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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:45 pm
Worried about glaciers melting due to the global warmenizing? Well, worry no more! The glaciers aren’t melting; they’re simply moving:
Massive ice sheets will develop on high land across Wales, according to a scientist who predicts our climate will get colder, not warmer.
Previously, scientists have said climate change would lead to higher average temperatures in high latitude areas such as Britain, with rises of up to 8C. Glaciologist Dr Bryn Hubbard believes past experience proves this will not happen.
Can’t we get some consensus here?
The result for Britain and other northern latitude countries will be a dramatic cool down, ultimately leading to the possibility of glaciers forming in the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia and even on comparatively low mountains.
Frankly, Snowdonia had it coming. So, how do we avoid the glacierfication of Britain, assuming anybody would want to?
Dr Hubbard said the process could be reversed by monitoring carbon emissions.
He said, “It’s never too late to change, and you can’t be drawn into a state of apathy. The answer probably lies in money, in a global system of carbon trading in conjunction with a direct tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
“There may need to be consumer-led embargoes on goods from countries which are the worst polluters, and there should be curbs on air travel, which makes such a huge contribution to total emissions of CO2. Aircraft should not be flown with empty seats and there must be cleaner aircraft engines. Sports cars should be heavily taxed and consumers should rebel against things like excess packaging on goods.”
Scientists urged the same things to avoid warming. I advise a system of rewards for carbon emissions, increased air travel, more flights, subsidised sports cars, and packaging to be no less than 150% of the mass of any packaged object. That ought to do it.
- OK, folks. If the Brits get glaciers in their backyard, will they stop serving warm beer?Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 01 at 02:42 AM • permalink
- Dr Hubbard knows his stuff. Warming does mean cooling, as NASA photos show that the Antarctic ice cap has been increasing for 30 years – see http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820southseaice.html
- But waitaminute MAGB, some climatologist on the television said just yesterday that both polar ice caps were melting rapidly and this could eventually lead to sea levels rising by 20 feet!
Aaarrrggghhh!
=^0
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 02 01 at 03:10 AM • permalink
- Dave S.
And they say this isn’t a religion?
Unprovable tenets? Check. Prophecies of apocalypse? Check. Man is sinful? Check. We must change our ways? Check. We must be thrifty, sober, and self-sacrificing? Check.
Don’t forget: anyone who disagrees with the recieved knowledge is branded a heretic and symbolically burned at the stake (in print, anyway).
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 02 01 at 03:13 AM • permalink
- Spiny Norman — Or challenged to unpayable bets. When it comes to those, I prefer the church version. Call me old-fashioned, but Pascal’s Wager is enough for me.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 01 at 03:37 AM • permalink
- MAGB You are crowing too soon..
Read this account..
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0204-02.htmAverage global temperatures are rising almost in a straight line.
So are atmospheric CO2 levels.
Although the two are in parallel, there may be a casual rather than causal link.
However, our home planet can sustain life as we know it (Jim) because approx 2 – 300 million years ago, (when it was much hotter adn we could NOT have survived) millions of tons of CO2 were locked up by trees and animals, into what we now know as coal and oil. That is what we are burning to put back into our home planets atmosphere.
Even if Andrew Dolt is right and the climatologists are wrong (some sponsored by the fossil fuel lobby are very vocal), and there is a 50:50 chance, that is one unimaginable chance to take with the ONLY home planet we have.
Hardly very bright of us, is it?
Perhaps we deserve a chance at extinction.
- Actually Nemo, the CO2 levels were much higher more recently than 200 million years ago—they began to plummet roughly about fifty million years ago. One of the likely explanations of this is the reaction of dissolved CO2 in monsoonal rains with the newly created Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, and not oil/coal formation, so that the excess CO2 is actually in inorganic geological deposits. Also, although the temperatures prior to that were generally hotter (albeit with some embarrassing ice ages), plants and animals survived quite well (including our ancestors, the early mammals).
- Thanks Burbank.
I have got my exact scales wrong but the point remains the same, regardless.
We are releasing the stuff back..
It starts the process of warming the planet..
The xs CO2 we are putting out is also going into the sea and lowering the pH.
Plankton are dying, corals are bleaching…
There are some suggestions, I know, that the CO2 incorporated into the shells of countless trillions of early molluscs, also acted as a reservoir (and contributed to the uplifing of the Himalayas. Astounding..)
Point is, this rate of change has only ever been seen before when there are extiction type events going on.. We are definitely causing the extiction of many species and probably our own. No questions there.. We are acting as an “evolutionary force”. We will leave many niches for other species to fill.
No question there either..
There are 2 things that puzzle me about this situation.
1) Many of the models are coming true (glacial melts and tree line rises, melting of permafrost and slowing of the Gulf Stream (for chrissake..) Why do deniers ignore and/or try and dismiss these events?
2) If there was a 1:2 chance of getting hit by an flying object, how many people would NOT duck??
I just can’t understand why there is any debate/denial. The possible consequences are horrendous (for us) AND then there is the need to manage petrochemical reserves (unless you believe in Abiogenic Oil…)
- For total credulity, see The Age’s Melissa Fyfe in today’s Age melissa is ‘hot’
No wonder Age readers are in a state of panic.
- Nemo,
the plant kingdom produces 5-10 times more CO2 than humanity, and this was only discovered recently.
This figure was never factored into the GCM’s so yet again, the climate models are a crock.
We do not really know what drive’s climate and that basis any future doom and gloom predictions are simply irrational.
- 18.. When I did Botany 101, plants took up CO2 and produce O2 and cellulose and other sugars. Have they changed that much??
Do you mean Methane that plants produce when thermally stressed and which could contribute, along with similar from the thawing permafrost, to runaway positive feedback??It is the balance and rate of change that is going to be a problem for us..
Irrational?? What is more irrational, Closing you eyes and hoping the best case will definitly happen or Opening Your eyes and planning for the worst??
Which earth would you rather for yourself and kids, etc??
You sound almost smuggly happy that there may be a mistake in some (small) part of the models.. It’s a big BIG weather machine and the maths of perturbations are incredibly complex and developing. A miss could mean a mistake, missing calculations, missing factors or some new effect etc.
Even so, they have had an alarming number of hits, haven’t they?? Don’t you think that in the same circumstances a hit is actually much more significant?I just can’t understand this attitude.
Can somebody please try and explain it to me?
Maybe I.m a pessimist, but better the dry pessimist than the wet optimist.
- Nemo, sucked in, man! If you trust the way the data has been mishandled and the ehat island effect ignored, then you seem unable to help yourself to an opinion by checking the data. Your loss, old cod.
We do not understand the climate, and as the envirodoomscreamers have been saying the same things before the latest major variable was discovered (a few weeks back), as after, why should they be believed?
The SAME envirodoomscreamers were howling in the 1970s that we were all gunna die from global cooling. Then we were all gunna die of starvation, with hundreds of millions starving in Europe and The End of The World As We Know It (read Ehrlich’s crap on THAT subject), then the oil was going to all be gone by 1990 and we were All Gunna Die!!
Same people, same bullshit, and funnily enough that same solutions to this huge variety of looming disasters. Big Government (headed by the Prophets of Greenpeace and the WWF and all those other dickheads) would impose drastic curtailment of all industry.
Same solution every time.
It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now, because envirodoomscreamers do not do proper science and use ‘self-licking-icecream’ modelling.
Want some proper scientific scepticism? Go to: http://www.warwickhughes.com/
MarkL
Canberra
We are releasing the stuff back..
It starts the process of warming the planet..
The xs CO2 we are putting out is also going into the sea and lowering the pH.
Plankton are dying, corals are bleaching…The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning – I, I live by the river!Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 02 01 at 08:01 AM • permalink
- They have found unexpectedly high levels of methane being produced by growing plants.
The methane load due to plants could be 10% to 30% of the total.
There is a technical word for all models that do not account for these levels: poppycock. And none of the existing models do. The models also have trouble accounting for past temperature levels (the “Little Ice Age” or the “Medieval Climate Optimum” for example).
Maybe I.m a pessimist, but better the dry pessimist than the wet optimist.
Of course, it’s possible to be a pessimist, and still be all wet.
Posted by Darth VAda on 2006 02 01 at 08:59 AM • permalink
- Serious answer, Nemo: there are multiple reasons. At the top of the list is MarkL’s. It’s a variant on the boy who cried wolf. I’m almost sixty. For my entire life I have heard from people hysterically demanding a solution to the pressing problem du jour, and the solution was always the same: cripple or destroy the United States of America (and, generally, Western Civilization). Funny how the exact same solution works for causes as desparate as (inter alia) starvation, pandemics, nuclear war, and global warming, eh?
Just below that in the “reasons why” list is the fact that immediate, forceful, emergency reactions to ambiguous, world-affecting problems do not have a good track record, in general.
And below that comes the attitude of some of the proponents of the schemes. In this case, clear signs of warming have been found on Mars and Pluto, and ambiguous indications in that direction in the Jupiterian and Saturnian cloud-tops; warming which is not anthropogenic. Wassup with that? And no climate scientist even mentions it. Now we discover that plants around the world add CO2 to the air in amounts that dwarf the U.S.’s contribution via SUVs. Destroying America completely (the preferred solution of Global Warmists) would actually make CO2 worse as the forests grew back on the uninhabited continent. And despite hysteria about melting icecaps, it’s known that Leif Ericcson was selling farmland in Greenland a thousand years ago and there were takers, which means (to us) that the effects of warming, if it exists, are not as predictable as some would have it.
And down at the roots, well, think about it. Global warming, worst case, will destroy civilization as we know it, causing lots of people to starve to death. So your preferred solution is… to destroy civilization as we know it. Sorry. Does not compute.
Regards,
Ric
- MarkL..
I posit a simple question and get this drivel thrown back.. Man..
Why the antagonistic attitude?
“…envirodoomscreamers do not do proper science and use ‘self-licking-icecream’ modelling…”
“PPssH” to pretty much the entire world community of climatologists, hydrologists, etc ad inf. I know NASA have had some foul ups but don’t you think you are being a bit hard on them?And you know better?
You do better modelling OR you have easy access to those who have a spare CRAY or two up their jumper??
We should be told of your superior work experience and peer reviewed research..Well bugger me… Look here, the naysayer of all naysayers, the US admin, has come out to acknowledge that there are problems..
Would be really interested in the names of the people and organisations that you are relying on for your slightly unpleasant posting (old cod.. !!)
So in the last 40 years, worried people have got a number of concerns wrong, because we have so far managed to stay ahead of trouble. After all, in 100 years of the industrial revolution we have masterd this 6 billion years old planet of ours.
So obviously, we can do that for ever and a day.. ahmen. Silly of me not to realise that.
Hey, you are such a smarty pants you, please give this “old Cod” a straight answer to 5 questions (no waffle and piffle allowed)
1)Is the planet warming up?
2)If YES…Why?
3)Is the worlds weather changing?
4)If YES… Why?
5)If YES to either.. What can we do?23.. ?????
25.. That is what I posted. Reread.
- nemo if the msm saved their catastrophising for just one or two situations maybe folks would be more receptive..as it is they close their eyes and ears.
Unwarranted squawking on the ABC/SBS -AWB/children in the water/little johnny is a fascist jackbooted rat/Dubya is evil and we can’t get elected and it’s not fair 24 hour hotline -Be alert and alarmed,be bloody terrified,Aussies are all Nazi bastards who eat babies and we know better than them the ignorant rednecks etc ad nauseum!
Mate we all switch off.
When the environmentalists start speaking civilly and shake off the alp,bob brown,trendy latte set we will listen.
Maybe we already know the state of affairs but are not running around in circles screaming.Maybe we are doing what we can,individually…
- nemo maybe you are part of the problem..look at what you are doing..alienating your audience.
It doesn’t matter how “right” you are if you can’t convince your potential converts..
Folks would like to see more environmental adcocates who have a conventional,conservative style of persuasion and lifestyle.
Dope smoking,bicycle riding,chardonnay swilling,intellectual academics do not cut the mustard with ordinary wage earners or business people.
- Ric..
Thanks for the serious answer.
So the reason is that people seriously believe that it is all a plot to “cripple” Western Business, particularly the US??
Well, that is an interesting idea that has never occured to me. How is it that plenty of the people who are calling for change are an integral part of the system you suggest they want to destroy/ham string?As I typed previously, just because some of the predictions of doom have been held away (cos that is what is really happening) doesn’t mean that situation will last. Forget the boy who cried wolf, what about the poor little sod with his finger in the hole in the dam.. “Its OK, it hasn’t collapsed (yet)”
There is nothing wrong with controlling growth anyway, it just means that future generations won’t curse us for our stupidity and profligacy quite so hard!!
Tell me again about growing plants and CO2 production..
Don’t quite understand the point about other planets as such. We live on this one yet don’t really understand the science of our atmosphere completely.
Controlling/curtailing growth including populations, to live a more sustainable existence, could be carefully implemented over a number of years. It would not have to be a terminal event. It would certainly have more of an impact upon the west but then we use too much anyway. We can learn to adapt.
The “end of oil” is likely to have a more significant and rapid effect unless we take steps to ameliorate the worst.
Global weather patterns are pretty much beyond our control, at the moment.
So in summary, its about not wanting to change our lifestyle, refusing to consider that it might be changed for us and therefore making no plans for that eventuality.
- Crash.. You really don’t know anything about my “lifestyle” or anything so you can’t really make any assumptions, can you??
We are all trapped into this life and want to do something better, agreed. However, the way to begin to make change is to talk about it, isn’t it?
I’m not trying to convert anybody, but, as a scientist, I hate to see Good science labelled as quackery BY quack scientist. It is painful.. 🙁
Just how would you suggest discussing world wide climate changes and the effect upon all? What language would you listen to?
How should it be approached so people do listen, think and act together?
Serious question.
- nemo: why don’t you read the explanations people are trying to give you instead of just repeating yourself over and over? Because we’ve heard it all before, man, nothing you’ve said here is any new revelation. And it’s boring.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 02 01 at 10:36 AM • permalink
“There may need to be consumer-led embargoes on goods from countries which are the worst polluters…”
So, the China boycott is on, then?
And in a related but alarming development, local temperatures here have declined significantly from the average of last summer. Cause for concern?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 01 at 11:17 AM • permalink
- Hi nemo I reckon a good place to start would be to recognise the changes people have made.
Certainly huge numbers of city people are changing the way they do things.Today the Oz pointed out that water is being saved (30,ooo Olympic swimming pools’ worth) and the environment rules in our house.We save all water used from the kitchen,some from the bathroom and all washing water.We use detergent and washing powder without
phosphates,recycle all packaging and tins,glass,paper.All supermarket purchases are bought with the environment in mind,we have a worm farm,compost,sub surface irrigation,alternative water heating,no air conditioning,a very small car,use as little electricity as pos.The rinse water is recycled as washing water in the machine and our whitegoods are all recommended by Choice.
But we still manage to get fun out of life and laughs and the occasional tinny doesn’t go amiss.We help the community sometimes too,donate to disasters overseas and have social consciences..Many households are like ours.
Oops I’ve been outed. nemo -were you sent by wronwright to test me out..have I failed master Rove’s simple entrapment manoeuvre..
- Nemo, the historic record indicates that past periods of warming correlates with peaks in human civilizations. For example, I’ve found that two North American cultures reached their largest extents, populations, and influence at times that match the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Roman Warm Period; their declines correlate with the ends of those warm periods. Another (earlier) culture developed and peaked at a time that is known to have been warmer and wetter than today.
So, if stone-age man—some with no knowledge of agriculture—can flourish during a warm period, what makes a coming warm period such a danger to modern society? Isn’t it possible that a warmer climate will in fact be a net benefit?
And, also, if man’s activities are causing the Earth’s climate to warm, what’s causing the climate on Mars to warm?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 02 01 at 01:11 PM • permalink
- #9 Call me old-fashioned, but Pascal’s Wager is enough for me.— Posted by richard mcenroe
Agreed.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 02 01 at 01:14 PM • permalink
- nemo, there are four things that have to be determined before we can do anything as drastic and detrimental as follow the Kyoto Protocols:
1. determine that global warming is happening
2. determine that global warming is happening due to human activity
3. determine that global warming can be stopped to a material degree by some type of human response
4. determine that the human response is realistic and feasible
Up to this point, we haven’t even answered Question #1, let alone the other three. Until we do, it simply isn’t practical or reasonable to cut back activity to meet 1990 CO2 levels.
(unless Karl says we should)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 02 01 at 01:32 PM • permalink
- 1)Is the planet warming up?
maybe
2)If YES…Why?
cyclic
3)Is the worlds weather changing?
no
4)If YES… Why?
n/a
5)If YES to either.. What can we do?
enjoy the warmer weather before the inevitable cool down.Hope that helps.
Posted by jeff mccabe on 2006 02 01 at 01:39 PM • permalink
- Sorry for repeating what others have put forth to Nemo, but I think that it bears repeating.
1. The significance of the failures of earlier apocalyptic predictions points to failures in methodology and/or political motivations. I’m not sure as to the causes, and it would appear that you neither know or care. I do, especially since some of the same sources are at work here. I rather doubt that the Korean scientist that faked his cloning results, pressured female assistants to donate eggs and lied repeatedly about his actions will be a serious reference in this field in the future. You stated that you are a scientist. As a scientist, would you concur, or would you buy whatever this guy peddles, based upon your scientific notion which seems to be predicated upon the notion of ‘better safe than sorry’?
2. The reports that other planets in this solar sytem are experiencing symptoms of warming are not being considered by any of the sources that you cite. Further, you do not seem to attribute any significance to these reports. Since we are supposedly looking for causal factors, wouldn’t other planets who also receive energy from a single outside source (The sun, our sun, Sol, the great Sun God) be an interesting line of inquiry? Especially since these other celestial bodies aren’t being oppressed by Dubya and John Howard? If they are ALL experiencing these things, and the only common factor is ol’ Sol, then why are not even thinking about solar activity?
- Say could Nemo really be Ender?
Hmmm – and is there any meaning in his/her acronym.
With Ender I thought it was always pretty obvious as standing for the End of Everything.
Now what could Nemo stand for? 20,000 leagues under the sea comes to mind, then there’s the recent movie “Finding Nemo”.
Any guesses?
- Nah, nemo isn’t Ender. First, Ender could spell and punctuate. Second, Ender’s style is to avoid answering questions by posting mounds of meaningless, discrete data. Nemo is just a shrill, nonspecific doomscreamer (50/50 chance of disaster? Where did he pull that from? And disaster of what nature, magnitude and time scale? Nemo seems to buy the global warming thing, but makes fun of Tim for posting skeptically about disastrous cooling, which would seem to put nemo in the “global cooly-warmy-whatever-we’re-gonna-die” camp – “The ice sheets are melting! And they’re advancing! And they’re kinda sitting there, but they’re plotting their next move! AAAIIIEEE!!!).
Same Shit, Different Doof.
- Cretans! It’s not global warming, it’s global climate change!
Nemo asks some pretty pertinent questions, though:
1)Is the planet warming up?
Compared to what? The current world temperature, however it may be accurately determined, is less than the average temperature during the Medieval Warm Period between 1100-1400 AD.There was no industrialised society during the Medieval Warm Period.
So, given that today’s temperatures appear to be a little higher than those enjoyed in the Little Ice Age from 1400-1800, it is fair to say that average temperatures have increased slightly.
2)If YES…Why?
Well, briefly there are three prime causes of climate change, being:(1) Astronomical causes:
(a) 11 year and 206 year cycles of solar variability and sunspot activity
(b) The 21,000 year cycle: Earth’s combined tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun, known as the precession of the equinoxes.
(c) The 41,000 year cycle, the cycle of the +/- 1.5° wobble in Earth’s orbit (tilt)
(d) The 100,000 year cycle: Variations in the shape of Earth’s elliptical orbit, known as the cycle of eccentricity, which is predominantly responsible for Ice Ages.(2)Atmospheric causes:
(a) Heat retention due to atmospheric gases, mostly gaseous water vapour (95%), also carbon dioxide (4%), methane, and a few other miscellaneous gases (1%)the “greenhouse effect”, essential for life on Earth.
(b) Solar reflectivity or the Albedo effect, due to clouds, volcanic dust, polar ice caps, and other surface attributes.(3) Tectonic causes:
(a) Landmass distribution: Shifting continents (continental drift) causing changes in circulatory patterns of ocean currents.
(b) Undersea ridge activity and “Sea floor spreading” (associated with continental drift) causing variations in ocean displacement.These are the three primary causes that can be scientifically identified. The global climate change alarmists, of course, latch onto the atmospheric causes (especially “greenhouse”), without considering any other causes.
If you consider the “greenhouse” issue in isolation, 95% is water vapour. 4% is carbon dioxide, of which a mere 5% is human generated. 5% of 4% is about 0.2% of all greenhouse gases, and obviously the complete shut-down of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will have no statistically relevant effect at all. Or to put it bluntly, two-thirds of five-eights of fuck all.
3)Is the worlds weather changing?
Yes, of course it is. The world’s weather has changed constantly for millions of years. I for one would be alarmed if it didn’tchange.4)If YES… Why?
See detailed explanation above.5)If YES to either.. What can we do?
Nothing. Adapt. Enjoy.Many more people die in freezing spells than heat-waves. Just read the news.
Nemo, even a clown fish should be able to understand this.
Funny how the exact same solution works for causes as desparate as (inter alia) starvation, pandemics, nuclear war, and global warming, eh?
Ric Locke—Shoot, boy, we’all’s stealin’ all the awl t’eat all the food and fart all the methane… what other solution could there be?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 01 at 08:49 PM • permalink
- 48. Richard, I’m going to be pedantic here… did you mean disparate or desperate? 🙂 Either works for me.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 02 01 at 09:07 PM • permalink
- 47 Kaboom – spot on.
But you said: Or to put it bluntly, two-thirds of five-eights of fuck all. ,
In my younger days the expression (as used by engineering students at one esteemed NSW university) was “Two thirds of three eights of sweet fuck all.”
So where did things go sour and where did the extra quarter come from? Geez! I don’t know what the world’s coming to. Next thing someone will assert we’re all about to die in a human induced planetary meltdown.
- #49—disparate, of course. I are a perty gud spellar, but misteaks do creep inn.
Nice list, kaboom. It’s especially nice to see somebody who has the numbers 🙂 I’ll point out that 1(d) is not absolutely determined, especially as causal for ice ages.
Nemo sez:
How should it be approached so people do listen, think and act together?
Serious question.I’m not sure it’s possible at the moment, nemo. The well’s been poisoned too thoroughly by people whose agenda is only vaguely related to anything pertaining to climate. It may just be that scientists don’t pay enough attention to politics, or that they are forced by circumstance to hang around with college professors, but whatever the cause the climate change issue got latched onto by people whose agenda is quite other than the health and safety of human beings, and the scientists don’t seem to be willing to even try to avoid that.
You can start with some historical-style research: what was the sea level in the Bay of Bengal in the year 1000, plus or minus 200 years? In other words, where was the coastline in the vicinity of Dacca? Admitting the existence of the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Roman Warm would be a useful good-faith exercise, as well.
The endorsement of politicians, of any stripe, means nothing. The measures you want to propose will involve a lot of use of raw, naked power, and that prospect always makes politicians feel a little funny in the pants. Acknowledgement of that from climate scientists would go a long way toward making me more willing to accept.
But the bottom line is—there is no stasis. The planet and its environment are dynamic, always changing. Sticking a stake in the ground and saying “thus far, and no farther” is going to get you what Koenige Knut got.
Regards,
Ric
- 51.Oops. I meant Ric. My bad.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 02 01 at 11:29 PM • permalink
- Ric Locke — Ah, but Canute didn’t have a global media consensus now, did he?Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 02 at 01:46 AM • permalink
- Sorry, what was that about empty seats? Do we need to increase, or reduce them, in order to stop, or to accelerate, global warming, or cooling?Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 02 02 at 01:54 AM • permalink
- Nemo, old mullet.
1)Is the planet warming up?
Maybe, maybe not. Certainly the urban heat islands are warming up, and envirodoomscreamers howl that this means the whole planet is. This contention is, of course, total bullshit. If the PLANET is heating up overall, a contention for which there is, as yet, no proof, then perhaps the sun might just have something to do with it. I note that envirodoomscreamers used the apparent drop in global temperature 1940-1970 to ‘prove’ that global cooling required us to immediately move away from industrialised economies. The apparent ‘rise’ in global temperature (which may well be just a UHI artefact) now causes those same clowns to call for a ‘solution’… which is to immediately move away from industrialised economies.
Hmm. How CAN that be the answer to two opposite problems – global cooling AND global warming?
What I’d REALLY like is an environazi to tell me is just how much, in metres, of the ~120 metre sea level rise over the past 15,000 years has been caused by human activity.
2)If YES…Why? See above.
3)Is the worlds weather changing?
Of course, just as it has for the entire history of the planet. D’you know , old sardine, what one of the leading exports of Roman Britain was, for a couple of centuries? Wine. The sort that comes from grapes. Traditional grape vines did not grow in Britain from the 5th century onwards, so Roman Britain was warmer than it is now. Was this known chilling period after the 5th century caused by human activity? We now know that the great Aegean Bronze-Age civilisations were destroyed by a change in the weather that caused the Aegean to become more arid than it had been, and their crops failed.
Y’know, Nemo me old flathead, I have scoured Homer for evidence of Achaean SUV use, Hittite B747’s, and for the swarming traffic snarls of Troy, as well as for the dead hand of Halliburton, and I just cannot find them! Perhaps Tyrns was a coal-fired power station, and that caused it all?
4)If YES… Why? Because that is how complex systems billions of years old operate. This is a simple fact known to everybody but the left, BDS and HDS sufferers, and envirodoomscreamers.
5)If YES to either.. What can we do?
Oh, that is easy. Get Wronwright – he’s a henchman after all – to flash up the VRWC’s Weather And Tsunami Control Machine (VRWCWATCM) over at HQ. That’ll fix it in a jiffy if you can convince the Dark Lord that his hatred of Polar bears is irrational. That is why we are melting the Arctic ice cap right now, you know. To nail the freaking Polar Bears (hey, it’s cool with me, I already have a room carpeted with Polar Bear skins out of it, and spit-roast baby seal is delicious). They ate his pet poodle, you see… (we had the devil’s own time cloning Jacques Chirac from bone chips in the Polar Bear shit and I don’t even want to talk about how we did the ageing process on the clone). I sent a minionmemo saying that a poodle was a dog, but Noooo, he said that HIS pet was special, that it was French (which counted), and that it rarely shat on the carpet as compared to traditional four-legged poodles.
I have had the minions polish the VRWCWATCM up to a lovely sheen, just for you.
TTFN
MarkL
Canberra
- I have finally found absolute global mean temp data – enjoy
http://lhcrazyworld.blogspot.com/2006/02/absolute-global-mean-temperature.html
- Hello again..
My little marine alter-ego appears to have been blocked by the angry adminNazi even though his questions did produce some genuinely helpful answers. Nemo says “Thanks” from his little fishy heart, to those who made a real attempt to clarify their undestanding for his benefit.
At risk of frothing the adminBitch up any more, he want to make the following points before he swims away to more salubrious climes.
1) Other Planets.. We do not live on them but more to the point, the science of Off Planet Weather (or whatever it is/will be called) is even more inexact than On This Planet Weather. Some analyses of our home from our own satellites have been strangely inaccurate. How much credibility can such data be given and how many assumptions have to be made to even begin to do so?
2) Hwang Woo-Suk (he of the terrible name..) is both a disgrace and a set back. However, his fraud was discoverd by an external panel of peers. That is why we have PEER REVIEW.
All the mainstream research is PEER REVIEWED as is the funding behind it. The conclusions are therefore a little more credible than the conclusions that come from the Denial “science” that many on this knowing panel quote.
Scratch a Denialist “Scientist” and you will find Hydrocarbon interests funding them somewhere, somehow.
3) Some of the scientific awareness here is rudimentary at best, kindergarden stuff.. Pretty elementary to mistake CH4 for CO2 (perhaps)..
4) Some of the statistical understanding is decidely “less than 2 SDs..”
For the sake of Dave S, (not sure why tho..) if a thing may or may not happen, that is a 50:50 chance. If a road splits into 2, how many ways can you go? (you CAN’T go back..) Got it?? If a fish brain can understand that…
5) To the wordy who say very little but pad it with pompous piffle, “Why Bother?”..
6) Wanting to be cautious about the state of our planet (do you know that Nemo has counted 45,000 pieces of plastic rubbish for every square mile of his once clean ocean home?) is NOT a matter of politics (Right, Wrong or Left) to most sentient beings. It is a matter of a reasonable, long term survival for them and their offspring. Nemo can’t hold a steering wheel or reach the peddles, but if he did drive and he were heading towards what looked like it MIGHT just be a concrete wall across his path, he thinks (he is only a fish of course) it MIGHT be wise to slow down or change course until he was more confident of the nature of what he thought his senses showed him.
7) Finally, Nemo is not ender or anybody else. He is just nemo, a little fish.
You might remember the scene in Sydney harbour though, with all the seagulls standing around…..
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“Doesn’t matter; just stop having goddamn fun.”
And they say this isn’t a religion?
Unprovable tenets? Check. Prophecies of apocalypse? Check. Man is sinful? Check. We must change our ways? Check. We must be thrifty, sober, and self-sacrificing? Check.