Originally Posted by playwrite

That's an oxymoron.

Full stop.

1) Ad hominem attack, because he can't attack the facts.

2) I can hardly wait for Playdud to explain those facts.

CNN is asking, "Will El Nino 2015 rival the strongest year on record?" The video includes some fairly clear explanations of the El Nino / ENSO weather patterns.

As we are near the peak warm period of the solar cycle, we have two natural forcing factors on top of global warming. This could produce a seriously warm year. The last time this happened was 1998.

Originally Posted by B Butler

...As we are near the peak warm period of the solar cycle, we have two natural forcing factors on top of global warming. This could produce a seriously warm year. The last time this happened was 1998.

...awesome. Maybe the people of kivalina can just take a boat instead oif flying in.

Originally Posted by JDG 66

...that "overwhelming majority" is a pretty cherry-picked group.

It's been shown by many researchers; this is just the latest.

What you may refer to is that in one study, a lot of climate scientists had put out papers whose purpose was not to decide one way or another.

Let me reiterate: "Science" is not the majority conclusion of self-proclaimed scientists. It is a method. The problem with HGW "science" is that whenever it's premises is tested, it comes a crapper. If it's adherents were honest, they'd start changing their premises. The fact that they don't is revealing.

The fact they don't is because the premises don't need changing; they are working out as predicted.

-Hmmm... maybe with thinner ice, they could start taking a boat...

I appoint you to pay for the relocation and/or rebuilding of that town.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's been shown by many researchers...

-"Many" is not 97% or whatever.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

... What you may refer to is that in one study, a lot of climate scientists had put out papers whose purpose was not to decide one way or another...

-Part of the problem the articel points out is the chery-picking inherent in using studies of so-called climate change scientists as opposed to real scientists.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

... I appoint you to pay for the relocation and/or rebuilding of that town.

-No, I propose that the adapt to the supposed change, and perhaps even take advantage of it.

Originally Posted by JDG 66

-"Many" is not 97% or whatever.

NO, I don't know if 97% of the researchers into the percentage of researchers who claim AGW, say that the % is 97 or better.

-Part of the problem the article points out is the chery-picking inherent in using studies of so-called climate change scientists as opposed to real scientists.

As opposed to scientists who don't study climate change, yes.

-No, I propose that they adapt to the supposed change, and perhaps even take advantage of it.

They have to build a whole new town onshore and considerably inland.
And again, I propose that you pay for it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's been shown by many researchers; this is just the latest.

What you may refer to is that in one study, a lot of climate scientists had put out papers whose purpose was not to decide one way or another.

Ah, but don't you know there are people out there whose political and economic values are stronger than their scientific? For such people, the sort of argument you are making here is pretty much irrelevant.

Frustrating, isn't it?

Originally Posted by B Butler

Ah, but don't you know there are people out there whose political and economic values are stronger than their scientific? For such people, the sort of argument you are making here is pretty much irrelevant.

Frustrating, isn't it?

Yes, I believe you call it "values lock"

Still waiting for someone to explain why, if the HGW chicken littles were sincere, that guys like Peter Gleick would have to phony up evidence against their opponents?
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2...ism-failiures/

...the unkindest cut that the environmentalist left has been nursing is a self-inflicted one. The great white whale of the movement has always been the fiction that a self-sustaining “green” economy could be realized if only lawmakers showed the will to rein in and domesticate the wild impulses of capitalism. This was always ever a fiction, and the environmentalist left’s laboratory experiment – the state of California – has unequivocally demonstrated as much.

“California lawmakers from both parties are calling for more stringent oversight of a clean jobs initiative after an Associated Press report found that a fraction of the promised jobs have been created,” the AP revealed. The biggest beneficiaries of the vast sums dedicated to this project have not been green energy producers but politically well-connected “consultants and energy auditors.”

The environmentalist left movement’s fatal conceit is that it is dispassionate, objective, and committed to empiricism, and there is no amount of evidence to the contrary that can shake their faith in that conviction...

http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/...ffle_1397.html

...When confronted with an obviously broken weather station that was reading way too hot, they replaced the faulty sensor — but refused to adjust the bad readings it had already taken. And when dealing with "the pause" in global surface temperatures that is in its 19th year, the agency threw away satellite-sensed sea-surface temperatures, substituting questionable data that showed no pause...

...the National Weather Service told the Capital Weather Gang that there will be no corrections, despite the fact that the disparity suddenly began 19 months ago and varied little once it began. It said correcting for the error wouldn't be "scientifically defensible." Therefore, people can and will cite the May record as evidence for dreaded global warming with impunity. Only a few weather nerds will know the truth...

[And anyone reading this link. This is for you, Eric... ]

...by contrast, NOAA had no problem adjusting the global temperature history. In that case, the method they used guaranteed that a growing warming trend would substitute for "the pause." They reported in Science that they had replaced the pause (which shows up in every analysis of satellite and weather balloon data) with a significant warming trend...

CNN Reports Polar bears lay siege to researchers in the Arctic Sea

Originally Posted by CNN

Five hungry polar bears have surrounded a team of unarmed researchers at a remote outpost in northern Russia.

The bears have settled in the fields outside a weather station on the island of Vaygach in the Arctic Sea, preventing researchers from leaving the building to conduct their work, the World Wide Fund for Nature in Russia said in a statement.

The team, which consists of two meteorologists and an engineer, tried to scare them off with flares, but the bears were undeterred -- and the Russian WWF says the team has no other weapons at its disposal.

I say follow the money trail. Big oil must have promised them fish.

Support the right to arm bears? Scientists?

Originally Posted by B Butler

CNN Reports Polar bears lay siege to researchers in the Arctic Sea



I say follow the money trail. Big oil must have promised them fish.

Support the right to arm bears? Scientists?

The Russians did it. The are bears, aren't they? And goodness knows, the Russians are armed.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The Russians did it. The are bears, aren't they? And goodness knows, the Russians are armed.

I didn't know that anyone was supplying Koch-aine to Russian polar bears.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I didn't know that anyone was supplying Koch-aine to Russian polar bears.

CNN reports that a Salmon spawns on Obama in Alaska.

Originally Posted by CNN

During his historic trip to Alaska, President Barack Obama spent some time fishing at Kanakanak Beach in Dillingham and in a comical moment, a salmon spawned on his shoes.

I'm expecting attack adds suggesting all Democrats are into bestiality and homosexuality.

The most pessimistic climate change scientist has had a sudden change of heart
Johan Rockström, who shocked the world with a bleak prediction in 2009, has had a dramatic change of heart
Tom Bawden Environment Editor @BawdenTom Monday 12 October 2015 16:00
http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...-a6689211.html

The world has a better chance of saving itself from catastrophic global warming now than at any time over the past two decades, according to the scientist behind some of the most alarming predictions ever made for the planet’s future.

Johan Rockström shocked environmentalists in 2009 when he identified nine categories of Nature that were essential for life as we know it, and warned that we had already crossed into dangerous territory on three of them – including climate change.

Rockström, an environmental science professor at Stockholm University and executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, has since transferred a fourth category, deforestation, to his list of “planetary boundaries” in the danger zone, which threaten irreversible, devastating consequences to the planet.

But he has had a dramatic change of heart over global warming, and is more optimistic that the worst of the threat can be contained than he has been since 1992.

The nine threats

In the danger zone

Biodiversity loss: the fewer species in an ecosystem, the less healthy it is
Deforestation
Climate change
Eutrophication: Nitrate/phosphate build-up in water (from fertiliser)

Other risks to life

Ocean acidification
Freshwater consumption
Chemical pollution, such as plastic
Aerosol pollution
Stratospheric ozone depletion

His optimism is founded on the breakneck speed of innovation in wind and solar power in the past two to three years, which means that renewable energy is being deployed on a massive scale and, crucially, at a cost roughly comparable to fossil fuels. Only last week new figures showed that the cost of electricity produced by onshore windfarms in the UK has fallen so much that for the first time it is now cheaper than fossil-fuel energy.

Rapid improvements in energy efficiency are also key, along with a drive to reduce waste and increase the volume of recycled materials used in manufacturing, he says.

These developments have effectively removed the last major impediment to dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, raising the prospect that even though the planetary boundary has been crossed on global warming, the world may be able to cross back again.

“We have a paradox unique to our era. On a scientific basis there is more reason to be nervous than ever before. But at the same time there has never before been so much reason for hope,” Professor Rockström told The Independent on Sunday. “The last time I was as optimistic was in 1992, with the Rio conference .... Then we lost 20 years. Now we’re back on a much more hopeful path,” he said.

Professor Rockström is referring to the United Nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro at which world leaders agreed to limit greenhouse gas emissions to a level that would prevent dangerous climate change and set up a framework to do this.

Each year, 192 officials from around the world attend such a summit, often with disappointing results. This year’s event in Paris in December is billed as the most important ever, because world leaders have pledged to agree emissions cuts and other actions that will put the world on a pathway that will eventually limit global warming to 2C. In advance, countries have said how much they are prepared to cut emissions by 2030. While these cuts in themselves fall short of what is needed, the professor is hopeful a more comprehensive deal, involving further cuts beyond 2030, can be struck in Paris – meaning the summit will achieve its goal.

He says the situation regarding climate change is similar to that facing the stratospheric ozone layer, which protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, towards the end of last century. This was being so badly depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in fridges and aerosols that the world had crossed “planetary boundaries”, threatening to dramatically increase cases of skin cancer. Then a cheaper alternative to CFCs was invented, the 1987 Montreal Protocol banned CFC use and the ozone layer recovered.

But Professor Rockström warns:“The negatives remain. The world’s coral reefs are so worryingly close to collapse, while the Arctic and Antarctic are deteriorating so rapidly they could hit tipping points that are irreversible ... it’s now or never towards tipping the world to a very costly, very devastating future, versus tipping ourselves towards a sustainable future.

“I take a sober, optimistic view.”

Originally Posted by B Butler

CNN reports that a Salmon spawns on Obama in Alaska.

Uh.... After viewing, that is "Salmon cums on Obama for CNN pr0n take away."

I'm expecting attack adds suggesting all Democrats are into bestiality and homosexuality.

Or for making bad pr0n.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The Russians did it. The are bears, aren't they? And goodness knows, the Russians are armed.

Russia is symbolized by the bear, just as the US is symbolized by the eagle. China is symbolized by the dragon.Canada is symbolized by the beaver, and Mexico is symbolized by the coyote. With all of that said, I just think the polar bears are looking for a quick snack.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Russia is symbolized by the bear, just as the US is symbolized by the eagle. China is symbolized by the dragon.Canada is symbolized by the beaver, and Mexico is symbolized by the coyote. With all of that said, I just think the polar bears are looking for a quick snack.

Given the choices, I guess I'm in favor of beaver.

Unmitigated climate change is likely to reduce the income of an average person on Earth by roughly 23 percent in 2100, according to estimates contained in research published today in the journal Nature that is co-authored by two University of California, Berkeley professors.

The findings indicate climate change will widen global inequality, perhaps dramatically, because warming is good for cold countries, which tend to be richer, and more harmful for hot countries, which tend to be poorer. In the researchers’ benchmark estimate, climate change will reduce average income in the poorest 40 percent of countries by 75 percent in 2100, while the richest 20 percent may experience slight gains.

http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/10/21/...lobal-economy/

Since Dan pointed me in the direction of All in the Family, I found Archie Bunker's enlightened views on energy conservation:

And yet, Archie is still right.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

And yet, Archie is still right.

Yeah. Hadn't seen that one in a while. Pretty amazing.
That show did a good job of mocking both liberals and conservatives.

Originally Posted by nihilist moron

Yeah. Hadn't seen that one in a while. Pretty amazing.
That show did a good job of mocking both liberals and conservatives.

Indeed, All in the Family is one my favorites. I've only seen it in syndication though due to the age naturally. The funny thing is most of the topics discussed in it are still current. I don't know how long that will last though.

ETA: One of my older (in age) comrades and I like to drink and sing a perverted version of the theme song to the show. We changed the lyrics extensively.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

Indeed, All in the Family is one my favorites. I've only seen it in syndication though due to the age naturally. The funny thing is most of the topics discussed in it are still current. I don't know how long that will last though.

I watched it as a kid with my parents. Right after they watched 60 Minutes and my sister and I watched The Wonderful World of Disney.
Archie was more "in your face" than any Gen Xer. Maybe we got it from him.

I almost never comment on this topic (because it bores me).

Here I break with convention for a few brief moments.

I see three camps, two of them vocal and nearly insane, one of them quiet and focused.

One camp is, for lack of a better term, rabid Gaia worshippers (like I used to be) who were indoctrinated into a particular view of ecological / environmental issues during the 70s and 80s. This camp subscribes to writings of people like Abbey, Brower, Callenbach, etc, etc. A few of the threads of this line of thought get into things like "Deep Ecology" and at a more radical branch, "Earth First!."

I know much about the above, because, as noted, I used to be one of that camp. It is totally a 2T quasi-religious belief system with a healthy component of Druid/Wicca mentality plus a number of other aspects. To be fair, I still pull the odd item from this particular tool box, however, maturation and long years of careful observation convinced me that there is a massive amount of anti-scientific thinking and irrationality included in this framework.

The other obnoxious camp are what I term skeptics for the sake of being skeptics. These are the types who simply like to argue and, when also of an extreme Libertarian bent, would view any and all environmental and ecological concerns as Communist plots to undo the Free Market and liberty. This second camp is actually surprisingly varied. Some in it even go so far as to question the radiative properties of gases and other basic science. They give true skepticism a bad name, and are just as irrational and anti-scientific as the first camp I mentioned. Interestingly, in spite of claims to the contrary by the first camp, this second camp is not actually taking money from big oil or part of any sort of big oil conspiracy. Most members of this second camp are far too looney to work at or be trusted by the energy conglomerate monopolists (who actually make tons of money even from green energy!).

Which brings me to the third camp of true scientists. True scientists may or many not be skeptical of some of the more hysterical and apocalyptic claims made by the first camp. This third camp is a diverse group but has one thing in common, head over heart. We have a goal of understanding and ongoing appropriate, scientifically justified environmental regulations. We are realists about the big picture. For example, the interglacial will end. It is possible that human induced climate change may slightly mitigate (or God forbid, the bad alternative, expedite) its end, but it will end. Between now and when it ends, we can do many appropriate things as part of our ongoing quest to balance human needs (and even some human wants) against human environmental impact.

Thanks for listening.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

I almost never comment on this topic (because it bores me).

Here I break with convention for a few brief moments.

I see three camps, two of them vocal and nearly insane, one of them quiet and focused.

One camp is, for lack of a better term, rabid Gaia worshippers (like I used to be) who were indoctrinated into a particular view of ecological / environmental issues during the 70s and 80s. This camp subscribes to writings of people like Abbey, Brower, Callenbach, etc, etc. A few of the threads of this line of thought get into things like "Deep Ecology" and at a more radical branch, "Earth First!."

I know much about the above, because, as noted, I used to be one of that camp. It is totally a 2T quasi-religious belief system with a healthy component of Druid/Wicca mentality plus a number of other aspects. To be fair, I still pull the odd item from this particular tool box, however, maturation and long years of careful observation convinced me that there is a massive amount of anti-scientific thinking and irrationality included in this framework.

If one wants to do promote ecology, then one is wise to know the science -- chemistry, physics, mathematics, and biology... and know the language of Big Business (economics, accounting, finance, etc.) Reform of how we use resources will be far easier if Green advocates don't rely entirely upon nature-worship. The Mammon-worshipers who see a tree and see only lumber have shown their ability to find willing takers of campaign funds.

The time for pushing the romantic notion that Nature is more magnificent than a McMansion is over.

The other obnoxious camp are what I term skeptics for the sake of being skeptics. These are the types who simply like to argue and, when also of an extreme Libertarian bent, would view any and all environmental and ecological concerns as Communist plots to undo the Free Market and liberty. This second camp is actually surprisingly varied. Some in it even go so far as to question the radiative properties of gases and other basic science. They give true skepticism a bad name, and are just as irrational and anti-scientific as the first camp I mentioned. Interestingly, in spite of claims to the contrary by the first camp, this second camp is not actually taking money from big oil or part of any sort of big oil conspiracy. Most members of this second camp are far too looney to work at or be trusted by the energy conglomerate monopolists (who actually make tons of money even from green energy!).

Those are the opposite of the "romantic" ecologists. They would gladly kiss up to Big Business. But even at that, the interests of Big Oil and the coal barons can be very different. Exxon-Mobil would be delighted to grow its own algae for transformation into motor fuels and oil. The coal business is intent upon promoting only one form of energy whatever the environmental and human cost.

Which brings me to the third camp of true scientists. True scientists may or many not be skeptical of some of the more hysterical and apocalyptic claims made by the first camp. This third camp is a diverse group but has one thing in common, head over heart. We have a goal of understanding and ongoing appropriate, scientifically justified environmental regulations. We are realists about the big picture. For example, the interglacial will end. It is possible that human induced climate change may slightly mitigate (or God forbid, the bad alternative, expedite) its end, but it will end. Between now and when it ends, we can do many appropriate things as part of our ongoing quest to balance human needs (and even some human wants) against human environmental impact.

Irrationality fails. Human nature is more consistent over time than inconsistent. Science and accounting realities are real.