Harris Poll: Europeans Tend to Care More Strongly about Climate Change than Americans

I didn’t mean to be nasty. I questioned your assumptions because they seemed to be quite strongly worded. Was it just talk or do you have reliable and verifiable information to back this cold future (tomorrow? next year? next century?) up? I keep an eye on the trade winds. Right now they are not very strong in either direction. When the Easterlies become strong enough to peel back a warm layer of equatorial ocean water, I will predict NH cold dry weather systems mixed with cold wet weather systems along the US portion of the jet stream. Right now we seem to be experiencing warmer dry weather systems mixed with warmer wet weather systems that naturally turn to snow in higher elevations. I just don’t see our current parameters leading to bitter cold in the next month.
Regarding the Sun, the oceans are much better at creating clouds than the Sun is. These clouds may be slightly enhanced due to solar influences, but the large swings due to oceanic influences likely bury solar produced cloud enhancements or decreases.

Bitter cold is not a very nice thing to hope for.

“While this study does not include science, it demonstrates that conservative private schools may need to wake up and smell the coffee.” Pam
Cool. I am not a conservative; I am a libertarian. Still, let the parents decide. That way, Leif’s kids can work for mine and the conservative kids can work for his and the Muslim kids can work for the conservatives’ kids.
“There’s a place for us,
somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quite
and open air
wait for us
somewhere.” from the West Side Story

OK, Tony. Sorry. I did not threaten Leif with physical harm just metaphorical harm.
REPLY: Thank you for that note, even so the debate is becoming circular. So a time out will bring fresh perspective and perhaps less vitriol. – Anthony

Back2bat, you said, “The [US] could easily become tops in the world if it [simply] abolished the government school system.” This seems quite a leap to me given what the data is saying. Are you “wishing” it were so, like hoping it will get cold, or do you have another data source that says something different than anything I have seen about the comparison between public and private schools? Is it really that easy of a solution? If the data suggests the answer is probably no, as it seems to be suggesting, do you still want to try what appears to be an unwise hunt for Shangri la? It seems to me your premise about public schools causing our current standing in the world is as questionable as CO2 causing global warming. However, it is your leap. If you can make such a leap of faith, do you see that it is then fair to allow AGW’s to make their leap of faith? Or is this do as I say, not as I do?
What is the difference between global warming religion and your seemingly religous stance? Both certainly require faith. Aren’t they both somewhat based on wishing and fantasy, even if sincere?

savethesharks (21:30:48) :
What harm has he caused you?
claims to have bitten my ankle, for one.
The guy is not a threat to me; his ideas are a threat to mankind [including you]. Not because they are any good, but because they are false. Same kind of threat that Lysenko was.
No. Lysenko is James Hansen, not B2B.
That’s all I am saying Leif. Please choose your battles. We are on YOUR side.
It is not all or nothing (that is a logical fallacy and you know that).
Meanwhile….back to topic;
I think, in general, Euros are more advanced in their thinking, but ah there lies the big rub.
It is terrible how all of these terms get welded together without much difference:
Climate Change Global Warming
(add anthropogenic)
Of course Euros are more concerned about the topic….they are more open-minded.
Yet therein lies the double rub.
Openmindedness is not the final measure.
When you have a bad idea (AGW) that is propagated by the scientific community and is embraced by “open-minded” people….nothing much is gained.
So….no big deal that our more forward-thinking Euro friends are more concerned about AGW.
If they are wrong at the starting gate, then what does it matter?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

If there’s so many people believe in AGW then they should be able to cut back more than enough to make up for the ‘deniers’. Then no treaties would be needed.

Leif Svalgaard (22:22:01)
The subject of discussion is the future of biological and the threat to society of a wrong understanding of its foundations. It seems that this is of equal importance as the threat to society of a wrong understanding of climate change. In both cases, pseudo-science has taken hold among the unwashed masses and is being exploited by politicians and other tricksters. This is about fundamentals. Having correct fundamental science be taboo is wrong.
But if the published biological “science” and assumptions that are published in Journals such as “Nature” and “Science” are qualitatively incorrect (and violate the first and second laws) and when questioned are updated (without citation) and still incorrect and are matters of great debate in biophysics.eg Kleiber’s law
Ontogenetic growth: models and theory
Anastassia M. Makarieva a, Victor G. Gorshkov a and Bai-Lian Li Corresponding Author Contact Information
Abstract
: We re-analyze the assumptions underlying two recently proposed ontogenetic growth models [Nature 413 (2001) 628; Nature 417 (2002) 70] to find that the basic relations in which these models are grounded contradict the law of energy conservation. We demonstrate the failure of these models to predict and explain several important lines of empirical evidence, including (a) the organismal energy budget during embryonic development; (b) the human growth curve; (c) patterns of metabolic rate change during transition from embryonic to post-embryonic stages; and (d) differences between parameters of embryonic growth in different taxa. We show how a theoretical approach based on well-established ecological regularities explains the observations where the formal models fail. Within a broader context, we also discuss major principles of ontogenetic growth modeling studies in ecology, emphasizing the necessity of ecological theory to be based on assumptions that are testable and to be formulated in terms of variables and parameters that are measurable.
Anastassia writes at HESS 2008 (reminiscent of Nalimov)
The validity of the fundamental laws of nature and of good theories based on them
has been tested on such a great amount of empirical data that it is a good theory that can tell you whether the empirical data are of good or bad quality rather than the data tell you something about the theory. For this reason, good theories can be used for making predictions, like the existence of many elementary particles was predicted in theoretical physics prior to their actual discovery. How justified is the use of models for making predictions?
During model development the priority is given to reaching a satisfactory agreement
between the data and the mathematical structure of the model. On the basis of theavailable sets of data points taken from the general ensemble of all empirical evidence the modelers determine linear and non-linear correlations between the chosen measurable variables, including their temporal changes. The resulting time dependence of model variables allows one to make a forecast for the future. Such a forecast, however, is nothing but a limited extrapolation of what has been observed in the past. With changing the empirical datasets the model structure and forecasts change. With inclusion of ever growing amounts of observations the models become more and more complex, while their agreement with the available observations naturally improve. Thus, an ideal model ultimately comes as an exact and convenient, i.e. mathematically formalized, representation of all the available data. However, to the degree the model is a model and not a theory, it lacks the predictive power. Because of the obvious fact that it cannot be expected that the calibrations made on the basis of the knowndata will remain valid in the domain of predicted (i.e. still unknown) data. This is a conceptual, fundamental problem with the modeling approach. The universal laws of nature predict things
Based on our own scientific expertise, we can illustrate the above points with specific
examples of models that were judged to be most successful based on their agreementwith the data and claimed derivability from a “universal” theory, yet shown to confront the fundamental laws of nature. As one can see, the problem transcends across the natural science as a whole. The biological model of organismal growth (West et al., 2001) misinterpreted the energy conservation equation and replaced it with the one conflicting with the energy conservation law. Despite that, the model showed perfect agreement with the data. After the error was identified (Makarieva et al., 2004) it took the model’s authors four years to explicitly admit it (Moses et al., 2008) and re-formulate the model. The re-formulated model re-calibrated using the same data as the original
(wrong) one showed equally good agreement with the data and got equally well published (Hou et al., 2008). Thus, irrespective of conflicting with the energy conservation law or not, the model agreed with the data, was widely cited and raised little concern in the reading audience
But as Alven Toffler suggested the illiterate of the future will not be the ability to read and write,but the inability to learn.
Makarieva, A. M., Gorshkov, V. G., and Li B.-L.: Ontogenetic growth: Models and
theory, Ecological Modelling, 176, 15-26, 2004.
West, G. B., Brown, J. H., and Enquist, B. J.: A general model for ontogenetic growth,
Nature, 413, 628-631, 2001.