It this turns out to be one of the years when the Midwest expeiences a snowstorm in April, will we still be talking about global warming nonetheless?

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

It this turns out to be one of the years when the Midwest experiences a snowstorm in April, will we still be talking about global warming nonetheless?

One storm would be weather. One storm would be cherry picking data to prove what your values want to have true. You'd have to do a lot more than hypothesize about a single weather event that favors your values and hasn't happened yet to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

This one is barely associated with global warming, but does address the 11 year solar cycle commonly mentioned in this thread. The NY Times sounds Celestial Storm Warnings. We are approaching the peak of the sun's magnetic cycle, where sunspots, auroras and solar flares peak. The Earth does warm a bit, but Celestial Storm Warnings talks more about communications failures, power grids going down, GPS becomming unreliable and communications with aircraft going sour.

This is expected to peak in 2011 and 2012.

There was a recent congressional hearing on global warming where the majority Republicans reportedly got to select five of the six academic witnesses. I have been reporting mostly the main stream science side of the presentation, and leaving others to cover the opposition. In this case, though, you get to see some of the more plausible and new approaches to denial.

One curveball got thrown. Dr. Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkley has been reviewing the surface temperature data under the assumption that the main stream people have got it wrong. He basically started from scratch using new methods with the expectation that no warming would be found. He was highly surprised by a finding that was right in line with the main stream science.

The economist showed an innovative bit of logic. His models proposed that an effort by the US acting alone would not significantly change the warming trend. Unilateral action would increase our taxes while the manufacturing would be done overseas. Thus, we should not take action until essentially all countries agreed to act together... which is unlikely to happen soon.

I'm not familiar with all of the arguments presented here. The people at Real Science are not impressed by them, but I haven't found links to rebuttals. However, I find them more interesting than the purloined e-mails.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

I see a similarity in how the entire academic community functions. "If you don't follow the party line you will not be published". The "Climategate" emails showed that practice at work. Hence, however much some people keep flogging away at it, this issue is dead.

This whole debate is silly. Dealing with global warming is expensive. People don't like expense and so deny the need for it. This explains the motivation for denialists.

Now the denialists say that the other side is biased because their is a global warming industry that provides a financial incentive for supporters to support it. This argument isn't an argument because it completely ignores the actual point.

Why do scientists believe what they do about global warming. The answer is because they were taught about it in school. Global warming is a very old theory dating from around 1900. For half a century the scientific consensus was that it was not happening to any significant extent. Scientists trained before the mid-1950's were what we call denialists today. By 1970 the consensus had changed, global warming was acceptable as a valid theory.

Can you show me any agencies giving our grants concerning global warming in the fifties and sixties? Where was the money in global warming when the science was developed. The answer was there wasn't any. There never is. The big money always comes AFTER the science is established because until the science is established investing a lot of money into the idea is too risky.

So the money and the scientific establishment was on the denialist side at the time the idea became established. Why on earth would anyone jump on board to support a wrong theory in which there was no possible career potential for doing so? They wouldn't, if it was clearly wrong it would never have overturned the existing consensus.

Then there is a supposition that all this weather and other disasters might be due to the approaching End Times. For discussion (and comic relief) purposes...

Couple survives (natural) disaster honeymoon

STOCKHOLM—Honeymoons aren't always easy for newlyweds, but six natural disasters?

Stefan Svanstrom of Stockholm said Tuesday he set out on a 4-month-long honeymoon with his wife Erika and their baby girl on Dec. 6 and immediately got stranded in Munich, Germany, due to one of Europe's worst snowstorms.

After that, he says, they experienced the devastation of a cyclone in Cairns, Australia, and the flooding in Brisbane, and narrowly escaped the bush fires in Perth.

Just before arriving in New Zealand, Svanstrom says, the 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch and at the couple's last destination, Tokyo, they felt Japan's largest temblor since records began.

Obviously, they did things in the wrong order. One is supposed to get married before they have a baby girl. Some divine entity clearly wanted to make this clear to them.

Just wish fewer people might have got caught up as collateral damage.

I'm still not quite sure why global warming is a bad thing.

Don't we want to grow more plants and finally colonize Antarctica?

Plus, we can then sail through the North Pole.

And Canada will be warm and welcoming!

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

There was a recent congressional hearing on global warming where the majority Republicans reportedly got to select five of the six academic witnesses. I have been reporting mostly the main stream science side of the presentation, and leaving others to cover the opposition. In this case, though, you get to see some of the more plausible and new approaches to denial.

One curveball got thrown. Dr. Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkley has been reviewing the surface temperature data under the assumption that the main stream people have got it wrong. He basically started from scratch using new methods with the expectation that no warming would be found. He was highly surprised by a finding that was right in line with the main stream science.

The economist showed an innovative bit of logic. His models proposed that an effort by the US acting alone would not significantly change the warming trend. Unilateral action would increase our taxes while the manufacturing would be done overseas. Thus, we should not take action until essentially all countries agreed to act together... which is unlikely to happen soon.

I'm not familiar with all of the arguments presented here. The people at Real Science are not impressed by them, but I haven't found links to rebuttals. However, I find them more interesting than the purloined e-mails.

Here's more on Dr. Muller's study -

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...0,772697.story

Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming
A UC Berkeley team's preliminary findings in a review of temperature data confirm global warming studies.

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

The hearing was called by GOP leaders of the House Science & Technology committee, who have expressed doubts about the integrity of climate science. It was one of several inquiries in recent weeks as the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to curb planet-heating emissions from industrial plants and motor vehicles have come under strenuous attack in Congress.

Muller said his group was surprised by its findings, but he cautioned that the initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined.

The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels, the largest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The $620,000 project is also partly funded by the federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Muller is a senior scientist. Muller said the Koch foundation and other contributors will have no influence over the results, which he plans to submit to peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, which contributed some funding to the Berkeley effort, said Muller's statement to Congress was "honorable" in recognizing that "previous temperature reconstructions basically got it right…. Willingness to revise views in the face of empirical data is the hallmark of the good scientific process."

But conservative critics who had expected Muller's group to demonstrate a bias among climate scientists reacted with disappointment.

Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman who runs the skeptic blog WattsUpWithThat.com, wrote that the Berkeley group is releasing results that are not "fully working and debugged yet.... But, post normal science political theater is like that."

Over the years, Muller has praised Watts' efforts to show that weather station data in official studies are untrustworthy because of the urban heat island effect, which boosts temperature readings in areas that have been encroached on by cities and suburbs.

But leading climatologists said the previous studies accounted for the effect, and the Berkeley analysis is confirming that, Muller acknowledged. "Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming?" he asked in his written testimony. "We've studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no."

Dr. Muller's got a lot of explaining to do to the Crotch Brothers!

More at the link.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm still not quite sure why global warming is a bad thing.

Don't we want to grow more plants and finally colonize Antarctica?

Plus, we can then sail through the North Pole.

And Canada will be warm and welcoming!

Yea, and who needs Florida?!

Originally Posted by playwrite

Yea, and who needs Florida?!

Ever since the 2000 election, I've wondered if we could sell Florida back to Spain.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Couple survives (natural) disaster honeymoon

Heh. I had a trip like that once. The morning I was to leave home, we were woken up at like 3AM by what felt like a horse kick on the side of our bed. Looked out the window to see the sky all orange in the not-so-distant. Turns out a chemical factory like a couple miles from us had blown up.

Two days after I got to Moscow, the VDNKh metro station got bombed (I had spent most of the previous day in and around there -- we were close enough to hear the boom when it went, too). On my last day in Russia, that school hostage thing in Beslan started. Then a stopover in Bangkok (gunmen broke into the city council building in the 24 hours I was there and mowed down a bunch of deputies). Then Indonesia (Australian Embassy attack in Jakarta).

Sometimes the coincidences just keep rolling along.

(I was a little worried coming back to the States whether anyone was going to flag my itinerary about the path of destruction I had left in my wake.)

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

The economist showed an innovative bit of logic. His models proposed that an effort by the US acting alone would not significantly change the warming trend. Unilateral action would increase our taxes while the manufacturing would be done overseas. Thus, we should not take action until essentially all countries agreed to act together... which is unlikely to happen soon.

I do agree with this logic, but IIRC, there are countries that are trying to pass multi-national agreements. Or is that mainly a European thing? I don't see China and India getting on board with a climate change bill that would hamper their economies, but I don't think we should pass anything if they're not willing to. What's the use of rules, if some people don't have to follow them?

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm still not quite sure why global warming is a bad thing.

Don't we want to grow more plants and finally colonize Antarctica?

Plus, we can then sail through the North Pole.

And Canada will be warm and welcoming!

Currently the world's best soils are in the world's best climates. After Climate Change, this will no longer be the case and we will be growing larger crop yields than we are currently (due to the population being larger) on poorer soil.

Whether or not you will be fed may be irrelevant but millions of people in developing nations will starve.

Next time a little discretion would be nice.

Originally Posted by Earl and Mooch

Ever since the 2000 election, I've wondered if we could sell Florida back to Spain.

And Texas and Arizona back to Mexico?

Originally Posted by Rose1992

Whether or not you will be fed may be irrelevant but millions of people in developing nations will starve.

Next time a little discretion would be nice.

I'm pretty sure that they will only starve if we don't send them food.

It's generally a political choice to let people starve in the modern era.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm pretty sure that they will only starve if we don't send them food.

It's generally a political choice to let people starve in the modern era.

Actually, it's an ECONOMIC decision. If it's more profitable to grow coffee, cotton, tea, chocolate, and bananas for consumption by people in the 1st World than to grow staples to feed folks in the 3rd World then people will starve. Essentially, people in the 3rd World starve because we outbid them for land use.

Originally Posted by Odin

Actually, it's an ECONOMIC decision. If it's more profitable to grow coffee, cotton, tea, chocolate, and bananas for consumption by people in the 1st World than to grow staples to feed folks in the 3rd World then people will starve. Essentially, people in the 3rd World starve because we outbid them for land use.

That's the start of it. The US is using land to grow corn for ethanol. China's rising middle class is going to be buying meat while before they were eating primarily plants. It will take much grain to raise the meat. Those that can afford it will eat and drive, while those who can't won't.

The recent wave of unrest in the Middle East and Africa is as much about food prices as about politics. The tyrants haven't suddenly become less scary, the people are becoming more desperate. This is less about democracy and freedom than food.

There is only so much improvement one can get by replacing tyrants with democracy. Sure, to some extent you can get reform and a better distribution of wealth. You can cut back some on cronyism and corruption. There won't be miracles, though. If more agricultural land is used to feed meat animals and grow fuels, supply and demand will drive prices up in the poor countries.

I don't see China stopping their steady improvements in life style. The Communist Party has been giving their people material things in lieu of freedom and democracy. I doubt very much they can stop doing this and continue their monopoly on power.

I also don't see the US changing course either.

Again, this is an ecological problem. Too many people. Too little food. Economic problems lead to security problems, often masked with religious and ethnic hatred.

Originally Posted by Odin

Actually, it's an ECONOMIC decision. If it's more profitable to grow coffee, cotton, tea, chocolate, and bananas for consumption by people in the 1st World than to grow staples to feed folks in the 3rd World then people will starve. Essentially, people in the 3rd World starve because we outbid them for land use.

Economics flow from politics.

We have made the political choice to allow economics to starve people.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Again, this is an ecological problem. Too many people. Too little food. Economic problems lead to security problems, often masked with religious and ethnic hatred.

It's a demographic issue. And it's self-solving in the modern era with massive declines in human fertility rates.

Look to Japan for examples.

And China is going to grow old before it grows rich. It's population is going to peak and then decline. The East is following the West in that resepct.

Originally Posted by annla899

And Texas and Arizona back to Mexico?

Not necessarily.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm still not quite sure why global warming is a bad thing.

Don't we want to grow more plants and finally colonize Antarctica?

Plus, we can then sail through the North Pole.

And Canada will be warm and welcoming!

Alligators in the Ohio, Potomac, and the lower Missouri won't be so attractive. Add to that, the rain systems shift poleward, so places like Los Angeles, Naples, and Athens (Greece) could become deserts. Knowing that places like Boston, London, Hamburg, and St. Petersburg (both the ones in Florida and Russia alike) would be underwater can't be so nice a situation.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

It's a demographic issue. And it's self-solving in the modern era with massive declines in human fertility rates.

Look to Japan for examples.

And China is going to grow old before it grows rich. It's population is going to peak and then decline. The East is following the West in that resepct.

Given advances in medical care and education for women, I do see it possible that population growth might be slowed in a benevolent way eventually. The key word is eventually. Both require that much be done to reduce poverty.

But failed states resulting from food scarcity and prices is happening now in the Middle East and Africa. We haven't got decades of time to watch birth rates slowly taper off.

Not that I'd expect people to look at a problem they don't want to see.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

...I was there and mowed down a bunch of deputies). Then Indonesia (Australian Embassy attack in Jakarta).

Sometimes the coincidences just keep rolling along.

(I was a little worried coming back to the States whether anyone was going to flag my itinerary about the path of destruction I had left in my wake.)

Hopefully this is just some unfortunate phrasing...

Originally Posted by RyanJH

Hopefully this is just some unfortunate phrasing...

Heh. You misquoted me (I wondered how I managed to phrase it the way you quoted...) I said, "gunmen broke into the city council building in the 24 hours I was there and mowed down a bunch of deputies".

Got me to check back upthread, though.

Real Climate writes of An Emerging View on Early Land Use.

The common impression is that man started effecting the climate during the industrial era. If one looks at the evidence, one finds increased greenhouse gasses as far as 7000 years back. Slash and burn agriculture and methane producing rice farming methods are possible explanations. Scientists are starting to look at early land use in an attempt to better figure out what happened.

Not an earth shaking article, but if anyone is interested in a little more depth...