islands where massive beachfront loss is occurring and to Florida, where the dengue fever virus has now arrived – thanks to climate change.
The receding Portage Glacier near Anchorage, which I observed in 2005, had retreated hundreds of yards just from its position near the turn of the century. The geophysicists at the University of Alaska - to whom I spoke when I visited the Geophysical Institute two days later, assured me it was a direct result of global warming which is always 3-4F more in the Arctic. When a 150' tower collapsed in Fairbanks the next day, tied to permafrost melt, it put an exclamation point on it. The antecdent Arctic warming was first noted by Prof. Gunther Weller more than twenty years earlier in his studies of ice cores.
Dengue Fever, which I caught while serving in Peace Corps in the early 70s, is nothing to sniff at. It isn't called 'bone break fever" for nothing, and little known about it is that it spreads via the Aedes Egypti mosquito and recent research shows the proliferation is malignant as temperatures rise, and wetness-rainfall increase, as predicted by global warming models. Dengue has now moved more than four degrees north in latitude from the late 1990s. In its most severe form, usually after the third exposure, it becomes dengue hemorraghic fever- and you bleed from every orifice: eyes, ears, urinary tract, rectum, mouth, nose .....and by the second day more than half are dead. It is nearly as bad as Ebola, if only because it is much more widespread.
Unlike some, such as Prof. David Suzuki, I don’t advocate locking up deniers or global warming naysayers – for threatening the lives of billions with their foolish delaying tactics and agnotology. However, I do think that a ‘buyer beware’ alert needs to be appended to all their writings, wherever they appear. The alert needs to be predicated on recognizable criteria showing that they don’t really understand what they are talking about. In addition, every serious writer who claims some pedigree, ought to be subjected to taking at least a basic thermal physics test. Thermal physics is the basis for global warming theory.
Below are a number of the telltale signs of the anti-warming blockhead, following which I present my basic thermal physics test which, up to now, NO warming critic has passed with at least a 70%.
1) They cite marginal scientists or those funded by special fossil fuel lobbies and interests
This seems to be the most common attribute, especially among the lower echelon of warming critics: media thinktank hacks, ordinary semi-educated bloggers, and the occasional low level newspaper or magazine columnist. What these all have in common is adopting the assumption that “one scientist is as good as any other” (Which is also common to the idiots that repeatedly cite the “30,000 scientists” who signed a “petition” declaring manmade warming false, not also stating that barely 1% of these are climate scientists. Many are psychologists, or anthropologists.)
Among the scientists most often cited are: S. Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen and Sallie Baliunas.
Siegfried Fred Singer seems to be a darling amongst the global warming denier brigade. Personally, I doubt if even one of ten thousand blockheads who cite him have even read one of his papers, or can understand what he's written. I am always amused when he gets published in Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, because inevitably he garners about five to six responses each time (published as research letters) which take every one of his claims apart.
An interesting tidbit: In the early 1990s, while officially "on leave" from the University of Virginia, Singer set up the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy with the help of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and with funding support from the Unification Church (also known as "Moonies," followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church).
This is why it amuses me no end when certain Christian Fundies cite Singer as some kind of climate guru, when in effect, they are supporting a guy whose freight is partly paid by the Unification Church.
More recently, Singer was singled out by Sharon Begley, in her Newsweek piece on the global warming disinformation industry (Aug. 13, 2007, ‘The Truth About Denial’, p. 21) noting the corporate media has been especially guilty in its misplaced notions of objectivity and fairness since they:
“qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with ‘some scientists believe’ when the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-induced greenhouse emissions are contributing to warming”.
Thus, as she notes, “the pursuit of balance has not done justice”
Begley also notes (ibid.)
"In April, 1998, a dozen people from the denial machine – including the Marshall Institute- Fred Singer’s group (of contrarian scientists) and Exxon- met at the American Enterprise Institute’s Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 respected climate scientists on media – and public- outreach, with the aim of ‘raising questions and undercutting the prevailing wisdom’”
Meanwhile, Lindzen, one of the leading skeptic scientists, is actually a member of the Science, Health, and Economic Advisory Council of a Maryland-based think tank funded by large fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon. Lindzen is perhaps best remembered for his “water-vapor- negative feedback thermostat” theory which proposed that whatever warming occurred would be negated by a negative feedback cooling effect. Thus, greater warming would lead to a greater condensation of water vapor and increased drying and cooling of the troposphere above 5 km. This process to act as a “thermostat” so global warming could never ever get out of control. Alas, Lindzen had to ditch this pet theory when detailed studies showed it to be poppycock. But this is the kind of poppycock that sells in the denier world. Anything they can latch on to in order to show either: a) no manmade warming is occurring, or b) if it is there are natural mechanisms to control it.
In November 2004, Lindzen was quoted saying he'd be willing to bet that the earth's climate will be cooler in 20 years than it is today. When British climate researcher James Annan contacted him, however, Lindzen would only agree to take the bet if Annan offered a 50-to-1 payout. Seems to me Lindzen is less certain of his skeptic bilge than he portrays. Surely he ought to take an odds even bet!
Sallie Baliunas staked her claim to fame in a 2003 paper (with Willie Soon) purporting to show that warming is nowhere near as severe as portrayed. Of course, to achieve that goal, she had to use some murky statistics - using 50-year intervals instead of the 30-year ones wherein the warming factors are expoosed.
Bottom line, anyone - be it blogger, media maven, or think tank hack - who cites any of these "climate scientists" can be assured of merely recycling memes from the fossil fuel industries, lobbies.
2) They claim that humans are too weak, pathetic and puny to affect a whole planet.
This one embodies just plain ignorance or mayhap, abject idiocy. It certainly doesn't say much for the claimant's level of awareness or consciousness. The history of human efects in the 20th century is a;ready well documented in thousands of journal pages.
For example, a residual global cooling effect emerged in the late 1960s- early 1970s, owing to the concentration of polluting particulates in the atmosphere. This general effect later came to be called "global dimming" because the effect of the particulates was to block sunlight as well as infrared radiation or heat from getting through. Today, we understand that - as efforts to remove these pollutants have proceeded (starting with the Clean Air Act in the U.S.) the effects of global warming have become much more pronounced. This is understandable since earlier the global dimming had MASKED up to two thirds of global warming. Obviously then, removing the hard particulates that subdue warming will unleash it.
Then there was the erosion of the ozone layer in the 70s, caused by enormous inputs of CFCs or chloro-flourocarbons. Each CFC molecule, as the late Carl Sagan pointed out in a 1979 article, was capable of eliminating tens of thousands of ozone molecules - that form the protective barrier against harsh UV or ultraviolet radiation. The type that causes more skin cancers and cataracts. Humans caused this massive ozone erosion, which reached up to 70% of the ozone layer over the South Pole by late 1979- and they repaired it, by eliminating most or all CFCs.
Finally, the "man can't do it" birdbrains forget the acid rain outbreaks in the 1980s when sulphur dioxide (SO2) from factories under the action of a catalyst, caused sulphuric acid (H2So4) to form and fall with rain, wrecking many crops world wide- even in nations that didn't feature heavy SO2 polluting industries. Again, humans caused this havoc - no god came out of the sky and threw magic bolts to do it, and humans solved it. They solved it by regulating SO2 emissions - which one would have thought was common sense.
In the same way, CO2 emissions can be regulated, as well as those of other greenhouse gases.
My point is that humans can and do affect the planet, in neutral, beneficial and harmful ways. Right now the harmful ways are outweighing the neutral and beneficial.
3) It would cost too much and wreck the economy to cut CO2 emissions
This is another load of nonsense. It is especially remarkable since it comes mainly from market worshippers who assert that under any other conditions, capitalism is "flexible" and can find a solution. So why not here? Where is the imagination, the drive? For example, in many European nations, green industries are now driving the economies and assuring higher levels of employment can be sustained. Why not in the U.S.? Maybe, just maybe - because the established energy-hog industries and polluters don't want competition?
Indeed, in The Wall Street Journal - the "bible" of free market capitalism, an article appeared on April 8, 2008 ('Climate Change Opportunity’ ) noting that “Solving global warming will be an added cost – but a bargain compared to the economic costs of unchecked climate change. And fixing this problem will create an historic economic opportunity”
The author goes so far as to say that whoever solves the problem to find suitable sources of clean energy will make a “megafortune”. Indeed, Europe has already shown the way to green profits in many respects. The trick is to get on board sooner than later, because the longer the delay the greater the inevitable costs for transfer in the end.
Finally, let me say I advocate Cheney's "1% solution" - but here applied to global warming. As readers may recall, in the book, "The One Percent Solution", former VP Dick Cheney was quoted as saying that if the chance of an Al Qaeda attack is even 1%, then it means going all out to protect ourselves. It is worth using every resource to get the job done, damned the expense.
Global warming, if the runaway effect kicks in - which is now a better than 50-50 proposition, would basically have ten trillion times the negative effects of the worst imagined Al Qaeda attack, no matter how big. Thus, if the Cheney "1% doctrine" holds for Al Qaeda defense, common sense tells us it ought to hold with even more force for the runaway greenhouse effect.
What?! Spend hundreds of billions to protect against an event that has only a 50% chance of happening? When is THAT ever done???
Every day! It's called buying insurance! Your chance of getting into a car wreck on any given day may be only 1 in 100, but are you going to stop paying auto insurance because you think it's a waste? More to the point, the chance of a massive fire destroying your home is maybe 1 in 200, but are you going to cancel your home insurance because it's "too expensive"? Don't think so! The whole idea is to prepare for events that, while relatively remote, don't wreak ultimate havoc.
Next: My basic Thermal Physics test.
2 comments:
Another really good piece that I doubt many of the flat earthers will read.
Btw, copernicus, why isn't global warming mentioned in the bible? Let me give it a try since your brother trotted that one out on his blog as some sort of reason to deny it.
I suspect:
1. There were no global warming or climate scientists at the time who would have recognized it even if it had occurred
2. There were no instruments of the sort we have today, like radiosonde bouys, and satellite monitors that detect ice cap melt etc
3. There were no ways of publishing any findings since no journals existed anywhere, though the Chinese did keep sunspot records at the time.
Is your brother that dumb or does he just act that way? Or is he too blinded by his stupid KJV?
Caleb, you forgot the major reason! 2,000 years ago the Earth was in a temporary cooling pattern, according to tree ring analysis and especially the ratio of C12 to C14 isotopes in them. So, no one would have been conscious of any "global warming" and also since civilization was confined to one part of the world there was still no "global" conception.
Even if there was warming, I seriously doubt the language of the era, from which the original oral material was transposed (e.g. Nag Hammadi scrolls), could have captured it.
I believe then it's what we'd call a "red herring". (Which doesn't necessarily mean it came out of the Red Sea!)
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