Voting closed TODAY Jan 13 at 5PM Eastern, 2PM Pacific time.
Preliminary ending numbers are available here
Thanks to everyone who participated. The results won’t be final until reviewed by the judges/operators. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. – Anthony
I urge everyone to vote WUWT, tell your friends, co-workers, family, distant relatives, distant relatives’ friends etc etc to vote! I would rather see RC win if i had to choose between that vile, non-sensical pharyngula blog and RC.
A win would surely boost viewer hits for WUWT and consequently allow the spread of solid science.
Counterattack begins!
Pharyngula is gaining serious ground, seemingly a well coordinated attack which started this morning. Latest stats indicate a good sized burst earlier in the morning that could close the gap in 0.92 days, however it has recently fallen off to a gap close in 2.6 days (too late). If they can recruit more and hold the gains, it’s a good possibility WUWT will not win. Remember to vote every day!!!
Would, except the site won’t load.
Pharyngula has only gained about 3%. I don’t think they have a chance.
I hate to dash anyone’s fantasies but it is so incredibly easy to rig these online beauty contests that I don’t know why you would want to waist your time. Give me a college computer lab and a decent batch scripting program such as WinBatch and I can control the outcome of any election. In the end the only thing you are voting on is who controls the most number of computers.
Right now the Weblog Awards website is incredibly slow. Do you seriously believe that these are live humans voting?
Mike
Votes are appearing at a significant rate (about 1 every 10 seconds) and the voting site is slow to respond.
As of 16:12:00 GMT on 12th the tallies are:
Pharyngula: 7493
WUWT: 9881
Total: 26,798
Looks like Pharyngula suddenly has a whole host of new fans or there is some tactical voting going on (I wont speculate on other reasons).
Wasn’t there a similar flurry of activity last year at the end of the voting?
I’ve done my bit and now have to wait 24 hours before I can contribute again.
As of 0925 MST, the weblog award site did not respond. Overload?
I quote directly from pharyngula:
“So go ahead and punch a button if you feel like it. But I will remind you: no cheating of any kind. The people who run this award have some weird rules, but they aren’t dummies, and they do scrutinize sources and voting patterns very carefully, and will throw out votes that have a hint of illegitimacy. The only thing more embarrassing than winning this contest might be losing it because a large number of votes for me were discarded.”
——-
Wow, that’s just basically begging to do the opposite. ( a Hint hint, nudge nudge),,,
I smell a rat. After reading some posts and comments, I would absolutely not be surprised if one of pharyngula’s loyal readers have taken such action.
First time around I voted for ClimateAudit. But now that I see the site has no chance of winning (only 13% for such an excellent site is an outrage) I’ve switched to voting for WUWT.
Well sunspot 1010 is gone. Not the one I think that was not numbered 1010 a week or so ago. You had to be quick to catch it. It made maybe a 1/4 rotation around the Sun.
It’s the SUN not the SUV
These sceptic websites are popping up everywhere…a regular cottage industry has sprouted. Thanks to GLOBAL COOLING.
Here’s the latest I’ve found: GoreLied.com
Interesting video!
http://gorelied.blogspot.com/2009/01/video-skeptics-skeptic-sen-james-inhofe.html
Here’s my scientific projection:
“Watts Up With That” blows the doors off second place Pharywhatever.
Jeff Alberts:
At 9:07 the totals were:
WUWT: 9979
Pharyngula: 7605
15 minutes later:
WUWT: 10028
Pharyngula: 7664
The gap is closing fast. Keep clicking on the voting page to vote: click
You’ll get through if you keep trying.
I’ve noticed that the site – especially to the science blog page – is loading extremely slowly. I am suspicious…it shouldn’t load that slowly.
I have to ask a question here, since so many are talking about pharyngula. Please Anthony block this post if you wish, and I want to say I have absolutely against atheists and I firmly believe in evolution. But I went to pharyngula a couple times this week and looked at the comments and and it’s seems more like a hate group then a science blog?
Again talking about the middle east today, talking about a Rabbi?
“No moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Thank you for the carte blanche, God. How about raping? Is that OK? Baby butchering? Raping butchered babies? I’m sure it’s all good.”
This is science?
To be honest that website scares me, maybe because I’ve read mein kampf.
absolutely nothing against atheists, I missed the nothing sorry.
Chill, folks, I don’t think there is any dodgy voting going on just yet. At around 18:10 GMT (about 2 hrs after Terry S above), the counts are:
WUWT: 10,080
PZ: 7,713
That’s an extra 199 votes for WUWT and 220 for PZ over two hours. But this surge coincides with PZ putting a blog post up at Pharyngula (no starting flame wars now boys and girls…), so it is probably no great surprise. Even if this was maintained, which it probably won’t be, it would take 4-5 days for PZ to catch up.
No need to panic, just keep voting…
Well there’s only 10 votes difference increase between the two. At that rate it will take a looong time for them to catch up.
I just wandered over from Pharyngula. The reason for the admonition not to cheat is that Pharyngula regularly engages in “crashing” online polls by ridiculously swaying them in a more favorable direction. Since the polls are viewed as meaningless to begin with, “cheating” is par for the course.
In this case, I think the warning is probably sincere. If PZ wanted his readers to vote excessively, I doubt he’d have any qualms coming out and saying it.
I really don’t have anything against those posts, but they don’t belong on a science site.
I try to vote every day but have only managed two so far.
Don’t always see the vote buttons, just results.
Alex (08:57:11) :
Let’s not put our own interpretations into others words. Jennifer Marohasy has moved into third place as Best Online Community over the last couple of days.
Best Consevative blog is neck and neck between Ace of Spades and small dead animals.
Presumably no one bothered to recommend a best Liberal blog because being Liberal precludes them from being interested in the complexities of life and the universe?
Allow the cards to fall as they will.
Can’t post anything!!!
7:32 CET : The requested site did not respond to a connection request and the browser has stopped waiting for a reply.
There must be a great overload on the Awards site.
Jim B in Canada:
The rabbi claimed that “indiscriminate killing of civilians” was morally okay during the Gaza offensive. Are you saying that a blog post protesting this statement bothers you more than the statement itself?
Reply: Both of you cease and desist now. Middle East politics will not be a topic on this blog. No appeals to “but I was just questioning where he was coming from about blog descriptions” ~ charles the moderator.
The “Real” story is the number of multiples more popular this site is than RC. 10X and counting. Could be because it is 10X more pleasant to hang here. Could be because its 10X more honest.
realclimate has less than 10% of WUWT’s total. Lol.
Good luck Anthony.
I used to subscribe to Pharyngula, but unsubscribed from it due to the excessive frequency of posts and excessive percentage of political and anti-religious posts.
Best of luck on this!
Okay, okay maybe I was being abit harsh.. likely they are not cheating,,
But still like JimB I was disturbed by the hate speech and the utter defamation of character of other blogs, including this one.
It angers me how such disdain for research from other sides of the debate is being supported by people such as those at phar.
Instead of looking critically at the research and trying to understand where there could be weaknesses or truths, there is an attitude of total hostility and claims of mere “denialist nonsense”. The future of science is quite worrying.
RE: Ian (10:33:11) :
‘Atta boy, charles!
This is a SCIENCE blog, doods, and (today) a cheerleading team for WUWT!
Yay.
…
You never count your money,
When you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ –
When the dealin’s done.
Can I put in a plug for “Junkfood Science”?
Sandy does as good a job at debunking the non-scientific research scams as anyone around. She needs a few votes!
Ian, the point is, it’s not science, and that was the point I was trying to get at.
I apologize if I implied any bias to any group or organization in the middle east, I was simply quoting someone else, and was not my personal opinion. Here, I have absolutely no opinion on those matters.
Reply: Let’s let this one die quietly please ~ charles the moderator
The winner is Mr WUWT
and…Ms WUWT: What Should She Wear? (WSSW).
http://www.wwd.com/fashion-news/dressing-the-first-lady-1875632?module=featured_1875632
OK: outstanding in January 2009 the contributions go to $ 20.00 (minimum).
The Rev…. you are my champion. ( the best)
Sorry for the bad english (SBE…. one more)
May I please share something TOTALLY off topic? JunkScience reports that PETA wants us to rename fish “Sea Kittens”…on the theory that no one will eat sea kitten sticks…is it only me, or do others see the headline: “PETA wants us to eat Cats!”
Sorry…sanity is slowly returning………
cdl
What odd bedfellows an atheist site and AGW followers make.
Richard Dawkins is supposed to have defined faith as “blind trust in the absence of evidence”. Surely there’s enough evidence against AGW to open a chink of scepticism in most hearts? Ahhh, but I’m forgetting, the Church of Global Warming does not brook any deviations from the righteous path or surely you will burn on Earth everlasting.
Reply: It’s been very very loosely enforced (as in none), but posters might want to avoid characterizing believe in AGW or MMGW with religious fervor. Let’s try and rise a bit above it shall we? This applies strongly when one is talking to or about a poster on our site, probably less for describing a blog master such as PZ~ charles the moderator
Phils dad: I have tried to point that out, at RC, that they have less than 10% of WUWT’s votes. So far, they have declined to publish this.
As a proxy to confirm the accuracy of said vote, I also suggested that they Google:
Climate Change is
or
Global warming is
…and look at the given suggestions by Google. Google ranks the suggestions by the number of hits for each suggestion.
Note: put a space after “is”, to show its not part another word.
(my apologies to the original poster of this Google search. I have forget who by, and where, this was posted.)
Exactly right. I have no problem with WUWT “losing” to Pharyngula, since they cover vastly different topics. As PD says, it’s about RC getting so little support. Phenomenally hilarious!
I think the extent to which most people compare AGW to “religion” has nothing to do with any opinion about anyone’s own religion. I think it has more to do with the notion that in matters of faith, arguments of logic fail, as they must if one is to remain faithful to their religion. Only a very few would think that is “wrong”, it just is, I think people mean to say that the people with “faith” in global warming might tend to be unswayed by a logical counter argument. The fact that no physical proof has ever materialized to support the claim that warming is due to CO2 does not diminish their “faith” that the models are correct despite their never agreeing with the direct observations.
I don’t think people use the term to be against religious people, but maybe some people who are against religion have now keyed in on that. Having faith is not a bad thing in a cultural sense. What the warmers need to recognize is that at this point with no direct observations to back up their hypotheses and models, their continued clinging to those notions makes them seem more like matters of faith than science and I think that is where the “religious” angle comes from. I don’t think it is meant to knock religion because a person of religious faith would willingly accept that one can not prove certain things with science and would be fine with that.
Reply: We know the background. And AGW proponents can make similar arguments for the term denier. Both concepts are primarily pejorative and that is what we want to avoid, or to use the term currently in vogue, ad hominem. My earlier comment was not meant to open a discussion on the subject. This site exists to promote respectful debate. The use of the religious comparison is not respectful and has nothing to do with challenging religion. It is an accusation of blind faith. Unless Anthony overrules me this is not open for discussion ~ charles the moderator.
REPLY2: You’ve got it, let’s leave this one alone. – Anthony
It’s seems the fair weather supporters of AGW from last year have woken up to real climate in the cold light of (a winter’s) day. 🙂
tried to vote numerous times today for WUWT but all I get is timed out message
REPLY: try close to 5PM EST today…lots of people leaving work
The surge has leveled off… No chance of overtaking WUWT at current voting levels (last 3 hours). But I never say never… I’m getting lots of timeouts too. I’m keeping track of the voting just for fun in case anything absurd happens.
I am also unable to vote, tried twice now and can’t get to the voting site at all. Now that the “recounts” are over in Minnesota maybe a bunch of people had nothing to do and they are busy “correcting” the vote here as well.
I just got in to vote for WUWT. They are at 37.1%, vs. 28.6% for the site who shall not be named. Together, WUWT and CA are polling just over 50% of the total.
So, as I was saying about sunspot 1010.
I didn’t realize junkfood science was in the running… I’ll have to find that. I wish Junkscience.com had a blog feature. Steven Milloy also does a good job debunking all-too prevalant junk science there as well. (and often links to WUWT) Thanks for the notice…
I just voted for WUTH!
I just voted as well without any problems.
I only found out WUWT is loosing ground and now leads only by approx. 2.500 votes.
wattsupwiththat?
In this poll, I have not voted for anyone.
After all, the result is meaningless.
Cream rises, and detritus sinks.
This haiku deviates from the norm in many ways.
It does not matter, since in Japanese,
It could be made to fit.
Who is WUTH?
The lonely meteorologist wends his weary way, …
WUWT – 10,838; XXXla – 8,432 as of 20:15 EST
An open letter to G. Schmidt, M. Mann and W. Connelley:
I tried, several times today, to post on Real Climate, regarding the Weblog Awards, and on the Weblog thread. It was as follows:
Each time, I received a message saying the above was awaiting moderation.
None was published.
What do you think are the reasons that you are trailing WUWT by 10 to 1, and are behind Climate Audit by 3.5 to 1?
Perhaps it’s related to the fact that when a post is; polite; accurate; objective; on topic; with references; and a suggestion to review the data to draw your own conclusion; but then this post is not published? And this is not the first time that this has happened to my posts, on your blog.
Is that how you define “open science”? Is that how you “communicate science”? Through censorship?
One of the really great attractions about this blog is the open and polite discussions one finds here.
Here is one of my favorite observations on the benefits of toleration, if you are really interested in understanding the truth about anything:
Paraphrased from the writings of John Stuart Mill:
I’m projecting the winner to be WUWT.
I would just like to express my thanks to Anthony Watts and team for maintaining this excellent blog. It has been a great refuge of truth in these times of universal deception and economic woe. I am interested in other areas of life such as politics, philosphy and religion, as well as other things, but it is so nice to come in here and see what else is going on in our physical world where the people conveying this information have no political or social agenda. Unlike Climate Audit, you do not have to have an advanced degree in Earth Science to understand what is going on, although several contributors and bloggers are real scientists who give incredibly kowlegible insight into the various systems.
Too everyone at Wattsup, from the top dogs, resident scientists and common layman offering insight and observation, thank you.
Although the Best Science blog poll has only about 30,000 total votes, all the blogs together have over 620,000 and there have been a couple of million page hits according to the site. Most of the action causing timeouts seems to be elsewhere.
Looks like the results are pretty much the same now as they were after the first or second day, percentage-wise.
I’m assuming you mean 2500 votes. Still, “only”?
Weather outlook for Inauguration day – GFS is showing a little snow moving out and temps around -6C (21F) and NW breeze.
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/gfs/18/images/gfs_ten_192m.gif
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=lwx&FcstType=text&site=LWX&map.x=259&map.y=112
will start having Inauguration Day forecasts tomorrow. For now, it says the rest of the week will be below freezing, but warming to 37F on MLK day, the day before Inauguration Day.
Just got in my final votes for this final day of voting. I see WUWT is maintaining its lead, now down to 37.3% to 29%, though Sir Anthony’s percentage is up a bit from this afternoon when it stood at an even 37%.
What the heck?
Yesterday it was 37.8% to just under 25%. Went to check out that other site. Now I feel so unclean.
1.45pm central Standard Time here in Adelaide
progress score
WUWT 11047
Pharyngula 8628
a lead for the good guys of 2419
keep voting!
My boss has been trying to get me to fly out there next week, fortunately no hotels are available at prices anyone is willing to pay.
Next year I will begin voting in the morning so I wont get caught camped on this PC late at night waiting for the 24 hour voting cycle to expire.
Regardless, congratulations Anthony looks like you will get a pretty classy, well deserved banner at the top of page.
Ric Werme (19:11:46) :
Weather outlook for Inauguration day – GFS is showing a little snow moving out and temps around -6C (21F) and NW breeze.
18z GFS model : 5040 thickness just 12 hrs before with with system digging south to the coast, heavy snow just north in NJ – tweek that output just a bit & it could be a major snowstorm for DC – with a whole lot more wind and somewhat bit colder too. The GFS tends to be a bit fast on these systems that far out IMHO so I would say we are definitely in the game for an interesting storm. Will this be another case of the algore effect – with uncanny cold & storms tracking him around from appearance to appearance ??? Of course, we know the skill in our models 180 hours out – not so good. Too early to start counting your eggs just yet, but it should be some good weather watching between now & then.
“Middle East politics will not be a topic on this blog.”
wow. see, right there is why i’m not going to subscribe to this blog.
come over to the Pharyngula comments if you want to have some fun. word to the wise – bring your brain
A little OT maybe[?]
For a different kind of vote, … $$$ that is to say,
For those of us who may be reluctant to use PayPal or credit cards online, is there a P.O. Box or street address where one might make a donation to WUWT?
pharynguloid O.M.
Middle East politics have nothing to do with science.
We sometimes get into political red/blue and opposite sides of the pond debates but it generally remains part of the climate and weather discussion in terms of policy and beliefs about such things. It took a while for me to get used to the mild liberal teasing that goes on here but I tend to be a pretty good sport about that with only the occasional, “Okay class, that’s enough!” teacherly retort. I have been involved in political and religious blogs and I find them terribly interesting, but I do tire of the strife. The lines drawn in the sand are far more obvious and impermeable in those types of blogs. And the trouble is, no one goes there to learn anything.
Weblog finalists scores at 0640 GMT
Phary…. 8987
WUWT 11389
Good luck! Let’s hope this ends up as a fair contest.
well theres more then just CLimate..
and since real climate isnt winning by far, i voted on Improbable research..
🙂
Is this site a target of a DOS attack now? I am reading here every day, but the last two days it has been very difficult to get access (Observe I am not talking about the weblog awards site, but wattsupwiththat.com) ?
I noted on Phary that the owner is quite disdainful of the “pseudoscience” of this blog.
To put a legitimate quest for a scientific answer to the causes of climate fluxuations in the same category as creationism is just a logical fallacy of the worst kind.
He was right however about Juan Cole. Juan Cole does know his stuff when it comes to what is going on in the middle east. Juan is a scholar of the first order.
rutger:
Traitor!! [Just kidding.] Last year I gave lots of votes to ClimateAudit. This year WUWT gets my votes. But if the voting gets close, I would hope that you would throw a vote WUWT’s way.
Carsten Arnholm:
I’ve had no problem accessing this site, so I’m not sure it’s a DOS problem. But I have a Mac, so it’s a perfect computer world. [/s]
Pamela Gray:
That’s the central problem with alarmist sites, isn’t it? Learning entails questioning, and sites flogging the AGW hypothesis don’t tolerate questioning.
OK people, today’s your last chance: Vote!
No appeals to “but I
And this is why I read the comments as well as the blog.
Thankees, Moderator(s)
Wow! This Pharnygula guy is really something else. He has recently posted an article COMPLAINING about polite posters coming by and leaving comments on his site. He is claiming that our use of manners and courtesy are a ploy to sell something that we know to be a lie. He is serious! Like all of us over here at WUWT got together and discussed going over there and being really polite and respectful just to get his goat.
How is it that a mean spirited troll site could even be close to in competition to this site, run by gentlemen scholars is beyond me. Guess the times are long gone when scholar and gentleman were nearly synonymous terms.
You heard the man —
Vote
WUWT is holding onto its percentage vote total {so far} of 37.3% thanks to all those votes coming in from around the world, while total votes pouring in for Pharyngula from Minnesota have lifted it in 36 hours from just below 25% to its new percentage total of 30%.
The next few hours will be critical. There are 7 hours left in the voting.
Let’s hear it from Europe. Get your vote in.
From the U.S. — it’s early here in the workday.
Vote
by the way, it looks like there’s a push for that other “science” blog going on at the polls…vote now!
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog/
Just voted last time. I only missed 1 vote, and that was because of a gig, getting home rather late, and, though I meant to vote, I was tired, and the only thing I was thinking of was getting to bed. All votes were for WUWT, of course. I never had a problem accessing the site (PC here). I see the the percentage spread with the “other” blog is now only 6.9%, and the vote difference at 2,215, so they are gaining. Though time is running out, this could be close!
why liberals don’t like polls: self-selected popularity contests are not a judge of anything’s quality.
why climate change denialists are stupid: same reason all denialists are stupid. prove your negative away, since that’s impossible. attack the popular nomenclature “global warming” by saying how nice and cool it is outside today. proudly exclaim that manhattan could use a few palm trees, even though manhattan would be under water if the climate was warm enough to allow tropical foliage to survive in such a northern latitude. make fun of the far left to characterize moderates as wackaloons. all denialists view logical fallacies as a guide on how to argue, rather than as a guide on how your thinking could be misled. that’s why you are stupid.
in case you were wondering.
oh and god forbid we bring middle eastern policy into this, since then we would have to admit that oil consumption is bad for this country and not just for this planet. ignore the big picture while looking at GLOBAL issues, smart smart.
now i’m done.
REPLY: There are other blogs for those political topics. We don’t discuss politics here for the same reason you don’t in a college chemistry class. – Anthony
just voted-
3.30PM GMT
strange blog with even stranger agenda – 10,000[30.6%](no kidding, must have hit it just right)
polite blog with openminded members/staff – 12,113[37.0%]
Nichole,
Thanks for the tutorial.
Mike Bryant
Smokey (05:58:01) :
I’ve had no problem accessing this site, so I’m not sure it’s a DOS problem. But I have a Mac, so it’s a perfect computer world. [/s]
DOS = Denial Of Service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack
I am still having some issues accessing, but hopefully the problem is over here.
I just voted for you. My last time. Good luck!
WUWT is holding onto its percentage vote total {so far} of 37.3% thanks to all those votes coming in from around the world, while total votes pouring in for Pharyngula from Minnesota have lifted it in 36 hours from just below 25% to its new percentage total of 30%.
Umm….percentage terms will vary as the two top blogs gain more points and the lesser blogs’ points become a smaller proportion of the total. It’s not a good measure to use – particularly because the winner is counted on total number. So why not provide that?
Last I saw, WUWT (which used to be about 2.5k votes ahead) had dropped back to 2k ahead. The same ‘race for the finish’ happened last year – probably happens with all the categories. Still important to get people out – friends, acquaintances, anybody with a computer!
Hi Nicole,
This is a non-political blog, which is why do not discuss things like the Middle East and other non-science related issues.
Thank you for your insight into how we are all stupid, judging by your use of grammer, capitalization and punctuation you should be a great judge of what is smart and what is stupid. Can you please explain to us dummies how Global Warming can be falsified, or proven to be false.
“all denialists view logical fallacies as a guide on how to argue, rather than as a guide on how your thinking could be misled.”
nichole
Pardon me, Nichole, but isn’t this an example of dicto simpliciter (ad dictum secundum quid)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(fallacy) refers.
I suggest that you are condemned out of your own mouth, and that you pay more attention to logical fallacies before posting again…
WILLIAM JAMES ON THE POWER OF PASSION (1882)
I think this passage from William James’ _Principle of Psychology, the Briefer Course_ (Harper, 1961, 318-319) gives a good description of the passion driving Pharyngula’s fulminations. A nice added touch is James’ use of “icy” metaphors.
Cheers, Cliosmith
Ellendale ND
“When any strong emotional state whatever is upon us the tendency is for no images but such as are congruous with it to come up. If others by chance offer themselves, they are instantly smothered and crowded out. If we be joyous, we cannot keep thinking of those uncertainties and risks of failure which abound upon our path; if lugubrious, we cannot think of new triumphs, travels, loves, and joys ; nor if vengeful, of our oppressor’s; community of nature with ourselves. The cooling advice which we get from others when the fever-fit is on us is the most jarring and exasperating thing in life. Reply we cannot, so we get angry; for by a sort of self-preserving instinct which our passion has, it feels that these chill objects, if they once but gain a lodgment, will work and work until they have frozen the very vital spark from out of all our mood and brought our airy castles in ruin to the ground. Such is the inevitable effect of reasonable ideas over others —if they can once get a quiet hearing; and passion’s cue accordingly is always and everywhere to prevent their still small voice from being heard at all. ” Let me not think of that! Don’t speak to me of that!” This is the sudden cry of all those who in a passion perceive some sobering considerations about to check them in mid-career. ”
There is something so icy in this cold-water bath, something which seems so hostile to the movement of our life, so purely negative, in Reason, when she lays her corpse-like finger on our heart and says,” Halt! give up! leave off! go back ! sit down!” that it is no wonder that to most men the steadying influence seems, for the time being, a very minister of death.”
I used to think that way years ago. What has changed is that I’ve travelled and seen more of the world, I’ve talked to more people from different walks of life, and I’ve read a broad range of books and topics. And that has changed my thinking. The sort of view you have nichole, is valid to a large degree, but it leaves out a great deal more which has to do with getting from a loosely holistic perspective, and instead moving onto a much broader and deeper holistic perspective that really can look at global issues. Oil consumption is just one aspect, and the world is way more complex than that. So if you want to think globally and holistically, start to open up your thinking. There is a reason “denialists” exist–they merely represent much of the other truths out there that are necessary for a more holistic view of the world. If you want to think holistically, you need to understand oil beyond simple “good/bad” dichotomy.
The slowness in voting might also be within your browser. As mentioned in their forum, the voting tool can use a lot of your browser’s processing time so it’s not a good idea to leave their site visible for long nor to embed the voting tool in a site.
Jeff Alberts (19:03:15) :
Ron de Haan (15:59:40) :
I just voted as well without any problems.
I only found out WUWT is loosing ground and now leads only by approx. 2.500 votes.
wattsupwiththat?
I’m assuming you mean 2500 votes. Still, “only”?”
Yes, and now it’s only approx. 2000 votes.
wattsupwiththat? I want Anthony to win!
Wait… so Nichole is ANTI-liberal AND *FOR* global warming? That’s a new mix.
I thought the anti-liberals were typically the deniers. (on pretty much ANY issue — “Nothing to see here folks, everything is just like it always is… move along”)
you’re all most welcome.
global climate change is irrelevant when the cost, both human and $ of the oil wars in the middle east are taken into account.
you don’t call political science “science?” well alrighty then. ~snip~
to prove that the theory of global climate change is false, one must time travel to the future 1000 years and check the weather. until then, you ought to allow the scientific consensus to determine policy matters. science works by consensus. ~snip~
i punctuate. my grammar is most fine. as is my spelling. i feel no need to reach for the shift key, but you can rest assured that i am aware of it’s existence and purpose.
~toodles~
yeah, i know. “its.”
figures i would do that there.
nichole.
I doubt you will be back to see this but I couldn’t let it rest.
Yep – popularity contests are fun. Just that. Sounds like something you haven’t experienced for a while.
Policy that harms me, my children and their future children based on a hypothesis whose adherents refuse, or are unable, to produce evidence that said hypothesis is anything to worry about let alone cripple nations and economies in advance for and attempt to cut me out of debating it, will draw my attention, my ire and my protestations.
The US policy of draining foreign oil reserves first, whilst purchasing and transporting them is cheap, and leaving closer-to-home reserves untouched – for whatever reasons – has NOTHING to do with the aforementioned scam, sorry, agenda, sorry, hypothesis, however much the little green monsters would like to teleconnect the two.
If anyone believes this to be a rant, you obviously haven’t seen me angry 😉
I am not done.
Hey Anthony,
Maybe we do not talk about the climate of the Middle East enough. I have been reading up theories concerning an ice age “Wet Sahara” and middle east. It would be great to get some inside from a meterologist on how climate change can effect the Hedley and Ferrell cells causing wet Westerlies to shift South into regions that are now dry.
Religion aside, the Bible is the only book that I know of that describes the climate at the end of the Ice Age.
REPLY: Nice try, not going there. – Anthony
oh, and my name most certainly has an “h” in it? spell it right if you feel the need to criticize me?
“I never thought I’d see a post like today on Pharyngula.”
Anthony, this is just proves that you are not well acquainted with Mr. Myers. His infantile diatribes are well known in biology circles. Unfortunate that he brings this level of “debate” to the climate issue as well.
I am not 100% certain that anything funny is going on with the voting, but we do know that Mr. Myers and his fawning admirers are willing to stoop in order to get the “right” result. Therefore, I am skeptical about the source of the gains they are making.
Casting a vote for WUWT now . . .
I’d caution everyone on this thread that just because taunts and insults are being levied, it does not automatically grant free license to descend to that level here. – Anthony
Oh, and Myers apparently suspects voters for WUWT of fraud:
I suspect that a lot of the votes for that ghastly Watt site and its mob of denialist fanatics are machine-generated, but I doubt that they’ll be disclosed.
So – if WUWT wins, it would be considered a win by deceit.
Wow!
I am so glad that this is not a Pharyngula type blog. I ventured over to further educate myself and was blown off my chair when I read the lead blog entry. I share my co-workers feelings when he commented “Anarchy poser”.
I guess I would rather be stupid than intellectually ignorant.
To all who frequent here, I thank you all very very much for maintaining civil discussion and investigation into the various topics explored here. Abusive and condescending remarks hold no intellectual merit and distract from the topic at hand! Sites and blogs like Pharyngula, always seem to be very long on adjective and short on pertinent substance, opting for crafty compilations of rhetoric rather than thoughtful insight into unambiguous discussion.
Just gives me the chuckles…
Go WUWT !!!
nichole: why liberals don’t like polls: self-selected popularity contests are not a judge of anything’s quality. FYI, many here, myself included, are thinking liberals (as opposed to knee-jerk ones). Meaning, we examine BOTH sides of an issue, even if it takes some effort, and digging for information, which is the case with the AGW issue, and then decide. You might want togive that a try.
“to prove that the theory of global climate change is false, one must time travel to the future 1000 years and check the weather. until then, you ought to allow the scientific consensus to determine policy matters. science works by consensus. denialism works by stupid.”
Cute. Naive. Just plain wrong.
Mother nature will have the final vote. If an ant-climate-science biology site wins this, a year or two from now we can all point and laugh, kind of like we do about that Nobel Peace Prize.
Right now I’m seeing Pharyngula, 10,269, WUWT 12,267 with 2.5 hours to go.
nichole wrote:
why climate change denialists are stupid: same reason all denialists are stupid. prove your negative away, since that’s impossible.
Who’s denying that climate changes? It does, has been for millions of years. What hasn’t been proven is the hypothesis that the recent warming was caused by man. AGW is like seeing a pubescent girl develop breasts and insisting someone must have given her a pill to explain the “unnatural” development.
“…MLK day, the day before Inauguration Day.”
I wonder how many nods to this we’ll have to listen to on the 20th. I’m proud of him, too. It’s historic. But I wish they’d leave it at that and move on. There are other issues, now.
@Jack Simmons (17:45:04) 1/12/09: As an aside, thank you for the exposure to John Stuart Mill. Interesting fellow.
Voting closes at 5 PM EST, not 2 PM as stated above. Important to note this as otherwise votes may be lost.
REPLY: fixed, thanks
Well there you have it folks, using anger to incite the vote is one of the oldest political tricks in the book.
That’s a pretty large non sequitur. Pharyngula explains why he positively encourages uncivility in his blog and commenters, and you interpret this as inciting his readers to vote for him?
The fact that you missed his specifically stated indifference towards the awards (in both of the posts he’s made about it) smacks a little of quotemining, mate.
As of 16.31 GMT
WUWT 12312
PZ 10372
CA 4008
RC 1252
It’s getting closer. Keep voting!
::ANTI-HOLISTIC::
but not anti-liberal. anti-extremism, left of center.
and if science doesn’t work via consensus, how does it work now?
and the rest of the world is on the green bandwagon, how will being left in the dust and being forced to buy green tech when cap and trade is in effect be beneficial to future generations? creating jobs making solar panels? with unemployment 7% and rising record-breakingly fast, might not be a bad idea. certainly are a lot of customers for said panels, and america needs some damned exports. so let’s take advantage of the dumb foreigners, how can you xenophobic rightwingnuttians be against that? you love that shite.
and we built most of the country (the good bits anyways) on the coast line – wouldn’t it be prudent to not katrina the shite out of it?
the ice caps are melting faster than those “bad” predictions. if anything, they’re probably too conservative.
so maybe it’s not anthropogenic. so we should sit down and do nothing? good plan! MAKE AN F-IN EFFORT. try, and die, or not. do nothing, and die. fer sure.
Reply: Please, no more name calling. ~dbstealey, mod.
As of 16.31 GMT
WUWT 12312
PZ 10372
CA 4008
RC 1252
As of 16.40 GMT
WUWT 12349
PZ 10452
CA 4011
RC 1257
PZ up 80 in 9 mins!
WUWT up 37
CA up 3
RC up 5
Keep Voting!!
Your blog is a joke and not even worthy of being considered a science blog. Winning this silly contest doesn’t make you better, it means you got enough people to vote for you. Anyone who knows anything about the scientific method knows that this does nothing to legitimize your stupidity.
Pharyngula seems to be garnering votes over WUWT by a ratio of 5:2 with about 5 hours to go. Speculation would suggest that there is an effort by anti-WUWT forces to make this close. I’d love to see the voting patterns as a time series. One will probably show hourly rates that vary within a range; the other will probably look strangely like something familiar … like a … um, I know, a hockey stick! 😉
Nichole,
I noticed you totally ignore the difference between global warming and AGW. If you would become an open minded frequent reader of this blog you will see that most here accept climate change as part of a natural cycle but question the validity of any additional human activity produced CO2 as the driver of that change. It is clear to me that those who are stuck in that world of AGW and refuse to consider anything else are the real deniers.
Take a pill dude 😉
Anthony will “win” regardless of the results of this vote. The real win here is the extreme lack of support for RealClimate. Pharyngula is a non-issue as I mentioned before. It’s a religio-political blog, not a science blog.
Since CA has third place locked, I’ve switched over to WUWT for my voting as of yesterday.
All this talk about all liberals on the side of AGW. Pure bunk. Many are coming around. I know many from progressive blogs that don’t buy the AGW line.
I would say one of the best progressive sites on the internet is Whatreallyhappened.com. The owner of that site thinks AGW is idiotic.
I can’t remember how I got to this site, but it was probably from a link that Whatreallyhappened.com sent me to. I think it probably was a link to a Russian website where soviet physicists were discussing the upcoming ice age.
I am probably far more progressive than most people who claim to be liberal. But for me, good politics, means getting the science right, if the matter in question is a scientific one.
Jackie (08:46:37) :
“Your blog is a joke and not even worthy of being considered a science blog. Winning this silly contest doesn’t make you better, it means you got enough people to vote for you. Anyone who knows anything about the scientific method knows that this does nothing to legitimize your stupidity.”
And I’m sure you will feel the same about the winner if another blog were to overhaul WUWT in the final hour.
Lol.
WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Global warming threatens the future and the incoming Obama administration will take steps to address the problem, Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be U.S. energy secretary, told lawmakers on Tuesday.
“Climate change is a growing and pressing problem. It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic, disruptive changes to our climate in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren,” Chu said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
I think it’s funny that Myers wrote 3 top of the fold posts, all functioning to inform readers the poll was going on, all seeming to make the claim that the winning is somehow not important to him for whatever reason.
Are online polls a form of beauty contest? Yes. Does winning mean the winner has the highest quality science of any blog? No. Assuming no hacking, does winning tell us something about popularity, outreach, enthusiasm etc? Yes. Do the winners usually feel good about winning? Yes.
Does PZ Myers care about the outcome if this poll? Yes. He cares quite a bit!
VOTE, ye swabs! And be puttin’ yer backs inter it!
“Well there you have it folks, using anger to incite the vote is one of the oldest political tricks in the book.”
Confused (08:35:57) :
That’s a pretty large non sequitur. Pharyngula explains why he positively encourages uncivility in his blog and commenters, and you interpret this as inciting his readers to vote for him?
Hummm… PZ said “I want my commenters to be uncivil. There is no virtue in politeness when confronted with ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion.”
Nice try, Confused (good name, btw). This is an obvious attack on WUWT, with its civil, and rational discussion, which he has characterized as “ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion”. Yes, of course he was trying to rile folks there, to incite them to vote for him.
The fact that you missed his specifically stated indifference towards the awards (in both of the posts he’s made about it) smacks a little of quotemining, mate.
Well, at least at this point, he’s losing, so of course he’d say he’s “indifferent”. Sour grapes.
Current voting rates:
WUWT 200/hour
PZ 450/hour
5 hours to go
WUWT currently leads by 1800 votes
It’s going to be very close. If the rate stays the same, WUWT will win by ~500 votes.
Ring your friends! Keep voting!!
Arrr.
Look guys, PZ is PZ … My uncle is an angry old Armenian man, and just because he can cuss up a storm on the freeway doesn’t make him a bad person. If you don’t like outspoken, left-leaning, atheist commentary, than Pharyngula isn’t for you … that’s ok, not everyone can handle Bob Sagets stand up material, but that’s personal preference. Not everyone is polite and reserved, even among scientists.
All this Mein Kampf stuff is pure rubbish; PZ may be hard on people whom he sees peddling trash knowledge, but he rarely compares them to Hitler. And the whole “inciting people to violence” to get votes. Ha! Really? Commenters on Pharyngula have always been a bit rude (and hilarious), and besides, I don’t think posting a snarky comment on a blog can really be considered “violence.”
What’s with the sudden influx of rude people? Ah well, if it makes them feel good to vent, I suppose…
In the meantime, I’ve voted all I can, so I’m going to shut off from it for the last few hours. May the most popular blog win (and I hope it’s WUWT).
The surge in voting for PZ is probably due to DailyKos urging its readers to vote against WUWT by casting a strategic vote for PZ.
With the drive by PZ over the past two days to garner votes the gap is rapidly closing. PZ seems to be geting 250-300 more votes per hour than WUWT. If the numbers hold, WUWT might hold onto its well deserved lead by a thin margin of roughly 400.
Sad to see WUWT becoming the target of such vitriolic hate speech and regurgitated true belief propaganda.
Jackie got it right, your site is a joke as well as your science denial.
nichole (08:44:14) :
“and if science doesn’t work via consensus, how does it work now?”
Nichole, science is the exact opposite of consensus. All scientific discoveries arise out of questioning what we think we know about something. There was a time when scientists believed that maggots were spontaneously born out of decaying meat. There were huge disagreements during the early work done regarding electromagnetism. Alchemists once believed that the elements making up all matter were things like earth, wind, and fire. Knowing what we know now, would you say it would have been better to have stuck with the consensus then?
nichole — “oh and god forbid we bring middle eastern policy into this, since then we would have to admit that oil consumption is bad for this country and not just for this planet.”
Oil consumption would only dip temporarily if we were to switch to electric cars by magic tomorrow morning. It’s too valuable, too useful to burn. It’s a great feedstock for plastics among other things. And certainly automotive technology isn’t the only use for it. The result is that the middle east would likely stay in the condition that it is and the pricing and so on would still go on as it does already.
And when switching to all electric vehicles, we have to consider the energy budget of electrical generation. Unless the energy is nuclear then “fossil fuels” will be part of the same equation. Switching off oil use and generating the same carbon via power plants results in the same amount of carbon being generated, only this time it’s at the power plant and not the vehicle.
As far as I can tell, until there’s a physics breakthrough that lets us create vehicles using a completely different technology altogether, we’re still stuck in the short term with “fossil fuel” use. The best technological solutions right now appear to be efficiency oriented; e.g. This stuff…
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=27335
…adopted widely and retrofitting into existing buildings would result in a better carbon reduction methodology than messing with automotive technology, at least in the short term, assuming that reducing carbon use is the goal.
The surge in voting for PZ is probably due to DailyKos urging its readers to vote against WUWT by casting a strategic vote for PZ.
Should we be calling out for some similar favour, then?
Having just read the entirety of PZ’s posting, methinks you “doth protest too much.” First, he makes it clear that he does not give much credence to this so-called “contest,” and with good cause. Ballot stuffing online is much too easy – just look at the starting lineup for the NHL “All Star” game. Second, and more importantly, his comments are both insightful and dead on accurate. Much of the stupidity which passes for “science” in America (and not just the fraud of “intelligent design”) must be answered pointedly and directly – and if some uncivility results, then so be it. Decades of conservative lies have seriously damaged America, and thus warrant a strong and concerted response. Those who are armed with the true facts can deal with blunt assessments of reality. Those who are not – just whine.
This thread has been amusing… I especially love reading the drive-by posts.
Mostly, it reminds me of the days when I, too, believed in the whole AGW thing. Yep, “skeptics” and “deniers” seemed like idiots to me. The pure irony of classifying skepticism as being anti-science is probably one of the funniest things to watch that I can even remember.
I’ve been to the voting log twice this AM, and the voting is closed, it only gives results, it does not say that I have voted in the past 24hrs. I haven’t. It is now, 12:42 EST.
It is interesting to see what it is like on ‘other’ blogs, by the few comments excreted here by their minions. It certainly does not invite one to engage them in discourse. Vitriol is no replacement for science nor reason. Thank you, Anthony, your staff, and all who contribute to this blog, for making it the great place it is.
and what is clear to me is that the icecaps are melting at an alarming rate.
let’s all sit back and argue while species populations disappear at what is also an alarming rate.
the one thing that’s nice is that florida is one of the first ones on the chopping block. i lived there for two years, HATED it.
what is clear to me is that the nature of global climate change is not as pressing of an issue as the change itself. sure, it should be looked into. might help us find a way to reverse it. we’ve looked into it fairly thoroughly now, the graphs match up nicey nice. +carbon, +temperature. ++carbon, ++temperature. ad nauseum. seems fair to extrapolate +temperature, -ice. -ice, +water. +water, -infrastructure. -infrastructre = millions(billions?) homeless. millions/billions homeless = major civil unrest. major civil unrest = war. global catastrophe is not far from here.
if you’ve got a better culprit, name it. won’t hurt to try multiple approaches. but you don’t have another culprit, do you? you say it’s just a “natural cycle.” regardless of the fact that said cycle is way faster than any previously measured. regardless of the consequences if you’re wrong.
i’m not a climate scientist. we can’t all be all things. cleaning up pollution sounds like an idea that’s been a long time coming, to me. we know about the carcinogens we release with the smoke from the coal plants, we know the effect of them. we know the effects of the mercury that the fish we eat are loaded with, we know where a lot of it came from. i’m in a part of the country where the air quality has been included in the weather forecast for a long time. we’re now in a global political climate where green tech is the way of the future. solar energy never had enough research dollars put into it. large scale production will make it cheaper and better, and i can’t see any downside to that at all. we’re all bathed in kilowatts all day, yet we murder each other for some nasty black shite that we spend enormous amounts of energy to dig up and transport around from one area to the other. finite resource vs. infinite. right outside vs. a zillion miles underneath the ground. clean vs. dirty. hey, there might be shades of gray here, but the black and the white kind of overwhelm it. we get power now by 1) digging up oil 2) shipping it to a refinery 3) refining it 4) shipping it to the power plant 5) generating the power 6) transmitting the power to the consumer. much more efficient would be 1) generating the power and consuming it in the same place with a solar panel. see? cuz you lose energy with every step you take. 1 step = best.
n
p.s.: had to look that fallacy up, eh dodgy? it’s good to learn new things. i’m aware of the dangers of painting large swaths of people with one brush; and i choose to do it anyway. the difference between “all” and “most” is not significant enough, IMO. if my forum posts were in a scientific journal, they would undoubtably be thrown out with yesterday’s coffee.
I think it is safe to say that nichole is speaking from a political rather than a scientific perspective. There is certainly concensus in science (sometimes not), but the concensus derives from the demonstrable logic of the science, and when new evidence changes what is known, the concensus is shown to have been wrong; This has happened many times in science. The subtle difference in politics is that the concensus is a validation in itself, since the subject is often a matter of opinion. By the way, speaking as a dumb foreigner, I advise against consuming your oil making solar panels – I won’t be buying them.
Tried again, and voted for WUWT.
and i never, not once, said anything about electric cars. vehicles are not responsible for most of the oil consumption, a fact i am aware of. go ahead and tear that straw man a new one, g.
Nichole,
Respectfully, current CO2 levels are under 400 ppm. That equates to <0.04% of the total atmospheric content. A trace gas. Even if we (mankind) doubles that amount in the near future at 0.08%, it will still be a trace gas with no appreciable impact on the overall climate feedback system. Go back to your Jr. High science books and read about CO2 in the ecosphere, it is ESSENTIAL to all life on earth, ergo not a pollutant. In addition, the amount of CO2 generated by man is a small percentage of a trace gas. Physics tells even if mankind ceases all generation of CO2 right now, the relative change in atmospheric concentrations will be negligable, so just as doubling will make no difference, ceasing will make no difference in the global climate system. So in fact, no efforts to curb or sequester CO2 will have any effect on the climate so there is absolutely no point in spending billions of dollars “doing something”. If alternative energy sources/manufacturing is to be viable, there will have to be economic rewards for doing so. Artificially creating “green” jobs is no more than one more Ponzi scheme.
As for Artic sea ice, you need to go back and check current levels. According most recent data out of the University of Illinois, current sea ice extent is at 1979-2000 yearly average. There has been record recovery this winter. Couple that with the fact that ANTarctic sea ice has been expanding for years, and you see the AGW arguments for sea ice melt away (yes, pun intented).
Now, find 1, just 1 argument for AGW that is based on directly attributable human causes, not on some model and I will listen to the rest of your arguments.
Good luck with that!
bwana
Currently 11009 to 12798… just got my last vote in.
nichole wrote:
“to prove that the theory of global climate change is false, one must time travel to the future 1000 years and check the weather. until then, you ought to allow the scientific consensus to determine policy matters. science works by consensus. denialism works by stupid.”
I think there is already sufficient historical information to show that climate is naturally variable so there is no need for time travel for verification. But assuming you actually mean man made climate change, the climate is already deviating substantially from model predictions so we will not have to go very far into the future to determine if the AGW hypothesis is valid. Your statement that science works by consensus is utterly wrong and is an anathema to scientific progress. The very idea that consensus is necessary to determine scientific fact simply means that the data and science isn’t yet sufficient to convince. When august scientific bodies such as the Royal Society issue proclamations such as they have done about ACC (AGW), they disgrace themselves. Let us leave consensus to government where it belongs.
As for the final vitriolic comment, it just reflects on its writers bias and contributes nothing to the discussion.
WUWT and Pharyngula are getting about 95% of the votes being cast.
Philosophical question: why do some people feel they need to post insults on a blog they won’t vote for? Is it a self-esteem thing? Narcissism? False bravado? A delusional episode? Intimidation? Seriously, what’s the motivation for such silliness? It can’t be that they really think it will change minds, can it?
@ phil:
global climate change was a discovery. and when a bunch of scientists do experiments and test discoveries and most of the evidence points in a supportive direction, consensus is formed. see, you got it backwards. it’s because you changed the word “theory” to “discovery.” science works by:
1) theory
2)experiment
3)evaluate evidence
4)publish data
5)reproduction of results by other scientists
6)publish new data
7)repeat 5 & 6 until evidence is overwhelming
8)consensus
from consensus, we can extrapolate new theories and do it all over again. and if, at any time, conflicting evidence is discovered, we start over again. conflicting evidence often gets weeded out at step 5. things that survive step 5 often lead to new consensus.
see, you might think maggots generated spontaneously if you never saw a fly lay its eggs. i’ve never seen a fly do that, have you? close observation of flies (step 2) weeded that theory out. didn’t even make it to step 5. what a good system we have!
Pharyngula. P.Z. Meyers is a jerk and a poor loser… a pox on him and congratulations to Anthony.
I’d go over to that other site and check out the terrible comments, except I don’t think it even deserves that traffic. My advice to all is to ignore the anti-science blogs altogether.
@ bwana:
see, i don’t have to do all the work you just did, because i just read the scientific consensus and i leave the professionals to their work. it seems disrespectful to do otherwise.
a ponzi scheme would not include a product. energy is a very valuable product. nice how you worked that term in there, madoff teach you a new word? cute!
doing nothing will leave us out of the global economy. doing nothing will, do nothing. see? things are better than not things. abundant energy is better than shortages. in energy production as in stocks, it’s best to diversify. you don’t have to agree with climate change to see this, but i suspect that your ideology will blind you. just like how middle east politics is “not allowed” on this blog.
bwanajohn,
Respectfully, CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas (Physics tells us that) and doubling it would have a profound effect, even if it is still in trace amounts. You can deny anthropogenic climate change all day long if you want, but you are being scientifically dishonest with your claims about CO2.
Also, long term trends are whats important to look at. Sure this may be a cooler winter in the northern hemisphere, which is good for sea ice production, but its just one data point.
As of 16.31 GMT
WUWT 12312
PZ 10372
CA 4008
RC 1252
As of 18.00 GMT
WUWT 12895
PZ 11104
CA 4037
RC 1338
Result at current voting rate
WUWT 14300
PZ 13200
CA 4117
RC 1580
We’re pulling away again! Keep Voting!!!
@ jim:
right. politics make policies. hopefully, ones informed by science.
“oil making solar panels” ?? wtf?
Well that is it I am done with this blog. You took PZ completely out of context. Something that an honest person would not do. Also, your desire to win a web award is kinda sickening. I tried to give your blog a chance, but I am done.
to prove that the theory of global climate change is false, one must time travel to the future 1000 years and check the weather.
How about looking 1000 years into the past? That we can do. And the results are quite illuminating.
and what is clear to me is that the icecaps are melting at an alarming rate.
I recommend you look at the graphs for both NH and SH and check out what (Pro-AGW) NASA had to say about summer 2007 ice.
Good grief… from where did all these anti-WUWT come from… and they really nasty… PZ Meyers must have slot of angry and unpleasant friends. I certainly am glad I don’t hang around with them.
Nichole”
1) generating the power and consuming it in the same place with a solar panel. see? cuz you lose energy with every step you take. 1 step = best.
Just make sure it is sunny all the time, yes? And certainly not snowing, yes?
Unless energy policies go the nuclear way, there is no possibility of stopping coal and oil factories. All the carbon capping schemes are a new way for governments ( and private enterprises like the ones Al Gore has) to squeeze money out of the hoi polloi, and get more control over the population.
What is clear to me… is that what some people consider “facts” are most definitely NOT FACTS. Ice caps melting?! I’m not sure you have the right planet. The rest of that monolithic block of lower case text is safe to ignore.
Why is it so important for some people that things be bad?
10:15AM local time [USA west coast]
WUWT = 12992
the other =11203
diff
1789
Yesterday the difference was running about 2300.
Difficult to access for vote.
Nichole,
Just curious. What does the trouble in Middle East have to do with Oil or Global Warming? Nigeria has plenty of Oil, so Does Russia, Canada and Mexico and we have no problem with those countries.
You folks over there, being anti-religous as you are certainly do not still believe that old tripe from 2003 about the war being for oil do you? Where else in the Middle East is at War right this very minute? Might that have something to do with your other boogeyman?
WUWT is not a political blog, and we try to stay narrowly focused here on Science only, but I am interested in your insight on this issue. Please email me at
hahajohnnyb@gmail.com
I will never share my opinion about this issue on this blog, so if you want a reply you must email directly. Thanks
Are you quite sure of that?
What if you came across data that indicated that previously there have been far faster, natural changes?
What would be your first reaction?
Wow, some really enlightened folks have
poopedpopped in here today to let us know how unimportant this is to them. I came of age during the heyday of the free speech movement, and to this day I’ve never understood how rudeness, incivility, and vulgarity are supposed to be a characteristic of the supposedly enlightened.Well, it will soon be over, and hopefully they will crawl back under whatever rock they crawled out from under to grace us with their presence. Then we can return to civil discourse, and honest questioning of whether or not anthropogenic global warming spells impending doom to the world as we know it.
@nichole (09:43:50) :
Wow! Been reading the New York Times a lot lately it seems.
Polar Bears Perhaps? I suggest you run over to WWF and make your contribution to save the poor Polar Bears.
Chopping block for what exactly? The demise of their citrus industry as our climate continues to cool and we begin to deplete the primary food source of plants (CO2) in a feeble attempt to control that which we cannot (temperature)?
Yikes, never mind, I could continue but this is just way too easy.
Nicole, I suggest you take a timeout and begin to educate yourself on this subject. You clearly have no real clue.
nichole,
“vehicles are not responsible for most of the oil consumption, a fact i am aware of.”
Would you please explain the basis for that statement?
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
I have never quite figured out why these folks are filled with such hatred and vitriol.
if you’ve got a better culprit, name it. won’t hurt to try multiple approaches. but you don’t have another culprit, do you?
Speaking personally (re data since 1976), I can name six: PDO, AMO, IPO, NAO, AO, AAO.
(There is also that little measurement issue, which is how this blog got its start.)
>…to prove that the theory of global climate change is false, one must…
Sorry, but It is the man-made climate change proponents who need to prove their case. They are seeking money and votes from us, not the other way around.
All here believe in climate change; most here believe that such change is a part of a natural cycle.
If someone wishes me to believe that mankind has taken over responsibility for these changes, such that I should vote to increase taxes in an attempt to deal with it, then it is they who have a case to prove, not me.
So far I’ve seen lots of taunting and attempts to intimidate with “consensus” arguments (which were probably used against Darwin in his time, and didn’t work then, either), but the actual science behind the AGW argument has so many gaping holes in it that I’m surprised it is still being taken seriously.
WUWT = 13081
PZ = 11320
nichole:
why climate change denialists are stupid: same reason all denialists are stupid.
nichole, “denialists” don’t deny that the climate changes as a matter of normal course, and changes naturally. Instead, that’s what the “believers” deny.
Hence the ipcc’s inveterately held presupposition that climate change must be due to fossil fuel CO2, which the ipcc’s method simply does not allow to be disproven/questioned, and which in effect is simply repeated as a basic article of belief over and over by the ipcc “science”.
That process also qualifies the ipcc/”believers'” position as a classic Conspiracy Theory, i.e., one that its adherents will hold to despite all evidence, and it also makes the “Theory” essentially nonsensical from a scientific perspective. There is nothing scientific which will disprove the Theory, and therefore nothing scientific necessary to prove it, either.
“Denialists” don’t deny that it’s at least possible for the climate to change via Man’s machinations. In the current situation “denialists” simply want proof that what the “believers” call “climate change” = Global Warming is due to Human acts as compared with Nature’s mechanisms – and, of course, that GW is actually occurring, that GW would result in a net disaster regarless of its cause, and that any alleged cure to GW will not result in a greater disaster itself than the alleged disease will.
Again, all the “believers” seem to do is to simply repeat over and over a few mantras, despite a massive amount of evidence which objectively questions the apparent meaning of these mantras, and which so far contradicts AGW predictions flowing from the mantras.
The “believers'” specific tactic essentially amounts to a variation of “The Monkeys know it is true because they always say it is true” method, and they apparently hope that this propagandistic tactic will hold sway with Politicians and the Public, so that the “belief” can be translated into measures involving control.
In contrast, “denialists” deny that this specific tactic is a part of the Scientific Method and instead want realistic solutions to real problems, as opposed to “solutions” addressing propagandistically created perceptions, a dynamic whose goal is merely control for its own sake, +/- the obvious fringe benefits accruing to those in control.
13174 vs 11.424
“oil making solar panels” ?? wtf?
British Petroleum was for years the largest producer of solar panels in Europe 🙂
voted
13,204 to 11,467 at 10:50 a.m. PST
Well, that was an interesting read… the paranoia is a bit unbecoming, kids.
PZ: 11.506
WUWT 13.235
Hope it’ll stay so.
Joe Golonka:
Decades of conservative lies have seriously damaged America, and thus warrant a strong and concerted response.
Wouldn’t ANY lies, no matter where they’re from be damaging? Do “conservatives” have the market cornered on lying? I highly doubt it, and I say that as a “liberal”. Because, you see, AGW is probably the biggest lie ever told, with severe consequences to society, to science, and to freedom itself very likely, if not stopped. The bigger the lie, the greater the chance for tyranny.
nichole:
and what is clear to me is that the icecaps are melting at an alarming rate.
No, sorry, they are not. If you will bother to look at the actual science, you’ll find that is just alarmist hogwash.
No, C02, or “carbon” as you call it does not “match up nicey nice” with temps. Wrong again. If you’ll bother to look at the geologic history (and I doubt you will) you’ll see that C02 rises as a result of temperature rise, not the other way around.
cleaning up pollution sounds like an idea that’s been a long time coming, to me. No one here says otherwise. Completely different issue, though one alarmists LOVE to conflate with the issue of AGW.
much more efficient would be 1) generating the power and consuming it in the same place with a solar panel. see? cuz you lose energy with every step you take. 1 step = best.
Everyone is certainly free to use solar energy now, if they so desire. If it made sense economically, a lot more people would already be doing so. In some cases, solar energy can actually be cheaper, due to the distance from the main power grid.
Again, no one here is “against” solar.
Hmmm… I’m beginning to wonder if nichole is PZ Meyers in drag… LOL
Roger Sowell — “Would you please explain the basis for that statement?”
You can get a lot of the info here:
http://www.gravmag.com/oil3.html#barrel2
Gas is something like 40% of the use of a barrel. Vehicles as a class consume something like 60% or so.
What I had said originally was that oil could just as easily be used for plastic (polymers etc) feedstock as for burning it. This was in response to the vague “middle east policy” reference nichole made; I had wanted to illustrate that oil would be used by mankind even if we weren’t burning it in vehicles. Best guess is that we would find a way to use as much as we do now for products yet to be invented or products that can be implemented now but aren’t due to cost. An example of the latter might be a plastic that is used in roadway construction, etc.
Squidly — “Polar Bears Perhaps? I suggest you run over to WWF and make your contribution to save the poor Polar Bears.”
Actually mankind is the cause of most recent species extinctions and has been for the past 10000 years. Man wiped out everything from the mammoth to the dodo bird, one way or another. The odd unlucky meteor strike wiped out a few things as well, and interestingly, lots of species that may have survived had mankind not been hunting them out anyway. e.g. It will probably be only a few more decades until the Africans wipe out the Mountain Gorilla.
It’s a shame that species exterminations have to be tied to AGW; the former is a sad reality and the latter is an obscene claim. My guess is that more species are lost to deforestation (land clearing) and bush meat hunting than anything else (i.e. the same as it has been for a few millenia.)
see, i don’t have to do all the work you just did, because i just read the scientific consensus and i leave the professionals to their work. it seems disrespectful to do otherwise.
Nichole, you’re quite funny – actually you do exactly what people did in the past. They read their Aristotle and were quite content with the knowledge about maggots emerging from the dirt. It would be disrespectful to do otherwise.
I have looked at this Pharyngula site and am a bit put off by the general tone of things there. Some folks must be troubled by irritable bowel syndrome. I like the tone of discussion much better here. Not quite so many idealogues.
Just my $0.02 worth.
J Peden — “ nichole, “denialists” don’t deny that the climate changes as a matter of normal course, and changes naturally. Instead, that’s what the “believers” deny.”
Actually, I think most “denialists” agree that mankind DOES have an influence, even on climate. The question is more about How Much and What Can We Do About It.
e.g. WUWT has pretty much proven the case that land use changes alone can account for localised temp shifting. WUWT has also been good at highlighting the effect of industrial soot on artcic conditions as well. Surely if man is generating enough soot to futz with the artic albedo that there is also SOME effect on the climate. Surely if man is deforesting South America this will have at least some effect as well. Assuming these have zero effect isn’t doing much good either.
Where “denialists” part company with the AGW crowd is the contention that man is SOLELY responsible for all possible climate change, but you have to be careful in stating that ALL climate change is natural. It isn’t.
In my mind the value of WUWT has been to quantify what man’s contribution actually is, to discover what is happening and how it works. And it all started by investigating how temperature collection really works as opposed to assuming. WUWT has been at the forefront of discussing land use change and this is very, very valuable.
Nichole said:
“Science Works by:
1) theory
2)experiment
3)evaluate evidence
4)publish data
5)reproduction of results by other scientists
6)publish new data
7)repeat 5 & 6 until evidence is overwhelming
8)consensus”
and seems to believe that AGW theory is at step 8. From reading this blog and many of the papers linked to it, it seems to me we are more at Step 5 and 6.
New data is coming in all of the time that doesn’t fit the original data published is step 4. Thus, consensus has not been reached.
Just posted my vote. They recovered from 2500 to 2000 rather fast, but then it slowed down and the trend just reversed and is going on the other direction pretty fast. I think those were the kos hardliners, and they’ve all already voted for the day.
I’ve no strong opinion on the subject, even after reading a bunch of papers on the subject. If I had to put my money on it I’d expect the oceans to drive the climate and c02 to be nearly irrelevant. By the way, I’m a solar physicist (that’s how I found the site) but I’m not convinced about the solar cycle thing (although it would be nice to have the kind of research money co2 people are getting here in Europe).
you all can’t put one foot in each camp. okay, so there’s climate change but we didn’t cause it. so let’s not do anything to affect it. it’s caused by carbon dioxide, but let’s keep making more of that. whether it’s your fault or not, don’t you want to help?
occasionally you have to get off your hands and do something before it’s a sure thing.
i have no “case to prove.” i am no “believer.” i trust science to its work. they trust me to mine. if they changed their consensus, i’d roll with that just fine. and unless you’re a climate scientist, you shouldn’t have anything to say on the subject. i’m here to defend the scientific method. it’s got great results so far. it’s a game, and like every other game, it has rules. you want to play, you got to follow them. you people are not following them. you just sit on the sidelines and criticize people who are working to figure this thing out. you mine some data, misconstrue it and raise a big stupid stink. all that serves to do is foul the waters. bad apples DO spoil bunches. i’m not here to argue science with you people, as you do not practice it. if you did, i’d be over my head. good thing for me.
and @ mr. sowell:
i was under the impression that the majority of oil consumption was transportation, but not by consumer vehicles. i don’t recall where i heard that. sorry 🙁
and @ squidly:
hughes, daily and ehrlich did a study on population extinction and the effects of loss of biodiversity. you could check that out, or you could characterize me as a PETA nut. how dark are your blinders?
first on the chopping block referring to sea level.
Niccole –
“unless you’re a climate scientist, you shouldn’t have anything to say on the subject.”
Would you mind telling that to Mr. Gore please?
Apologies for long post (I tried to take just tiny snips). Also many apologies to Steve H for using you as an example of what maybe most of us have done here at some point. But this archetypal sequence suggests strongly to me how camps can become divided and ignorant of the best of each other.
Steve H. – That’s funny folks. A couple of you immediately play that “peer review” canard to avoid finding out how bad the AGW case is.
@Steve H. – Peer-review is the backbone of science, it’s a means for those who are informed on the matter to assess the merit of an argument as opposed to exposing it to the ignorant…. Look up “Burden of Proof”. We’re not arguing with the scientific consensus (that would be rather arrogant of me, anyway, being no climatologist). We’re not the ones making the assertion. You and yours are. If there is really a case, it should have no problem passing a peer review process…. Or you can just make a single stop: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics/common_claims_and_rebuttal
Steve H. – Kel & Paul, Take off your peer review helmuts and read. I am not preaching anything and have no burden of proof. Hansen does and has failed miserably. But again you wouldn’t know that because you have apparently missed or avoided the entire unfolding and lengthy discussions that go into extensive details on every angle of the IPCC assertions… Why do I get the feeling my comments should not be allowed here?
@Steve H. – That’s funny, I don’t see your comments being blocked, censored, or edited. Unlike some comments I’ve recently made at an AGW denial website…
Steve H. -…. [read] http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/global_warmmongering_more_silk.html
@Steve H. – I just read the article you linked too. Could you explain to me what homogenization is in regards to data analysis and why it is inappropriate to apply it in this case? In the article it notes that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. Why is this considered significant? The article seems to be unaware what is regarded as statistically significant, in the field. Do you know how climate is defined and why it is defined that why? I ask because the article you cited seems to be unaware of these basic definitions.
Steve H. – Wow, impressive responses!… Trent, OK so you read the article and apparently missed the central point of it entirely. Your straw man diversion is silly. You can’t understand the piece? Read it again. It doesn’t make any claim of particular significance that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. Yet you claim the article seems to be unaware what is regarded as statistically significant? Your silly stunt is useless…
@Steve H. – Somehow in all that, you forgot to answer Trent’s specific questions, so I’ll ask again. According to the GISTEMP documentation “The goal of the homogeneization effort is to avoid any impact (warming or cooling) of the changing environment that some stations experienced by changing the long term trend of any non-rural station to match the long term trend of their rural neighbors, while retaining the short term monthly and annual variations.”
@Steve H. – If you think this practice is inappropriate, why? If you think the algorithm fails to meet its stated goal, why? The article you linked to does not explain either of these things; it just complains that in one particular instance the trend line changes from cooling to warming. By the way, your post contains almost nothing but ad hominems. I thought the blog you hail from is supposed to be above that sort of thing?
@Steve H. – Gawds balls! Is this the best they have? The amount of restraint we are all showing in not trolling them is amazing.
To me, this all shows the need to be able, continually, to refer warmists to gold-standard write-ups of the climate science basics we all know. Gold-standard basics that are open to criticism and improvement. This is why I wrote a climate science skeptics’ primer; and why I now want to help develop, with the whole skeptical science community, a wiki that can aspire to such a gold-standard.
sorry, I didn’t say, the quotes are from Pharyngula.
To put a sense of urgency on the A in AGW vs N (natural) GW:
Here in California, the government passed AB 32 in 2006, known as the Global
Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Núñez, Chapter 488, Statutes of 2006). This is the first such legislation in the nation, although Obama promises federal legislation virtually identical to California’s.
Using California as an example, here is what is at stake. The fear of sea level rising and flooding coastal areas, particularly areas near the delta and levees on the Sacramento River, and warming in the Sierra mountains that reduces the snowpack, were two of the key motivations cited for this law. The snowpack is the primary source of fresh water for California.
Some of the dire consequences from inaction are stated in the Act as:
“Global warming poses a serious threat to the economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment of California. The potential adverse impacts of global warming include the exacerbation of air quality problems, a reduction in the quality and supply of water to the state from the Sierra snowpack, a rise in sea levels resulting in the displacement of thousands of coastal businesses and residences, damage to marine ecosystems and the natural environment, and an increase in the incidences of infectious diseases, asthma, and other human health-related problems.”
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/psp.pdf
The Air Resources Board was delegated authority to write specific regulations to enact AB 32, and they are requiring massive reductions in CO2. The requirements are approximately 30 percent reduction from business-as-usual by 2020, and 87 percent reduction from business-as-usual by 2050. The language states it differently, but that is the result.
The economic impacts of reducing CO2 are huge, with very little return on the investments. This places California businesses at a competitive disadvantage relative to other states, and relative to other countries. The likely result will be business relocation to more business-friendly places. Unemployment will increase, and the state will further increase taxes in an attempt to compensate. Economic analyses conducted by ARB state otherwise, but these were invalidated by outside, independent experts. ARB essentially ignored the independent experts.
Given all the above, it is crucial that the A portion of AGW be exposed as inaccurate, in clear and convincing terms, and quickly.
WUWT is doing a great job in this effort.
Thank you again, Anthony, moderators, contributors, and commenters. Keep it up!
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
see, i don’t have to do all the work you just did, because i just read the scientific consensus and i leave the professionals to their work. it seems disrespectful to do otherwise. nicole
Nicole, there’s nothing wrong with that. I do that every time I step on a bridge – I don’t stop first and measure the forces, I just assume the engineers did their work properly. That’s a normal way for a human to behave.
But it isn’t science. It’s faith – faith in science, if you will. This blog is about SCIENCE. It’s about doing science. That’s why we do all the work you seem to have a problem with.
If you want to be of use here, do some work or refer to some which supports your point of view. Then we’ll be interested. Honestly, we’re not interested in slanging matches, and insults just go over our heads. But point out somewhere where we’re wrong and WHY – then we’ll listen….
nichole:
and unless you’re a climate scientist, you shouldn’t have anything to say on the subject.
Well, that leaves you out of the discussion, nichole. That’s your rule, so you should certainly follow it, no?
It might be kinda nice to have this yearly intrusion. Reminds us how in some places people try to figure things out using anger and name calling instead of trading information and ideas. Kind of a nice reality check.
I’m still holding my nose after reading Prof. Meyers’ blog. He strikes me as the archtypical tenured professor who freely bullies those with whom he disagrees. I would love to be a fly on the wall of one of his freshman classes when one of the students says something that smacks of unorthodoxy or original thinking. On, second thought, maybe I’d like to be a venomous insect with a powerful sting.
@ j. peden & g. alston:
i didn’t say it was bad to look into whether global warming was man-made or not. what i said was that it ::appears:: to exist and to be a bad thing since we built all our houses on the coast line like idiots. inaction would appear to be most imprudent. even if we’re wrong, cleaning up pollution is never a bad thing even just for the aesthetics of it and diversifying energy sources is also never a bad thing. even with falling oil prices, the political climate is right for achieving these two noteworthy goals and if you prove there’s no global warming, then it won’t be. even my dad, republican though he is, is looking into a 75,000 kw/h solar array for the shop. research dollars for technology have been a might bit scarce lately and that is most definitely a bad thing.
like hussein was a bad guy for twenty years, and some jerk from a different country had to smack us with a couple of planes before we had the political impetus to take his ass down. and now everybody’s concentrating on the WMDs, or lack thereof, and regretting doing something that probably actually had to be done. i would say that our reason for invading iraq was just as relevant as the cause of global warming. hopefully, it’ll all work out in the end.
but you two don’t seem like the type to drive an SUV out of spite and i had no intention of irking your ilk.
@ watt:
i would most definitely not mind telling him.
“if they changed their consensus, i’d roll with that just fine. and unless you’re a climate scientist, you shouldn’t have anything to say on the subject. i’m here to defend the scientific method.”
nichole
from wiki:
Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2]
Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.
Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce a biased interpretation of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.
Please note the word “consensus” or anything alluding to it is not mentioned.
What’s the secret handshake to get in to vote? From the “poles” page clicking “vote now” does nothing. Going to the results page shows I have voted 0 times, which is true, but it also notes I have already voted within the last 24 hours. My chad is hung!
just keep trying…or try a different network…traffic is heavy
11,779 to 13,538
@ G Alston (11:03:22) :
@Nichole
I would certainly agree with you that mankind has and is harming many species. I will not agree with you however that it is through AGW. I believe our whale hunting is a complete travesty, killing of elephants for ivory is absolutely stupid, etc… etc…, however, the supposed disappearance or our NH ice cap (which isn’t happening) is not jeopardizing the extinction of any species. So, instead of blaming AGW for species extinctions that don’t exists, why not concentrate your effort on those things that are causing extinction and address the real problems? duh… To me, this doesn’t seem to be too difficult of an issue to identify correctly.
If you spend up all of your money and resources to try to manage temperature, what will there be left to deal with the real root of these problems? Nothing, that is the point. You will have exhausted all of your resources on a problem that doesn’t exist, or, if the problem even does exist (giving you the benefit of the doubt), you still cannot convince me that you can do anything within reason about it, you are still left with the original problems of hunting and other things. You will have done absolutely nothing to solve these problems and yet your pockets will be empty.
Believe me, I am all on board with about protecting our environment, protecting our wildlife, protecting our natural resources. These are the precise reasons why I question AGW and primarily the current suggested approaches to control it. I am so concerned about our well being that I want to be sure we are not just digging a deeper hole, and, unfortunately, to date, I am finding that we are in fact doing exactly that. We are digging a hole with the AGW shovel that will become so detrimental that it is going to severely hamper our ability to solve or protect anything. I fear it will push us into a position of fighting for mere survival and we will have done nothing positive towards our global climate or any of these other problems.
You obviously do not understand the basic position of most of the people that post here on this blog. Fortunately, there are many people here that are willing to discuss these things in an intelligent and rational way. I would enjoy it, no matter your position on politics or issues, if you could join us in the same disposition and intellectually discuss the cause, effect and solutions to the climate issue. Otherwise, I really have no further comment as this discussion will lead to resolution of nothing.
Well, then, that leaves James Hansen, Al Gore, David Suzuki, Tim Flannery, and a whole host of other AGW proponents out of it doesn’t it. We can safely discount all of their hand-waving. Thanks!
@ nichole:
“oil making solar panels” ?? wtf?
Why not? I’m not suggesting that solar panels are MADE from oil (although I don’t know if any plasics are involved) but solar panels are an industrial product, and that inevitably involves energy consumption in manufacture and distribution – and oil is a major source of energy for industry and transport. I don’t think it is currently realistic to divorce any significant manufactured product from oil consumption in some way. Of course, you could postulate an industrial society run on solar power, but you would have to make a lot of panels first.
Nichole: “what is clear to me is that the nature of global climate change is not as pressing of an issue as the change itself. sure, it should be looked into. might help us find a way to reverse it”
Am I detecting a slight sway in your thinking? See what a nice friendly blog can do for you? And while I disagree with your thinking that we can “reverse it”, I most heartily agree that we should continue to keep looking into it.
I will now ask you the questions I have posted here before several times.
What is the correct temperature for our Earth? Who gets to decide what it should be? You, Mr Meyers, Al Gore? I vote for 85 degrees F with SST at 88 degrees F. My brother, who is visiting this week from New England and says even he has had enough of the cold this year, would vote for temps in the 60’s. So how about you, Nichole, what temperature would you like to see our Earth “fixed” at?
And BTW, Florida has been underwater in the past It probably will be so again in the future.
@ ken:
if you can’t agree on anything because everything is “technically possible,” we wouldn’t get anywhere. it’s technically possible for me to walk through a wall. probability has to be assessed; sometimes that includes a risk dynamic. times like a dis.
Nichole:
we built all our houses on the coast line like idiots. inaction would appear to be most imprudent.
You have very little trust on the innate wisdom of old societies and how they adapt to the circumstances that nature presents them with, whether flooding ( like the netherlands) or heat ( like the dug out houses in the earth in northern africa).
When I visited Japan I was impressed how the coast line was not populated, and the sand dunes to the oceans were more like garbage dumps than scenic views. Until I remembered how earthquake prone they are and that huge tsunamis are quite probable. Of course Japan has been adapting for thousand of years to nature. Maybe Californians will learn a lesson the hard way, but it is the grand one that they should fear rather than global warming, whether natural or not. Even the IPCC predicts a minuscule rise of the sea in 100 years, less than we have with the tides every day, let alone storms etc. Nobody builds on the tide line.
As the water rises, AGW kooks believe the water is rising, when in fact their boat is sinking.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/01/12/22506/
nichole — “inaction would appear to be most imprudent.”
Action would be moreso, and if you think about it, that’s exactly why WUWT and such gets as much traffic as it does. What blogs like this do is clearly advocate that we understand precisely what is going on. Are temps what we think they are? Are they influenced how we think they are? Does our understanding jibe with what we know re solar influence (if any) and satelleite data?
The one thing that is annoying regarding climate scientists, which you seem to have not quite grasped, is that these are people who made models that were intended from intitial design to model the influence of CO2 on climate systems. Therefore, when they later report that there is, it’s not exactly a big surprise.
And from these models we are all supposed to immediately drive policy? Even those experts who agree that man influences climate (e.g. Dr. Roger Pielke) thinks this is a poor idea. In fact his blog is all about policy. (Interestingly he too gets labeled as a moronic denialist because he doesn’t march in modeler lockstep. But that’s a post for another day.)
And just in case you’re not caught up to the others before you who were a bit more eloquent stating your case, you are arguing a form of Pascal’s Wager, and this has been shown as inappropriate.
The problem is, if you really look into it, without an agenda to tint your glasses, you see there’s nothing to see.
It’s never been smart to build on coastlines, yet we’ve always done it. Now is no different than 5000 years ago. So tell me, why did Al Gore recently purchase waterfront property in San Fran? Doesn’t he really believe what he peddles?
i have no “case to prove.” i am no “believer.” i trust science to its work. they trust me to mine. if they changed their consensus, i’d roll with that just fine.
That’s laughable, nichole, as your actions here falsify that claim. Face it, you are an AGW Believer. The science showing AGW to be false is available, and accessible to the layman but it obviously doesn’t interest you. The so-called “consensus” claim itself is a complete fraud, and wouldn’t matter even if it were true, since science isn’t about consensus, which is the stuff of politics.
Squidly — “I would certainly agree with you that mankind has and is harming many species. I will not agree with you however that it is through AGW.”
Ummm…. dude. Read the rest of what I wrote, please. I think for the most part you and I are in violent agreement. 🙂
I just want to thank Anthony and the other moderators for maintaining a reasonable, civil discussion on this website. On so many other websites, the vitriolic proponents of AGW are allowed to run roughshod over anyone with a different or dissenting opinion without repercussion. Without this site and others like it, so many fewer people would know that there is another point of view in the debate and that it is okay to think for yourself.
As we have seen today, there are many sites out there where you are ridiculed, called names, and belittled if you do not follow the accepted groupthink. For everyone that enjoys this website, please contribute to Anthony’s tip jar.
Nichole: your
hughes, daily and ehrlich did a study on population extinction and the effects of loss of biodiversity.
Their work was based on extinction computer models;
which was itself based on the IPCC worst case warming computer models;
which itself was based on the high end of economic models;
which itself uses a monetary exchange mechanism banned by the rest of the UN, and the economic community. The IPCC model uses Market Exchange Rate (MER), when the rest of the world uses Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
To give an example of the lunacy this economic model; North Korea, will, according to the models, have a per capita GDP of over 2 times the USA, by 2100.
Lets recap;
You are basing the economic model on population models.
Then using the population data, you are taking a discredited economic model, and using the worst case scenario from this;
then taking this data and making a worst case emissions scenario model;
then using this data to make a worst case temperature scenario model;
then taking this data and making a worst case extinction scenario model.
You see the problem here?
At 3:08 Eastern Time, it’s 13636 to 11842.
You know, I’m an atheist, a Democrat, a scientist, and a firm believer in evolution. I ought to like PZ Myers’ site, But I just can’t get by the bile he pumps out and encourages. As for global warming, as far as I’m concerned, he’s a right-wing conservative, swallowing the party line whole and excoriating his critics.
Noting the tone of some of the recent visitors to WUWT, I am reminded of the underlying logical fallacy employed, the Argument from Intimidation.
Fortunately, most regular WUWT’s readers/commenters avoid engaging in such a disreputable practice.
Btw, nichole, what do you mean by, “There is a consensus”?
What do you mean by “consensus”? What numbers constitute a “consensus” and what process must occur to derive the numbers?
The only “consensus” finding on AGW I might agree to is that there are probably more people at large merely saying, “There is a consensus”, than there are saying, “There is not a consensus”.
There certainly aren’t many people saying, “The consensus is against the AGW position”. But given the number of specific statements made by valid scientists gathered by Sen. Inhofe against the AGW position, and given the number of people with degrees in Science who have signed the Oregon Petition’s statement against the AGW position, it appears that a case could be made that “The consensus is against the AGW position” is true, even if it’s irrelevant from the perspective of the Scientific Method.
These numbers of people making actual statements against the AGW position amount to >10,000 people. Where are the contrasting numbers of scientists who have actually signed a statement, or personally made similar statements, supporting the AGW position?
nichole, since you say you are following the “consensus”, shouldn’t you at least make certan what the “consensus” actually is?
My vote is in for WUWT, for what good it does. I hope it wins but does it really matter? It would be nice for it to be recognized for the good it does but these kinds of votes can be manipulated too easily and there are plenty of people willing to cause problems for no other reason than they can.
Even the advocates of CO2 driven climate change do not believe (or at least at one time did not believe) that consensus is good science.
The question is has our fundamental level of sophistication at predicting long term climate really changed much since 1976. Sure the models have many more lines of code, but do they do a better job than counting fuzzy caterpillars to determine if this next winter will be warmer or cooler than the last.
Larry
Just voted we are not that far ahead and have lost a load of ground. Two minutes to vote. Two hours to go. This is a far superior blog and it deserves to win. Come on everyone. Ed
13,682 to 11,873
latest figures
WUWT 13674
Pharyngitis 11869
They’re catching up!
To answer the homgenization question, at least in regards to UHI, the problem is that Urban sites are being compared with corrupted, invalid rural sites.
Therefore the difference in temperatures is much less and as a result, UHI is being severely lowballed.
Besides, why homogenize? Either make the adjustments and live with your wild margin of error–or else site the dang stations properly to begin with, already. We’re supposed to blow and/or lose a trillion-plus a year yet we can’t invest a few lousy pennies in that?
ack, pascal’s wager is not relevant. possible global catastrophe is a real risk, not an imaginary risk like hell.
if we’re not listening to climate scientists, who are we listening to now? i’m sure they’d be insulted by your characterization of them as biased.
and can everyone stop asking me to defend al gore? i just recently supported the war, for christ’s sake.
can’t we all agree that conservation is a good thing? we all seem to. who cares why joe schmoe buys a compact instead of an SUV? he’s an idiot, and will never do anything for the right reason anyway since the right reason is “boring.” let him do the right thing even if it’s for the wrong reason. stop telling him otherwise!!!!
Nichole: your
and unless you’re a climate scientist, you shouldn’t have anything to say on the subject.
So, Pauchauri (head of the IPCC) and Yvo de Boer (head of the UNFCCC) should not have anything to say, either?
Pauchauri has a PhD in Economics, while de Boer has a technical degree in social work.
Just a heads up, BTW. If you go back to school, and try using Arguments from Authority in a thesis, you will probably end up with a failing grade.
Nichole important question. What is the normal temperature of the earth?
Second question? Why must warming be bad? It can also do good things including expanding the agricultural growing bands to wider and better ones. The AGW crowd always spouts the very worst possible case? But is really that bad if things warm up? Note that the earth has been much warmer in the distant past. We used to have rain forests in what is now North America, Europe and Asia. That was the distant past but it has been that warm before. Warming doesn’t automatically mean an area turns into a desert you know.
About this blog:
I’m a former television meteorologist who spent 25 years on the air and who also operates a weather technology and content business, as well as continues daily forecasting on radio, just for fun.
Okay …
From wiki:
Watts has stated that he had “at one time been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was indeed the root cause of the global warming problem” but “later changed my thinking when I learned more about the science involved and found it to be lacking.” He established the blog “Watts Up With That?” to popularise his views on global warming and the controversy around the science.
Interesting …
Again from wiki:
The conclusion that global warming is mainly caused by human activity and will continue if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced has been endorsed by more than 50 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Joint Science Academies of the major industrialized and developing nations explicitly use the word “consensus” when referring to this conclusion.
So, Mr Watts, why don’t you submit your opinions, theories, data, compute models, computer simulations and etc. to the top scientific journal for scrutiny? Or do you prefer to only argue with laymen?
I have two projects in the works right now that will in fact result in papers. We’ll then see if they are accepted.
Also the Wiki entry about why I started this blog is incorrect. I did not start this blog they way they portray it.
I started in November 2006 as a general science blog, as part of my local newspaper blog group at http://www.norcalblogs.com. It was not until about April of 2007 (go look at old posts in 2006/2007) that the focus switched to mostly climate, and that occurred only after a discussion with another Norcal blogger, electrical engineer Lon Glazner, who runs Commission Impossible, about the accuracy of thermometers. That got me looking at the USHCN and paint on Stevenson Screens. The response was so significant that I went in that direction of interest since then. – Anthony
11,918 vs. 13740. Back over 1800 ahead.
If nearly 2000 unanswered votes the other way come swinging in, I’m taking this to World Court!
Evan, it is for the contest judges to decide. Let the chips fall where they may. – Anthony
@ hotrod & les:
not here to debate the science. here to debate the prudency of debating the science in a public forum.
LotharLoo (12:26:53) :
Wiki? You think that’s an authoritative source?
That explains a lot.
ah jeez, thanks lothar!
I am more than happy that WUWT will most probably win the Best science blog. However I would like to calm down the excitement. So far and less than 2 hours before vote closure, WUWT casted 13,677 votes. I have voted 4 or 5 times for WUWT and how many of us are in the same situation.
but on average per day WUWT as more than 28,000 visits! so the total votes (and that includes plenty of people voting several times) will equal to just half of each daily visits.
Clearly voting is not a great interest and I believe another way to vote for the best blog should be developed. After all how many people are accessing blogs every day?
G Alston (12:09:44) :
Oh, well, then that is good. Sorry, my bad. Just too busy working right now to pay attention as well as I should. Perhaps I should exit this conversation until I can actually read what I am replying to. 😉
Thanks!
Nichole: your
not here to debate the science.
That’s painfully obvious.
here to debate the prudency of debating the science in a public forum.
Then don’t. Leave. Please.
Most here, on the other hand, want to debate the science.
nichole @ (09:43:50) said:
… cleaning up pollution sounds like an idea that’s been a long time coming, to me. we know about the carcinogens we release with the smoke from the coal plants, we know the effect of them. we know the effects of the mercury that the fish we eat are loaded with, we know where a lot of it came from. i’m in a part of the country where the air quality has been included in the weather forecast for a long time. …
I think if we didn’t spend all of our environmental resources on trying to change the climate to our liking, we could directly and more effectively deal with the issues you mention which are not CO2 problems.
Nichole: your
not here to debate the science. here to debate the prudency of debating the science in a public forum.
Using your logic, Pauchauri and de Boer should not be allowed speak in the public forum, either. Is this correct?
@ les:
and just a heads up, if you want people to give you any credence you oughtn’t condescend to them. i don’t care what people think of me; i know you are all true believers and won’t listen any way. i’m a straight up troll. what’s your excuse?
it’s cute when true believers try to make everything somebody else says a logical fallacy. really. adorable.
unfortunately, i’m not defending anthropogenic global warming and it’s not an argument at all. it’s just a “from authority.”
see, unfortunately for all you suckers who don’t believe in consensus (among other things), consensus is made and policy is already being developed. sounds like a good idea to me to have an economist on the panel, since you all seem so concerned that we’re going to financially bury ourselves fighting imaginary demons. rather than clutching your pearls, why not discuss how best to go about making new eco-friendly public policy? since your horse is long past dead and all.
Actually we do have an economist on the panel here. Search for “Indur Goklany” in the upper right search box and you will see some of the articles he has guest posted here. – Anthony
LotharLoo (12:26:53) :
Your Wiki quote:
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Joint Science Academies of the major industrialized and developing nations explicitly use the word “consensus” when referring to this conclusion.
So? When Galileo was indicted the consensus was all against the heliocentric system. The priests had cornered the science. Are we getting back there where we get a popularity vote for the results of experiments?
LOl! Wow what an explosive discussion, pity i wasn’t here to join in on the fun :),,,
It is an hour and a half from midnight here in SA when voting ends (EST +7) and it looks like WUWT is a winner (fingers crossed)… If the result is a winner then Congratulations! If not, then still a big well done,
thank-you to this blog and all it’s commentators for creating a space where decent folks can gather and discuss interesting topics on science.
Luckily the atmosphere here is one of constructive critisism and (relatively) peaceful evaluation with a hint of humor!
Best wishes to the future of this blog and to sound science. I will definately continue to frequent this blog!
Cheers to WUWT!
Update:
3:49 EST
12023 – PJ
13852 – AW
One more thing for all you Wiki-freaks out there :
Simply do a search “the sun” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_sun
and read the first paragraph;;;
” Energy from the Sun, in the form of sunlight, supports almost all life on Earth via photosynthesis, and drives the Earth’s climate and weather.”
So you see, even Wikipedia (of all the alarmists) acknowledges a solar driver for climate!!! Priceless!! 😛
@TomT
Those are good questions you ask Nichole. I am curious if you have an answer for them.
Also, “We used to have rain forests in what is now North America, Europe and Asia”
Well that’s true, but the earth’s plate have a tendency to move.
The problem here is not warming, it all comes down to rates. The biosphere can adjust to gradual changes in climate brought about by variations in atmospheric chemistry, variations in the earth’s orbit, plate motions, etc, but as I said, those things tend to happen at a fairly slow rate. When you have drastic change rather suddenly, that’s when things start to fall apart.
Phar 12008
WUWT 13830
CA 4081
RC 1432
2047 GMT
OOH, it’s exciting isn’t it
Not this garbage again.
Societies and academies are not science, they are political organizations. The members of all those organizations do not all believe in the “consensus”. Some of them even post here. Are you saying we shouldn’t question any scientific paper?
” why don’t you submit your opinions, theories, data, compute models, computer simulations and etc. to the top scientific journal for scrutiny?”
Many have done just that. But let’s be real here you AGW alarmists.
Have you not grapsed the resistance to such oppostion reports and the declaration of the debate being over?
Many of these science institutions are as uninterested in the opposing science as you laypeople alarmists are.
Go google a bit and figure it out. This repeated declaration that the science refutting AGW isn’t scientific, by experts, or valid, or credible is
getting really dumb.
You should practice what you preach. And actually we’re true unbelievers. We just want to make sure what they say is happening really is happening. And so far, it ain’t.
A dead horse is better than a computer-generated one.
Last 40 mins
WUWT +304 votes
PZ +203 votes
Yay!
lothar & nichole: As Anthony stated, Wiki is incorrect.
Its often incorrect, especially where climate change is the topic. It makes negative, editorial comments on those who do not toe Connolley’s party line on warming.
Editorial comments have no place in an information source, especially false editorial claims.
Nichole:
What’s wrong with that?
Some of history’s greatest discoveries have been made by complete unknowns, and some of the greatest scientists were unknown before they made their discoveries. Some of the most profound breakthroughs in knowledge were made by someone in some backwater.
Who’s to say that some ordinary member of the public won’t come up with a solution to the ‘problem’, simply by looking at things through a fresh pair of eyes.
And if climate change is genuinely the greatest threat we face, isn’t it prudent to apply as many minds to it as we possibly can?
nichole:
but you two don’t seem like the type to drive an SUV out of spite and i had no intention of irking your ilk.
Exactly right about me, and no problem concerning ~”irking my ilk” [nice one]. I went flourescent over 20 years ago, bought one of the first “Toyoda” mini-pickups ~ 1982 out of a similar concern for energy efficiency, have lived in the warmer 6 month season around here in a cabin/area with no electricity for the past 33 years, again by intentional design, have derived most of my heat even in Winter from wood stoves using higher combustion mechanisms including catalytic converters where possible, etc..
One thing I think I’m sorry about is not having developed an on site hydo-electric capacity, because now I don’t think the Enviros would let me “get away” with it, even though it would have exactly no more of an adverse effect on the environment than my spring fed gravitational water supply already does: anything too near the “pristine” Wilderness might ruin it, don’t ya know – when in fact I bought my isolated private property, which is right up against Wilderness on two-three sides, partly so that it wouldn’t be turned into a fully developed housing project or recreational resort, which it hasn’t.
So getting lectured to by current Enviros/AGWer’s somehow doesn’t impress me very much, except as to their logical and scientific deficiencies.
Nichole
see, unfortunately for all you suckers who don’t believe in consensus (among other things), consensus is made and policy is already being developed.
You are wrong here. The EU, which was mired in this idiotic cap and trade policy is fast changing its mind, due to the economic necessities that have arisen. I will be very surprised if Obama does not hold his peace too, putting priority on the economy. He does not look gullible to me.
rather than clutching your pearls, why not discuss how best to go about making new eco-friendly public policy? since your horse is long past dead and all.
eco friendly policies are fine. Suicidal policies are to be discouraged.
If the gods are looking kindly on the human race another winter or two like the present and the last one will bury the AGW horse in ice.
LotharLoo So, Mr Watts, why don’t you submit your opinions, theories, data, compute models, computer simulations and etc. to the top scientific journal for scrutiny? Or do you prefer to only argue with laymen?
If you hang around here, you will see the many reasons we have problems with journals and peer-reviews in Climate Science today. You will also realize that not everyone here is a layperson. You might even find references to Nobel prizewinners here (the real science Nobel prize that is, not the peace prize nonsense). Or if you want to find the reasons more quickly, just click on my name and read my primer. Oh, and if you have issues with my primer, join our forum and let me know, as I have tried hard to reach sufficient accuracy, and try to examine challenges to that accuracy in a fair way.
Have to head out to do some grocery shopping but first I have to shovel up some of that global warming. Damn deer crossed my walkway last night and knocked a load of snow back in the path.
In the meantime it’s looking good for WUWT. Seems to be hanging onto that 1800+ lead with an hour to go in the voting. Glad this’ll be over and we can return our focus to the odd things the climate {and other things} keep doing.
Nichole: your
and just a heads up, if you want people to give you any credence you oughtn’t condescend to them. i don’t care what people think of me; i know you are all true believers and won’t listen any way. i’m a straight up troll. what’s your excuse?
it’s cute when true believers try to make everything somebody else says a logical fallacy. really. adorable.
unfortunately, i’m not defending anthropogenic global warming and it’s not an argument at all. it’s just a “from authority.”
see, unfortunately for all you suckers who don’t believe in consensus (among other things), consensus is made and policy is already being developed. sounds like a good idea to me to have an economist on the panel, since you all seem so concerned that we’re going to financially bury ourselves fighting imaginary demons. rather than clutching your pearls, why not discuss how best to go about making new eco-friendly public policy? since your horse is long past dead and all.
Total useful information imparted, 0
Points of reference, 0
rhetorical misuse, -1
mixed metaphors, -3
from authority arguments, -2
Incorrect assumptions, -1
ad hominem arguments, -3
OK nichole, could you have taken out Saddam with solar powered tanks?
Question is, just how realistic is it to expect that we will get off of oil anytime soon? I’ll bet you Iraq will become a first class Democracy before we ever get off of oil. And that’s going to be a loooong time.
I am not sure why so many are bothering to entertain Nichole the troll (motto ‘lots to type and all of it tripe’) but congrats to you, Anthony: no previous winner has deserved it more (with the possible exception of Climate Audit last year, lol).
According to some of our “friends” visiting the last two days:
Website votes = bad
Science votes, aka consensus = good ???
WUWT is making a late surge. 12,105 for angry bad science guy (32.5%)and 13,951 (37.5%) for the forces of reason and polite discourse.
Huzzah!
It looks to me like a repeat of last year where a good blog is winning and the pro AGW nuts are willing to commit fraud to prevent that. I have not been able to vote for the last 3 days because I can’t reach the site, it just times out. Last year at least a nice blog was being pushed to compete with a GW science site.
I will be glad when this is over so some of these commenters go away and we can return to civil and humorous discussion. I particularly like being told by someone like nichole what science is. After just over 30 years as a professional scientist and nearly that long focused on scientific method and experimental design her definition is one that would never occur to me. I am in fact certain it would never occur to any of the hundreds of quality scientists I have worked with.
The Blog that is being used to orchestrate or fix this election is so nasty and anti science that I can not endure it, small wonder the commentors supporting it are being nasty.
Regardless of the poll your hit count keeps rising, and the word is spreading, here you can learn something.
I have two projects in the works right now that will in fact result in papers. We’ll then see if they are accepted.
Good luck with the papers. In the meantime, I would rather go with the majority of the professionals who disagree with you.
Les Johnson (12:34:08) :
Wiki? You think that’s an authoritative source?
That explains a lot.
The wiki article includes references if you have not noticed already.
anna v (12:42:58) :
So? When Galileo was indicted the consensus was all against the heliocentric system. The priests had cornered the science. Are we getting back there where we get a popularity vote for the results of experiments?
What a moronic remark. You equate priests with scientists, the religious dogma with scientific consensus and the ancient practices of science with the modern scientific method. At least learn to use the continental drift instead of this ridiculous example. You would still be wrong, however.
It’s the freaking “weblog awards” not something important like local dogcatcher. It’s exactly this sort of passive-aggressive melodrama — where you’re constantly on the look-out for the slightest transgression of arbitrary civility so you can shout “Gotcha!” and declare some sort of victory in the argument — that PZ is railing against in that post.
anna v: right on!
More “Global Warming” in Michigan today:
“Residents of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula dug out from a weekend winter storm that dumped up to 8 inches of snow on the area. But forecasters said more snow and the coldest temperatures of the season were still to come…The temperature is expected to fall to around 13 (F) by 5 p.m. and to around 7 (F) by Wednesday morning… The weather service said even colder weather was headed for the western Upper Peninsula on Thursday and Friday, when wind chills could drop to 30 below to 35 below zero (F). ”
If consensus rules, then it won’t take much more of this for that consensus to build in a big way. Pity we are having such balmy weather in Los Angeles – set a record high for the date yesterday at 88 (F).
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
cookie — I am not sure why so many are bothering to entertain Nichole the troll…
Target practice?
Well, it doesn’t look like PZ Myers’ putsch is going to work.
He will lose by over 1500 votes. Unless he or one of his [snip] cheats. Can’t count that out.
The best part is that, in losing, he showed his true colors and exposed himself for the [snip] that he is.
Did you ever watch the Television program called “Connections”? It showed how a large number of apparently unrelated developments, discoveries, and viewpoints led to a chain of events resulting in major discoveries that changed our world.
Many or the industrial age’s great discoveries were developed by people who had no formal education in the field, but were active life time learners in the technology of the day. Some were kitchen table experimenters, some were well educated clerics or from the wealthy elite, others were entirely self taught.
In spite of that they built bridges, devised ways to bore tunnels under rivers, perfected and invented new machines. Sometimes they did that by asking the questions that the formally educated knew there was no need to ask. Sometimes like Einstein they looked at things in a new way by asking questions framed in a new context.
Sometimes the most effective peer review, is to try to answer the question of a novice who is not contaminated by the biases of the day. I know that I have learned many things answering questions from students I was teaching. In many cases I found that you don’t really understand a question unless I can explain it to someone who is not skilled in the art, in a technically accurate but clear manner.
The Wright brothers developed the powered airplane by doing good engineering and experimentation, with no formal education in engineering or the sciences yet they solved aerodynamic problems that others could not, by a methodical process of experimentation. (ie the scientific method)
One of the things I find most disturbing about the recent trend in climate change debate, is the very dangerous assumption that if you do not have a degree in a specific field, you cannot possibly understand or contribute to the discussion.
Continental drift was discounted by the Peer reviewed journals and experts in the field when it was first proposed. The same can be said of other major discoveries.
The process of debating the subject drives all of us to investigate for our selves to the limits of our understanding and education the arguments. In the process we assemble a puzzle of little pieces.
For example in many of these comments I discover sources that I would never stumble across in a 100 years of web surfing. As a group, we comb through information and bring what appears to be useful or at least thought provoking to a central location where others of similar interest might find it and examine it. Sometimes a reference gets shot full of logical holes, other times it spurs a contribution from an unexpected point of view that leads people off in a new and interesting direction.
At the very worst it is intellectually stimulating, and educational. At the best even the non-technical contributors might through an off hand comment or observation, lead one of the other investigators to a new line of investigation they had not thought of before or a new way of looking at old data.
More importantly, it leads to an informed citizen who is better able to evaluate information in the public domain and that ultimately leads to a better democracy as a more informed public tends to make better decisions on issues.
If you delve into a little history of science and technology, most of the principles we take for granted today, were dismissed as nonsense by the most highly educated specialists of the day when they were first proposed. Likewise there have been some major “discoveries” that sounded good until people started asking questions, and have faded away as quickly as they appeared.
Sometimes the things we believe are “proven” are more a case of getting the right answer for the wrong reasons. The resulting blind spot to examination frequently leads to long delays in progress as the formally educated are indoctrinated to ignore small inconsistencies or paradoxes and blindly pursue dead end research as they refuse to step back and ask them selves “what do I really know?”, and “what are my assumptions that may or may not be valid?”.
An axiom I picked up years ago, is “do not hold an idea responsible for its source, judge it on its merits”.
Many years ago I worked in an office machine repair job. We had a machine that suddenly stopped working and was driving the tech nuts, as everything checked out but it would not work. He spent hours measuring resistances, checking fuses, tracing wires. He forgot to ask himself what he really knew. He knew there was power at the wall socket, so he assumed that power was getting to the circuits of the machine, and proceed to troubleshoot all the major systems. Finally someone asked him, “did you check that there was power at the power supply?”. His answer was that he had checked the power plug and he had power.
The problem was, he was drawing a false conclusion based on that bit of data. When he finally agreed to test the power at the other end of the power cord he found it was dead. Someone had tripped over the power cord and had jerked one connection loose inside the power plug.
Many of us feel the hypothesis that CO2 is the driver of global climate and temperature is like that test of the power at the wall plug.
Yes CO2 is a green house gas, and if you assume that if you double CO2 and that the green house warming you attribute to CO2 also doubles, lots of bad things will happen.
BUT — what if the physics do not support that assumption? What about the possibility that CO2 has already contributed almost all the warming it is physically possible to provide, and has already nearly closed its IR absorption window. If that is true the whole premise of CO2 driven global warming falls apart.
What if CO2 increase is a trailing indicator of temperature rise rather than the cause of temperature rise?
What if the sun has some to this point unknown means of transferring energy to the earth other than its direct irradiation ? Perhaps the buffeting of the earths magnetic field by the solar wind pumps large electrical currents into the earth and its atmosphere? What if its somehow modifies the absorption of the radiation it gives off by effecting cloud formation ?
Larry
dKap, fans of such people either overlook or encourage jack booted totalitarian fascism. After all, such a person is your friend when they’re on your side (same with lawyers and police officers), but really annoying when they’re not.
And as for feeding the trolls? It keeps them here instead of calling all their family and friends to get votes that they claim not to care about… 🙂
@ Roger Sowell
Climate v. Weather
Weather is a data point.
Benjamin P. says:
“Respectfully, CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas (Physics tells us that) and doubling it would have a profound effect”
What does physics actually tell us about CO2 absorption of infrared radiation (badly termed as the greenhouse effect). CO2 absorbs in three distinct and rather narrow bands. Two of these bands match up with the broader strong absorption bands of water vapor so any so called greenhouse effect is primarily due to the one remaining absorption band which does not align with the absorption spectrum of water. The absorption effect of CO2 is also logarithmic, not linear. A doubling of CO2 does not lead to a doubling of infrared energy absorption. Theoretically, a doubling of CO2 concentration from present atmospheric concentration will increase the global temperature by about 1 degree F. Climate modelers show much higher temperature increases for CO2 doubling by assuming positive feedback. The levels of positive feedback assumed are not based on good science and seem to be derived in order to make the models fit the historical data. The historical data itself is in dispute. My conclusion is physics in no way tells us that doubling of CO2 will have a profound effect. If we look at paleolithic levels of CO2 which have been many times higher than the present level of CO2, we know that there cannot be a strong positive feedback effect because a strong feedback would lead to an unstable climate system and we would not be here today.
WUWT still 1834 ahead with 27 mins to go. All over bar the shouting I reckon.
Congratulations to Anthony and all contributors at Watts Up With That.
Last year Climate Audit achieved a notable success for serious science.
This year WUWT has scored a notable success for accessible science.
The forces of reason, logic, openness and good sense are in the ascendant.
Who knows, next year we may be getting articles regularlarly posted in a prominent liberal blog (like HuffPo 🙂 and rooting for them in the political category.
For now, we can enjoy watching the pharyngitees whine themselves hoarse.
I have a feeling we’ll have some strays washing up here soon enough.
For those who have visited us to put their view, bring it on! Always good to hone our skills and we never tire of real debate.
It ain’t over till its over…
Well, I took a look at pharyngula. Not really a science site, best I could tell.
Personally, I think bloggers are the new editorialists, and they will–one by one–supplant with op-ed staffs of established papers.
I read WUWT really for straight climate science, hopefully thoughtful and impartial. If the data supports global warming, that’s fine. If it refutes it, that’s fine, too. What I want is information; let the data provide the spin.
It’ s a great site, by the way. I check it almost daily.
Nichole, somewhere way up thread (things are moving fast here) you stated re Iraq:
“like hussein was a bad guy for twenty years, and some jerk from a different country had to smack us with a couple of planes before we had the political impetus to take his ass down. and now everybody’s concentrating on the WMDs, or lack thereof, and regretting doing something that probably actually had to be done. i would say that our reason for invading iraq was just as relevant as the cause of global warming. hopefully, it’ll all work out in the end.”
Bear with me please, coz I am seriously interested in your logic. So we have a bad guy in Iraq. So how is it that the best way to deal with that bad guy is to invade his country, destroy most of the infrastructure, directly and indirectly lead to the deaths of over 4000 US soldiers, and perhaps 1,000,000 Iraquis (most of whom were being persecuted by the bad guy), huge numbers of traumatised and injured soldiers and general population of Iraq. Surely a better answer is to use the International Justice system to bring him to account? Shouldn’t we be focussed on getting the International Justice system to function effectively. Seems to me that you must be a US citizen to seriously consider that the violent approach used is preferable to a reasoned, rational, civilised approach employing effective justice.
Science, 14,096
Invective, 12,200
OMG james gets it!!!
the opinion of the scientific community, which is more educated and specialized is > the opinion of the unwashed masses!!!
ding ding ding ding!
and when we get that solar array at the shop here you’ll have solar powered HELICOPTERS!! built by solar power, anyways!! and everyone knows, helicopter > tank!
and what about finding eco-friendly policies? economical + ecological, that is. what’s wrong with that? why would you want to cast doubt on it? that’s the only suicidal policy i see.
and thanks, peden. alliteration is much more so my forte than meteorology. i ain’ t trying to lecture you, but a little information is a dangerous thing. let’s not give anything that can be misconstrued to the les johnsons of the world, hm? they call them “low information voters” for a reason.
lothar: your
The wiki article includes references if you have not noticed already.
It does not use accurate references when it is making editorial comments about so called skeptics. The links to the so called references are often dead ends or just contain no reference related to the subject.
@Benjamin P
I don’t know what the earth’s normal temperature is and that is something you need to know before you can talk sensibly about how much of a problem warming or cooling is. It appears that at best the AGW proponents picked a particular year or day in the late 20th century and said this is the norm against which all is measured.
As a method to measure if the earth is warming or cooling that is fine. But as a method of determining if the warming or cooling is a problem it doesn’t work at all. After all if the current temperatures are below normal and are still going up to what the earths baseline should be then taking action to stop or slow it is not only premature but contraindicated. If on the other hand we are way over the norm then there might be a problem. See climate science hasn’t even had this discussion so at best they can tell us the current trend warmer or cooler … maybe. I note that their models have been having a wee small problem the last 10 years or so.
The second part of that is how bad are the results of the warming. Well the current proponents are AGW are predicting the worst case scenario’s as the only thing that can happen. We again come back to the fact that actual behavior of the system may be far different and far less. I personally expect that the results would be somewhere between the best case and worse case scenario probably close to the best case side.
Given both of the above issues acting now to do something on the precautionary principal C.F. is not only over reacting it is actively foolish. Since we don’t even have a good grasp of what is actually going on taking active action to interfere is criminal and could cause serious harm to the earth, humans and the general environment.
Is some action warrented? Maybe, certainly there is nothing wrong with a good basic conservation approach to your local environment and personal actions. Should we enforce draconian measures just in case? No that can only lead to harm and not good.
WUWT 14,123
Pharyngula 12,222
More than 1,900 ahead 7 minutes before end…..
@ mondo:
clearly the war in iraq was poorly executed. we had a poor executive branch, mentally poor anyways. what did you expect?
how long has it been since the first gulf war? the peace treaty which included allowing UN inspectors into iraq to investigate on a regular basis, something which totally didn’t happen. the consequences of iraq’s refusal to allow inspectors in was supposed to be the u.s. returning. which was totally political suicide until sept. 11th. let’s not forget the genocide that sadaam perpetrated, hm? you may oppose the incompetence of the leadership of this war and still support the cause. he was a genocidal dictator, not just some guy. the way it was supposed to go wasn’t working.
so let’s go about green policy the RIGHT way! now that we see what happens when we make policy the WRONG way.
Jeff Alberts (10:29:40) :
I really don’t have anything against those posts, but they don’t belong on a science site.
————-
You don’t have anything against lying? You don’t have anything against hatred?
Those people don’t hate religion, they hate a pseudo religion, with no relationship to any recognized religion on this planet.
It’s over by my clock. Congratulations Anthony.
Congrats Anthony. Looks like Small Dead Animals may win too. Chalk one up to science!!!
THE WINNER!
12,238 vs. 14,150!
Congratulations!
At 2 p.m. PST:
WUWT: 14,147
Next: 12,235
Congratulations!
We must have won. Its 10pm GMT. Well done everyone and thanks to Anthony and guest posters for a truly brilliant combination of intelligence, questioning, altruism, friendliness and fun. Hooray. Ed.
Just so I know that I have it right:
1000 incorrect scientists beat out the one correct one? History must show this, certainly……
What would the earth’s temperature be if there was no CO2 ? If that were the case could we have a baseline as to what the addition and subtraction of a single “thingy” would be. I am NOT a scientist nor can I spell AGW.. But i am a programmer and without performing Exception or Unit testing all my programs crash no matter how smart i think I am. side note: All of the code I ever tested to perfection still never passed the User Acceptance Test unscathed 🙁 My point here is that without the ability to question…. There is no way to prove AGW at all. My thought is since the Polar Ice Cap is going to be totally gone by 2012 we have only 3 years. 🙂 Now there would be a great place to buy shore property as there is 6 months of 24hr a day sunshine :)….
As a programmer burned by promises of logarithmic scaling (SHOW ME).
Congratulations to WUWT and to all.
Unless there are some post vote shenanigans, I think you’ve got it. Congrats!
@Robert Austin
Can you give me your source please.
Also, “If we look at paleolithic levels of CO2 which have been many times higher than the present level of CO2, we know that there cannot be a strong positive feedback effect because a strong feedback would lead to an unstable climate system and we would not be here today.”
We are at near historical levels if we dig (no pun intended) through the geologic record. What’s interesting is that the earth tends to do things slowly, and can typically handle variations in inputs of CO2 that occur on natural time scales. What takes the earth ~10,000 years to do, humans have done in 100 years wrt CO2 concentrations.
On a more general note, I would also like to say I am not advocating one thing or another, only that we keep things grounded in science. The truth lies in science, and as long as we are honest as we approach the problems the truth will be ours at the end of the day. Throwing around half truths and disinformation is a disservice to all.
Congratulations, Anthony! Well done.
I Think WUWT won!
Everything is going to work towards the good. All that negative stuff from the Daily Kos, and PZ it is driving people over here to check out the website. I bet your website hits go up after today.
People reading articles and comments (other that than this one’s) will find thoughtful scientific analysis of data. They’ve been told we are flat earther’s. Let them check us out for themselves. See if they have been told the truth.
Congratulations! very happy you won, I feel like we all won and now it’s over and can go get some work done.
Haven’t been able to access the “finalist” website for the past two days.
Congrats Anthony! It’s nice to see you get some recognition for all the work you put into this site. Keep up the good work. People like me definitely appreciate it.
Yeah, congratulations, Anthony! And to Climate Audit, too, for kicking RealClimate’s butt!
@Lotharloo
“What a moronic remark. You equate priests with scientists, the religious dogma with scientific consensus and the ancient practices of science with the modern scientific method”
Lemaitre? Mendel? Copernicus? …
Looks like WUWT won (assuming there’s no Chicago type graveyard vote)
Congratulations !
Benjamin P. (13:35:12) :
wrote: @ Roger Sowell
Climate v. Weather
Weather is a data point.”
And, perhaps climate is merely a series of weather data points, integrated over time.
Or, is climate what the books say, as in The Mediterranean has a pleasant climate. Or, the Sahara Desert has a dry, arid climate. Or, the Amazon jungle has a hot, humid climate. Or, the New Yorkers moved to the Southwest to live in the healthier climate there. I have read all of those statements over the years.
I take your point, though. A single value for anything is almost meangingless, unless one has some context for it. If I tell you my son batted 0.400 in his baseball season, you might not be impressed if you knew nothing of baseball. If he was in the major leagues, and you knew baseball, you would be very impressed. But, if he was in high school, and you knew that such batting is not unusual, you would not be as impressed. But, being a nice guy, you would likely congratulate me anyway.
In any event, the point is valid that when this globe cools so that the current weather in Michigan is the norm rather than the exception, we have a climate change. By definition. And Houston, We Have A Problem.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
wattsupwiththat (13:47:59) :
It ain’t over till its over…
It is now. 🙂
WUWT 14,150
PZ Myers 12,238
It’s after 5:00, and it looks like WUWT is the clear winner! Woo-hoo! Final vote looks to be: WUWT – 14,150, Pharyngula – 12,238. Science wins!
Victory is sweet.
The results still have to be reviewed by the contest judges. I’ll wait to hear from them before declaring anything.
Lookin’ good, Anthony!
Congratulations!
A laurel wreath donation will be placed on your brow :0)
nichole:
i’m a straight up troll. what’s your excuse?
nichole, I’ve been dying to find out what value or purpose the Political Scientists and Strategists think the tactic of “trolling” an alleged opponent’s blog has. It must be based upon some psychodynamic theory concerning how to influence people, unless perhaps it’s also intended to test out arguments and mine for the “opponents'” responses so as to then further prepare for them, maybe by issuing a pre-emptive meme to the supporters and Public, for example.
So, nichole, if it is not inconsistent with your mission as a troll, perhaps you could explain to me the theory behind trolling. [But don’t do anything unethical simply on my account or something which might cost you your job!]
nichole: your
the opinion of the scientific community, which is more educated and specialized is > the opinion of the unwashed masses!!!
Really? From previous comments of yours, I gather you put yourself in the “unwashed masses” category. Are you saying your opinion does not count in this debate?
Personally, I have great respect for the “wisdom of crowds”.
congrats
Congratulations, WUWT!
Thanks TomT!
It’s tough to pin down what the “normal temperature” of the Earth is when we are dealing with billions of years of earth history. I suppose, given the fact that climate variation often has to with the effects on us as humans, looking at the “normal’ temperature over the last 100,000 years would be most prudent.
I can emphasize well with your skepticism with the predictions associated with climatic models and the ‘worst case’ scenarios that make the headlines in our media. We’ll never know the full ramification of climate change until they have happened, which one way or another, will in fact happen.
I will make a strong argument that as a by-product of “fighting global warming” results in a weening off of fossil fuels that can only be a good thing. As you all know, oil is a finite resource on this ball of rock, and one way or another, we will someday stop using it. Id rather begin the process now, while we have some time, rather then waiting for the day when its too late.
Cheers,
Ben
@Benjamin P. (10:09:42) :
“Respectfully, CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas (Physics tells us that) and doubling it would have a profound effect, even if it is still in trace amounts. You can deny anthropogenic climate change all day long if you want, but you are being scientifically dishonest with your claims about CO2.”
Sorry, I can’t let this go. According to “Greenhouse molecules, their spectra and function in the atmosphere”, J. Barratt, Energy & Environment, vol16, No. 6 (2005) it is clear that CO2 is anything BUT a “potent greenhouse gas”. To quote from the paper (page 1042):
“If the concentration of CO2 were to be doubled in the absence of the other
GHGs the increase in absorption would be 1.5%. In the presence of the other GHGs the same doubling of concentration achieves an increase in absorption of only 0.5%, only one third of its effect if it were the only GHG present.”
The effect of doubling CO2 concentration from 285 to 570 ppmv will be to increase its greenhouse impact from 19.6% to 20.5%. This cannot be regarded as particularly significant, and certainly not a “profound effect”.
The assertion made by AGWers is that CO2 then drives temperature up due to “positive feedback” from water vapour. This assumption is however unproven scientifically, and in fact appears from all the evidence to be simply incorrect, otherwise we should still be showing runaway warming, since CO2 levels have continued to rise.
Benjamin P. again :
“Also, long term trends are whats important to look at. Sure this may be a cooler winter in the northern hemisphere, which is good for sea ice production, but its just one data point.”
It is true that long term trends are important in climate science. In fact thirty years is regarded as a single data point usually. That is why it is necessary to examine the long-term history. We have been warming for some time, ever since we came out of the Little Ice Age around 1850 or so. Prior to that in the MWP it was somewhat hotter than now. The rate of warming currently is not unnatural, and in fact currently the trend right now is pretty flat. The steep rise from the 70s to 2000 appears to follow the PDO and sunspot influences quite well, and now that sunspots are down and the PDO appears to be reversing the temperatures are dropping slightly.
The polar bears were never in danger, the Arctic ice is growing again, the Antarctic never stopped growing anyway, and sea level rise is slowing too. Not that its rate of around 2mm/yr was ever a problem anyway, since it is slower than tectonic movements in most places, which are measured in cm/yr in places.
So the question really is “where did all that global warming hysteria come from anyway?”
Congratulations from Denmark. As it is not a NASA review I have faith in their fairness.
“In any event, the point is valid that when this globe cools so that the current weather in Michigan is the norm rather than the exception, we have a climate change. By definition. And Houston, We Have A Problem”
Roger that.
I have a feeling that the earth will be warmer, because the data leads me to believe that. But regardless, its important, form a communication standpoint of scientific ideas, that we make sure we understand the difference between climate and weather.
My grandparents live in North Dakota, and I can tell you, if they just looked at the weather today, they would be strong opponents to the idea of climate change.
Ben
I’m very disappointed with the result. I really did think the blog would do better than it did. But never mind maybe next year it can poll 10 times the number of votes than RC instead of just a measly 9.78 times. I guess some RC bloggers actually voted for RC instead of Pharyngula just to avoid the embarrassment.
Congratulations Anthony, thanks for WUWT, its always a pleasure to read and, occasionally, comment.
You’re mistaking what I meant. Anyway, we’ve been told not to go there, so I’m not going to respond in detail.
Congratulations Anthony. Now that this is over maybe PZ Meyer’s trolls can go back to their caves and leave us to the science.
In that case, Ice Age conditions are normal, and not the temperature of the 1970s.
Congratulations, and thank you Anthony!
I voted WUWT every day.
Congratulations!!! We beat the [snip] at phar-blog-that-must-not-be-named!
lol **********BIG NEWS FLASH********
“Chaitén Volcano a Tambora-sized event?”
Uh oh… could mother nature could be joining us for the celebrations!!!!??
http://www.iceagenow.com/Chaitén_Volcano_a_Tambora-sized_Event.htm
Must give my congratulations from Sweden to you for this award and thank all participants at this blog for a good and informative site with a correct and scientific atmosphere.
I did my best to help you out with my votes.
I don’t think you should underestimate the significance of this victory.
It shows clearly that the hesitance regarding AGW has grown considerably among “normal” as well as “educated” (with regards to climate science) people and it will surely be nice to tell all the AGW fearmongers that WUWT has been voted the “Best Scientific Blog” of the year.
Well done!
I am encouraged to see that the problem of post poll closure voting has been solved this year. We have no advancing numbers.
Last year, the numbers on both sides continued to climb for CA and for Bad Astronomy for a couple of hours afterwards. They couldn’t shut the voting engine down for some reason. This year, no such trouble.
It is nice to see that the contest organizers learned from last year and improved the voting system.
A sincere thank you to everyone who participated, on all sides of the voting. We’ll wait for the final word from the contest judges.
nichole:
Similar scientific communities derided Robert Goddard on space flight, Semilweiss on disinfection, Wegman on continental drift, and Fujita on microbursts. Guess who was right in those cases?
There are a number of climate scientists who don’t buy catastrophic AGW and the list is growing, and the key word is catastrophic.
Nothing so grandiose, I’m sure. It’s just to annoy people. The anonymity of the Web is great for that sort of thing.
Well done!
Congrats to Anthony and WUWT.
I only started reading this site a few weeks ago but have found it very interesting and looked at some of the numbers a bit more for myself.
I do have a technical background in engineering (Ph.D.) but not in climatology, so definitely an amateur in that field. My observation so far is the same as the NASA Administrator, (paraphrased) we don’t know what is causing warming. I think the effects of warming out weigh those of cooling by a large amount so I am not worried about more warmth, plus I do not feel the positive feedback in the models is realistic, so there is no issue with a runaway scenario to me. This means to me we keep looking at the issue but do not waste mega bucks and manpower on solving the problem. There are many good reasons to making energy production more efficient and less reliant on oil, but global warming is not one of them.
Let’s hear it for RealClimate! Yeah baby!!
What?
3.8% of the total vote?
Oh.
Umm…
Splunge!
Well, only after they’ve been fooled once or twice. Then they tend to forget after a few generations have passed.
3 years in a row… RC cant accumulate more than a pickens of science voters at all, assuming they even get nominated… Proof that RC is just like AGW… a puff of hot air
Congratulations Anthony and WUWT!
We didn’t learn that lesson in the late 70s during the “oil crisis”.
I think this sentiment is only valid if it’s not being forced upon us for no good reason. For something to replace oil it has to be at least as good as oil, preferably better. We’re not there yet. Wind and Solar are too unreliable. I live north of Seattle, and I can’t even buy solar walkway lighting, because they just don’t get enough charge for half the year (fall and winter) to last more than an hour or so each day.
I think in another 20 years battery technology will be leaps and bounds better, and perhaps we’ll have some fusion plants coming online, that is, if the envirowhackos don’t continually try to sabotage every reasonable advancement. I’m all for making OPEC go pound sand (well, more than they do already), but if we try to force it, things will only get worse, not better.
Congratulations and well done! From the only AGW sceptic in Berkeley!
Congratulation Anthony. Even if you have to wait for a while for the result to be confirmed by the proper “authority” , and hence made public, I am shure that your facial expression right now is completely dominated by a big fat smile of joy. That´s fair enough, and you sincerely deserves it. I myself have voted for you everyday since the poll started running. The reason for my favouring your site this year is the huge undertaking of your´s in tracking down and checking the weatherstations. The poll might be meant for an adults play for joy only, but the result nevertheless proves that people wants to show their appreciation of what you are doing and that you have the attention of a lot of good people who wants to support you and your enterprise. Carry on with the good work. Have joy.
Congratulations Anthony! You certainly deserve it. Keep up the great work!
Ecotretas
Looks like the final results may be in. I finally pulled up the totals after 5:00 p.m. CST. Weblogawards shows Greg Laden with 323, 60 Second Science with 367, NASA Watch – 619, Improbable Research – 637, Neurologica – 1192, Real Climate – 1446, Bad Astronomy – 2545, Climate Audit – 4096, Pharyngula – 12,238, and the winner is… (Drumroll, Please!) Watts Up With That? – 14,150! Congratulations, Anthony!
mondo:
Surely a better answer is to use the International Justice system to bring him [Saddam Hussein] to account?
“is”? Well, mondo, application of the “International Justice system” via the U.N. and its post Gulf War 1 surrender-based Resolutions really just didn’t work out too well, that is, prior to the actual delivery of the “serious consequences” promised to Iraq/Saddam by the U.N.’s Res: 1441, should Iraq/Saddam not comply with 1441, as was finally provided by the U.S. and its allies. No?
Furthermore, the U.N. not only did not object to the U.S., enc.’s, actions against Iraq/Saddam – just as it didn’t object to the Clinton Adm.’s unilateral “Desert Fox” assault on Iraq, aided by the British, following the ejection of the U.N. Weapon Inspectors from Iraq in late 1998 which was also against the surrender agreements – the U.N. also has in effect supported the regime change, etc., taking place in Iraq ever since its invasion in 2003.
Anthony – Joe Romm at Climate Progress was trying to drive his readers to Pharyngula too. Just to check out the competition I went to that site. There Myers had posted some particularly vile cartoons mocking the Catholic faith.
He really doesn’t like you.
Well done WUWT and all of its supporters.
A win here as well as Australian Senator Joyce calling the anthropogenic global warming ideology “eco totalitarianism” and drawing parallels between environmentalism and Nazism http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24911122-12377,00.html – spot on.
I voted and, like all votes, mine’s a secret.
Some time ago I became interested in global warming and the discussions which flowed back and forth regarding the merits of this postulation. I did what anyone who has any interest in the scientific process does and that was to seek as much data as possible to enable me to make up my own mind. From what I found I discarded dogma and politically inspired rhetoric and concentrated solely on that which purported to be fact. I drew inspiration from those who challenged statements which were not and could not be supported with verifiable data. I relished seeing falsified data being exposed.
I have now made up my mind. AGW does not exist in any verifiable form. It does not pose any form of threat to the planet in general, nor to mankind in particular. The so-called “green” agenda is politically motivated and recommends nothing but the banning of previously acceptable items and behaviours whilst imposing outrageous levels of taxation on an innocent population.
I am a “denialist” through choice and through my own research.
And I voted three times for the same site!
WALLY (14:27:26)–
You are the man (woman?) You have summarized the most rational status of the science and public policy implications. It’s my hope that millions of taxpayers and voters show your good judgment and rebel against ideological alarmists, cargo cultists and financial manipulators who are looking for us to subsidize their carbon trading schemes. Cheers.
Nichole – ouch, you hurt me! Inaction is exactly the right policy right now. Just as there is no evidence that directly ties manmade CO2 to any of the more recent warming, there is no indication that throwing massive amounts of capital at it will change a thing. The climate is changing, always has, always will. It is beyond arrogant to believe that we can make any dent in that at all. Show me any real science that supports your ‘action is better than inaction’ argument. So far, you have presented nothing scientific to back any claims made. You are content to bash me as unscientific but you have yet to present one verifiable fact on this blog. I can tell you as a peer-reviewed, published scientist and a reviewer that peer review does not guarantee sound science. Reviewers are tasked with looking at methodology and presentation, most are outside of their own areas of expertise to try to keep professional bias out of it. Peer review does not say anything about the conclusions drawn in the publication, only the methodology and presentation to get there. Often, there is better review in the public domain.
Benjamin P. – yes, CO2 is a powerful GHG but when you look at the spectrum of GHGs, water vapor is by far and away the most powerful and prevelant of the GHGs. So it seems reasonable that if we are to control GHG emissions, it would make more sense to try to control water vapor which mankind emits right along side CO2. Why not? Because CO2 is directly tied to energy consumption. The real agenda is about control of energy. not GHGs. Listen to Hansen’s rants sometime about the evil coal plants and SUVs. Robert Austin touched on it but did not quite put out the full picture. The GHG effect of CO2 is non linear but logarithmic, meaning that there must be a 10 fold increase in concentration for the same absorption affect. ie a 50 to 100 ppm increase in CO2 (doubling) will yield and X change in temperature. For that same X change, the next change in CO2 concentration must be from 100 to 1000 ppm. So you can see why doubling and doubling again of CO2 will not affect global temperature significantly. We have already reach the saturation effect of CO2 or near to it. It is of course more complex than that but you get the point.
A simple lesson here is anytime someone yells “its the end of the world” especially when based on computer models, you should – without fail – question them.
As of yet, I have had no one pick up the challenge of my last post.
God bless,
bwana
PS: congratulations to Anthony and all of your regular WUWT contributors.
Wuwt, looks like you wonDD
What happened to whining about how MEEEEN all those nasty atheists over on Pharyngula are?
Voting done. No time left, no hanging chads, no Minnesotan recounts.
Done! Congratulations Anthony and WUWT crew for jobs well done!!!
Mondo
Like any Criminal justice system, there is no justice unless there a cops to enforce the law. That means breaking into buildings arresting bad guys, smashing their meth labs and sometimes shooting and killing them if they shoot back at you. If you’d like an example of what happens to the “World Order” when Western countries rely on isolationism and World Court decrees you only have to go back to Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The cost in human lives was much greater than that of Iraq and the benefits of a democratic counterbalance to the Facism of Iran will be great and only fully realized in the future. I don’t see any other countries in this world stopping the genocides around the world if the US does not lead the way.
Speaking to the wisdom of crowds:
The reason why they Alarmists are losing the debate isn’t so much the science. There are plenty of concerned citizens who want to be part of feel good solutions, or who don’t understand and will believe what they are told without knowing the difference between science and consensus, etc.
But what the Average Joe is taking to account in his daily actions, is the urgency of the alleged crisis. When you’ve got the IPCC talking about New York being underwater, and then repeatedly and grossly downgrading the scenarios, while Average Joe can look at the Hudson river and see that the sea level in New York harbor has not changed appreciably at any point in his memory, he quickly tires of the whole debate.
Urgency matters, and there is no credible urgency with respect to climate. Meanwhile there is a very obvious and credible urgency to massive cap and trade impacts to the current difficult economy, and to policies that will drive current energy prices. These clear and present problems actually land on the radar of Average Joe, as they should.
But there’s just not enough real or even fake climate disaster evidence for Average Joe to feel threatened, no matter how many news specials NBC films live from Antarctica. The Alarmist crowd should give up on this basis alone. But they never seem to grasp that moment of introspection when Ehrlichian doomsday prediction after doomsday prediction never materializes.
Anthony,
As I was in the midst of my diatribe I forgot:
Congrats! I have been reading for about a year and have found a lot of useful information. At somepoint this summer I am going to try to do some reconnoitering of the TX Gulfcoast weather stations for you. You are truly a scholar and gentleman.
God bless,
bwana
President-elect Barrack Obama’s nominee for Energy secretary, Steven Chu, walked a fine line today between his strong views on the need to combat climate change and the concern of some senators about Chu’s past criticism of coal use, endorsement of gasoline taxes and tepid embrace of a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Anthony, congratulations from the Netherlands. This whole day I asked, everywhere my works brought me today, to use their internet for voting WUWT!
Well done Anthony-a great site peopled by- on the whole-well mannered bloggers. A refreshing chamge from some of the vitriolic sites on the web.
Its great to see some warmists here as well so as to get a different view point-they are the grit in the oyster.
TonyB
Congratulations from Japan.
Anthony, congratulations on the win, you are a service to the world community and an example of how to run a no nonsense, high signal to noise ratio blog.
It is a pleasure to read the posts here, and I have started checking here on a daily basis to see what is going on.
Likewise to all the accumulated contributions from all who post here, the award is well deserved and I am sure will increase your daily hits as more people discover they can get information at WUWT without drowning in a political agenda.
Larry
Take a bow Anthony…
Gio-
It looks as if my previous post missed the link…
http://giovanniworld.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/pissing-off-an-ecofascist/
Gio-
Nichole,
Hope you stay around for awhile. You may go through the same kind of breakthrough that many regulars here have already experienced. Your use of “wtf” is exactly what I experienced when I first discovered the alarmists were lying. With me the initial discovery was that temperature did NOT follow CO2, in fact, historically it was just the opposite. My thought process was “if CAGW is true then why do the adherents need to lie in order to make their case”.
So, I started looking at all the hype and low and behold I found lie after lie after lie. WTF!!!!!! The polar bears are doing fine, the arctic ice extents appears to have been lower 80 years ago when CLIMATOLIGISTs of the time found open waters further north than today. The temperature record keeps getting modified by those who started the CAGW scare and amazingly the warming trend keeps going up because past temperatures are lowered (no shite). Not only that, the data and methods are kept private by government scientists.
So, stay around and just maybe you will get to say “wtf” many more times.
PS. Congrats to WUWT. Thank you for all your hard work.
Congratulations. This blog is compulsive reading. I sometimes wonder where you find the time for it! Keep up the good work.
Congratulations.
@BarryW (14:24:11) :
Actually, IIRC it was Alfred Wegener on continental drift.
Congrats to Watts!
I don’t know, over the years I’ve somehow developed the possible rationalization that its make enough sense to beat the opposition only because they want to beat you so badly, especially when it involves contest which perhaps doesn’t really prove anything lasting.
But since AGWer’s allegedly don’t put much stock in public opinion polls – apart from the one which shows that there is probably a consensus about a consensus on AGW – I suppose they are not too bothered by their defeat.
It wuz the Sun wot won it!
(UK readers will get the gist).
Well done Anthony.
Anthony.
Congrats. thanks for the education.
Aaron (15:03:37) :
What happened to whining about how MEEEEN all those nasty atheists over on Pharyngula are?
I’m an atheist, and I think that Pharyngula is an embarrassment. I sincerely hope that WUWT has won.
We are assuming you have won (we hope)? Is it confirmed?
REPLY: Thursday morning final results will be announced – Anthony
Congratulations Anthony and crew.
It looks like the good guys prevailed for a “change”.
Hurrah, WUWT! My favorite blog wins!
The Rev.
CONGRATS
I hope WUWT: congrats exceeds 39,000
nichole,
Did I used to be married to you?
congratulations from Toronto (its going down to negative 20 C tonight and tomorrow). Lets hope there are no hanging chads out there.
Yes! A year late, but YES!
Congratulations on a more than deserved win.
Congratulations from this side of the world (NZ) on your excellent and very deserved win. It’s a pity you couldn’t share it with CA, the two sites are compulsory reading for me every day. Keep up the good work.
Congratulations seem to be in order. Hopefully the votes aren’t tallied in Minnesota.
Congratulations Anthony, moderators, and commenters – a most awesome site. Somehow I missed a day and only voted 6 times.
OT, a hard freeze (28F) tonight in San Antonio. Time to drip the faucets and drag in the plants (Hard Freeze PPP – Pets, Plants and Pipes).
“I’m an atheist, and I think that Pharyngula is an embarrassment. I sincerely hope that WUWT has won.”
As another atheist have to agree that Pharyngula is an acute embarrassment.
It seems to exist so as to make creationists look reasonable.
Brute… you are so lucky… LOL
.
Congrats on making it to the end! It’s finally over!
Now all we need is to get the official results Thursday morning.
There’s been a positive result from this vote. Total hits at WUWT are way up. Check out the latest from Quantcast:
http://www.quantcast.com/profile/traffic-compare?domain0=realclimate.org&domain1=wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com&domain2=wattsupwiththat.com&domain3=climatecrisis.net&domain4=
Figures from Alexa aren’t in yet; they only go to 7 Jan. End of month numbers from WordPress should be impressive.
Now we may find more regular readers taking part in the quest.
.
Anthony et al.,
I’ve voted for you 3 or 4 times now.
Good luck, and keep up the great work. It’s important to our future, and the future of climate science.
@bwanajohn
Ah yes, that pesky water vapor. Thankfully air masses become saturated and it rains. But you already knew that.
I am very curious, if it is all some great energy control conspiracy, what is the end game? What do these folks want to gain? I was talking to one of my students who was sure that it was a conspiracy as well.
“What is the agenda of the conspirators and what do they hope to gain?” I asked. He had no answer.
Perhaps you have an answer for me?
@Bob D
Neither Jack Barret nor the “Scientific Alliance” carries a lot of clout in my book, sorry. His paper that you cite makes some pretty significant assumptions, was not peer-reviewed, and quite frankly, does not really stand up to any scrutiny. I can put some fun equations in a paper, with some neato-graphs, but it does not make it science.
A side-note to all. All fossil fuels, all uranium, and every other non-renewable source of energy is just that…non-renewable. I think it is in all of our interest to be working on alternatives because one day we wont have a choice. Thank goodness for global warming in the Mesozoic because that has done wonders for our cheap energy now. But that cheap energy is running out, and we need to be prepared. Global warming, global cooling, or otherwise I think we can all agree we need to develop renewable energy.
Ben
Congratulations Anthony,
WUWT is a voice for truth!!!
This is a “well” deserved award you and support team’s efforts, in search of the truth.
I too am an atheist. I think Pharyngula gives people a bad impression of atheists.
@Phil (15:53:38) :
Oops, teach me to not look up the name (I did look up Fujita). Thanks for the correction.
I attended a lecture by Fujita once. He gave a fascinating talk on how he came to develop his microburst theory. For proof he took small planes up and photographed destruction in areas that were supposedly gust fronts or tornadoes and found circular patterns (microbursts). Turned out nobody had bothered to do that kind of research!
Richard M (15:46:32)
Commentors like you have helped make Watts Up With That the gold standard for science blogs.
Your reasoned, polite invitation to Nichole (with an ‘h’) to stay a while, kick back and explore Anthony’s offerings in the diverse company of scientists and laymen was elegant.
That’s what separates this blog from the pack. It’s a treasure trove of information – honestly presented, and friendly good-natured discourse.
Kudos to Anthony, his WUWT team and all you great participants.
Congratulations, Anthony.
368 comments on this thread – is that a record?
I share many people’s dislike of many aspects of popularity polls such as this, but voted any way. It’s interesting the attention WUWT got just for being in the lead. I assume the late increase in Pharyngula was more from opponents trying to block WUWT from winning than Pharyngula supporters scrounging more voters.
Ah well, sore losers will give up, AGW zealots will settle down a bit. Ultimately, I have no idea if winning this popularity contest means anything, but congratulations on your apparent victory.
Time to get back to business. The Friday high here near Concord NH will be about 6F (-15C). After the fact I’ll see how close that is to the coldest high since I set up my weather station. It’s anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but still deserves attention.
Interesting link, Leon B! (@16:46:57) It will be even more interesting when today’s numbers are added up and posted.
Note to RealClimate: Climate Audit won last year, and WUWT won this year. Now that’s a consensus!
Congratulations Anthony. It’s always nice to see hard work and honesty rewarded.
Keep up the good work.
Well deserved! Congratz!
Well done Anthony, a well deserved reward for many years of hard work.
Congratulations Anthony.
Best Science Blog on the Net! And there must be thousands or tens of thousands of them.
Benjamin P. (16:50:57) :
All fossil fuels, all uranium, and every other non-renewable source of energy is just that…non-renewable.
How do you know that so called “fossil fuels” are non-renewable ? Perhaps uranium is the only “fossil fuel” that isn’t renewable because it decays into lead.
But coal, oil, natural gas, they are products of nature. Of course they are renewable. Co2 isn’t expelled from the planet. It is gobbled up by algae, embedded in the soil as fecal matter. It coats the seabed as detrus, and is continually sucked from the air by plantlife. Your comment shows zero concept of the many times that the individual carbon atom in oil has been recycled.
Congrats to Anthony and all the people who make this a great place to visit.
Ben P; (and further to what Jeff Alberts said).
Re: Your comments about finite fuels.
Why do we need to move off fossil fuels? Applying the K.I.S. principle, money is a tool. It is mercury of the economy. It relates to us the underlying value of a certain piece of asset as interpreted by the market. In order to provide this market value, each individual (data point if you wish) says what s/he will pay for it. In that decision are thousands of factors. Very few are overtly considered. Note: the vast majority of factors are not considered. Some factors considered are:
• foreign political risk, scarcity of material
• production cost
• domestic political environment
• competitive environment amongst many others.
As I said, when the market looks at these factors, it comes up with a price. Included in that price are ALL FUTURE EXPECTATIONS. As our new found, self admitted troll, Nichole, proclaimed, the sun is for all intent and purpose, infinite. If coal is less expensive, why do we want to go solar/wind? We can control the real pollutants, i.e. SO2, NO2, O3, etc. but NOT CO2, why would we not use it? We have thousands of years of it left. The sun and wind aren’t going anywhere. Is your risk interpretation correct and the market is wrong? Perhaps, but I doubt it. You are sort of correct in the world will eventually run out. The shortest estimate I’ve read is 200 years we’ll “run out” of oil. I’m confident it will be much longer as we can look at coal liquefaction, improved extraction methods, etc. Nobody really knows when but eventually oil will become scarce enough the cost of extraction will become too high and investment in solar/wind may or may not be worthwhile.
May or may not be worthwhile you ask? Neither you or I have a crystal ball and know what technologies will come? Should we force people to move to a more expensive technology when another may appear? Do I think I’ll see cold fusion in my lifetime? Nope. My children’s? Probably not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
If we start considering CO2, aka plant food, as a pollutant we overvalue a cost driver on to it and get a distorted picture. It needlessly takes away your and my wealth. If you don’t want that wealth, then so be it. Buy some carbon offsets. It’s up to you. But please, don’t include me. It really isbasic economics. I used to read sites to try to convert me in to catastrophic AGW believer. The best I could come up with is at best, it is a very remote possibility which is becoming more remote everyday. I even think I’m fooling myself with that conclusion. Believe you me, if I could honestly conclude there was any sort of reasonable possibility CO2 was a threat to the earth, I’d be on the bandwagon.
I’m an atheist, and I think that Pharyngula is an embarrassment. I sincerely hope that WUWT has won.
I’m an “atheist”, too, = “non-Supernaturalist”. But how would this also justify being Certifiably Nuts?
Benjamin P says:
“Can you give me your source please.”
Chart showing Phanerazoic Carbon Dioxide
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide_png
“We are at near historical levels if we dig (no pun intended) through the geologic record. What’s interesting is that the earth tends to do things slowly, and can typically handle variations in inputs of CO2 that occur on natural time scales. What takes the earth ~10,000 years to do, humans have done in 100 years wrt CO2 concentrations.”
As to historical levels of CO2, it depends on your time frame. Phanerozoically, we are at low levels and the so called ideal of 290 ppm is exceptionally low over a geologic time frame. The comment about the rate of change sounds like mere whimsy. I could ask for a citation but I won’t.
“On a more general note, I would also like to say I am not advocating one thing or another, only that we keep things grounded in science. The truth lies in science, and as long as we are honest as we approach the problems the truth will be ours at the end of the day. Throwing around half truths and disinformation is a disservice to all.”
I can fully concur with your parting statement. If only Al Gore et al would take it to heart.
you atheists crack me up (no, i’m not making fun of you). i like your sense of humor and willingness to engage in witty, meaningful discussion 🙂
Congrats to all at WUWT- have thoroughly enjoyed the site and the many and varied posts over the year
Mike from Canmore, very nice disquisition on some of the problems involved with pursuing an AGW Utopian wish. Obviously, the AGWer’s strong suit does not include rational thought and science in confrontation with reality.
Congratulations all!
OT: Anyone catch the Lou Dobb’s tonight? Wonderful piece on GW! I recommend trying to catch a re-broadcast if you can.
@ Benjamin,
“All fossil fuels, all uranium, and every other non-renewable source of energy is just that…non-renewable.”
Are you sure oil (I assume you mean oil when you say ‘fossil fuel’) is a fossil fuel, let alone non-renewable? There is some evidence that oil is not ‘fossil’ in origin but rather a product of chemistry deep within the crust and is continuing as we speak.
@Benjamin P. (16:50:57) :
Well, to be honest the “not peer reviewed” argument is wearing very thin nowadays, especially after the Mann debacle. In any case the science is not determined by the peer review process, the science is determined by the robust debate that occurs after publication. And there is healthy debate going on between Dr Barrett and some of the IPCC people.
However, there are some important points about the paper that make sense. It shows why the IPCC’s ‘hot spot’ is missing, how the earth can cool happily (as it’s doing now) without any regard for CO2, and it offers a possible insight into why all the GCM projections have been wrong so far.
It is also based on observations of the IR spectra as measured by satellites, rather than the “neato-graphs” you refer to. Also, the only “fun equation” offered is the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, which is a rather mundane equation, in my opinion. Quite boring, actually.
A lot of what he is saying is simply that the GCMs do not accurately account for the spectral overlap between H2O and CO2, nor the obvious complexities and unknowns of our environment. Therefore they are over-estimating the effect of CO2 on temperature, and this is borne out very well by current observations.
ROTFL!!!
Benjamin P, and others re renewable energy.
Benjamin wrote: “A side-note to all. All fossil fuels, all uranium, and every other non-renewable source of energy is just that…non-renewable. I think it is in all of our interest to be working on alternatives because one day we wont have a choice. Thank goodness for global warming in the Mesozoic because that has done wonders for our cheap energy now. But that cheap energy is running out, and we need to be prepared. Global warming, global cooling, or otherwise I think we can all agree we need to develop renewable energy.”
I personally do not believe we are running out of oil, or coal, or natural gas, and I am not sure about uranium. But whether we are or not, we have a fabulous alternative. It is renewable, as green as can be, and virtually free. Unfortunately, it is not equally available to every nation on earth, and that will create some problems.
I refer to hydrogen, from artificial photosynthesis as discovered in 2004 by scientists in Imperial College, London. They discovered via ultra-microscopy the exact shape and atomic structure of the site in chlorophyll that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, using only sunshine as the energy input.
Within about 15 more years, assuming 20 years from discovery to commercialization, the world will have all the energy ever needed. No need for nuclear plants with their toxic waste products, or uranium mines and enrichment plants with all the environmental destruction associated with that.
No need to burn fossil fuels any more, instead we can use them in their highest-value form, as petrochemicals and pharmaceutical feedstocks.
If anyone is interested, I can provide the link to their publication.
The beauty of this is, should CO2 ever become a problem in the atmosphere, we can pull it back out with what will be virtually free energy.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Benjamin P. (16:50:57) : asks
“I am very curious, if it is all some great energy control conspiracy, what is the end game? What do these folks want to gain? I was talking to one of my students who was sure that it was a conspiracy as well.
“What is the agenda of the conspirators and what do they hope to gain?” I asked. He had no answer.
Perhaps you have an answer for me? “
Here is the answer Ben
When the profiles of the communists and socialists of the 50s- 60s (the “Ho-Ho Chi Ming’s gonna win” crowd) and the current environmentalists are analysed, it is clear that the latter are direct intellectual descendants of the former (at least in my opinion). In his seminal work, Capitalism, George Reisman elaborates on the philosophical affinity between these maniacal movements: The Reds argued that “the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as ‘exploitation,’ ‘monopoly,’ and depressions. The Greens claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as the destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, and global warming. Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity”; the Greens for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage.” The goal of the communists was the destruction of the US society with its emphasis on individual liberties, freedom to choose and commitment to free markets. Since communism failed as an ideology, the apparatchiks have now latched on to a different strategy to achieve their objectives. The goal is the same, but the strategy is different. Such ideologies give rise to dictatorships. Controls on what cars to drive and what light bulbs to use are already in place. What will be next: Maybe where we should live, crammed together in cities; what we should wear, a uniform dress issued twice a year to cut down on the usage of energy in garment manufacture; maybe a uniform vegetarian diet to save on energy for farming? (As Ragendra Pachchauri of the IPCC is even now suggesting). Or James Hansen’s suggestion to use Global Warming to re-distribute wealth.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/01/01/nasas-hansen-obama-use-global-warming-redistribute-wealth
The final outcome will be to manipulate the collective guilt of the western society, and then offer them salvation through collective suicide. With that in mind, the current policies of the liberal apparatchiks are going to drive up the costs of both gas and electricity (The current respite will be only temporary). Probably the best way of hobbling an economy is to drive up energy prices. Meanwhile the other economies unfettered by these shackles imposed on the US economy will power ahead and surpass the US.
This would tie in nicely to the thesis that the successors to a totalitarian ideology are using different strategies to achieve the same goal.
Guy
Both WUWT and CA have achieved enormous wins over RealClimate, that’s what’s important. Pharyngula is less of a science blog than any of those listed.
@lucia (16:52:56) :
When someone becomes smug and arrogant about their belief system they give all of their fellow believers bad press, regardless of what that system is based on.
Benjamin, your (alarmist) side is quantitatively challenged (as usual). Google “breeder reactor”. Google “fusion energy”.
@Ric Werme (17:13:29) :
You wrote in part:
“Ultimately, I have no idea if winning this popularity contest means anything, but congratulations on your apparent victory.”
Actually, I think the Awards sponsors give each of the winners an all-expenses-paid trip to anywhere, ANYWHERE they want to go… on the internet ;o)
@Anthony
Two thumbs up!
you atheists crack me up (no, i’m not making fun of you). i like your sense of humor and willingness to engage in witty, meaningful discussion 🙂
Hey, speaking as a witty atheist, maybe if you were to actually use some Capitals, then, just maybe, I might consider the possibility that you are in fact a SuperNaturalist yourself. That’s your first problem.
@BarryW (18:44:23) :
“Both WUWT and CA have achieved enormous wins over RealClimate, that’s what’s important. Pharyngula is less of a science blog than any of those listed.”
Agreed. Pharyngula is irrelevant in my opinion due to arrogance and lack of discipline, and RC also shares the same fate, although they are more subtle.
The beauty of it is that without the internet, none of this groundswell of resistance to junk science could have developed.
“I too am an atheist. I think Pharyngula gives people a bad impression of atheists”
Wow, what hope do you have for your future? I will pray for you. Please don’t get mad.
OT: The Law of Unintended Consequences
BANGKOK, Thailand – It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.
But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday…
I’ve not read all the comment but the HATE coming at me is palpable!
I’ve NEVER seen it here before, and hope I never do again!
It is a tribute to WUWT that the moderators did not censor this hate.
All the best to everyone. (Even the haters.)
DaveE.
J. Peden (18:54:50) :
don’t assume because i don’t use capital letters i don’t know grammar or punctuation rules. 🙂
in blog entries, email and other informal settings, i for some reason prefer lower case as i think it detracts less from the meaning of one’s comments and somehow seems less authoritarian.
I can use appropriate capitalization, if necessary. 🙂
Just wondering if RealClimate will take any lessons away from this… Nahhhhh.
Bob D (18:58:48) :
That wasn’t my comment. I think you meant the comment in front of mine: Jeff Alberts (18:40:24) :
Just a question. Has any catastrophic environmental prediction based on computer models been validated? That’s meant with all sincerity and not a snarky comment. I’m actually curious. The ones I’m familiar with such as the Club of Rome failed, but their should be some positive examples to learn from.
“Pharyngula”
OT, the term “Pharyngula” connotes and even denotes to me “A Deep Throating Apparatus [Pharynx or Tongue] or its Recipient [Pharynx or Tongue]”.
I’m often intrigued with the way these Progressives name themselves. Apparently, they are just waiting for the right way to fit in the Phalynx.
Congrats, Anthony! Well deserved. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that you were attracting only 15-25 comments per thread, and seemed to hold somewhat of a local Chico audience. Look at it now.
There’s a lot to be said for your success – clearly, there is an “attention market” for science-related content that is understandable by all, well moderated, and displays patience with all who post unless they wear out their welcome. It’s a pleasure to be part of this audience.
I can use appropriate capitalization, if necessary. 🙂
Well, Capitalization does have a purpose which has nothing to do with being Authoritarian. Or are you going to abandon all of the other oppressive rules involved with using written words in order to communicate, you know, such as spelling correctly, for example?
I should have added Anthony.
Congratulations. If you’ve not won, I will be screaming fix lol
If anyone knows, is there a site used by GISS or UAE within about 50 miles of Newcastle on Tyne GB?
I could do with a day out with my digital camera. You have my email so I’m easily contactable.
DaveE.
BarryW — predicted environmental disasters
I also read Club of Rome in undergrad around 1973 or so, and noted that none of its dire predictions even came close. Except for the recent economic crisis, which some could argue was predicted by CoR. I think it was unrelated. We certainly did not run out of food, or water, or minerals, or die in our own pollution.
Another prediction that could have come true was the Acid Rain and killing all the lake fish – but the enviros claim victory by heading that one off with regulations to curb SOx and NOx emissions.
They also claim some sort of victory on Ozone and CFC’s, again by regulations banning them. I think the DDT ban would also qualify.
Among many other things, they got lead banned from gasoline and paint, mercury banned from just about everything, at least some asbestos was banned but not all, and they got catalytic converters installed on cars and now (at least in California) on trucks, too. They got smoking banned in indoor workplaces and restaurants and bars in California, and some other places now. They got vapor recovery nozzles installed on gas station pumps, at least in some places.
Their claim is that a lot of lives were saved, and the earth was protected. I have not read all the enabling legislation on these, but almost always they start out by dire predictions of consequences if the law is not passed.
A very recent one is the imminent demise of the polar bears, those lovable white critters that are now on the endangered species list. That may be an example of a prediction not coming true.
Don’t know if this helps, or was what you seek, but there’s my two cents!
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Great result and of course congratulations to Anthony on the win (provisional) and for providing us with this very informative site.
Interesting isn’t it the conjunction of the weather (climate?) turning cold and the collapse of the world economies and the effect this has on the funding of the AGW proponents. This is where a poll such as Anthony has just won is so important for it is the average taxpayer that is funding all those “oh so important” scientists in the Govt. institutions that seem to be turning against the AGW case.
If I were a scientist in one of those institutions I would be getting all my debts payed off quick smart.
Also can’t but help notice the similarities between the AGW crowd and the Neo Classical economists and their reliance on dodgy models.
Woe is us if they both hold sway!
Halcyon
BenjaminP – Of course I have an answer for you. This being a science blog, I would prefer to discuss politics/philosophy in the proper forum. Mine is a little more simplistic explanation as Guy’s but along the same lines. BTW this is the same view held by Clas Vaclav, the Polish president and he has articulated it many times.
Also, I do not disagree with you about renewable fuels. What I am against is the attempts to for the natural order of progression. I think we have seen time and time and time again is that throwing large sums of government (ie yours and my tax dollars) at altruistic goals rarely yields more than empty promises. When there is a real economic drive (not artificially inflated by government dollars), then true, viable, alternatives will be developed. But we have decades of cheap “fossil fuels” to exploit in the meantime.
If you have a forum you wish to discuss the political issues, let me know I will follow you there.
God Bless,
bwanan
We Are the Champions, my friends . . .
Congratulations Anthony on a well-deserved win.
I regularly frequent Steve McIntyre’s site for its continuing demonstration that scientific measurements without good statistics can result in very poor science. I also read Roger Pielke Sr’s site for its great climate reviews of recent climate-science studies, especially those associated with land-use changes – close to my own current field. However, I find WUWT to be the most interesting site because of the breadth of its articles. Both your articles and guest posts are always worthwhile, along with the comments of your readers. Two recent posts by Steven Goddard and Bob Tisdale were first class and thought provoking.
The other major attraction to your site for me has been your own research project (Surface Stations). As an old-school scientist, I was taught that bad data is worse than no data, since it may, inevitably be actually used. As my own work has been in biological oceanography and latterly river-water chemistry, I have always understood the importance of careful and relevant calibration of instruments.
Hence, your exposure of the problems with temperature measurements in the US has been eye-opening. From your work, it seems that the change from the old, Stephenson-box manual system to modern, cable-linked automated systems has been accompanied by the throwing of siting considerations out the window. Coupled with adjustments by GISS that seem at least illogical and against the likely trend of increasing urban, heat-island effects, the surface stations data now seem hard to believe, at least completely. I’m sure that similar issues will be found with HadCrut stations. Of course, you must realise that the more questionable stations you expose, the less relevant that these data will become. However, it is necessary to be critical of these records, if they are to be improved, which they must be if we are to measure real trends.
You must publish your results in scientific journals ASAP. You would have many papers’ worth by now. Once again, congratulations for a great site.
REPLY: Thank you for the kind words. – Anthony
Yay for us!!! Anthony clearly deserves credit for “borning” this blog and for all his hard work in station surveys. I love anything to do with weather so this site is better than a Friday night date at the movies anytime. By the way, if you overlay the cryosphere today pic of ice extent http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ with the Arctic Jet stream pic http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html with the Arctic SST pic http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png the Arctic ice behavior over the past few days can be easily explained.
Congratulations Anthony from McLaren Vale, South Australia!
A well deserved victory.
And hopefully the trolls from Pharyngula will descend back into the caves from whence they arose. They give atheists a bad name!
nichole (07:22:23) :
why liberals don’t like polls: self-selected popularity contests are not a judge of anything’s quality.
Absolutely right. That’s why liberals don’t like the Academy Awards.
Anyway, self-selected congrats to us all.
Well that was just silly.
Forgot to add the basic one: The fairly stable Arctic oceanic currents at
http://www.aquatic.uoguelph.ca/oceans/ArticOceanWeb/Currents/climate.htm
Peter (14:42:45) : wrote:
Congratulations and well done! From the only AGW sceptic in Berkeley!
_____________________________
How presumptuous is that Peter ?? I’m across the border in the Oakland Hills, but I have several friends over there who are not lemming zombies. Maybe I should hook you up.
Congratulations Anthony from a very warm N. California. The good news is that my grapevines think it’s Spring. The bad news is that it isn’t !!!
I can use appropriate capitalization, if necessary. 🙂
So, then, please be so kind as to enlighten us as to what constitutes your rules for “appropriate capitalization”.
Dear, or rather …dear nichole i am a liberal alltheist and I lurv this site
(that was not a typo)
Good one!
Congratulations to WUWT, ya’ got my votes.
Still looks like NCEP NCAR snow cover has decide to permanently forget about the past so you can’t compare anymore re: huge + snow anomaly NH
http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/ been like this for 2 weeks now
Rotfl! Then why was there such a concerted effort to win at the last second by the pharyngulites (Pharyngulites: One who suffers from Pharyngulitis)? Apparently they only like them when they win.
Sorry about that “blockquote” close error.
Reply: It was a WordPress glitch. Fixed. ~dbstealey, mod.
Jeff Alberts (18:38:57) :
All bets are off, I’d say, since we don’t know if nichole is even a woman to begin with.
RECORD OF THE WEATHER IN PHILADELPHIA
1790 The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees This is the mildest month of January on record Fogs prevailed very much in the morning but a hot sun soon dispersed them and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade at mid day Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers There were frequent showers as in April some of which were accompanied by thunder and lightning The uncommon mildness of the weather continued until the 7th of February A Meteorological Account of the Weather in Philadelphia From January 1, 1790, to January 1, 1847, Including Fifty-seven Years ; with an Appendix Containing a Great Variety of Interesting Information … By Charles Peirce
Our esteemed new Secretary of State said today that global warming “threatens our very existence.”
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090113113744.aspx
Just checked the raw vote and it looks like you have won! Congratulations…what a nice honor after all your hard work and dedication. Yours is an inspirational story about what one man with a sense of curiosity can accomplish. May 2009 be an even better year for you Anthony.
Congratulations WUWT. Well done.
I first went onto the website after Chris Booker, Daily Telegraph, London, recommended it in several articles last May/June time. I have been on it nearly every day since then and look forward to seeing the lastest postings; every one is thought provoking.
One thing concerns me! 14150 votes only equals about 2000 people each voting 7 times as I did. Plus WUWT has only recently passed the one million hits mark of which I will account for 200/300. Add these 2 together and it means that there is a vast amount of uninformed people out there drifting through life believing the information given out by the powers that be.
Let’s try and change that. I encourage all devotees to use this upcoming award, not confirmed until Thursday, to tell people about WUWT and encourage them to go on WUWT and read, and understand, what is being done in their name.
Carry on the good work.
Sorry mate, end of a long day.
This should increase the readership. 🙂
evanjones (09:11:40) :
VOTE, ye swabs! And be puttin’ yer backs inter it!
My vote for the most witty comment on this thread goes to EvanJones.
Congratulations to Anthony, the moderators and all contributors for making this a genuinely excellent science site, which has deserved the accolade of Best Science Blog 2008.
Of course, my voting is a secret (nudge nudge, wink wink).
Whoot!
Last year it was a faked up tie because the AGW people cheated so hard. This year, not even close.
Thanks to Watts Up and Climate Audit and the rest of the skeptics sites AGW is going down. Soon enough that the loony policy prescriptions it leads to are, at least, being questioned.
We’re winning. (did anyone notice Real Climates rank?)
Thanks all.
BarryW:
Just a question. Has any catastrophic environmental prediction based on computer models been validated?
If you can get hold of a copy of “But Is It True? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues” by the late Prof. Aaron Wildavsky (Harvard UP 1995, ISBN 0-674-08923-5) (probably have to be 2nd hand by now) It make interesting reading concerning many scare stories and the subsequent proper science which came after the scare had gone.
—-
Guy:
This would tie in nicely to the thesis that the successors to a totalitarian ideology are using different strategies to achieve the same goal.
Interesting to note that Karl Marx himself, unlike his “followers,” was dead against imposition of revolution from above by violence, and I expect that would extend to lying to, cheating and swindling the public.
I reckon these people want to run the show whatever, and they have to get rid of excellence in order to do so simply because they can’t hack it.
Allan M
Actually the issue of depletion of “fossil fuels” (ie oil) is trivial. You can make all the synthetic oil you need very easily. The technology already exists, and some new developments undoubtedly will continue to improve the process. The current break even price to make synthetic oil competitive is around $80/bbl for fossil oil, depending on local economics of input energy, and raw materials for the process.
Since much of that cost is process energy, low cost renewable energy inputs would substantially improve the break even costs. In spite of that, it is cost competitive today with recent historical oil price peaks, which would become the norm as conventional fossil fuels became harder to recover.
All you need to do to make synthetic crude oil is take any material that contains a hydrocarbon component (plastic, paper, biowaste, coal, tree chips, garbage, slaughter house waste) put it in a pressure vessel and cook at high temperature with a little water, and pressure (500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to 600 pounds per square inch. for 20 minutes. Out comes a synthetic crude comparable to a high quality crude oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/agricultural_waste.pdf
There is a new microwave process that is also being worked on to do the same thing.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141
Synthetic crude is the simple KISS principle solution to replacement of fossil fuels, along with the bio fuels like biodiesel and ethanol, we already have the means to totally replace our imported oil, all we need is the political and financial will to invest in the infrastructure to do it. If you provide the process energy from, solar, you have a simple way to store solar (or wind, tidal, hydroelectric ) energy in the form of a hydrocarbon fuel for use at a later date.
100% energy independence is possible today with existing processes, and with no fundamental breakthroughs required. We simply lack the initiative to begin a sustained long term program like Brazil did some 35 years ago to build out the infrastructure to provide energy from local resources.
Since every dollar invested locally in energy development rolls over about 6 times before it is tied up in long term assets, on a dollar for dollar basis we would make huge gains in our economy simply by replacing a large fraction of our current oil imports through locally developed energy sources.
It might take 50 years to do it much like our interstate highway system, but it is the only sensible “have it now” solution to off shore energy dependence.
Larry
nichole (08:44:14) :
and if science doesn’t work via consensus, how does it work now?
By searching for provable truths, then sharing them until the ‘consensus’ realizes it’s missed something. Arguing, haggling, heck, even shouting some times, like it always has. Plate tectonics, sterilization for surgery, even hand washing between patients, sun centered solar system, the list of revolutions against the consensus goes on and on. The consensus is often wrong, but never in doubt…
But you assume there is a consensus in climate science. There is no such thing. I have a small library of published works and books by scientists who dispute the AGW theory. Some 31,000 scientists signed a petition saying so.
creating jobs making solar panels? with unemployment 7% and rising record-breakingly fast, might not be a bad idea. certainly are a lot of customers for said panels, and america needs some damned exports.
First off, there is nothing even remotely record breaking about the rate of unemployment nor its first derivative. It was >25% in the Great Depression and rose faster. Even since then, I’ve seen worse. Yes, this is a significant recession, but it’s an ordinary garden variety one so far. (I’ve lived through several)
Your understanding of international business is a bit, er, thin. Here is a list of randomly selected stock tickers for solar stocks (from the sector list on a widely used charting service) with the country of their headquarters. These are all traded in the U.S. markets. Tickers with no address listing were eliminated. That usually indicates a start up with no real business.
Stock Symbol – Country
AKNS – USA
ASTI – USA
CSIQ – Canada
CSEHY – China
CSUN – China
ESLR – USA
FSLR – USA
JASO – China
LDK – China
SOL – China
SOLF – China
SPWRA – USA
STP – China
TSL – China
YGE – China
Notice a pattern? LOTS of China? We will not be given the world for our personal use as a captive export market. Not by a long shot.
Now I know a bit about semiconductor fab, having been a production planner for a semiconductor company for a while. Even the ones with USA headquarters will do a lot of their fabrication out of country. It’s just so much cheaper to do it overseas. Generally you keep a small operation in the USA so engineers can debug processes, but the big fab goes to the low labor cost markets. That would be China, India, Malaysia etc. FSLR, for example, has a facility in Malaysia. From their web site, per their manufacturing locations:
Malaysia
First Solar Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.
(Co. No. 758827-T)
8, Jalan Hi-Tech 3/3
Zon Industri Fasa 3,
Kulim Hi-Tech Park
09000, Kulim,
Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia
Now, to be fair, they do have a fab in the USA and one in Germany. This indicates an intention to manufacture near the market of use. I.e. build where needed. I.e. USA fab is for USA demand, not export.
If you really think that we will generate significant export sales from a US fab of solar cells or panels, well, you will be sorely disappointed. The economics of production and distribution just don’t support that.
I am greatly in favor of solar and own stock in solar companies, but hold no fantasy of a US industrial renaissance based on the solar industry. We will get a small part of it, that is all, and it will largely be for domestic sales.
I’ll skip over your rather crude insults of the center of the country and several other things. No merit in them…
so maybe it’s not anthropogenic. so we should sit down and do nothing?
Yes. When you have no idea what causes something, it’s a bad idea to start monkeying with it. When you have no idea how it works internally, it’s even worse.
What if solar is the driver? What if we just fell into a solar funk with zero sunspots and a Maunder Minimum event brings with it a Little Ice Age. Kind of a dumb time to be enhancing the cooling. Now I don’t expect such a thing, but if you don’t know what’s happening, you can not prudently plan on it not happening.
try, and die, or not. do nothing, and die. fer sure.
And this indicates the other major flaw. The “doom and gloom end of life as we know it we’re destroying the planet” mind set. There is no evidence at all that the planet is being harmed in any way by CO2 or warming. None. There are many fantasy projections, but nothing real.
Don’t Panic! We have a hundred years at least to sort out what is really happening (the computer models are deliberately made to ‘run fast’ to encourage folks to panic into early action. Neither a prudent nor a moral behaviour, but there it is, none the less.)
I’ve lived through 40 years of so of “we’re all gonna die” that I can remember and projections of planetary doom Real Soon Now. Guess what? The world is a better place now that it was 40 years ago. It has been consistently improving. There is no doom. You can let go of the gloom.
So I’d suggest that you have a nice cup of tea, sit back and calmly study the science yourself. Nothing bad will happen for the length of my life, nor that of my children. Plenty of time to get it right.
And during that time we can use the money that would have been squandered tilting with windmills to do really useful things, like cure malaria, teach folks to micro-farm more efficiently, provide education to the 3rd world, build and distribute Rocket Stoves (or similar fuel efficient minimalist stoves) to save the 3rd world forests, and build more aquaculture ponds so the oceans can be saved from over fishing.
Oh, and building some coal to liquids (CTL) factories so we can stop sending trillions of dollars to folks who want to kill us would be good too. It would even let us stop spending a few trillion dollars on military operations to defend the oil routes. Frankly, this is, IMHO, the single most valuable thing we could do to help America. Stop shoveling the dollars out of the country and stop sending our family and friends to fight in foreign lands. The technology is well proven. Sasol, the South African Synthetic Oil Company (ticker SSL) has been doing it for South Africa for decades.
America could be completely free of foreign oil before the end of Obama’s second term if CTLs were made a priority. Go the solar / wind route, and thanks to the vehicle fleet not turning over in less than 15 years, you will guarantee that we continue to fund terrorists with oil money and then spend trillions to go police the world to clean up after them. Your choice…
Congratulations – if a bit late. Keep up the good work; I’ve learnt more science from here in the past six months than I have in the past sixty years!
I endorse Steve Brown’s brief comment which seems to me to sum up just what those of us who felt uneasy about AGW but hadn’t the science to argue the case feel about it now,
Pete S — Yes, I get the reference to the Sun! How about the other one: If the Warm-mongers win, will the last person to leave the planet please turn off the lights!
Congratulations to Anthony. I don’t comment here very often but I read this blog (as well as Climate Audit and ICECAP) all the time. All credit to last year’s winner Steven McIntyre as well for helping to lift the veil on the AGW myth. Hopefully there will be victory for the sceptics before too long and integrity shall finally be restored to climate science.
nichole (09:43:50) :
we get power now by 1) digging up oil 2) shipping it to a refinery 3) refining it 4) shipping it to the power plant 5) generating the power 6) transmitting the power to the consumer. much more efficient would be 1) generating the power and consuming it in the same place with a solar panel. see?
We don’t ‘dig up oil’ we pump it. Oil is not used in power plants, it is used largely for transportation liquid fuels. (Power plant fuels are almost exclusively coal, nuclear, and natural gas).
You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
the difference between “all” and “most” is not significant enough, IMO.
So you would be equally happy if your doctor said “I got ALL of the cancer out” vs. “I got most of the cancer out”? OK…
I’m sorry nichole, but you clearly have not a clue about where energy comes from, how it is used, and the technical limits to change (thus the consequences of the actions you propose are also opaque to you). Please spend a while looking into where different energy flows go in our economy. You have much to learn.
By the way, whilst on the topic of wikipedia being innaccurate regarding global warming, I would encourage you all to try to improve this article, which is blatantly alarmist, exaggerated and innaccurate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
Examples of the alarmism include this sentence:
“Climate changes characterized as global warming are leading to large-scale irreversible effects at continental and global scales. The likelihood and magnitude of the effects are observed and predicted to be increasing and accelerating.”
and this:
“Scenarios studied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predict that global warming will continue and get worse much faster than was expected even in their last report.”
This is an edit that I made a while back that was reverted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effects_of_global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=251291938
I think you may have done it, well done fingers crossed for the all clear!
atb
Belated congratulations Anthony! I know the official announcement hasn’t been made yet, but I believe the site is the winner. Well deserved, too!
Congratulations, even if for second place, which seems unlikely. No matter any award, I continue my “subscription” (contribution) to one of the most excellent blogs on the internet. When I see a number like 449 comments, I gulp, but try to skim most of them because of the value of so many. For example, I am grateful to Allan M, hotrod, and E M Smith above for new information for my rapidly expanding files. Thanks much, Anthony Watts.
i consider the true believer to be a different species and will therefore not mate with them. i don’t breed that far afield.
i voted for neurologica, btw. once. multiple voting is stupid.
and you all insist on spewing facts at me when i told you i don’t care about that. i’m under the impression that climate science is immensely complicated. even the professionals can’t predict the weather tomorrow with 100% accuracy. i doubt i can purport to do so with casual study of some crap i read on the interwebs. i further doubt that i can purport to predict several orders of magnitude beyond tomorrow. i would say anyone who does so is arrogant to the extreme.
so, yes, you all get a gold star. nichole = unwashed masses. i’m not a climate scientist. damn, you found me out. i only said it a gazillion times. srsly. that’s why i don’t say if global warming is anthropogenic or not. i say neither as i’m not qualified to comment on the subject and neither are most of you.
what i am qualified to comment on is people, as i am one of them and i know a couple, too. scientific debates do not belong in the public forum. you all point out some sweet exceptions to the rule that you found, stole one from lothar with the plate tectonics thing. wow, you figured it out! rules aren’t writ in stone! you are giving ammunition to the low information voter who doesn’t want to conserve for a reason i’ve yet to fathom. ~snip~ i believe education is the cornerstone of america, and anyone who is against it is unpatriotic. this country was the first to institute public schools. unfortunately, it has gone downhill from there. the news media is already broadcasting the controversy that doesn’t really exist because that’s what the unwashed masses love – a good scientist deathmatch! but there isn’t too much of a controversy except you people keep egging it on. loose lips sink ships.
the public attitude is correct, even if maybe for the wrong reason. we need to diversify our sources of energy. we’ve needed to do that for a long time now, but it wasn’t politically viable until now. stop ruining it.
that’s why i troll you 😛
@alex, here’s a new reference for you to use in your battles with the Wikicult!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aXm16yRTS344
“Greenland’s Rapid Glacier Retreat May Stall, Scientists Say”
Benjamin P. (16:50:57):
I am very curious, if it is all some great energy control conspiracy, what is the end game? What do these folks want to gain? I was talking to one of my students who was sure that it was a conspiracy as well.
“What is the agenda of the conspirators and what do they hope to gain?” I asked. He had no answer.
Perhaps you have an answer for me?
The simple answer is, your student was incorrect. There is no conspiracy; none is required. The AGW alarmists love the “conspiracy” angle, as it makes for a very good straw man. The AGW bandwagon is huge, and holds many, with varying interests and agendas. Guy (18:40:22) spoke of the Greens and their agenda, but there are many others on the AGW bandwagon who benefit monetarily, whose careers are dependent on it, or who use it for political gain, including environmental groups, some “scientists”, and of course, the MSM (alarmism sells). Many, if not most on the AGW bandwagon have little, if any actual scientific knowledge of the issues, relying primarily on the IPCC, and on the “consensus” argument. But, there’s a problem. The wheels of the bandwagon are falling off. Those who are smart, and are able to, are jumping off, because when this thing comes crashing down, the fallout will be huge.
J. Peden (19:46:33) :
man, what gives? why should I have to justify anything? i don’t see you getting on anyone else because for these things. just relax and enjoy the commentary…
as an aside, i do my best to ensure that my spelling is correct as the inadvertent misspelling of a word can sometimes convey a different meaning.
I really enjoy reading the comments. EM Smith great comments among many others. Anthony, GREAT JOB on the unofficial win. You and your team deserve so much credit for the hard work, wonderful attitude, and great readable science. I’ve learned so much from you on both science and web decorum.
I felt like the precinct committee officer in the get-out-the-vote campaign here in the silicon valley. It was all in good fun.
There’s a difference between “need” and “can”.
Anything else you think we “need” to be doing?
Whatever happened to needing to end world hunger and poverty?
Whatever happened to needing to educate women throughout the world (progress begins in the home with the mother) ?
Whatever happened to needing to reduce the spread of AIDS?
Whatever happened to needing to end wars?
Whatever happened to needing to provide for the elderly as the birth rates decrease?
Whatever happened to needing to stop nuclear proliferation?
Whatever happened to needing the UN to actually work?
This is the major irritation about environmentalists: they champion their pet cause and grab all the attention whilst denying all other issues as in any way being more important.
i second the accolades for EM Smith.
hotrod (03:30:52)
Thank you for references to what is an extremely interesting process. I would if I may caution against such statements as “all the synthetic oil you need very easily” as I’m sure you will agree that many aspects of the project need careful assessment and modification.
Having said that, IMHO it is a far more valuable approach to any liquid fuel supplement than burning perfectly good food. I was impressed that the developers didn’t claim that this was going to save the world catastrophic global warming, One to watch for in the future. I have repeated the links inorder to save readers from trawling back through the thread to see what we are talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/agricultural_waste.pdf
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141
You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
And solar vehicles simply don’t work. If you mean solar for charging batteries, won’t work either since the charging would have to occur at night, and unless you’re within the arctic or antarctic for a certain 6 months, that won’t work either.
Hi Nicole,
First, it is good that science is done both privately and publicly. Your comment about science not being for the public forum is a concerning statement. This website among others have greatly contributed to the accuracy of the temperature record. This is why both skeptical and pro-AGW scientist communicate with Anthony. They communicate because he and the thousands of thinkers, checkers, historians, mathematicians are like a massively powerful parallel computer that can often arrive at ideas, data, corrections extremely fast. While each one of us is not as powerful as a scientist with a million dollar lab, together we doing science (data integrity study and interpretation). What’s the best on-line encyclopedia today? Is it the best because it was left to a few private smart people to write? Or is it the best because thousands of experts who could have never been hired by a single company are allowed to comment. Public review and debate is a wonderful thing. And even better here as Anthony has kept his forum polite.
Continuing, you want to know about silicon temperature measurement, I’m probably in the top hundred in the world and probably in the top 10 in quartz. Very few universities types will know more than me about these areas – as they don’t have the access to the types of tools I have or the longevity in these areas. Remember money and technical data is sometimes more available in the commercial world. I’m not bragging as I know other readers here are amazing experts in the own right on tons of different scientific areas. I’ve spent the better part of 15 years in my small technical area – it’s just what I do. In the community here, there are people who specialize in chemistry, physics, semiconductors, sensors, etc. I bet I could ask some of the world’s toughest question here and a regular reader is a top ten expert in the area in question. Some of the world’s experts don’t work for the government or for a university. Are we supposed to be silent and not comment?
Your comments are great about education. Education is great, public, private, etc.
I’m a big fan of solar power. I used to work for a top 5 company in solar power based in the silicon valley. The solar wafer pays back the energy required to make it in about 1 1/2 years. However, there is still a bit to go because the solar panel frame, installation process, etc. actually consumes a lot of energy too. I’m extremely optimistic. However, like EM Smith said before … our environmental laws have caused most of the solar production and much of the development offshore. Remember it requires dams, nuclear plants, coal, etc. to create the energy necessary to make solar cells and environmentalist are against all of these things.
As a conservative I am not anti-conservation. I have no idea where you get these notions. Waste not, want not is a wonderful conservative principle. Everyday, my teams work on ways to get power consumption out of the semiconductor chips we design … we worry about a single mA. My last chip helps notebook computers achieve the latest Energy Star requirements. We don’t do this because we are anti-conservationists, we do it because it is the free market at work. It is more profitable to produce products that consume less battery life. Do you want an iPod that is massive and clunky? Do have any idea of the massive amount of power conservation technology rolled into a simple iPod? I could write a 5 page essay and would not come close to covering all the power saving technology in that device let alone the details. What is higher priced a notebook computer with 2 hours of battery life or one with 12? Do you think that as a conservative I don’t want long battery life equipment, that I don’t want LED lighting, high-tech cars? We do. Unfortunately, the regulatory environment, lawyers, enviro wackos raise the cost of research. If a scientist want to put in a lab today that requires a nasty but interesting chemical it takes a near act of God in California. Do that in Taiwan, no problem. Where do you think the next generation of science is going to be done? Remember, not all science labs can be stock with only water, baking soda, and vinegar … sometimes science requires a bit more toxic things.
I am anti-environmentalism, because I seem the damage environmentalism is doing to the environment, to the economy, to jobs. You care about education. How would you feel as a parent watching your children come home from school and then helping them with their Math … the Math is about the environment (an industrialist has a factory that is polluting X over 30 days, etc.), the Biology is about the environment, the Music is about the environment, the History is about the environment. I have 4 kids in Bay Area, CA schools – and frankly some of the classes at a few schools here are in full-brainwash mode.
I would love to see our dependence on foreign oil reduced. I drive a Prius becasue I’d rather send the Japanese the money then people who want to do harm to us and I get to drive in the carpool lane.
All the best to you in your journey
E.M. Smith — You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
She (nichole) doesn’t understand the fundamental difference between sources and storage mediums. QED.
nichole (05:36:57)
I do wish you would calm down. Learning is not a bitter fight, it’s open to all of us and fun. You seem to think you are not qualified and therefore go on the attack. It doesn’t have to be that way. We all learn as we grow and yes we often get things wrong. You should never think of others as your intellectual superior but learning from others through testing and demonstrating to your self that indeed they to have a better understanding and better knowledge on the subject of your interest than you, then you are becoming their equal. Let me give you some words that are not of my own but I believe profound.
You should have a bit more courage – at least the courage to use your intelligence. Scientists (let alone the ones in recently-invented and less rigorous fields) are not a superior species or a master-race with the right to bully others into silence. They are only human. Some are fools, some are crooks, others are perfectly honest but under pressure to produce dramatic headline-grabbing claims. And of course they all like money. Instead of grovelling before them you must judge what they say according to the normal criteria of logic, plausibility, consistency with other sets of facts etc. If you don’t, you are just a vegetable who doesn’t think because master told him not to.
nichole:
that’s why i don’t say if global warming is anthropogenic or not. i say neither as i’m not qualified to comment on the subject and neither are most of you.
Yes, you do, nichole. Because you have stated that you believe in the so-called “consensus”, which is a myth, but which falsely claims AGW to be true. You claim not to care whether it’s true or not, but you obviously do, because it fits your agenda.
All of the issues you claim to care about, conservation, energy diversification, energy independence, pollution, etc., we do as well. Apparently, you think “the ends justify the means”. They do not. Lying to people is never a good idea, and will eventually backfire. Science has been corrupted by AGW, and will take many years to recover. That is bad news for humanity, which needs good science to make advancements. Spending trillions of dollars on a non-problem is a huge waste, with tragic consequences for humanity.
Your rant against Republicans, and right-wingers is also way off the mark. I, and many others here happen to be liberals of one stripe or another. I voted for Obama, but most certainly not because of his hugely mistaken views on AGW. Unlike you, we here CARE about science, and yes, we laymen (many here are actually scientists) most certainly are fully capable (as are you, if you wanted to) of researching the subject.
Nichole’s
and you all insist on spewing facts at me when i told you i don’t care about that.
Nuff said….
Nichole,
Considering your blind faith to the “facts” regarding global warming and being, as you have written, unqualified to question the “scientific” community, I would assume that you believe in God because the vast majority of people in the world do, and you would be “unqualified” in making a self determined decision as you haven’t attended (I’m assuming) Seminary?
See you the front pew this Sunday!
when the cause is good, the ends do justify the means if the means are as trivial as not educating a public that’s not smart enough to understand anyway. take les for example. quote mines and takes things out of context, abuses statistics and thinks that any time he gets his feelings hurt he is the victim of an ad hom. total freaking moron, that one.
i am on the attack because you are as qualified as me, sir. which means you should stop talking about that which you do not know. oh we can all play the game! how sweet and post-modern and incorrect.
i am aware of the difference between an engine and a battery. how presumptuous of you. i can hypersimplify all i like.
i want to know about silicon temperature measurements? oh wait. no i don’t.
i totally said something about solar vehicles, too. poor straw men, always getting beat on.
we do ::need:: to diversify our sources of energy. yep, probably the most important thing. the intellectual renaissance was paid for with abundant energy. energy shortages will lead to terrible things. we’ve been humping the same legs for so long, it’s time for some fresh, renewable sources. global warming has made that politically viable. long term results of abundant energy for all are positive for everyone who isn’t opec. more energy will help us achieve all that stuff you said, because it will make our economy richer and we’ll have extra resources to spend.
sorry you don’t like how hysterical people are. they’re stupid, what do you want? my mom thinks vaccines cause autism, kay? stupid. subtlety is lost on them. lost on kids too. gotta get out the hammer. the thing about backlash is it often overcompensates.
Anthony,
Well done, and deserved!
Nichole:
So what are we getting? What are we supposed to be ‘ruining’?
Billions still pumped into researching ‘climate change’, when the science is supposed to be ‘settled’.
Energy costs rising, with most of the extra we’re paying disappearing into the black hole of govt taxation, and to the shareholders of the oil companies, amongst others. Yes, the oil companies actually like high energy prices – more money for them.
Carbon credits, etc, with most of the proceeds going into the pockets of Al Gore and his ilk.
Higher prices of everything, including food, because of energy costs, changes of land usage etc.
And precious little being poured into research and development of really viable alternate energy sources.
Hat tip to Anthony, all the contributors, all the moderators, and all the commenters that make this blog so great. This blog is a real eye opener!
As a side question, does anyone know of any sites that do a good job at explaining the scale of our atmosphere and the density of gases within it? I don’t think the average person really understands what .06% is and in conversations about CO2, I get the feeling most think CO2 is quickly replacing all other gases!
you know peter, obama seems like a smart guy and he hired some adviser types who also seem like smart guys and i bet you they know that oil companies like high prices.
how might we avoid their tyranny? by putting money into alternative energy research? i bet you they’ll do that.
you really think that all the money made from cap and trade gets paid to al gore? are you that stupid? because it’s going to get paid to the state as compensation for the pollution; it’s a license to pollute. al gore doesn’t get anything from that. unless he makes the state of gorida and some businesses move there. then they’ll have to give him money.
if you all would shut up about the nonexistent controversy, maybe we could divert funds from researching a dead issue into something a bit more worthwhile. so you agree with me, then? we still put money into researching if vaccines cause autism because of idiots like jenny mccarthy. everybody knows they don’t except for a bunch of stupid tax payers. we’re still putting money into researching the cause of global warming because of the ruckus caused by the minority opinion that global warming isn’t real.
CodeTech (10:15:08) :
The rest of that monolithic block of lower case text is safe to ignore.
Why is it so important for some people that things be bad?
I’ve thought about this a lot. I think it comes down to 2 clear things, and maybe a couple of more speculative ones.
Folks like adrenaline, and fear raises the level. There are many examples of ‘adrenaline junkies’. It’s exciting, you wake up and feel alive! Hitchcock sells.
The need for self esteem. Maybe an individual can not do anything that matters in the world, but they can join a group that claims they will fix some dire problem and thus feel that their life has some meaning. Which sounds better as your epitaph: “OK burger flipper on 5th street” or “World saviour”
And, of course, it is far easier to succeed at fixing a problem that wasn’t there to begin with…
I would also speculate that maybe after millions of years of evolution we are still prone to a genetic predisposition to be afraid of what goes bump in the night. Our linage was a prey species for most of that time. The fearful monkey that gets far from the lion lives, the calm and curious one that goes to check it out is called ‘lunch’… Unjust fear may be an inherent part of us.
My other speculation would be that there are folks who need followers. They crave the adoration and importance. These folks frequently use strong emotion to motivate their flock. Anger. Fear. How better to raise the level of these blinding emotions than with a story of impending doom? Watch any leader building their casus beli, it’s all about fear of the evil one about to do something horrible. It’s a well proven tool. Well, today, “the Devil is coming” has lost it’s punch and “communists under the bed” is dead meat too… so what is an aspiring charismatic cult leader to do?…
In conclusion: I think we are stuck with this part of our species behaviour. I don’t think we can change it. Maybe there is some way to use it better. I am fairly sure, though, that when you try to tell someone they need to not get their adrenaline fix and not see themselves as savior of the world and not follow their leader to glory; well lets just say you are working a long row with a very short hoe…
Pearland Aggie (10:28:46) :
I have never quite figured out why these folks are filled with such hatred and vitriol.
It’s hard to think, it’s easy to hate.
Nichole ought to take a look at the wonderful graph at:
https://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php
If she does, she will see that of 41.3 exajouls of oil consumed in the USA, 27 of them go to transportation fuels. 5.5 are ‘nonfuel’ while 4.2 is industrial and 2.4 is residential / commercial. There are 2.2 exported and 1 used for electrical production.
Oil is all about transportation fuels.
Oil has almost nothing to do with electrical production (and much of that is emergency / standby generation). The 5.5 of ‘nonfuel’ I would presume is the petrochemical part and can be easily substituted with natural gas or coal.
THE problem that must be solved to reduce oil consumption (at any rate faster than fleet change: 15+ years) is how to make a fuel that runs in our present vehicles. And that has already been solved a couple of times. You can use butanol (as BP is doing) or you can use natural gas, coal or high carbon trash to make synthetic gasoline and Diesel (as is being done by Sasol SSL, Rentech RTK, SYMX, SYNM Syntroleum, Chevron CVX, Marathon Oil MRO, Shell Oil RDS, and many others).
Nichole: your
when the cause is good, the ends do justify the means
As many a tyrant has stated. Look how they turned out.
if the means are as trivial as not educating a public that’s not smart enough to understand anyway.
You seem to have a very low opinion of the public. Of which you have set yourself firmly amongst, BTW. I, on the other hand, firmly believe that the public will make the right decision the majority of the time.
take les for example. quote mines and takes things out of context, abuses statistics
I would love to see examples and refutations.
and thinks that any time he gets his feelings hurt he is the victim of an ad hom. total freaking moron, that one.
Thanks for proving my point on this one. Note the term ‘ad hom’ followed immediately by an actual ad hominem.
Your whole argument can be summed up as:
Interesting.
Jeff Alberts (09:08:17) :
“You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
And solar vehicles simply don’t work. If you mean solar for charging batteries, won’t work either since the charging would have to occur at night, and unless you’re within the arctic or antarctic for a certain 6 months, that won’t work either.”
Gently disagree. Solar vehicles do work. Daily. Using California (I live here) as the example, many parking lots are now shaded with solar PV panels, with plug-in stations for the cars. The number is growing. Person drives up in the morning, parks in a favored spot, plugs in, goes to work. Car recharges with sunshine during the day. One of the benefits of living in a sunny locale. There is one such installation in the Santa Monica courthouse parking lot.
Probably will not work as well in more polar locations, or those with few sunny days.
And as for replacing the vehicle fleet, yes we are. You should see the number of hybrids on the road in California. Some of them are plug-ins, and some are pure EV. Have a look at the Detroit auto show, currently in progress. Whether gasoline prices go back up so these hybrids / EVs are a good buy is an interesting question.
I believe the Saudis will control oil production so that hybrids are not so attractive. They have two massive new oil production projects underway that should give them enough leverage to keep prices low. On the other hand, the demand for gasoline and diesel is growing, some say due to prosperity in India and China.
My prediction is that U.S. diesel demand will soon slacken, as more short-range diesel trucks acquire hybrid technology. UPS just took delivery of their first hybrid vans. U.S. gasoline demand also will decrease, even more than the 2008 reduction of about 4 percent. If this keeps up, we will see the U.S. becoming a product-exporting nation rather than importing.
Our current refinery expansion projects (U.S.) are likely to not see the financial rewards the owners hoped for, as demand declines.
Another very big factor is the startup of a huge refinery in India owned by Reliant Industries. It has just now started up, and is exporting products into the world market. Gasoline and diesel prices will likely fall as a result, and how far is not certain.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
nichole (12:28:59) :
not here to debate the science. here to debate the prudency of debating the science in a public forum.
Then you are probably in the wrong place. We debate the science here. We take it apart and admire the good bits while we disparage the broken bits. That is what science is all about and this is a science blog.
Per prudent debate of science in public: It is always prudent to debate science in public. It keeps folks honest. Anyone can do science, and the citizen scientist is still important to the world. If cast adrift from public scrutiny and left to ‘the authorities’ science will become nothing more than a power tool of the power elite; another set of popes and cannons…
Congrats on your victory.
Sadly some people aren’t that happy – I’ve just read this post on the Weblog forum:
“The WebLog Awards provides a good service, but are open to abuse by special interest groups trying to distort the apparent popularity of their viewpoint. You might take note that an anti-science site is being given the best science blog award… ”
Very sad.
(I must point out that this was the view of a poster not the hosts)
Nichole, maybe I get where you’re coming from now. OK, how do you make people change? Right? How do you change the great ignorant mass of population, and persuade them to do what’s obviously right? OK?
Now you could have pulled a stunt like that 200 years ago. You could create a myth which moved people to behave in a way that works. I’m told by Muslim acquaintances that eating pig meat is forbidden, and that is simply a belief for them. But in some respects, due to the sanitation and hot climates of the times, it probably was indeed a bad idea to eat pig meat. So anyway it becomes dogma and part of the religion, so now people keep doing it without knowing what the rule was for in the first place.
Today you have two problems. To be a rational person, you have to question dogma and myth and beliefs. It begins with questioning. That’s really the starting point. So creating a myth (even accidentally) of AGW for the sake of convincing people, can’t work because people know that we have to start by being rational, and we have to question stuff. Like people are always trying to sell us stuff, so to survive in this world you have to question things. So creating a myth to convince the population, is the wrong strategy. Wrong because it won’t work. Most of that “dumb” population you refer to is actually a thinking population, and has been told many scary scenarios before. Oil fires were going to change the climate. A radiation leak was going to kill half the country. All that stuff, the dumb population has heard before.
Second, not only are people more questioning, we also can get access to information much more quickly. I can imagine environmentalists sitting in meetings deciding on a new publicity stunt, and within a day of doing it, people have already googled and discovered the real truth of the matter. So again, creating a myth won’t work in the modern world. You could create myths in the Bible, thousands of years ago. Today people will expect you to have a disk full of photos to prove it and preferably a video on their phone.
In short, it is just the wrong strategy, and you’ll need to think about actually working with people and the real intelligence which they do have.
Because whilst the energy crisis is frontmost on your mind, you are just one individual. As a country you have a widely distributed intelligence–there are people everywhere making decisions about their little corner of life. It has been said by a famous historian that no real democracy has ever suffered a famine. The reason appears to be that in a real democracy, people can find stuff freely themselves, and the food gets where it is needed. In a centralized system, however, it is a different story. A central authority can’t understand the whole system, nor handle everything fairly. Food may be available and yet people are starving. So learn to look at the wisdom of the masses, a sort of distributed global brain, if you will. If it was truly necessary to go for all these carbon rationing measures, the world would be doing it already.
wattsupwiththat (12:52:31) :
Actually we do have an economist on the panel here. Search for “Indur Goklany” in the upper right search box and you will see some of the articles he has guest posted here. – Anthony
Um, I’m one too… though I usually try not to admit it in public 😉
“If you laid all the Economists in the world end to end, you still could not reach a conclusion.”
Why do people still respond to nichole? She clearly is not going to change her mind no matter what you say. Like many people on this planet, she is immune to logic. She’s admitted she’s a troll, and she thrives on the negative attention she gets. Just ignore her now and in all future posts she makes.
example of les taking something out of context:
i say: “when the cause is good, the ends do justify the means if the means are as trivial as not educating a public that’s not smart enough to understand anyway.”
and you cut off the second half of that sentence to make me look like hitler. i put a qualifier on the end there, jackass. you didn’t even put an ellipsis.
glad you realize that i think i’m surrounded by idiots. amongst which you are counted, sir.
see, you truly think that an ad hominem is just an insult which is one example of why you are an idiot. okay, let me spell it out for the mentally impaired:
you are an idiot because your argument is false. = not ad hom
your argument is false because you are an idiot. = ad hom
calling you a moron is not an actual ad hom. moron.
your whole argument is “oh yeah?!”
E.M. Smith — re petroleum usage
Absolutely correct for the U.S. But the world picture is slightly different. Globally, oil products for transportation are around 50 percent. The EIA has some global statistics, but I suspect you know that.
And, the non-fuel disposition does include petrochemical feedstocks, also asphalts, lubricants, and solvents.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Why is it so important for some people that things be bad?
It sells lots of newspapers and television advertsing time.
Nichole,
I hope you don’t kiss your Mom with the same lips that spout all that invective.
Mike
Nichole: your
and you cut off the second half of that sentence to make me look like hitler. i put a qualifier on the end there, jackass. you didn’t even put an ellipsis.
Well, you qualified it by disparaging the public at large. Which doesn’t really qualify it. Rather, it reinforces the first part.
see, you truly think that an ad hominem is just an insult which is one example of why you are an idiot. okay, let me spell it out for the mentally impaired:
ummmmm….yes, an ad hominem is indeed, an insult. That’s the definition. If you attack the man, not the data, its an ad hominem.
You have yet to attack the data.
Oh, that’s right, you don’t want the facts. Carry on.
To the moderators
Why are the pathetic posts by Nichole calling people jackasses and idiots being allowed?
anna v (13:02:57) :
You are wrong here. The EU, which was mired in this idiotic cap and trade policy is fast changing its mind, due to the economic necessities that have arisen. I will be very surprised if Obama does not hold his peace too, putting priority on the economy. He does not look gullible to me.
Ah, Anna V, what a wonderful insight. So many folks think the USA is the whole world…
And add to that international lack of consensus the Russians who have lots of gas and oil to burn, the Chinese who are building coal power plants and coal to liquids plants as fast as humanly possible, and the Indians who are buying cars as fast as their push to modernity will let them. The Europeans talk a good game, but threaten their wallet and they roll in a heartbeat. Germany just did.
If the USA wants to do silly things like cap and tirade and hobble their industry, well, the rest of the world will happily pick up the slack. There will be about 6% economic growth next year in China. We are expecting them to loan us the money (via purchase of treasuries) to fix our mess. Add the AGW agenda to the mix and all we are doing is handing the world economy and our own destiny over to China.
Nothing will change in terms of CO2 emissions in any case. They will just move from coking plants in Ohio to coking in China.
If things are not dramatically better in 2 years, expect a voter revolt. Gutting our economic competitiveness and raising gas prices back to $4/gallon will not be seen as ‘better’. I think 2 years worth of rope is enough…
eco friendly policies are fine. Suicidal policies are to be discouraged.
Well said! Waste is never a virtue. AGW agenda policies are terribly wasteful. How many Rocket Stoves could be built instead … How many teachers in the third world could be funded? How many rain forests bought and turned into parks…
If the gods are looking kindly on the human race another winter or two like the present and the last one will bury the AGW horse in ice.
I’m still hoping for a frozen Jan 20th. TWC shows lots of cold headed that way. It just needs to slow down a bit (presently scheduled to warm on 1/19 to somewhere in the high 20’s to low 30’s for the highs.)
Sunspot 1010 has faded, we are back at zero spots though there may be a plage or sunspeck on the backside. The PDO flip argues for 30 years of colder. Just Dandy. I’d would expect a several year battle ground between residual ocean heat and colder land / poles like we have this year; but with the cold gradually winning. By 2011 DC ought to be nicely frozen. I can wait. Luckily the government can’t do anything very fast…
E.M.Smith (12:01:44) :
personally, i think coal-to-liquids is a good solution, but it will not be as cheap as naturally-derived petroleum products as long as the demand for them is low or the supply is long. in the mid-term, i think this could be a good bridge to electric- or other-powered vehicles.
since you all insist on misunderstanding me, when i say the public is dumb i don’t mean that they can’t tie their own shoes i mean they don’t grok big numbers and no one really understands statistics. 3000% increase sure sounds impressive. whether risks are relative or not is never stated on quality programs like faux news. they’re undereducated and misled. casting doubt does nothing positive. if you want to play the science game, go back to school, change your career and then you can be widely derided and ignored in the professional scene.
you all realize that everyone thinks this blog is a laughingstock, right? all this guy’s claims get thoroughly debunked and you people just ignore it. look, straight up graph:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/02/weblog-awards-duped-by-deniers-again/
sea levels are rising. deny your faces off.
Philip:
Why do people still respond to nichole? She clearly is not going to change her mind no matter what you say. Like many people on this planet, she is immune to logic. She’s admitted she’s a troll, and she thrives on the negative attention she gets. Just ignore her now and in all future posts she makes.
You are right. She is obviously not here to learn, but to hurl insults, taunt, and basically to tell us we should all just shut up. With her most recent post calling people “jackass”, “idiots”, and “moron”, I do believe it is time for her to go. Others have been banned here previously for her behavior.
Take a look in a mirror..
And not using proper grammar, or even attempting to, makes you look like a 5 year old…
since you all insist on misunderstanding me
i don’t think nic ‘hole has made a single coherent argument to be misunderstood! 🙂
“i totally said something about…”
“totally“? Tee hee.
i am aware of the difference between an engine and a battery.
Impressive! ~snip~
Nichole,
“you all realize that everyone thinks this blog is a laughingstock, right? all this guy’s claims get thoroughly debunked and you people just ignore it. look, straight up graph:”
Uh, I went to your link… did you even read the comments? It seems that the poster himself was the debunked and laughed at.
I’m through with you, Thanks for stopping by.
Love and kisses,
Mike
Stefan (13:13:41) :
Question is, just how realistic is it to expect that we will get off of oil anytime soon?
Define ‘soon’? Less than 5 years? Zero. 10 years? 5%. etc.
Define ‘get off oil’. No use? Domestic ok? Substitute carbon source OK?
I’m going to help nichole out. The shortest possible time to eliminate oil in the US economy is 10 years. That would be with a WWII style all out push. It also would require using coal to liquids for vehicles. Some large commercial vehicles can be converted to CNG / LNG. All other paths take longer and cost more (money we don’t happen to have, BTW).
If we are to ‘get off’ of both coal and oil (i.e. can not substitute coal for oil) the time required runs out to about 20 years. In that time the trucking and train fleets can be converted to CNG / LNG and the car fleet turned over to a lot of hybrids and electrics and especially flex fuel plug in hybrids. You will need to build a lot of new generation capacity to feed them electricity, though. Biodiesel can also be used for the diesel ships, trains & trucks. Expect a large increase in prices for food. You still need a few percent of gasoline to make E85 work, but that can come from existing US oil fields or natural gas fields. To eliminate coal use in electric generation will take about 30 to 40 years. It takes a long time to build a bundle of nuclear plants, especially with the law suits and protests.
If you want to go “all green all the time” with only wind, solar, geothermal, waves & tides; then you are still in the 30-40 year range for completion. First you have to upscale the industry (10 to 15 years), then it can start building volume (the next 10 to 20). You must also solve the ‘storage’ problem. Expect electricity dependent industry to move to China. Aluminum, for example, depends on astounding quantities of low priced electricity. Alcoa would be toast…
The only potential “out” from this that I can see is algae. It is still somewhat experimental. If upscaling to production is shown to work, you could have a 5 to 10 year ramp to sufficient biodiesel to replace a lot of the ship, truck, train, farm demands. Add another 15 years for the non-Diesel car fleet to swap to Diesels and you are at about 20 to 25 years. But it is all predicated on that “if”.
The key takeaway here? You don’t rip out the core of your economy or replace several major industries in anything approaching ‘fast’ timescales.
To those who think we could do wind, solar, et.al. in less than 10 years: And just what bank will loan the few trillion dollars it would take to build the solar & wind fabrication factories knowing that in less than 10 years they would be shut down due to demand halting as the build out finishes? You can build 1 windmill fast; a country worth takes decades – plural.
nichole
I hope we aren’t making you late for face painting workshop.
Pearl And Aggie,
You pipped me to it. 🙂
Nichole
Here I go, guys. Crossing swords with Nichole. Cover me. (deep breath)
“sea levels are rising. deny your faces off.” nichole wrote.
Interesting that Boulder sea level data does not concur. At least since 1994, and on the U.S. west coast. The trend line is definitely down, approximately 6 cm by my eyeball in 14 years (1994 – 2008). There is an even more dramatic drop since 2006. Using data input of Latitude 31, Longitude 239.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/wizard.php?dlon=239&dlat=31&map=v&fit=n&smooth=n&days=60
Even their totalized graph shows an inflection point starting in 2006. A line connecting the peaks of the 60-day smoothing line (the blue line) no longer trend upward, but trend slightly down.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
I deny. Did my face just fall off?
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Jeff Alberts (14:37:15) :
We actually know how the depletion curve is shaped. It’s basically a bell curve. We might be able to compress the downside a little bit with advanced oil recovery, but not much. This means that the entry time to peak will be about the same as the exit time. Roughly 100 years from here.
See any of dozens of write ups on Hubbert’s Peak for further exposition. I think we will have plenty of time to taper off and there will be no crisis.
I think this sentiment is only valid if it’s not being forced upon us for no good reason. For something to replace oil it has to be at least as good as oil, preferably better. We’re not there yet.
But we are. There are at least 3 workable alternatives, two of them ‘existence proofs’ on a country sized scale. It’s not about the technology, it’s only about the costs. Periodically OPEC likes to drive oil cost low enough to put the alternatives out of business. Kind of like now… Two countries chose to say “We don’t want to play” and set policies to replace oil with little regard to low prices.
The first is coal to liquids. CTL. This has been done in South Africa since the ’70s as the major fuel source. The company doing it is Sasol (ticker SSL). Their economy has benefited from the stable energy cost and foreign exchange retention (i.e. not sending gold to OPEC). They are the most industrially advanced economy in Africa.
The second is biofuels. In particular Brazil and sugar cane. Cozan is a large player there (ticker CZZ) and make hugh quantities of cane sugar, much of which is converted to ethanol. Flex fuel cars are the norm there. They, too, have an advanced technological society. In fairness, they recently discovered a lot of oil off their cost (PBR is the oil company) but the ethanol mandate began during the embargo years when they had no oil.
We can easily make CTL and almost as easily make biofuels. (No, not the food to fuel kind, that is a political solution…). VRNM Verenium along with a couple of others are doing start up scale cellulosic ethanol. PSUD and OOIL are both doing algae oil biomass.
There are also vast quantities of natural gas in America. Several companies have built GTL, gas to liquids, plants. Expect to see more of them.
You are correct that non-carbon alternatives are not ready yet, especially for things like winter heating and vehicle power; but there are viable alternatives using carbon when oil is over $50/bbl.
I’m all for making OPEC go pound sand
The easy way to do this is to tax imported OPEC oil such that it is over $50 to $80/bbl and to exempt domestic & NAFTA energy from taxes. You will be up to your eyeballs in non-OPEC energy and liquid fuels in no time flat… But our government puts taxes on all fuel sources and discourages them all while leaving the OPEC leverage on prices intact.
Ops. Paragraphs 2 & 3 above ought to be non-italic. i.e. mine.
An opinion — FWIW
I think that nichole is actually a very clever AI construct designed to carry on seemingly intelligent and certainly provocative conversations.
If so, she [it] certainly has elicited many very informative and lucid responses from many posters, but since this construct is unable or unwiling to learn from these replies and doggedly maintains its often questionable points of view, it is my opinion that it fails the Turing test.
Nice try though.
*****************************
Perhaps nichole =
neuro–intelligent–cybernetic–holistic–omni–logic–engine or some such.
Wattock Hunt (14:12:02) :
Mods, how did THAT comment get through??
I was mainly referring to non-CO2 producing alternatives. Not that I think CO2 is a problem…
Benjamin P. (16:50:57) :
I am very curious, if it is all some great energy control conspiracy, what is the end game? […] “What is the agenda of the conspirators and what do they hope to gain?” I asked.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, one isn’t needed to explain it. Lust for power, money, and control has been with us since the beginning of time… See the history of the Hostmen and coal taxes in England for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_tax_post
http://www.internalcombustionbook.com/Hostmen.php
A side-note to all. All fossil fuels, all uranium, and every other non-renewable source of energy is just that…non-renewable.
So? Non-renewable does not imply that there is any problem.
Oil starts to be an issue at Hubbert’s Peak ( that may be now, or may be in another decade or two). The slide down the backside of Hubbert’s Peak is roughly the same shape and duration as the rise. About 100 years.
Coal is variously estimated at 250 to 400+ years worth. So in about 200 years call me and we can start making the alternatives…
Ah, Uranium… though you really need to conflate Thorium with it. The two are functional substitutes in our present reactors.
See: http://www.thoriumpower.com/default2.asp?nav=technology_solutions&subnav=tech_pub
So, for Uranium we have about 10,000 years worth in mines on land. Thorium somewhat more, though folks have not bothered looking for it much. I make that 20,000 years+. So, maybe in 19,900 years you can give me a call? No? Ok, then I’ll give you the trump card now…
Uranium is not renewable, but it is functionally unlimited. This clever scientist in Japan made a polymer that absorbs it from sea water at a price of about $150 / lb. Not competitive with the land based U by a few dollars, but certainly cheap enough to make cheap electricity. And if we powered the whole planet on sea water U, we would extract slightly less each year than washes into the ocean via erosion… We run out of energy when we run out of planet. Literally. See:
http://www.taka.jaea.go.jp/eimr_div/j637/theme3%20sea_e.html
and /or just google “Uranium polymer adsorption japan” for more examples. (both adsorption and absorption are good search terms… why? don’t ask why…)
So I make that about a few billion years before we might have an energy problem with non-renewables. Call me in 500,000 and we’ll work on it…
I think it is in all of our interest to be working on alternatives
Yes. Though the work is largely done. Lots of proven technologies at oil equivalents of $50 to $80 / bbl. It’s an economic issue not a research one. THE problem is oil less than $80/bbl. Nothing more.
because one day we wont have a choice.
No.
But that cheap energy is running out,
In a few hundred years… for carbon energy…
and we need to be prepared.
And we are. GE makes wind turbines, as do several other world scale companies. A dozen or so major companies make solar (and a few dozen minor companies). There are several wave and tidal companies making products. Biomass? About a half dozen in which I own stock… My bias and my conflict of interest is for alternatives companies. But I must be realistic about their economic prospects.
Global warming, global cooling, or otherwise I think we can all agree we need to develop renewable energy.
No, we don’t. We need to implement renewable energy where it is cost effective. It’s developed already. From here on out it is incremental improvement largely aimed at cost reduction. I’d expect a few breakthrough moments are still in the wings, but the heavy lifting is done.
BTW, one of my favorites is Rentech RTK who have a trash to liquids demonstrator running. I don’t think we’re in any danger or running out of trash any time soon…
nichole and joe romm sitting in a tree……
totally, nichole is joe romm.
for some time i have thought of it as a machine. a broken, but still barely functioning junk food dispenser. it has made a lot of people ill as they rush through life in need of substance, but settle for grease and sugar. it needs to be decommissioned.
Roger Sowell says:
For some value of work, yes they do, but not for me. For example, recently my family and I drove from Mountain View to Las Vegas. We stopped in Bakersfield for gas and a feed. We managed each direction in about 8 hours of driving. Could we do that with solar?
Also, The only place I have seen a hint of solar panels around here at parking lots are at Foothill College and Google and we have had plenty of days recently were it was overcast enough to reduce the output to zero, I should think.
John McDonald (07:33:57) :
I really enjoy reading the comments. EM Smith great comments among many others. Anthony, GREAT JOB on the unofficial win.
Pearland Aggie (07:55:41) :
i second the accolades for EM Smith.
BLUSH! Golly, a ‘2 fer’! My French teacher always taught me that we don’t ‘remerci’ but, I just have to… Thank you for letting me know that I’m doing well.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m being a bit too repetitive or wordy… But the truth, politely stated, shall set you free…
Pearland Aggie (13:36:29) :
personally, i think coal-to-liquids is a good solution, but it will not be as cheap as naturally-derived petroleum products as long as the demand for them is low or the supply is long. in the mid-term, i think this could be a good bridge to electric- or other-powered vehicles.
Exactly right. Were I in charge, I’d put up a tariff such that imported OPEC oil was $80+/bbl and make CTL like crazy as a transition fuel. Then we would have the time it takes for the fleet to naturally turn over. Yes, folks are buying some e-cars now, especially in California. But it takes a long time for the whole fleet to turn. Ask the guy on minimum wage on the wrong side of town when he can afford a Prius…
nichole (13:39:12) :
you all realize that everyone thinks this blog is a laughingstock, right?
Reminds me of that old quote: ~”That Place? No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded!!”
Richard Sharpe
My answer is Yes. Maybe not today, but you can when service stations not only fill up your gas tank or diesel tank, but will swap out your depleted battery pack with a fully-charged one. A bit like trading in the empty propane tank for a full one for the BBQ. Will take about one minute. Far less time than it takes to use the rest room and eat that hamburger.
Car companies and battery makers are dickering over the details at this time, but it is coming. They need to settle on a standardized battery geometry and access port. Batteries get recharged by the service station in a back room somewhere, who cares if it takes 4 hours or 16? Just need a bigger inventory.
The energy density of batteries (Kwh/kg) is increasing. I predict this will improve, somewhat like computer power on a chip — maybe not quite that fast, doubling every two years, but something similar. Right now, cars can do around 40 miles on one battery charge. Doubling that gets 80 by 2010, then 160 by 2012, then 320 by 2014. That is a good four or five hours in a car, plenty of distance to make it convenient to stop and stretch.
E.M. Smith,
You are right on with your alternate energy analysis. The key truly is crude oil prices at or above $80 per barrel. Lots of economic options at that point. That is why I believe the Saudis will do all they can to produce new oil and keep the market price just under $80. They did it in 1979, when crude price jumped to $32 per barrel. The reason? We had just completed the coal liquefaction studies, coal-to-oil, and needed about $40 per barrel crude to make it worthwhile. The Saudis were not about to let that happen.
However, for the OPEC members who do not have a long supply of crude oil left, they want much higher prices to maximize their revenue.
What will be interesting is to see if Obama keeps the tax credit for hybrid vehicles, or perhaps increases them to promote their sales. Win-win there, for car manufacturing, car sales, sales taxes, less oil imports. Can do the same for plug-ins and pure EV’s. Hope he does. Would even be better if the Feds would make the money available at time of purchase, and not have to wait as much as a year to get the tax credit. The down side is reduced federal gasoline taxes, at least from the U.S. treasury viewpoint.
Companies in the hybrid business include virtually every car maker now, but one to watch is AFSTrinity. They are privately held, but make a pretty good combined battery-ultracapacitor power delivery system. Eaton is another, and they are publicly traded.
http://www.eaton.com/EatonCom/ProductsServices/Hybrid/index.htm
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Jeff Alberts (09:08:17) :
“You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
Pearland Aggie (13:36:29) :
personally, i think coal-to-liquids is a good solution, but it will not be as cheap as naturally-derived petroleum products as long as the demand for them is low or the supply is long. in the mid-term, i think this could be a good bridge to electric- or other-powered vehicles.
I believe you folks are not including agriculture in this picture. As an agronomist, I must add that efficient modern agriculture demands the use of 300 – 1,000+ horsepower tractors. Would someone like to determine the weight of batteries needed to power these vehicles on electric or solar for a 12 hr day? Some of the old steam engines weighed 15-25 tons and produced around 100 hp.
Since the US is the worlds largest exporter of food and the most efficient producer/acre, requiring or utilizing any energy source other than liquid fuel, within our lifetimes, would cause the starvation of billions of people.
Sorry, Tim, but I didn’t say what you’re attributing to me.
Did anyone else notice DeSmog only got 88 votes in their catagory.
‘I believe you folks are not including agriculture in this picture. As an agronomist, I must add that efficient modern agriculture demands the use of 300 – 1,000+ horsepower tractors.’
I’m sure many of you have seen the railroad commercial about how they can get 425 miles per gallon of fuel. Why can’t that type of technology (engine powers generator which powers wheel motors) be used in heavy road haulers and farm equipment?
Tim Clark (19:00:51) :
you’re absolutely correct. i believe that we will always need some sort of combustible fuel to power earth movers, military vehicles, and other heavy equipment. i didn’t mean to confuse normal modes of transportation with those pieces of equipment…sorry about that!
Roger E. Sowell:
320 miles per tankful is about as much as I can get on my car right now, but…
Do you have some historical information on energy densities of batteries to support your predictions?
I could not find any convenient graphs that would show it, but my impression is that battery’s technology advances are nowhere near Moor’s law.
If I remember right, 40 miles per charge was feasible about 15 years ago, so doubling every 2 years doesn’t sound very realistic.
Have the results been finalised?
Guy
Looks like it’s official!
The winners have been posted on the Weblog Awards home page:
http://2008.weblogawards.org/
Congrats!
Over 9.78 votes for WUWT for each vote for RealClimate.
That’s a consensus!
J. Peden (19:46:33) :
man, what gives? why should I have to justify anything? i don’t see you getting on anyone else because for these things. just relax and enjoy the commentary…
Far Out, Man.
Reply: OK, enough.
People prefer WUWT to RealClimate 9.78 to 1 🙂
nichole;
sea levels are rising. deny your faces off.
nichole, I thought you said that those who are not “Climate Scientists” should not speak as to the “Climate”.
Btw, I’m still waiting for your explanation as to the supposed benefits concerning the “Theory behind Trolling an Oppontent’s Site”.
As far as I can tell, your trolling only brands your supporters as imbeciles. So I wonder what the offset in your specific Trolling could be which offsets that.
old construction worker (04:24:53) :
“I’m sure many of you have seen the railroad commercial about how they can get 425 miles per gallon of fuel. Why can’t that type of technology (engine powers generator which powers wheel motors) be used in heavy road haulers and farm equipment?”
I believe the railroads are referring to long-haul trains, which of course have long periods of relatively constant speed. That is quite a bit different than stop-and-start farm equipment. And for long-haul trucks, there is a wind-resistance factor they suffer from, that trains minimize by having a long string of cars very close together. Some trucks approximate this by having dual trailers. State laws prevent having triple trailers or more, but Europe allows triples. Still, you make a good point.
Also, weight is a bigger issue for trucks, as they have an 80,000 pound weight limit. Installing a more efficient power train is no good to them, if it weighs much more than the current system. More weight in the power train means the trucker must reduce the weight of the load, and thereby earn less money. Power-to-weight ratio in the engine/transmission is very important in trucking. GE’s new hybrid locomotive is reported to weigh 207 tons, or 414,000 pounds, and produce 4,400 horsepower. The train lbs/hp is around 94. In contrast, a truck may weigh around 20,000 pounds and have an engine that produces 400 to 500 hp. Using 500 hp, the lbs/hp is around 40.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, CA
“Derek (01:01:14) :
Did anyone else notice DeSmog only got 88 votes in their catagory.”
Now that is funny. Thanks for pointing it out. Btw – gotta love the CO2 work on your site right now.
HadleyMet appear to have “discontinued” the world’s longest historical record.
Used to be here;
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/fourofour/hadleyredirect.html#/CR_data/Daily/HadCET_act.txt
Big Brother “working for you”.
I must, also, admire the previous posts on alternative fuels.
My two-penneth-worth;
Solar array next to the seaside somewhere hot. Crack seawater to get hydrogen. Use current tech to transport and deliver – docks – tanker – docks. – refinery – tanker – gas station. This maintains the status quo and the top dogs should hardly complain.
http://www.rmets.org/pdf/qj74manley.pdf
“”
Tim Clark (19:00:51) :
Would someone like to determine the weight of batteries needed to power these vehicles on electric or solar for a 12 hr day?
Clearly my comment won’t apply to all farm gear, but… It was common practice in the ’60s to put lead oxide powder in tractor tires to give them more weight so they would grip the mud better… Don’t know if it still is. For a very large class of farm gear, added weight is a major feature…
With that said, it is my hope that the fuel of the future for farm equipment is vegetable oil, grown and processed on the farm, used in Diesel engines, and with not one cent of taxes nor profits leaving the farm to go to anyone other than the farmer. It is technically possible today and being done in India.
old construction worker (04:24:53) :
I’m sure many of you have seen the railroad commercial about how they can get 425 miles per gallon of fuel. Why can’t that type of technology (engine powers generator which powers wheel motors) be used in heavy road haulers and farm equipment?
It is. It is called a hybrid… You can get hybrid trucks today from a couple of makers (who’s names escape me because it’s 3am …) Unfortunately, in addition to not being a mile long as others mentioned, there is another aspect of trains that trucks can not match. Steel wheels. The rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails is about as close to nothing as you can get. Not so for rubber tires on concrete… especially not for tires in mud. Trains will always beat trucks for long haul for those reasons. Thus intermodal.
Roger Sowell (16:47:26) :
State laws prevent having triple trailers or more, but Europe allows triples.
Some states allow them on some roads. IIRC Colorado lets them haul over the Rockies.