Last night in the SOTU address, Obama made this pronouncement about climate change:
But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.
To that, I say this:
There’s never been any assertion that climate didn’t change, the idea that somehow this is something new to the 21st century is absurd. For example, this graph illustrates just that fact:
Click image for a full sized print (3000 pixels wide, suitable for printing) or choose the PDF below. Note the blip in the top line at the far right, that’s our climate change today. Source: Andy May
Younger_Dryas_to_Present_Time_Line (PDF)
And, as science itself has demonstrated through history, it is never settled, it is always searching for new information, retesting, and sometimes discarding old ideas based on new knowledge.
Saying “the science is settled” is as ridiculous as this famous quote attributed to Lord Kelvin who reportedly said in 1900*
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”.
* This quote is reputed to be Kelvin’s remark made in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1900). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomson,_1st_Baron_Kelvin#Pronouncements_later_proven_to_be_false
Equally preposterous (now) is this statement from Kelvin:
In 1898, Kelvin predicted that only 400 years of oxygen supply remained on the planet, due to the rate of burning combustibles.[62][63] In his calculation, Kelvin assumed that photosynthesis was the only source of free oxygen; he did not know all of the components of the oxygen cycle. He could not even have known all of the sources of photosynthesis: for example the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus—which accounts for more than half of marine photosynthesis—was not discovered until 1986.
Kelvin’s pronouncement, which he believed to be true at the time based on the facts he had at hand, were later disproved by new science and obviously discarded. But, imagine if there were a panic movement then to conserve oxygen, with “oxygen taxes” applied, massive government funded research implemented, and reams of NGO’s feeding on the frenzy demanding a host of new laws and changes in human behavior to avert the crisis.
They’d look pretty stupid to us in the context of science knowledge today, wouldn’t they?
Kelvin also computed that earth was only some tens of millions of years old, based upon the rate at which iron loses heat. Then Rutherford discovered the energy source of radioactive decay, which still heats the planet’s interior.
I attended a computer science lecture in 1975 that proved, based on fundamental physical limitations, that computers would never get significantly faster than they were at that time.
At least Lord Kelvins hypotheses were falsifiable and he did use the numbers he had to hand. Compare this to the wishful, doom-laden and unfalsifiable prophecies of the true believer.
Some will not leave a dead horse (climate change) alone. Then fire up the coal plants on the east coast and warm it up from all the cold they are experiencing.
milodonharlani says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:08 am
“Then Rutherford discovered the energy source of radioactive decay, which still heats the planet’s interior.”
Don’t mention that, we don’t what Greenpeace picketing the Earth and calling for its closure!
Many people I speak to interpret the phrase “Climate change is a fact.” to mean “We must all work together to protect the planet.” The word “fact” is no longer associated with “objective reality” but rather with subjective concepts such as “policy.”
Kelvin was a hidebound conservative who hated to be challenged and was prone to making pronounce,nets based on his own biases. I loved his quote that biology was a non-quantifiable science and that biologists and ecologists’ knowledge was paltry because they could not (then) make precise measurements of the knd he did. Personally, I think he was no better in his way and day than our modern climate science elite; i.e., a charlatan who traded on his name.
The worst part is it makes you question how much any leader understands about anything they pronounce upon…
Is there no limit to the corrosive effects of the the AGW belief-system?
And the hypocrite goes right along with his own DENIER meme – the one that DENIES such things as the 33,000 dead from hypothermia in the UK last year, courtesy of the carbon tax.
Shouldn’t it be legally actionable for him to attempt to link skeptics to Holocaust deniers? Isn’t he rather sitting in a glass house throwing stones?
Whereas, we CAN PROVE that policies to control CO2 KILL PEOPLE.
If you like your climate, you may keep your climate.
Consider the speaker.
Two of the alarmists favorite strawmen,
1. Climate change is real.
All skeptics believe the climate changes.
2. Global warming is real.
All skeptics believe there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.
Obama is a desperate man. His economic “reforms” are in ruins, his popularity is in tatters, his trillion dollar stimulus sunk without trace, nobody wants his poorly implemented health reforms.
When people look back at his presidency, what will be his legacy? Sure he was the first black president of America, but will anyone be able to point to anything useful he did?
Obama doesn’t want to be remembered as a black guy, he wants to be remembered as someone who achieved something. Climate was going to be his big thing – and we’ve taken it all away from him.
The sad thing, if Obama wasn’t so arrogant and ignorant, he would realise there is a way he could create a memorable political achievement – he could be the President who reversed America’s disastrous climate policies, who persuaded the Senate to support Congress, to free the American economy from the green shackles of zombie climate science.
But no – I don’t think that is going to happen.
Kelvin also calculated Earth’s surface was last molten 20 million years ago.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck
“Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out. Thus, Science advances one funeral at a time” Max Planck
I am imagining an Edwardian Era “Hold Your Breath” Society which would’ve advocated as little breathing as possible in order to conserve oxygen. Blue faces would’ve been very ‘in’ for the progressive, ‘free sex’ crowd back then. Aleister Crowley would’ve lead the way promoting erotic asphyxiation as a method to save the planet.
Eric Worrall says: January 29, 2014 at 9:28 am [ … ] When people look back at his presidency, what will be his legacy? Sure he was the first black president of America, but will anyone be able to point to anything useful he did? Obama doesn’t want to be remembered as a black guy … [ … ]”
That is why we must remember our past as demanded by George Santayana and not indulge The Poverty of Historicism. Have we learned the lesson of progressivism the make-things-better movement – FORWARD willy-nilly – damn the unintended consequences.
Here is something else Kelvin got wrong, but in an amusing sort of way:
“You, in this country, are subjected to the British insularity in weights and measures; you use the foot, inch and yard. I am obliged to use that system, but must apologize to you for doing so, because it is so inconvenient, and I hope Americans will do everything in their power to introduce the French metrical system. … I look upon our English system as a wickedly, brain-destroying system of bondage under which we suffer. The reason why we continue to use it, is the imaginary difficulty of making a change, and nothing else; but I do not think in America that any such difficulty should stand in the way of adopting so splendidly useful a reform.”
” but the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact”
Now we all know that when the alarmist Democrats refer to climate change it is not “natural” climate change that they refer to which is happening all the time . They use climate change to mean global warming caused primarily by man generated greenhouse gases. So is global warming caused primarily by man settled ? We all know that it is not . The last 17 years of no further increases in global temperatures and the alarmists inability to predict this and to explain why it is happening and how long it may last is more evidence of the doubt and flaw still in their science. The 15 years of cold winters and now the coldest winter across US and Canada since the 1970’s just confirms that the debate is not settled at all. There is even more doubt now.
In my opinion ,climate science is being used for political purposes while the public is being misinformed and left unprepared for the real climate that is currently underway and coming in the future. Large areas are running out of fuel [natural gas and propane ] that should have had their stocks raised before the start of the winter given the past 15 years of growing colder winters .But if the officials say that the science is settled and to expect only global warming , who is going to raise the fuel stocks ?
@quelgeek –
AGW belief is only one small corner of an ideology that distorts a person’s view of everything and, worse, prohibits and prevents him from changing his thinking or recognizing reality. It is not there in isolation, apart from the rest of a belief system.
One also must recognize that for the ideologue, there is ONLY the ideology. Concepts such as true, false, fact and illusion are entirely outside its purview and are irrelevant to the thought process (if indeed something so rote and so mechanical can be called “thought”). That is, I believe, why these people are so resistant to changing their attitude even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. For them, that contrary evidence not only doesn’t, it can’t exist, and more than that, can’t even be conceived of. Sort of like “ungood” in Orwell speak, leaving no room for “bad”.
Fascists – and this is what the Eco Loons are – historically promoted the following; death of ‘deniers’ or dissenters; a rewriting of history and fact; cult membership; denial of rationality and real faith; follow the leader cult mentality; Orwellian newspeak.
Yes OBozo the climate does change, but it has nothing to do with Co2 a trace chemical 95% emitted by Gaia….just a ‘scientific’ pastiche for more gov’t control over the peasantry.
When you push policies (unilaterally) that hurt the standard of living of the poor while you pontificate about the evils of “income inequality,” I guess you have to use imperial statements like “The science is settled!” Woe is he who acts on the whims of his ignorance…
You would think someone who is in charge of the most powerful country in the world would at least have the sense to look out of his window and realise that his “experts” have misinformed him.
In a similar vein, the Daily Telegraph has a report today that fish in the North Sea, are getting smaller due to global warming. I can assure the “scientists” who publish this rubbish that this is not the case, if they wish to prove their point, they can go skinny dipping in the North Sea for a couple of hours! I live 20 miles away from it and believe me it is as cold now as it was thirty years ago!
“Saying “the science is settled” is as ridiculous as this famous quote attributed to Lord Kelvin who reportedly said in 1900*
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”.
He appears to have got the century right, though. With apparently little to do in the last half a century, metaphysical dark matter, strings and such have come out of the woodwork, largely as patches on theories that aren’t fully satisfactory – e.g. stronger gravitational force needed to explain motion of outer arms of galaxies (the pioneer anomaly, too?) and “maybe” we found the Higgs boson …
POTUS’ plausible deniability and nothing more.
“All skeptics believe there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.”
Absolutely. We do however often disagree on the magnitude of the fraction of a degree, and even if we can get a real and accurate measurement of the global atmospheric temperature at all.
It is very difficult for POTUS right now. He is bright and knows he is right. We are all just dumb unwashed for not getting it and agreeing with him.
We got change no one believes in (if you like your healthcare, you can keep your healthcare—not), implemented by violating his oath to uphold the law (Obamacare implementation, non-recess appointments, exemptions to No Child left behind,…).
It would be so much easier for him not to try to ride so many dead horses (climate change as a code word for CAGW), income inequality (a new code word for the war on poverty that already failed back in LBJ’s day), peace in the Mideast, brotherhood between Shiites and Sunnis, … But he knows he is bright and right, and so rides on into oblivion.
“The president said ‘climate change is a fact’ and vowed action via the Environmental Protection Agency in his State of Union Speech, but he did not ask for any new legislation such as the cap-and-trade bill he touted a year ago. As a scientist who knows without a doubt there is no significant man-made global warming, perhaps I should be pleased the president took a softer stance on the issue, But I am far from happy about the state of affairs on the issue.
“It has become purely a rock-solid, lock-step political position of the Democrat Party to believe in global warming, and of the Republican Party to disbelieve. I see no hint that the leadership in either party is truly interested in opening their minds to a scientific debate — to study the evidence and reach a reasoned non-politically motivated position and take actions accordingly.
“Science and politics do not match well. Science is not settled by a vote, and slogans and platform planks are not scientifically significant. It is my deepest regret this has become a political issue. I think we will make little progress in obtaining an open hearing from the public as long as the political leaders line up their followers on one side or the other.”
Dear President Obama,
Drought in California is Normal; the last 100 years have been the wettest in the last 7,000 years. The last 100 years being wet is the “abnormal’. So if man changed California’s climate, man made California Wetter!
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more
My reply to anything this guy says now is:
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period”
(I would love to be in a debate with this guy, I would start every one of my turns by quoting that.)
I also hear he is decalring a “year of action”, where he bypasses congress and just does it himself. Not suprising that he also lied when he took that oath of office “to support and defend the constitution”.
When he rams through “action” to protect us from Warming (and everything else), realise that the actions are really to increase his personal power and prestige and to increase the unilateral power of his friends, specifically the Democrats (or those who support him anyway, specifically the large government worker unions). If, like the above health care plans, he has to hurt you to increase his own power, he will do so (again).
People get the kind of government they deserve.
Science is never settled; only dogma is settled. Reference the consensus of scholars in 1902 who insisted Man would never fly or the academics in 1491 who maintained the world was flat…
Please, please don’t say “oxygen tax” too loudly, lest someone gets an idea.
Doug Huffman says – January 29, 2014 at 9:39 am
“… Have we learned the lesson of progressivism the make-things-better movement – FORWARD willy-nilly – damn the unintended consequences.”
What reason could one possibly have to believe any of the consequences are unintended? If your goal was to destroy America as we know it, what would you do differently? Just a thought.
An excellent graphic presentation.
One suggestion: The Vostok chart insert, which was published originally with a reversed “years ago” time axis, should be flipped to match the rest of the graphics.
Allow me to put this in religious context, since that is the most logical description of the warmist brethren, “Anyone, or any organisation that prophesies with faith and certainty, is by their very nature – FRAUDULENT”.
herkimer says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:40 am
” but the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact”
Now we all know that when the alarmist Democrats refer to climate change it is not “natural” climate change that they refer to which is happening all the time . They use climate change to mean global warming caused primarily by man generated greenhouse gases.
Precisely.
So, the statement “climate change is a fact” is, indeed, a factual statement, but what he means by the statement is, indeed, neither a fact or settled debate.
Would **** *** comment **** **** but ***** ***** can’t ***** ***** breathe !!!!1!1!
Legatus says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:58 am
I also hear he is decalring a “year of action”, …
Well, yeah, and we should give him a break on this.
He is just trying to separate this new “year of action” from the previous years of inaction.
🙂
I think Obama can be forgiven for his position on this. I’ll bet that if you polled the CEO’s of the Fortune 500 the majority would tell you AGW is a fact, and a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Why do you think we are having a Super Bowl in an outdoor stadium in NJ. It’s because people thought winter was history.
^ this
SOTU was confusing at first.
It began very bipartisan, and red-white-blue. It continued this way.
Then, at the end, it became a statement regarding the imperial presidency.
This morning after, I believe the strategy is to have a show of being bipartisan, and portray any dissenter as an opponent of bipartisanship.
This is all it takes to keep most liberals and the liberal media off the scent.
“Settled” is newspeak for suppressed, squelched, and subverted.
That man and all his cronies are just manuplitive liars; we can expect nothing less and never any good/right from them.
Obama always looks stupid – to those who are not enamored with his new clothes.
But the debate is not settled. It is not a fact that I am Richard Nixon reincarnated.
No, I am not Richard Nixon. I am not the ghost of Richard Nixon. I am not the prodigy of Richard Nixon…
…Ok, I’ll stop before it ceases to be funny. But, then again, maybe it’s not funny. I mean, can one really seriously look at Richard Nixon and assume, in their wildest dreams, that the man provoked humor?
@Tom J – Mr. Tom, I served with Nixon, I knew Nixon, I was a friend of Nixon. Tom, you are no Richard M. Nixon!
Sorry, I could not resist. 😉
Contemporarily, N. N. Taleb, any that prophesy without doxastic commitment are not to be trusted.
Eric Worrall says: “Sure he was the first black president of America,” …He’s not black. His Mom was white. He’s as white as he is black.
The POTUS cares nothing about scientific truth.
That is brilliantly and blindingly clear.
He cares only how he can abuse the name of science in support of his political agenda.
He cares only to exploit science to gain power and control.
Sadly, there are many, many eager academics who will do his bidding for and with your money.
I know a few. They care only to keep the gravy train going, and none at all about the horrid expense, nor the plight of of the poor they will kill with increased energy costs and by diversion of billions of dollars away from more important causes such as clean water, medicine, and cheap energy. So they can sleep well at night these academics arrogantly drive their electric cars (coal-fired) and Prius’s built with batteries who’s very construction is poisoning a nation. They care nothing about suffering of the world’s less fortunate who every day must face the quadruple Hobson’s choice between heat, food, gas or medicine. Instead of really helping the poor and sick we’re spending a billion dollars a day on this scam called ‘climate change.’
The POTUS wants to keep control of his 47% with free bread and circuses paid for by taxing the middle-class and with crony-capitalist deals of necessity. He has to keep the 47% in his debt or the whole thing falls apart. He WANTS the 47% under his thumb and angry at everyone else except him. Free phones and food stamps! Extend those unemployment benefits! Keep them dependent. He has to tell them every single day who to hate and who the savior is. It’s the job of the mainstream media to sell it, and they happily do.
What I write here sounds wrong! How can this be right? All you have to do is ask some leading questions of academics and economists in the pay of our nation, or socialistic multi-national organizations. These folk would double the cost of gasoline through taxes to fund the machine, and give tax credits to the poor so they can buy their gas and to keep them dependent. Same thing with taxes on that ‘pollutant’ CO2 that is necessary for life. Tax the ‘evil CO2’ through taxing energy costs to play the same game with credits to keep the poor dependent and grateful because they don’t know any better.
It’s criminal. This is the only thing that is settled. It’s criminal.
The worldwide distribution of cheap and plentiful energy and the redirection of the billions of dollars spent on this climate change fiasco into clean water, medicine, and jobs are the ONLY things that will improve the plight of emerging nations, and in fact our own nation’s poor.
Instead we get abhorrent taxes on tightly controlled cheap plentiful energy going into the Nations coffers to redistribute crumbs to the useful idiots who keep this treadmill in motion with their votes.
RoyFOMR says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:14 am
RoyFOMR says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:17 am
********************************************
[non- (naturally)] falsifiable.
TonG(ologist) says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:21 am
“Personally, I think he was no better in his way and day than our modern climate science elite; i.e., a charlatan who traded on his name.”
That begs the question of how he got “his name”. He earned it.
The takeaway is not that Lord Kelvin was a charlatan, but rather that even the most accomplished figure in a given field can be blinded by personal bias and tunnel vision.
Peter Miller says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:40 am
“…I hope Americans will do everything in their power to introduce the French metrical system.”
We probably would have, if calculators and computers hadn’t come along and made menial arithmetic trivial.
Wasn’t it Bill Gates who said we would never need more than 1 Mbyte of computer memory (when introducing the IBM-AT?).
Great collection of graphs. Gives the big picture all in one place. My friend who believes what the MSM tells him is not capable of studying this long enough to understand the import. This is the warmest decade in history. CO2 is skyrocketing. Seal level is rising. Ice is melting. The POTUS sez it is so. Period.
Chad Wozniak says:
“And the hypocrite goes right along with his own DENIER meme – the one that DENIES such things as the 33,000 dead from hypothermia in the UK last year, courtesy of the carbon tax.”
Chad, I think that end is the goal if many of the Gia worshipers.
The statement “climate change is a fact” is nothing more than a equivocation based on two meanings of “climate change”. One is the ordinary English meanings of those words, and as others have said anyone would agree with that claim. “It is settled. The sun will rise again tomorrow morning.” The other meaning of “climate change” is the one cooked up by the UN, namely
“We take climate change to mean a change in climate caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.” That assertion is not “settled science”. The further implied claim that the man-made climate change is a matter to be dealt with by government policy is an even less established “scientific fact”. The even further implicit claim that even if policy to deal with it is advisable, the best such policy is restrictions on CO2 emissions is even less settled as a fact. The even further claim that such restrictions are advisable for the US and Europe if the rest of the world does not go along with it is even less settled as fact. Yet the POTUS expects many of his listeners to hear him saying all these claims are “settled fact” while simultaneously maintaining “deniability” if challenged.
I think we should embrace that “Climate Change” is real and caused by natural processes. Rather than be skeptics of global warming caused by man, we can be believers that climate change is real and naturally caused. When they say the climate change is a fact, we can completely agree with their position. If they want to argue the climate is warming or is driven by CO2 emissions, then they need to make that argument. Everyone believes the climate changes. Since the climate has always changed, and we all agree upon that, then no actions are required.
Tim Obrien said @ January 29, 2014 at 9:59 am
Ah yes, a Big Lie in the service of Truth. Even the wiki-bloody-pedia gets it right:
John William Draper was an American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer.
Andrew Dickson White was an American diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century.
According to Stephen Jay Gould
Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that
Lord Kelvin may have been wrong on many a thing, he was darn right on this one:
0 K is pretty cold.
It is unfortunate that by this repeated but apparently still flawed warning about climate change due to global warming, the democrats are advising the various regions of the United States to prepare for unprecedented global warming and are thus diverting tax funds and public attention away from preparing for statewide and national wide serious winter cooling which is much more likely to be on the horizon and could be more disruptive and damaging than warming as the southeast regions around Atlanta with all their ice and snow have found out yesterday and today. This IS not a new event because winters have been cooling now for 15 years in every state of this country.but do you think the democrarts are telling you this and if not why not?..Many states may find them selves totally unprepared for the winters ahead in terms of secure energy stocks and proper road infrastructure to withstand the colder winter ice and snow .. The reason why this writer is speaking up is because the past IPCC forecasts and models seem to bare no relationship to observed reality and using IPCC reports to shape public policy is premature, wrong and wasteful of public money that is urgently needed for other goals like helping to rebuild after “natural” disasters caused by “natural” forces which will always be with us.
The promoter of CAGW have done a good job of filling the term “Climate Change” with all sorts of implied meaning. When the President says, “Climate Change I know exactly what he means — he means CAGW. Skeptics need to be very careful not to fall into the linguistics trap that is being set by the CAGW promoters. If we casually adopt the phrase “Climate Change” when arguing about the theory of CAGW, then we get framed as flat-earthers because climate change is a fact; and to argue that the climate never changes is silly to the extreme. But too often I see skeptics using the phrase ‘climate change’. Even in the comments here, people got caught up in that trap.
When you really dissect it, the climate wars are about politics and not science. The scientific argument is fairly narrow and would not elicit the kind of all-out tribal warfare that we see if politics were not the central issue. Think about it this way:
(1) The climate is always changing. No one argues that fact.
(2) There is evidence that the earth warmed in the second half of the 20th century, but the exact magnitude of that warming is in dispute due to problems with the temperature record. Few would argue that surface temps did not increase in the second half of the 20th century — although the evidence is largely anecdotal.
(3) Humans have contributed to a changing climate … as have all of the major species. For example, plankton has a profound effect on the climate — certainly more than humans. So I think skeptics are better off to acknowledge that all living things effect the climate.
(4) The central question remains as to how much of the change seen in the second half of the 20th century can be attributed to human CO2 emissions vs other causes. In my mind, this is where we need to be quite precise in our language.
The battle is really about whether Human CO2 emissions have a big impact (equilibrium climate sensitivity about 4 Kelvin), a moderate impact (equilibrium climate sensitivity between 2 and 4 Kelvin) or a small impact (equilibrium climate sensitivity below 2 Kelvin) on Average Global Surface Temperature.
I’d love to see the Skeptic community narrow the argument. For example, to say “I am skeptical of the claims that equilibrium climate sensitivity is greater the 2” forces the CAGW proponents to argue in the specific. Its also very hard for them to label that position as anti-science, flat-earther talk because its a reasonable position based on sophisticated knowledge of the topic.
We just look silly when we adopt the linguistics of our opponents simply because “we know what they mean”.
The more our cerebral president seeks to educate us the more I think he should endeavor to study, at least a little bit, that which he seeks to educate us about.
Careful Anthony. You do realize you’re just begging for an IRS audit, right? That’s assuming the DOJ doesn’t find grounds to investigate you.
I loved this line ,
“WSJ: President declares end of global warming debate, while climate scientists struggle to explain the ‘pause’
Steve from Rockwood said @ January 29, 2014 at 10:49 am
Dunno, but my Zenith 8 MHz 286 had 3 MB of RAM.
@The Pompous Git – Extended or Expanded? The 286 architecture could not address over 1mb. So they did tricks to use more (paging).
Tim Obrien says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:59 am
Academics in 1491 did not think the earth was flat. The issue with which Spanish savants disagreed with Columbus was not over the shape of the earth but its size. They were right & he was wrong, but lucked out by running into new continents where he expected to find eastern Asia.
Virtually all scholars in the West in 1491 knew that the earth is a sphere, & its approximate size. Some Church Fathers before Augustine still took the Bible literally, so supported a flat earth covered by a solid dome & rejected the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian system of nested concentric spheres, but few if any did so after c. AD 400.
“But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”
I thought this president was supposed to understand nuances?
Kevin Bonnet says:
I think we should embrace that “Climate Change” is real and caused by natural processes. Rather than be skeptics of global warming caused by man, we can be believers that climate change is real and naturally caused. When they say the climate change is a fact, we can completely agree with their position. If they want to argue the climate is warming or is driven by CO2 emissions, then they need to make that argument. Everyone believes the climate changes. Since the climate has always changed, and we all agree upon that, then no actions are required.
Kevin, that is exactly the position taken by the majority of readers here. The problem is getting the alarmist cult to engage in that discussion. As it stands, they run and hide out from any debate that would clarify the respective positions.
See, they want the public to believe something that is false: that scientific skeptics do not believe in climate change. In reality, it is Michael Mann’s followers who believe that nonsense. Mann showed in his [thoroughly debunked] hockey stick chart that the climate was static, until humans started emitting CO2 in large quantities.
But skeptics know that the planet’s temperature has always fluctuated, naturally, and that the current global warming cycle is neither unusual nor unprecedented: it has all happened before, and to a much greater degree — during times when [harmless, beneficial] CO2 was much lower.
I think you are missing a subtle change in language they are now using. Notice that Obama did not use the word science in connection with climate or debate being settled, instead he talks of a debate. Is this a first sign of change in their argumentation? Have they finally realized the anti-scientific nature of consensus science?
It is rather ironic that on the same night that “climate change” (aka global “warming”) is being touted in the SOTU speech, Atlanta, GA (home of the “we’ll keep you safe” Weather Channel) is experiencing a snow emergency!
Storm Strands Thousands in Ill-Equipped South
By KIM SEVERSON and ALAN BLINDERJAN. 29, 2014
ATLANTA — Thousands of commuters were trapped in cars overnight on highways in the greater Atlanta area, hundreds of students remained inside dozens of schools Wednesday morning and at least 50 children spent the night on school buses because of an ice storm that is still gripping the deepest parts of the South.
…
Several officials spent time trying to explain how things got so bad so quickly
“This came very suddenly,” Craig Witherspoon, superintendent of Birmingham City Schools in Alabama, said Wednesday. An estimated 600 students in his district spent the night in schools, tended by about 100 staff members.
“All reports for the Birmingham area were that we’d get a light dusting to the south of where we were,” Mr. Witherspoon said. “And the flakes started coming, and then it just poured out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/us/ice-storm-southern-united-states.html
—
Please remember this when people like climate scientists and Weather Channel meteorologists claim they want to “keep you safe”…
Steve of rock wood says:
Originally with MS DOS the maximum RAM was 640kb, with later versions of DOS the OS could use expanded memory up to 1mb and extended which took it up to 4mb. My first PC was a 286 running at 20mhz with 40mb HDD and 1mb RAM, OS was MS DOS 4 this was in 1991. The first upgrade I carrie out was to fit a sound card to run DOOM! It didn’t run well so I doubled the RAM to 2mb, for the cost of £25 (about $32).
Bill Gates did say that 640kb was all the RAM anyone would ever need. The people that sold me the computer told me that I would never fill the HDD!
andrewmharding said @ January 29, 2014 at 12:13 pm
It really is the day for false truths [sigh]. There is no evidence that Gates ever said that!
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484
BTW the decision to load drivers in the High Memory Area (between 640 KB and 1 MB was made by IBM.
@The Pompous Git – I had heard it was some faceless IBM middle manager (and it was 1mb). But thanks to Intel and their bugs, I previously misspoke. You could actually access the first 48k of the 2nd mb of RAM on a 286 due to a bug in the 286 chipset. They could have corrected it when it was found, but by that time, memory managers were using it! So they decided not to.
In all fairness he’s not the first President to mistake a cycle for a trend.
Thomas Jefferson on Climate Change, 1781
”A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two, or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits. From the year 1741 to 1769, an interval of twenty-eight years, there was no instance of fruit killed by the frost in the neighbourhood of Monticello. An intense cold, produced by constant snows, kept the buds locked up till the sun could obtain, in the spring of the year, so fixed an ascendency as to dissolve those snows, and protect the buds, during their developement, from every danger of returning cold. The accumulated snows of the winter remaining to be dissolved all together in the spring, produced those overflowings of our rivers, so frequent then, and so rare now.”
That ‘blip’ looks very hockey sticky to me, higher than MWP.
philjourdan
January 29, 2014 at 12:16 pm
says:
‘@Tom J – Mr. Tom, I served with Nixon, I knew Nixon, I was a friend of Nixon. Tom, you are no Richard M. Nixon!
Sorry, I could not resist. ;-)’
I must admit, I am at a loss for words (like that’s anything unusual). Well, on one thing I think we must agree, I’m no Barack Obama either. Best wishes to you, sir. [:-{> (I’m not frowning; that’s a pix of me with a mustache and a long ‘v’ shaped beard)
@Tom J – Agreed, you are no Barrack Obama. he does not have a cool beard. 😉
Interestingly, from Job 26:7— “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” Consistent with the Arctic Ocean, polar cap, and the axis of a rotating, closed-curvature Earth suspended in space. Best guess, 6th century B.C.
Besides the falsifiability flip-flop, there’s also ” Kelvin’s “. ;p
John West says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:28 pm
An important difference is that Jefferson actually observed & recorded weather & climate data himself. I don’t think that his statement rules out the possibility of cycles, but merely notes what he has observed & been told about “climate change”, since he is talking about periods long enough to count as a climate rather than WX.
He was also willing to change his mind when presented with more information, as he did for instance on the question of species extinction.
Eric Worrall says: @ January 29, 2014 at 9:28 am
….The sad thing, if Obama wasn’t so arrogant and ignorant, he would realise there is a way he could create a memorable political achievement –
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Eric,
Obama could have put racism to bed. He had that chance the first time the media played the race card. He could have said, that era is behind us it is time to move on as Americans. Instead he continued to act the Black Community Organizer even going so far as to go after some poor Hispanic in Florida and a rodeo clown in Missouri.
Obama could have helped the economy by leading reform of the regulations written by the departments under his control. Regulations that strangle the small businesses that account for over half the economy and new jobs. This would have stimulated the economy without the ‘Stimulus Bill” or the Feds quantitative easing. There is much Obama could have done and did not. He has not been any kind of leader. He rather play golf.
Just in case you are wondering why I hammer the regulations/business point, the US Small Business Association estimates that existing government rules, regulations and mandates consume $1.75 TRILLION in compliance costs/yr.
FROM: The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms
archive.sba.gov/advo/research/rs371tot.pdf
That is money that we as customers pay. Money that comes out of the economy as complete waste.
POTUS SOTU: O HAI THERE STOP TEH AGW IZ STOP SO STFU STOP
AN WHEN R CHILDREN’S CHILDREN LOOK US IN DA EYE AN ASK IF WE DID ALL WE CUD 2 LEEF THEM SAFR, MOAR STABLE WURLD, WIF NEW SOURCEZ OV ENERGY, I WANTS US 2 BE ABLE 2 SAY YEZ, WE DID.
AND CAN I HAZ 4 MOAR YRS PLZ?
herkimer says: @ January 29, 2014 at 9:40 am
….. Large areas are running out of fuel [natural gas and propane ] that should have had their stocks raised before the start of the winter given the past 15 years of growing colder winters .But if the officials say that the science is settled and to expect only global warming , who is going to raise the fuel stocks ?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The best think that can happen is brown outs and running out of fuel [natural gas, propane, kerosene] to the point it makes a huge number of Americans very uncomfortable with out killing anyone. Hopefully that will happen for a couple of winters in a row along with a very nasty wintery cold October/November of 2014. Only the shock of continued cold water straight in the face is going to wake the Sheeple up and with luck Ma Nature will do so.
(Brownouts nation wide in the summer would be nice too.)
I am mostly concerned that women didn’t learn anything from this Obama fiasco and are going to put that nasty snake Hillary in office so that she can finish the damage Nobama has started. Horrible president but he’s black followed by horrible president but she’s a she.
Michael J. Dunn says:
January 29, 2014 at 12:39 pm
Talk about stretching!
Maybe to you the passage is consistent with the Arctic & a spherical earth, but not to anyone who has actually read Job in Hebrew (probably originally Ugaritic) & its Septuagint Greek translation, knows what the words translated as “north” & “empty place” really mean & is interested in the truth rather than special pleading, phony exegesis.
Just to get you started, here´s the etymology of the word mistranslated as “north”. It originally referred to the mountain marking the traditional northern limit of the Levant, which was also a home of the god Baal. In the Ugaritic texts, the word still means that mountain, not its later use as shorthand for the direction.
http://books.google.cl/books?id=LW8XieaBETIC&pg=PA436&lpg=PA436&dq=job+26:7+north+mountain&source=bl&ots=fWqLqexlqD&sig=OBkC-viUapLX-iSwOi6prSAHbhE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gWnpUva7NbKksQTEp4GABg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Studying the etymology of the rest of the passage will further explicate its original meaning for you. Biblical scholars considered it obscure if not mystifying until discovery of the Ugaritic texts.
RCP POLL AVERAGE — President Obama Job Approval
43.1% Approve
51.6% Disapprove
Time for the men in white coats to come for Obama if that’s the level of his understanding after six years as POTUS.
He’s not even going to be made a Fellow at this rate, all he’ll have to show for his time is a Nobel Peace Prize. What did he get that for again?
Wait…. there was debate?!
Politicians don’t actually know anything, few actually have any real world experience in any background. So they listen to boneheads with common ideals and activists with an agenda. They last thing they want to do is listen to an opinion that proves them to be wrong or leads them to second guess themselves and their ideals. Politicians are all essentially arrogant paternalistic asshats.
“We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth (D)
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson, Greenpeace
The climate does, has and will change. His opinion doesn’t, will never change, and everyone else must change theirs as it it they that are wrong because his advisor’s say so. Everyone else has to just get on board for the sake of humanity.
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States…De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation…Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
– John Holdren, President Obama’s science czar
Obama needs a war to leave a legacy. He long gave up on Afghanistan, Libya was a mess and even he isn’t stupid enough to touch Syria.
“I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”
– James Lovelock
What better than one that has no casualties on the evening news, against an imaginary enemy, in a conflict that he can define and announce a winner through data manipulation and media coercion? He can ramp up the rhetoric and blame it all on something that cannot be seen, but has a financial effect when natural misfortune hits and affects all to so a minor degree and some to a major degree.
“I would freely admit that on [global warming] we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”
– Charles Alexander, former Time Magazine science editor
“The science is settled”.
I imagine that an obscure patent clerk in Switzerland heard those same words back around 1905.
http://www.shmoop.com/albert-einstein/annus-mirabilis.html
Good thing he ignored them and went on to turn the science world upside down.
So the learned president is telling us that climate did not change in the past? And they accuse US of believing the Earth is flat!
2soonold2latesmart says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:11 pm
Science always advances against the settled consensus.
To take a few examples from the first 124 years of modern science, Copernicus challenged the settled consensus in cosmology in 1543 & Vesalius in anatomy in that same year of miracles. In 1609, Kepler could not convince even Galileo, who had overturned Aristotelian physics, that planetary orbits are not circular. Harvey furthered Vesalius’ overthrow of Galen in 1628 with his description of the circulation of blood. Lutheran convert to Catholicism, then bishop Steno showed that fossils were the remains of actual living things in 1667.
Every century since has provided similar victories of science over settled consensus.
For those who do not follow U. S. politics closely, State of the Union Messages to the Congress are mandated by Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;”
In modern times this annual buffoonery has morphed into nothing more than a self pat on the back by each POTUS. The message carries no legal authority and is viewed by many of us as an annoying waste of time. (thankfully I was able to watch the Lightning instead even though they lost to the Maple Leafs).
I thought his speech was; “I’ve got my pen and magic phone”
As in Bugs Bunnies version of Sword and magic helmet.
Next the man will be taking credit for discovering sunrise.
Tom in Florida says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:35 pm
SOTU speeches are a fairly recent invention, started by Wilson, but not always annually. The Constitution doesn’t require a speech, let alone annually, just an occasional report..
=====================================================================
NET (New English Translation) Notes (Job 26:7)
15 sn The Hebrew word is צָפוֹן (tsafon). Some see here a reference to Mount Zaphon of the Ugaritic texts, the mountain that Baal made his home. The Hebrew writers often equate and contrast Mount Zion with this proud mountain of the north. Of course, the word just means north, and so in addition to any connotations for pagan mythology, it may just represent the northern skies – the stars. Since the parallel line speaks of the earth, that is probably all that was intended in this particular context.
16 sn There is an allusion to the creation account, for this word is תֹּהוּ (tohu), translated “without form” in Gen 1:2.
17 sn Buttenwieser suggests that Job had outgrown the idea of the earth on pillars, and was beginning to see it was suspended in space. But in v. 11 he will still refer to the pillars.
To get back on topic (and hopefully stay there), have you ever had plans that have gone “south” as Obama’s?
(My reference to “going south” was a reference to “global warming” and “Winter Storm Leon”.8-)
john says: @ January 29, 2014 at 12:52 pm
I am mostly concerned that women didn’t learn anything…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Most women can recognize a back stabbing B!T$h when they see one and you just don’t get the closing of ranks you do with blacks. Studies have been done and women are more likely to be aggressive and not supportive to other women ie not promoting or hiring them.
With OB you had all the blacks voting because he was black and all the progressives because it was ‘Politically Correct’ (And besides he was a progressive.) and all the rig voting machines.
With Hillary she has been pretty much out of sight for eight years and she has BENGAHAZI hanging round her neck like a big white albatross.
The Repubs haven’t pushed Bengahazi much yet…. I think they are waiting.
…..
Rasmussen Reports January 27, 2014 Generic Congressional Ballot: Democrats 42%, Republicans 37% So it is the Independents that will swing elections.
These are the more telling polls:
January 27, 2014 59% Say Less Government, Not More, Would Help Close Income Gap
January 21, 2014 21% Think Federal Government Has Consent of the Governed
November 08, 2013 56% Think Their Congressman Likely to Have Sold a Vote
January 08, 2014 8% Think Congress Doing a Good or Excellent Job “Sixty-six percent (66%) rate its performance as poor, but that’s a noticeable improvement from 75% in November”
Can you say a vote of no confidence?
September 27, 2013 70% Think Government, Big Business Often Work Together Against Consumers, Investors
January 14, 2014 53% Rate Economic Growth As More Important Than Economic Fairness
December 17, 2013 New High: 66% View U.S. Economy As Unfair to the Middle Class
April 24, 2012 66% Think Most Government Contracts Go To Those With Political Connections
I think the Sheeple may not be as stupid as I first thought.
And a cop in Boston. And . . . ?
philjourdan said @ January 29, 2014 at 12:52 pm
Himem.sys accessed 64 KB of the High Memory Area starting 16 bytes before the 1 MB mark—FFFF:0000 (0xFFFF0) to FFFF:FFFF (0x10FFEF). DOS 5 and later allowed loading of parts of the OS into the HMA freeing up to 46 KB of conventional memory.
@The Pompous Git – My mistake. My memory and math are not so hot these days. Thanks for the correction.
Kelvin also computed that earth was only some tens of millions of years old, based upon the rate at which iron loses heat. Then Rutherford discovered the energy source of radioactive decay, which still heats the planet’s interior…..
TIME OUT! Backfield not in motion… The amount of radioactive material in magma, and estimated by gamma emissions from the interior, are BELOW the amount needed to heat the Earth, as measured by IR generation from the surface.
The “unknown” energy providing that is still UNKNOWN!
rogerknights says: @ January 29, 2014 at 1:59 pm
…And a cop in Boston. And . . . ?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Isn’t it interesting that in all three cases he ended up looking like the hind end of a donkey at least to a neutral party.
I am so very very sick of the race card…. MMphmuph (I just swallowed the rest of the sentence to spare Anthony from banning me)
@pompous git. Apologies. Looks like I inadvertently re-introduced an urban myth. Gates denies ever saying 640kb is enough memory for anyone and there is no evidence he said that. I have reprogrammed my memory banks.
If we are running short of oxygen, we’d better not sequester billions of tonnes of CO2. Over two thirds of CO2 is oxygen.
======================================================================
Perhaps the missing heat is Gore’s hot air?
milodonharlani said @ January 29, 2014 at 1:28 pm
Mostly agree, though Steno was rather late to the party. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) noted that fossil seashells from rocks were similar to those found on the beach, and therefore once living animals.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 – 1519) agreed with Aristotle:
jaymam says: @ January 29, 2014 at 2:16 pm
If we are running short of oxygen, we’d better not sequester billions of tonnes of CO2. Over two thirds of CO2 is oxygen.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If we do sequester billions of tonnes of CO2 it should all be sequestered under Washington D.C. It should also be done by government employees.
Max Hugoson said @ January 29, 2014 at 2:10 pm
Aaah! Knowing what you don’t know is the first step to wisdom 🙂
Gail Combs said @ January 29, 2014 at 2:25 pm
Whats settled is the lib-left is to far down the global warming rabbit hole to change course now.. It would be disastrous for them to even try and explain how they could be so completely wrong.. So they wont..
What has to happen is they have to be voted out and kept out until the vested interests retire/die or move on to the next scam..
Gail Combs
You said
“Only the shock of continued cold water straight in the face is going to wake the Sheeple up and with luck Ma Nature will do so.”
The winter is not over yet and the month of February is cooling faster than any month for Contiguous US. Here are the rates of cooling in F degrees per decade since 1998. I am afraid that there is a major disconnect between what the democrats are saying publically and the observed world that the public is experiencing when it comes to climate in United States .
WINTER
DEC -0.70F/ decade (declining)
JAN -1.49 F/decade (declining)
FEB -2.64 F/ decade (declining)
SPRING
MAR +1.39F /decade (rising)
APR -0. 22F /decade (declining)
MAY -0.58 F /decade(declining)
With April and May also cooling , the risk for increased tornado activity is also there in the spring.. This may again be wrongly blamed on global warming
well, Gates apparently did join with Gore to call for population control at Davos recently…in the name of CAGW:
24 Jan: CNBC: Jeff Cox: Contraception key in climate change fight: Gore and Gates
Stopping overpopulation is one way the dangers of climate change can be mitigated, according to two of the most prominent believers in global warming.
Former Vice President Al Gore and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that contraception is a key in controlling the proliferation of unusual weather they say is endangering the world…
Though Gore said corporations collectively are coming around to the dangers of global warming—a condition that has been the subject of fierce dispute—they still too often treat the atmosphere “like an open sewer.”
“These extreme weather events which are now 100 times more common than 30 years ago are really waking people’s awareness all over the world, and I think that is a game-changer,” he said…
He (Bill Gates), too, made a pitch for birth control as a way to reduce excess population that generates pollution, which in turn creates unusual weather events…
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101361600
How’s your run for the House of Reps or the Senate from your new state going?
Remember, if you’re not leading, you’re probably following …
.
Gore and Gates should go back in time and make sure they are not conceived and then we will all be better off here, safe from a few less conceptions, while they take one for the team!:]
Even Stephen Hawking has decided Black Holes may be more than he previously thought. That’s the way science work.
This isnt science its politics.. Obama is gonna earn his Nobel by protecting his friends.. End of story..
“Climate change is a fact.”
I think science is not about fact-finding. I think science is a research methodology.
Correctly applying scientific methodology an investigator might find “facts” that stand as such until the next investigator proves otherwise.
Jim says: @ January 29, 2014 at 3:28 pm
How’s your run for the House of Reps or the Senate from your new state going?…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Are you kidding? I do not want to be anywhere near DC when the government hacks start sequestering all that CO2!
(Besides I am not a lawyer or a Liar)
Some other Obama quotes “CO2 causes climate change” and CO2 is a pollutant. If CO2 is so bad, he should ground air Force 1 and do his business over the phone, he already has a pen.
“The president said ‘climate change is a fact’
That’s what the sceptics have been saying since the beginning of the AGW scare. The warmists only claimed CC when they realised the earth wasn’t warming as predicted.
@Andrew Harding –
Yes, you would think a glance out the window would suggest to der Fuehrer that his AGW meme isn’t quite on target – but let’s not forget (as I mentioned in my previous post above) that ideologues are uninfluenced by facts, no matter how dramatic. Der Fuehrer will never be persuaded that there is anything but the warming he claims even if temps drop 5 C over the next five years, winters routinely start in October (April, S hemisphere) and end in June (December, S hemisphere.
While it’s possible that the man knows he is lying and thereby simply manipulating the sheeple, I am not inclined to credit him with that much intelligence. That in itself would be a recognition of a concept foreign to ideology, and excluded by its first rule, which is to not recognize the existence, let alone the validity, of contrary evidence. It would take enormous intelligence and strength of will to overcome that barrier, which he surely does not have. Therefore, since “lying” is a concept absent from [his] ideology, [he] would never see his utterances in that light even if he is otherwise fully conscious of what he is doing..
From Summa Theologica written by Thomas Aquinas d.1274:
Both an astronomer and a physical scientist may demonstrate the same conclusion, for instance that the earth is spherical; the first, however, works in a mathematical medium prescinding from material qualities, while for the second his medium is the observation of material bodies through the senses.
good news gets twisted in a para to doom and gloom:
29 Jan: Phys.org: Jonathan Nott, The Conversation: Record lows for Australian tropical cyclone activity
The number of tropical cyclones hitting Queensland and Western Australia has fallen to low levels not seen for more than 500 years, new research published in Nature shows…
But while that’s seemingly great news for people in cyclone-prone areas, our new research into Australia’s past cyclone records also highlights a serious risk…
Our study shows that current seasonal cyclone activity is at its lowest level in Western Australia since 500 AD and since about 1400 AD in Queensland. That decline began about 40 years ago.
While Australia’s official cyclone records only date back to 1906, we can track cyclones further back in time using measurements of isotopes housed within limestone cave stalagmites…
But while the number of cyclones is expected to decrease, the intensity of those cyclones that do occur is expected to increase…
We cannot be sure that this current decrease in cyclone activity is due to climate change – but it is mirroring the forecasts…
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-lows-australian-tropical-cyclone.html
Source:
30 Jan: The Conversation: Jonathan Nott: Tropical cyclone frequency falls to centuries-low in Australia – but will the lull last?
Disclosure Statement: Jonathan Nott receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
COMMENT by Victor Jones: I guess if there is a positive to come out of more destructive cyclones is that those who contributed to global warming the most, the rich, will be hit hardest in first world coastal areas.
http://theconversation.com/tropical-cyclone-frequency-falls-to-centuries-low-in-australia-but-will-the-lull-last-20814
The Pompous Git says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:21 pm
The consensus before Steno was that fossils only coincidentally resembled living things, or that the Flood had carried marine forms high into the mountains. Steno convinced natural philosophers with his sharks’ teeth that the former proposition was false, while his laws of sedimentation showed how weak the case was for 17th century Flood Geology. Remarkably, he did all this before his Church condemned Galileo for heresy, or strong suspicion thereof.
Even in the late 18th century, Thomas Jefferson in the first edition of his Notes on the State of Virginia still perpetuated the notion that fossils weren’t really from once living things. He soon learned differently however. This settled consensus belief died hard.
Gunga Din says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Going off topic, but maybe only sort of, seems to be my role here.
The cosmology of Job is no different from the rest of the Bible, both Old & New Testaments. Since it probably stems from Ugaritic texts predating most of the rest of the OT, it could hardly mark a change in cosmology. The Bible´s cosmology is Ancient Near Eastern from start to finish, ie flat earth covered by the domes of heaven (more than one). Even the NT, written after Greek science had overturned the ANE cosmos, still favors the old conception of the universe.
Yet again to quote Galileo’s friend, Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine, “The Bible is intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.
PS: Baal Zephon also shows up, strangely enough, in Exodus, about the time that Pharaoh’s forces are drowned.
Max Hugoson says:
January 29, 2014 at 2:10 pm
I fail to see what the possibility of other internal heat sources has to do with the fact that the discovery of nuclear decay falsified Kelvin’s age of the earth calculation based solely upon thermodynamics.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/07/18/nuclear-fission-confirmed-as-source-of-more-than-half-of-earths-heat/
Although it’s an interesting question.
Why does the graph show the present warm period to be warmer than the Medieval period?
milodon’s proof text for claiming the Bible teaches that the earth is flat is a Psalm that says that the sun’s rising is at one end of heaven, and it’s circuit is to the other end of heaven.
So if you ever use the terms “sunrise” or “sunset,” you may be a flat earther.
milodonharlani said @ January 29, 2014 at 4:57 pm
The scholastics certainly believed the account contained in Aristotle’s Meteorology but that portion of the Meteorology is attributed by most modern scholars to Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum. The inclusion was most probably made by Aristotle’s Arabian translators. Elsewhere he wrote that fossil shellfish since they so closely resembled living shellfish must have once been alive.
From the wiki-bloody-pedia:
“But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”
On Earth, that is a nearly information free statement.
AGW attack dogs hounding climate skeptics would do well to pay attention to this report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4489792.stm
The predator can sometimes become the prey.
This President also called math “complext.” The emperor wears no clothes.
I found some interesting stuff and so far it checks out when I went digging into the Clean Air Act.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-29/obama-has-total-legal-cover-for-climate-action-dot-does-he-have-the-nerve#r=hpt-fs
…
“The Clean Air Act is the single most powerful environmental law on earth,” says Mark Hertsgaard, an independent journalist and author who has covered climate change for more than 20 years. “It not only enables the president to act; it actually obliges him to act. The key verb is ‘shall.’ Not can. Shall. The president shall pass laws to protect the public health.” Moreover, Hertsgaard notes, “the language of the law says the president is not supposed to even look at economic repercussions. It instructs only to look at public health. [Obama] actually has all the tools he needs.”
…
Ed Mertin,
You can argue that the President shall ‘pass laws’. But he is not a King.
Bills are passed by Congress, then signed into law by the President. If they pass muster with the courts, they become the law of the land.
Just because some conniving eco-aide inserted language like that, it does not mean that the President can act unilaterally, much as he would like to — even a President who fancies himself a proto-King.
@dbstealey – “If they pass muster with the courts, they become the law of the land.”
Actually it is “they become the law of the land, until (and if) they fail muster with the courts” since they become law until challenged and over turned.
sagi says: January 29, 2014 at 10:02 am
An excellent graphic presentation.
One suggestion: The Vostok chart insert, which was published originally with a reversed “years ago” time axis, should be flipped to match the rest of the graphics.
Done. Ditto the excellent part.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/younger_dryas_to_present_time_line1.png
Left uncorrected the typo “Israeli occupied Palestine,” which obviously referred to occupied Jordan.
Rud Istvan says: January 29, 2014 at 9:55 am
It is very difficult for POTUS right now. He is bright and knows he is right.
I’d like to see the error bars on that one.
Roy Spencer says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:19 am
Roy, if by “nuances” you mean lies, half-truths, and straw men, the Usurper is still the master of that particular brand of rhetoric. Those are the only “nuances” this POTUS can be good at. Otherwise, he remains the simpleton that he is.
Obama is going down in history as a DDFN – Dumb and Dangerous Focker like Nero. Hard to tell which of his views are more obtuse, Climate or Constitution.
Pethefin says:
January 29, 2014 at 11:30 am
“I think you are missing a subtle change in language they are now using. Notice that Obama did not use the word science in connection with climate or debate being settled, instead he talks of a debate. Is this a first sign of change in their argumentation? Have they finally realized the anti-scientific nature of consensus science?”
The writer is a 33 year old guy I think. He would have checked for possible attacks against the formulations and tried to squirrel his way out of it. Just tactical writing. No meaning anyway. Prez will do whatever he can as always. I mean, he didn’t say, we had a record Opium harvest in Afgh last year or did he. Meaningless.
There’s some reason for thinking he said something like that, in another context. (Of how to divide up the 1 megabyte memory space of the IBM PC into reserved and user-accessible parts, in the context of good enough for ten years.)
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/
The quote investigator site should be bookmarked. It makes for fascinating reading. There’s also a book of interest, They Never Said It, at:
http://www.amazon.com/They-Never-Said-Misleading-Attributions-ebook/dp/B00524WMKA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391090180&sr=1-1&keywords=They+Never+Said+It
The graph seems to be wrong. The Mediaeval Warm Period was globally warmer than the present yet the top graphs don’t reflect this. The top one is hockeystick like.
Well do nothing Congress sure hasn’t helped small business, because Obamas’ bills to tear down regulations have gone nowhere there.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-29/was-there-enough-for-small-business-in-obamas-state-of-the-union#r=hpt-ls
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-12/what-happened-to-obamas-big-plans-for-small-business
And the Clean Air Act kinda explains why his predecessor was telling DB Stealey what he wanted to hear to get his vote, then going and implemented all kinds of green bs.
Lies kill.
Truth is life.
Obama lies.
With intent to defraud.
Guilty.
Very, Very much a danger to all and self destructive.
Gunga Din says:
January 29, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Surely these pillars merely refer to the strength of the foundations of the earth, rather than having a cosmological (literal) meaning.
Just another lie with evil intent.
No big deal.
He might set off a world wide depression.
Wars may be declared as a result of these lies.
I mean after all it is just a debate about a graph done by a fake coumpter code that used fake tree ring data, no big deal.
Move along, watch the Super Bowl.
U.S. GDP Advances 3.2% in 4th Quarter – WSJ.com
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304428004579352472437635350?mg=reno64-wsj
“When we take into account the near three-week federal government shutdown at the start of the quarter, the…growth is pretty impressive,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “The broader picture is that, as the massive fiscal drag diminishes, economic growth is accelerating.”
-Thursday’s report showed that the economy remained resilient despite political budget battles and a 16-day partial federal government shutdown in October.-
Translation: we lucked out, Ted Cruz is renouncing his Canadian citizenship but will keep his Cuban citizenship just in case the US ever deports him, he’ll have a place to go.
– Higher exports offset imports, likely due to a booming domestic energy sector. Exports grew 11.4%, after rising 3.9% in the third quarter. Imports were weaker than the prior three months.-
Translation: claims that the US dollar is doomed are not panning out.
Michael D says:
Many people I speak to interpret the phrase “Climate change is a fact.” to mean “We must all work together to protect the planet.” The word “fact” is no longer associated with “objective reality” but rather with subjective concepts such as “policy.”
‘Policy’ is part of the hierarchy: Policy, Objective, Strategy, Tactics. The policy of the US and the UN – “carbon” mitigation – is wrongheaded, because CO2 is not harmful at either current or projected concentrations. In fact, CO2 is beneficial. The planet is currently starved of CO2, therefore more is better.
Ed Mertin,
Obama’s ‘help’ for small business was buried in a large and objectionable series of proposals. Obama’s message was: ‘Take it or leave it.’ It is entirely Obama’s fault that the economy is struggling. But as usual, he blames everyone except the person who is actually at fault: himself.
Next, the economy is ‘resilient’ despite Obama — not because of him. This President has never held a real job in his life; he has never run a business, or had to meet a payroll. Everything he has was shoveled into his pockets in return for future favors. He is delivering those favors to his cronies in big business and finance. Is there any doubt about that?
Your final “Translation” is a complete non-sequitur following the energy numbers you quoted. The dollar is strong for one reason: just about every other currency is in worse shape. It is the old story of “I don’t have to run from the bear very fast, I only have to run faster than you.”
You cannot increase the nation’s money supply more than $85 BILLION per MONTH, year after year after year, without the chickens coming home to roost. And they are: the real unemployment rate is around one-quarter of the working age population, not the bogus 7% claimed by the Administration.
Shadow Stats puts the U.S. unemployment rate at 24%, based on the same metrics used by the Bush Administration to calculate the unemployment rate. This Administration simply moved the goal posts, and voila! unemployment magically drops to under 8%. But everyone knows unemployment is far above that bogus number.
Since you’re so obviously in the tank for the wrecker of our economy, I thought I’d set the record straight.
@dbstealey – it also helps when 439,000 jobs are “magically” added to the labor force. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/seasonal-and-birth-death-adjustments-add-429000-statistical-jobs
The source of these jobs has never been found.
philjourdan said @ January 30, 2014 at 4:50 am
My 63 year old brain no longer functions as rapidly as it once did. Accesses that were once instantaneous can now take 3 to 5 minutes! When I told my GP, she said: “Welcome to the real world!” There are even some things I know are in there, but are no longer accessible. I find that irritating.
Here is another great quote and 5 scientific blunders.
Temperature standstill, climate models anyone?
I too believe that the science is settled. Here are the Great storms of the Little Ice Age, worse than today.
Dr. Patrick Michaels – [Twitter]
The Gore Effect lives! As soon as he mentioned “climate change” it started snowing on Capitol Hill. #catoSOTU ##SOTU
https://twitter.com/CatoMichaels/status/428363810148069376
@ Jimbo
While it’s true that Hoyle “just kept trying to invent ways to keep the steady state model” it’s equally true that the same thing has occurred with Big Bang Theory. While academe maintains a consensus, there’s plenty of astronomers who differ:
http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/top10BBproblems.asp
philjourdan says:
“Actually it is “they become the law of the land, until (and if) they fail muster with the courts” since they become law until challenged and over turned.”
Picky, picky! ☺
You’re right, of course. I should have been more careful in how I said it. But since just about every law is challenged at some time, my point is the same: the President is not the one making the laws.
@dbstealey
You are correct on both counts. I was just clarifying for the international audience that finds American government hard enough to grok already.
@ dbstealey and philjourdan
Immediately prior to my retirement, I was involved in the implementation of a new law. I was surprised, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been, at how badly written and conceived it was. It even contained a triple negative! It was interesting decomposing it with symbolic logic for my boss who really needed to know what it meant in reality rather than what the original intent was by those drafting the law. I’m afraid public servants don’t think the same way Pompous Gits do…
@The Pompous Git – As I am married to a lady in the legal profession, I am often privy to the inner workings of lawyers (Barristers over there). And while their minds are very logical, their writings are not even close! Yet they do have others to proof their writings to ensure that a misplaced comma does not cost them a court case.
legislators do not have that motive for accuracy. I shudder to think that laws are framed so that everyone is guilty, and it then becomes a matter of selective prosecution. It is that way here.
================================================================
Actually, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the Supreme Court has to wait until a law is challenged to make a ruling as to it’s Constitutionality. To wait was the precedent set by the first Supreme Court Justice…but it wasn’t a ruling.
(If I have that fact wrong, I’m willing to be corrected.)
Gunga Din,
That’s why I specifically wrote “the courts”, and not the ‘Supreme Court’.
Anyway, it seems the central point is being ignored: the President is not the one who makes laws. That is the job of Congress [meaning both House and Senate].
The President cannot have that power delegated to him either, without amending the Constitution. The President’s job is to sign bills into law, or veto them if he wishes.
dbstealey says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Gunga Din,
That’s why I specifically wrote “the courts”, and not the ‘Supreme Court’.
Anyway, it seems the central point is being ignored: the President is not the one who makes laws. That is the job of Congress [meaning both House and Senate].
The President cannot have that power delegated to him either, without amending the Constitution. The President’s job is to sign bills into law, or veto them if he wishes.
========================================================================
Very true…but he acts like it isn’t.
Maybe it’s time for the Supreme Court to abandon precedent and tell the President just what his “Executive Odors” are full of? 😎
Perhaps the theme song for the GOP should go something like this (with apologies to Robert Palmer):
They tell such lies there’s no telling where the money went.
They’re simply irresponsible.
Do you really believe the globe has warmed uniformly since the end of the LIA? That would be an unskeptical stance. There is no global temperature.
Re: unemployment. The current rate is almost one-quarter of the population, not the fake 7% – 8% unemployment rate claimed by the Administration.
The cost of living is also rising faster than admitted. [To be fair, this Administration is not the only one that juggles the numbers in order to look good.]
Anyone who goes grocery shopping knows that prices are rising faster than the 2% – 3% claimed by the government. If prices are not rising fast in certain sectors, then manufacturers tend to downsize their product containers. Mrs. Smokey just bought a 36 oz container of oatmeal for the same price she paid a year ago for a 42 oz can. It looked to be about 4/5ths full. Maybe it settled. But if Wal-Mart’s CEO says that more inflation is in the pipeline, I would tend to believe him over the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
dbstealey says:
January 31, 2014 at 9:59 am
Mrs. Smokey just bought …
Who is Mrs. Smokey? ☺
The Pompous Git says: @ January 30, 2014 at 2:16 pm
….It was interesting decomposing it with symbolic logic for my boss who really needed to know what it meant in reality rather than what the original intent was by those drafting the law. I’m afraid public servants don’t think the same way Pompous Gits do…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Full employment for lawyers! Ever notice most politicians are lawyers.
Tax laws are written to promote full employment for accountants.
wbrozek,
Someone I knew in a past life.