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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 02:06 pm
Time magazine—a small, ecologically-aware enterprise published out of a tiny mud hut and part of a company noted for its microscopic environmental impact—warns of the Great Dooming:
No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth.
Never mind what you’ve heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.
From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us.
It might be interesting to calculate the resources consumed to produce and distribute this hysterical example of enviropanic—and the environmental destruction caused by environmentalists rushing to buy it.
- I’m gonna sing the Doom Song! /gir
(….okay, maybe I should just go to sleep before I do start typing the lyrics and Andrea smites me.)
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2006 03 27 at 02:24 PM • permalink
- Gaaaw-lee! What with all them there “tipping points” and “feedback loops”, I reckon we’uns is jest plain done fer. I mean, ‘taint like the earth has any kind of self-regulatin’ capacity, or individuals and companies have tried to do anythang about it at all. And since 110% of scientists has crossed their hearts and swored it’s all true – whooooee! – better jest pack maw and the kids in the camper and head for high ground.
- When I was in college in the 70s, the imminent threat was global cooling. Professors earnestly warned that just a couple of degree (Fahrenheit) drop in average temperature would drastically reduce the growing season for millions of acres of cropland in Canada, Russia and the United States resulting in mass starvation.
I have gained 35 pounds since this prediction.
Posted by perfectsense on 2006 03 27 at 02:29 PM • permalink
- So where the bloody hell are you?
I just can’t let it go,
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 03 27 at 02:51 PM • permalink
Or Mars, where not quite enough atmosphere has resulted in a wind-blown frozen desert.
Mars has global warming: it is coming out of an ice age. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html
Unless of course the rovers motoring about on Mars has caused it.
- I can tell you that Time Magazine is consuming less environmental production mojo than it used to. Have you seen it lately? It looks like a glossy insert in the Sunday paper, and has about the same content. Years ago, it was a fairly thick magazine with fairly interesting news. Man, those were the days.
- Who does Time seek to convince? The only people still reading it already are true believers.
Do you suppose 1300 feet above sea level in eastern California will be enough? Should we get to higher ground? Should we pull back to Nevada? Utah? Colorado? Such a dilemma.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 27 at 03:33 PM • permalink
- Calls for self help, the spirit of true grit. Reminds me of the story of the days when the Lone Star State was a Nation. The enviormentalists of those days were convinced that the Polar Cap was melting (as they are now) and that the entire Earth would be under 700 feet of water in 10 days. They decided to announce the news through the three great religions (at that time)of the world. The Pope sent the message to the faithful that there would be special masses, dispensations, confessionals, etc., etc, and to announce that we would all be soon at the right hand of our Lord Jesus, Amen. Billy Sunday shouted “REPENT Sinners, or you’ll suffer then burning torures of Hell, etc, etc. The Jews built an arc. But Texas Bob heard the news and got on his bull horn and shouted,“TEXANS, YOU HAVE 10 DAYS TO LEARN HOW TO LIVE UNDER 700 FEET OF WATER!!!!”
The mayors of more than 200 cities have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging, among other things, that they will meet the Kyoto goal of reducing greenhouse emissions in their own cities to 1990 levels by 2012. Nine northeastern states have established the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for the purpose of developing a program to cap greenhouse gasses.
I like how the northeast is going to show the rest of the US how things are done. No doubt they will apply for Federal tax revenue to pay for this “Initiative”….whether it works or not.
Not that I have a problem with all these folks doing what they can. More power to them, says I. Just don’t send me a bill.
BTW—when might we expect the northeast to curtail their use of heating oil in the winter by building nuclear power plants?
[crickets chirping]
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 27 at 04:01 PM • permalink
- PS: If Time Magazine is so concerned about the environment, they should start printing their publication on softer, non-glossy paper. Then people could use it as toilet paper. The stuff they use now can hardly used as a fire starter, let alone ass wipe.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 27 at 04:03 PM • permalink
- PPS: thnnnn, Ender, et al: This is not a good example of consensus. It’s an example of doom mongering.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 27 at 04:04 PM • permalink
- In 1990, David Brooks quoted Charles Alexander as saying, “As the science editor of Time [magazine], I would freely admit that on this issue [the environment] we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.” And he was proud of that.
Well, 16 years on and I guess we’re that much closer to being doomed.
Posted by Monroe Doctrine on 2006 03 27 at 04:11 PM • permalink
- Chicken Little-ism is the environmentalist stock in trade and has been for over three decades.
In 1972 the Club of Rome predicted world-wide catastrophe based on increasing scarcity of nonrenewable natural resources, increasing environmental degradation, and continuing population growth. So far the trend has actually been the opposite—greater resource availability at lower prices, a cleaner environment in developed nations, and declining population growth accompanied by a decrease in starvation.
Alvin Toffler’s best-selling 1970 book Future Shock predicted global mass starvation, pollution, and poverty by the year 2000.
Color me skeptical of environmental activists bearing predictions of Armageddon.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 03 27 at 04:11 PM • permalink
- If only they had have made a movie about this sort of rapid climate change before the last US election Kerry might have won.
Oh hang on….
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2006 03 27 at 04:19 PM • permalink
If only they had have made a movie about this sort of rapid climate change before the last US election Kerry might have won.
It turns out that the whole premise for the movie was wrong. It just seemed cold to Dennis Quaid because he had no fat.
- If I give up my Hummer in theory, will you give up the World Cup in practice?Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 03 27 at 05:33 PM • permalink
- Better start building that Ark then.
Out of enviro-friendly non-bleached plantation timber of course.
Posted by Jay Santos on 2006 03 27 at 05:35 PM • permalink
- There is now a compelling case for someone to give me some money so I can fly to some conference to discuss this – preferably in the zone that is likely to be most affected, roughly the Hawaii/Tahiti region.Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 27 at 05:44 PM • permalink
- TIME spelled in reverse is EMIT. I have no damn idea where I’m going with this, or what my line of thought is.
Maybe some good soul can help.
I just thought I’d toss it out there, as no one else has. I mean it’s not like whatever the hell one calls the thing that spells the same friggin word backword…or whatever. Well in a way it does, because…Ahhhh, screw it. Done…:).
- Hasn’t anyone told these people about the incipient change in the earth’s magnetic fields?
I’m not sure what changes to look for as the magnetic field is shifting, or what it will be like once it’s shifted (I mean, will we have to change the compassi’s, or switch the names around so we’re still talking about the same direction). But you can bet things might possibly change and that won’t be a good thing on its face. So, no matter what happens, I think we ought to all be running around waving our arms frantically about the magnetic shift stuff, instead of greenhouse stuff.
P.S. And don’t be trying to shift the focus with that asteroid hitting the earth red herring. If that happens, that’s obviously an act of some ticked off god teaching us a lesson about hubris. We can’t blame that on George Bush.
- It’s about selling magazines. The only people buying magazines are morons, so that’s who they write for.
The “serious news’’ hype of course deserves ridicule, but mostly their audience deserves ridicule for being their audience in the first place.
The news in general says : “You are serious people because you watch serious soap opera.’‘
The damage done is that moronism takes over the editing of all public debate, less the space blogs are retaking.
You can’t assume they’ll go out of business, unfortunately. Look at what’s available at supermarket checkout lines. The world is full of these readers
- “We can’t blame that on George Bush.”
Sure we can! 😉
Posted by Old Grouch on 2006 03 27 at 07:40 PM • permalink
- In other news –
wanker greeniesenvironmentalists are protesting the release of the film Ice Age 2 for depicting unrealistic themes to impressionable children.It is not the idea of talking mammoths or friendly banter between herbivores and carnivores which has greens spitting tofu, but the fact the film is set in an Ice Age
Spokesman Al Gore said the earth had been the same temperature for billions of years and ice ages were impossible without evil industrial humans interfering with the climate.
“This film explicitly brainwashes children that climate can change naturally, which is just ludicrous,” Gore said.
However, the former vice president, loser presidential nominee and inventor of the solar system said the ice age depicted in the film could be a glimpse of things to come.
“Global warming is a great threat which will cause the planet to sizzle or maybe even freeze. It is that powerfully mysterious and the only way to stop it is to tell other people to stop producing energy by flying around the world in private jets and owning houses in several locations so we don’t use the resources of just one city.”
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 03 27 at 07:49 PM • permalink
I like how the northeast is going to show the rest of the US how things are done. No doubt they will apply for Federal tax revenue to pay for this “Initiative”….whether it works or not.
You are being overly cynical. I’m sure that the northeast’s policy of declining their industrial production and moving large parts of their populations to southern and western states is already reducing their levels of greenhouse gas emissions…
TIME spelled in reverse is EMIT. I have no damn idea where I’m going with this, or what my line of thought is.
Maybe some good soul can help.
I’m in no position to judge the virtue (or lack of same) of my own soul, but maybe you were weighing the possible use of “vomit” vs “emesis”.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 27 at 08:27 PM • permalink
- #32 RebeccaH: Now you see! That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about. It never would have dawned on me to think about the problems birds might have. This just points up the great, dire, and immediate need for everybody to put their heads together and get a government grant. One thousand ignorant heads are better than one ignorant head…er, wait.
Anyway, I think it is possible that with a magnetic shift, hell might freeze over and pigs might fly. Is anybody giving a thought to the pigs? To the possibility of migrating pigs?
- hmmmmm interesting. I often wonder from the tone of the topic ie “
the great dooming
” that there’s an air of denial about environmental issues in this blog. It’s not a one-off it’s a bit of a regular theme here.
If someone says the climate is changing, the problem is urgent, and it’s getting worse – and are able to back it up with research, are they, by definition a rabid leftist greeny with poor personal hygiene?
Sure Time mag prints a LOT of paper. They also have a huge reader base from people who actually want to read informed and well researched news.
I can’t compete with Tim or others in the media industry in creatively deriding Time mag – I simply do not have the industry based experience.
Speaking as a lay person, a consumer of media, and very occasional Time reader, is there not also cause for concern to go with the derision?
Peace
Days
- #36 “If someone says the climate is changing, the problem is urgent, and it’s getting worse – and are able to back it up with research, are they, by definition a rabid leftist greeny with poor personal hygiene?”
I agree, Daysy, that kind of stereotyping is wrong.
Some of us are everyday people who are trying to get some enviro-dollars so we can keep up with the SUV repayments.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 27 at 10:22 PM • permalink
- So… confused birds?
Upside… those effing pigeons get off my property.
Downside… they’re replaced with albatrosses…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 27 at 10:27 PM • permalink
If someone says the climate is changing, the problem is urgent, and it’s getting worse – and are able to back it up with research, are they, by definition a rabid leftist greeny with poor personal hygiene?
No, but when there’s as much good research saying otherwise, and quite compelling evidence that any warming would either be harmless or beneficial, and people cling to the doom claims regardless, they shift from doing science to doing politics.
When there’s a consistent pattern of claims of imminent doom—for over three decades—with shifting claims of cause, effect, and mechanism, yet the proposed solutions are always the same, it reinforces the idea that the issue is politics, not science.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 03 27 at 10:39 PM • permalink
- #36 So this is what we get from the “occassional reader” of Time: This mag provides “informed and well researched news”. Now that’s a knee slapper. So well researched that even Sharon won a libel suite against this rag. I don’t know how an occassional reader could come to such a hilarious conclusion. I knew the local Time reporter when I was a visiting professor to the University of Buenos Aires in 1964: at that time Ilia was President. General Ongania performed a coup d’etat. The faculty met to protest the coup. The meeting was invaded by Ongania’s military thugs and the faculty present were beaten mercilessly. (I was there.) The Time reporter covered the story. When I read the magazine the following month it had a glowing portrait of Ongania. I couldn’t believe it, not a word about the beatings. (I was then under the false impression that this was a reliable journal.) I asked my friend the reporter about it. Oh, he had sent in the story, he did, but, he told me, the editors had their own adgenda and would often not print what he sent or twist his reports so that they were generally unrecognizable. I have followed the stories in Time which cover events I have observed personally, and find the practice continues. (The reporter quit soon thereafter since he was a man of integrity. He is now a retired successful professional and does not read Time.)
No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill…
…but hey, Time magazine will do it anyway.
After all, no one can say exactly what it looks like when an editorial room is chock full of intellectually dishonest, scientifically ignorant, shrill circle-jerkers, but it probably looks a lot like Time’s.
- #36If someone says the climate is changing, the problem is urgent, and it’s getting worse – and are able to back it up with research, are they, by definition a rabid leftist greeny with poor personal hygiene? No, if your premise is correct that it’s backed up by scientific research and if the “someone” who says it” has a history of scientific integrity. With all due respect, either you are not a scientist or you are but have not evaluated the scientific evidence. In either case, you don’t know what you’re talking about. There is plenty on the web which deals with the climate change theories, some of it quite technical, and a good deal written by scholars who know what they are talking about. There is a lot written by kooks, but I’m sure you can tell the difference. Don’t be fooled by titles. The recent scandal about stem cell research should warn you against that mistake. And learn from Einstein. The question Einstein was asked was whether a Noble Prize winner would lie. The question was asked with respect to Heisenberg (a Noble Prize winner) and as to whether he could be lying (after his capture by the British) in denying that he had worked diligently on the Nazi A-bomb. I wonder what Einstein could have said. Look it up and the word agenda. (OOPs, this last word spelled incorrectly in 41, sorry.)
When there’s a consistent pattern of claims of imminent doom—for over three decades—with shifting claims of cause, effect, and mechanism, yet the proposed solutions are always the same, it reinforces the idea that the issue is politics, not science.
Don’t forget the cult, Rob. The Cult Of Mother Gaia™, against whom no one must dissent. And the Cult Of Mother Gaia™ is always right. If you don’t believe me, just ask any ardent follower.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 27 at 11:28 PM • permalink
- #36 MrDays
I think part of the reason for the flippant attitude toward this bruited crisis is that, if you’ve been around for a while, you’ve heard all this sort of thing many times before. Swine flu was going to kill us all, acid rain would destroy the lakes, nuclear war was inevitable and imminent, we’re running out of all resources, we’re being feminised by artificial hormones, we’re going to starve to death by 1980, etc. ad nauseam. It’s a problem partly of the boy who cried wolf. It’s particularly amusing that we moved straight from the approaching ice age scare (see this April 1975 New Scientist article) to the global warming scare.
For this and many other reasons it just seems that there’s something other than a real concern for our future well-being that is motivating these campaigns. Therefore they are mocked.
- #41 Disappointing to have you carry on in such a self-important highbrow fashion.
I clearly stated my position of knowledge. I’m not in the media industry. I’m one of those poor suckers who goes on what’s available, and attempt to filter the information from the pap.
I don’t know how an occassional reader could come to such a hilarious conclusion.
Ummmm…. this is just a wild guess… Because I didn’t have the good fortune as your good self to personally research and verify the stories – as they developed – before they were published.
I now know more about the media, and I guess about the supposed “Real News” magazines such as Time. I had previously given them more credit than say… the Murchoch and Fairfax press. The advice I’m receiving here is to consider it from view of greater cynicism.
I’ve now got some good answers to my questions, but the bitterness of “stats” leaves me wondering if his own personal view is tainted with the misfortune of his own experiences. This would be that extra cynicism at work.
- SteveGW – yes, but that was 31 years ago. A lot can happen climatically in such a lengthy period. We were probably at the cusp of a “tipping point” where a small perturbation has seen us fall catastrophically (a la Thom) to the other extreme. Or something. It’s not linear you know.
Nothing unusual here. I’ve also gone grey in the same period.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 03 28 at 12:25 AM • permalink
- Mr. Days,
I am fifty-eight years old.
When I was very young, the Big Problem facing the world was that the beethree-six, which lumbers and grumbles, was going to turn our bones to jelly and strike us all dead. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was for the United States to give up its wealth, don sackcloth and ashes, and hand over its governance to the One True Way (in the shape of Socialism, as exemplified by the Soviet Union) in sincere apology for error.
When I was a bit older, the Big Problem facing the World was that the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was going to homogenize the planet into ignorant drugged consumers at the sway of the MegaCorps like AT&T. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was for the United States to give up its wealth, don sackcloth and ashes, and hand over its governance to the One True Way (in the shape of Socialism, as exemplified by the Soviet Union) in sincere apology for error.
A little while later, the Big Problem was that pollution was going to kill all the intestinal flora and we were all going to die gasping, unable to digest soapsuds. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [etc].
Then there was Starvation. The Big Problem was the Population Bomb, which was going to eat up all the food like locust plagues in Egypt. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [Alt-E P]
Somewhat later, the Big Problem was War, specifically American wars of aggrandizement against the Noble Peasants Rising Against Their Capitalist Exploiters. And since they were obviously going to win anyway, the Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [ibid]
More or less contemporaneously with the last Big Problem, the Other Big Problem was the Ice Age, absolutely proven by the Latest Scientific Research! We were all going to freeze to death. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [yadayada…]
A variant on that one was Nuclear Winter. When the Soviet Union invaded Europe, as was its natural right and destiny to bring Socialism to the Masses, the American Nuclear Response was going to cast a pall over the Sun that would end all life on Earth. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [yawn. again.]
Somewhat later, the Big Problem became that the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (from above) was a dithering incompetent, and we were all going to go broke and have to learn Japanese to beg our daily crust. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [tum tum tee tum….]
Then Oil reared its ugly head. The Big Problem was that the oil was going to run out, because Americans (the only ones in the world who use the stuff, of course) were going to suck it all up, and we couldn’t even go down in flames because there’d be nothing to burn. The Only Possible Solution to the Big Problem was [any guesses?]
About then, of course, we lost the Soviet Union (sob!) Never mind. There are plenty of volunteers for Americans to surrender their wealth to, simply in the interest of the Good of the World’s Children, of course.
I think you may have caught my drift. Many of the Big Problems mentioned above were, and are, real problems needing solution. But we have learned to be a little suspicious with the Universal Solution to All Big Problems. It’s just a trifle, whatsisconcept, facile, y’know?
There is, as noted above, global warming on Mars. Warming has been noted in instrument readings of Pluto, and there are tantalizing hints of increased temperatures in the cloud tops of the gas-giant planets. Closer to home, it’s at least interesting that the occupation dates of the Chaco Canyon culture fit suspiciously closely with the dates of the Medieval Climatic Optimum; eleventh-century farmhouses are melting out of the glaciers of Greenland; and nobody yet has answered a question I first posed in 2001: what was sea level in the Bay of Bengal in the year one thousand?
Call back when some climate model, somewhere, can get today’s conditions from the last two centuries’ data, instead of ice balls or 200C deserts. In the meantime, if you have some nice coastal property you’re thinking of giving up in fear of rising sea level, I’ll be glad to take it off your hands. Strictly in a spirit of generosity, of course, and I have some mesquite-infested Texas scrubland to offer in trade, well away from the rising waters. Let me know.
Regards,
Ric
[sorry, Andrea. Got carried away]
- RE #31, sorry, jic, I missed your response…..never thought about that. Eventually, the northeast will be one huge wilderness area, with isolated conclaves for the rich and famous.
Sounds like a bunch of bona fide lefties to me.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 28 at 12:31 AM • permalink
- Q. What’s the difference between Time Magazine and Weekly World News?
A. About two bucks a copy and one of them used to have a reputation…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 28 at 12:46 AM • permalink
- If someone says the climate is changing, the problem is urgent, and it’s getting worse – and are able to back it up with research, are they, by definition a rabid leftist greeny with poor personal hygiene?
As usual for enviro-mongers, you’re starting with the unquestioned a priori assumption that climate change is a “problem”. You’ll find that most people here reject that notion. Thanks for playing though, you’re not at all sounding like every single other concerned person who has posted here because they were oh-so-confused about why we’re not just falling in line with the “consensus”.
- Eventually, the northeast will be one huge wilderness area, with isolated conclaves for the rich and famous.
And in an ironic twist, the 2040 equivalent of the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste depository project will be targetting some place in the Northeast, because that will be where it’s furthest away from people. 🙂
- #50 WhaleSpinor
I don’t doubt that most of the relationships that are important in modelling climate are non-linear. I don’t doubt either that it is possible that some of those relationships are such that they may be described by one of Thom’s ‘catastrophes’. If that were the case then a gradual change in some climate parameters could lead to a sudden leap in some dependent climatic value. All very true, but that is irrelevant to the sudden change from cold-scare to heat-scare. Both those scares claim that there are definite, monotone, accelerating(?) trends in the climate data that indicate that disaster will come upon us – and usually not in a mathematically ‘catastrophic’ fashion. A role for catastrophe theory is more likely to be found in some projected mathematical description of the sociology of doom-saying.
- #13 stats. You’ve evidently been misled. What I was shouting through the bullhorn that glorious day was, “DON’T MISS OUT ON THE REAL ESTATE DEAL OF A LIFETIME! SOON TO BE BEACH FRONT PROPERTY GOING AT BARGAIN BASEMENT PRICES!” I was able to unload several hundred acres of high plains desert to the likes of LeftyManateeBoy and Drefuze Sheen. Ah, those were the days…
- On statistics and the significance thereof:
“From a practical standpoint, however, it may be preferable to acknowledge that the concept of statistical significance is meaningless when discussing poorly understood systems.”
- Folks, getting back to reversing magnetiuc fields (thanks saltydog, RebeccaH), one of my favouite hobby horses (Oh, you’ve noticed?)
One of the objects of the International Stop Continental Drift Society (you’ll see us between The International Connoisseurs of Green and Red Chile and The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Mushrooms) is to stop magnetic pole drift and ultimately, magnetic reversals altogether.
As its been pointed out, a reversal of the magnetic poles will lead to birds flying backwards AND upside down, and compasses becoming useless due to ‘North’ actually being ‘South’. That’s why we are also inventing the digital compass – just to be sure.
Anyway, send me your cheque for $20 to help stop the continents drifting and with any change left over, we’ll fix up
global warmingclimate change.Promise.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 28 at 02:59 AM • permalink
- Would reversing the magnetic poles would make generators reverse their polarity, turning them into motors? Conversely, would all motors become generators, drawing energy from the natural magnetic field?
Wow, talk about reversing entropy……. ;-P
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 28 at 03:51 AM • permalink
And in an ironic twist, the 2040 equivalent of the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste depository project will be targetting some place in the Northeast, because that will be where it’s furthest away from people. 🙂
Yeah, but no windmill farms to destroy the scenic outlook, you hear me!!!! 8^D
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 28 at 03:52 AM • permalink
- SteveGW
That 1975 Newsweek article has to be a put-on. It’s too perfect. I mean – the references to near unanimity of scientists, the foretelling of disaster just around the corner and the despair that governments won’t take the right measures etc the parallels with today’s newspaper articles on precisely the opposite (hypothesised) problem are too numerous to describe.
Go on admit it – you wrote it didn’t you
(as far as i’m aware there is a sarcasm marker for internet use but not a facetious marker)
- No one can say exactly what it looks like when a magazine takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Time.
Never mind what you’ve heard about global circulation slumps as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.
From factual ignorance, to bad journalism, to pseudo-science, to populist alarmism, the publishing nightmare seems to be crashing around us.
- I will be converted when the first scientist or greenie starts buying high ground inland. I they are so sure what is stopping them??Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 03 28 at 05:24 AM • permalink
- No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. … well stick a bloody big rectal thermometer in Australia, commonly called the arsehole of the world and the universe, and take the temperature. What, no change? Methinks the earth is taking a sickie even though it aint sick.
Be back on the weekend.
- Texas Bob
Looks like the arsehole of the world and the universe has moved half a buttock left towards South Africa … maybe there’s a bit of global warming happening in Antarctica? …
- # 65 stevo
Be back on the weekend.… so you were just passing through, then?
Sorry stevo, couldn’t resist.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 28 at 06:30 AM • permalink
Closer to home, it’s at least interesting that the occupation dates of the Chaco Canyon culture fit suspiciously closely with the dates of the Medieval Climatic Optimum…
Ric, I won’t once more trot out the three other pre-Columbian cultures which peaked at times corresponding to warm periods.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 03 28 at 08:25 AM • permalink
- #48 I’m sooooo sorry I disappointed you. I dare not advise someone as astute as you are who has such an appreciation for the veracity of Time magazine, so I can only suggest you stop “psy-clogizing” people you never met and (1) make comments relevant to the post your addressing(2) respond with coherence (3) give up on sarcasm, you’re not good at it, in my humble view (4) you might make some effort to get the facts from some reliable sources rather than try to “filter them from the pap” (5) you might try to learn from past experience (see #51). (Or am addressing LLL? In which case I take back my humble suggestions)
- #57 Texas Bob: My real estate agent heard your call and almost persuaded me get in on that opportunity of a lifetime, before global cooling started (she read it would in Time-out-o’-mind, Volume -XXXXII, page XL) and turned all that beach front property into one facing the largest ice-rink in the world. I now have a new agent.
- Better was Time when backward ran its sentences that reeled the mind.Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 03 28 at 10:11 AM • permalink
- #51 gives an excellent summary, but let’s add a little more to the list of false alarms and scientific frauds concocted by junk science entrepreneurs and propogandized by rags like Time (even in the days of Malthus):
1. Malthus (1766- 1834): Well-known apostle of over population predicted widespread famine, wars, civilization melt-down etc. due to too much screwing. The fault with his crystal ball, as all all alarmists over the centuries, is a failure of scientific knowledge and prudence and facts and the inability to predict advances in technology, including food production.
2. Skip all the many chicken-littles up to 1968. The Club of Rome became the first (to my knowledge) to make the ALARM a profit making enterprise featuring Junk Science. In 1972 published a book which sold 30,000,000 copies (good bit of change that) and predicted the end of economic growth and the exhaustion of oil fields by 1990. Even with Sadass Hussein’s help, we are far from that stage.
3. Prof. Forrester of M.I.T. Developed something called “System Dynamics” which the Club of Rome and his assistant professors used to predict the end of energy supplies by 1990, and which helped this M.I.T. group to gather considerable financial support from many sources. We no longer hear about System Dynamics, which was nothing more than a computer model based on hot air.
I need no go further as #57 contain other examples, far from exhaustive. But here are just two other examples of fraud which have cost millions of dollars and considerable pain to individuals,1. The World Health Organization started a program in 1971 called “Health for All by the Year 2000”. The program was to eschew modern medical methodologies by training local members of a village to serve as medical practitioners, often using the methods of medicine men. This program was meant to copy China’s program of “village doctors”. We know how this communist method of extreme socialist medicine turned out. The WHO program was attempted all over Africa, the Phillippines, South and Central America at the cost of millions upon millions. We hear no more about it, since it flubbed completely. (As a side remark, in discussing this program with the WHO representative from Zimbabwe, he remarked that no more money should be spent by the west on medical research on things like cancer since it only benefitted the western rich, the money should be spent on the WHO programs such as “Health for All…” I noted that the Mugabes and the Saudi princes and the Arafats rush to the West for medical attention and asked where they would go if all western advances stopped. No answer.)
2. Numerous medical frauds, the latest recently, a major fraud in stem cell research committed by a Dr. Huang of South Korea with the compliance of USA investigators. The researches garnered loads of grant money and honors (including from the UN). (See Wall Street Journal, Section B, front page, 12/16/05.) To show the sleazy nature of the grant grasping community, here is an example from that WSJ story on a major fraud in stem-cell research “Dr. Schatten [Professor U. of Pittsburgh,] is in an uncomfortable position. Though he was listed as a senior author of the [fraudulent] paper , he has said he did little more than provide advice and edit the manuscript.” Imagine, he lends his name to a paper in which he has had no scientific input and the veracity of which he has no idea. And why? Does “money grasping” answer the question? The answer is the affirmative (see same WSJ story). In view of the fraud, one might demand a stricter accounting be made by these researcher as to their scientific findings. No, no, not so, according to these grubbers. The solution is more U.S. funding. The WSJ reports: “In a statement, the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, a lobbying group backed by U.S. Universities and disease advocacy organizations, said “this [the fraud] is just another reason that this field of research should be conducted in the U.S.” under government supervision.” With U.S. taxpayer money, no doubt, supervised by Dr. Schatten.
- Still go with the not very popular, or widely discussed, theory that we’re actually still coming out of the last great Ice Age, which explains glaciers retreating, Arctic ice melting and breaking up, average temperatures slowly rising.
Ever since discovering the supreme knowledge datbases of Stats and Texas Bob a few weeks back I’ve stopped reading all magazines, newspapers and online media resources. From now on I will only believe what I read Texas Bob and Stats stating as fact, in amongst the constant streams of catty sarcasm and verbose abuse that they think passes for civil conversation and exchanges of ideas.
But what media do they read and consult for regular, accurate information? Where do they get their brand of supremem truth that soars above the lies and unrtruths that us mere mortals must make do with?
Who knows. Neither Stats or Texas Bob will tell us lowlies the name of even one publication or media resource they regularly use, despite being asked to do so repeatedly.
Waiting, waiting, waiting….
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 03 28 at 11:25 AM • permalink
Or flamingos. Unless you live in Florida. Then it’s probably flying pigs.
Back off the flamingos. That’s a touchy subject for some of us…from Florida.
Posted by tree hugging sister on 2006 03 28 at 03:53 PM • permalink
- Damn it, this is ruining my enjoyment of classical literature! Back in the day, when I was a lad, when I read and re-read the scene of Jor-El railing at the Science Council, he was always depicted as the good guy! Now it’s as if he were some demented crank, who just got lucky and had his planet blow up anyway.
You know, I really ought to rewrite that, but …
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 28 at 04:06 PM • permalink
- Saltydog 34
I think it is possible that with a magnetic shift, hell might freeze over and pigs might fly. Is anybody giving a thought to the pigs? To the possibility of migrating pigs?
I’m sharpening up my ice-skates AND investing in stout canvas hats, with very wide brims.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 28 at 04:22 PM • permalink
- #77 RebeccaH
Ker-ching! Thank-you. Bartender!
I can’t imagine anything more subversive than the International Petula Clark Society. Has Homeland Security been told about this?
He He He. Anyone seen Petula Clark recently?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 28 at 05:32 PM • permalink
- stats,
Actually, I thought it was “psychlo-gizing”.But my psychlo-gizer is broken at the moment, so it can’t be that.
Thanks for your advice. Clearly you’re passionate.
I was going to respond point by point – and I got a little way into it.. but jeez, I don’t have the energy to perpetuate this nonsense.
Here’s what bothers me. You were a Processor visiting Buenos Aires in 1964. I’ll leave the folks at home to do the math. Impressive. (No, seriously). I’m sure you have a richness of life’s experience to draw from. I’m having trouble reconciling that level of experience and maturity with that of your posts. Personal abuse, misquoting and just general bullying. It doesn’t match.
Please – recommend me some good media outlets and information sources.
Thanks for your advice and criticisms, but I’ll continue to “filter the information from the pap” – as it still seems a perfectly sensible approach. Read something, examine the context it is presented in and ask self how does this fit with what I already know? – if it doesn’t… ask questions.
Thanks for those that did take the time to respond. SteveGW, Ric – excellent response thanks, and PW. It’s very much in the context of what I was seeking. Stats, you did make two nice attemts at an answer, but I’m afraid I’m naturally wary of those that try to bully their opinions into me.
Please go ahead and flame me now – I’ll be suckered by your baits no more.
PS. What did LLL do to get in your good favour?
- #1 Rob,
In Planetary Science the temperate character of the Earth, and thus it’s nature as a considerably different planet from the others, is called The Goldilocks Problem. Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, but Earth is just right.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 03 29 at 01:16 AM • permalink
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Never mind the truly run-away greenhouse of Venus, where an atmosphere best described as hot, high-pressure sulfuric acid takes apart the few probes we’ve sent to it.
Or Mars, where not quite enough atmosphere has resulted in a wind-blown frozen desert.
Never mind that Earth’s temperature and pressure remain pretty much where it’s always been, or that there have been past times that were hotter or colder. Nope, ignore all that, it’s gloom, gloom, gloom—because without doom, where would the idiots like those at Time get their power and prestige?