From Warren Meyer, who was discussing the recent announcement from the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force.
If one wonders why the climate alarmist movement is suffering from a credibility problem, one only needs to read some of the claims:
Climate change is already having “pervasive, wide-ranging” effects on “nearly every aspect of our society,” a task force representing more than 20 federal agencies reported Tuesday.
Here are some of the devastating non-trends in US Climate:
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The problem with not being ‘politically correct’ – I do not know if this term is a UK concept only – is that you are almost always right.
One means of being politically correct is to believe in AGW. Others might include the concepts of:
i) believing that all politicians are decent honorable people, and
ii) increasing taxation solely to fund the bureaucracies and welfare dependency systems in which the likes of Obama and Brown are passionate believers – this is at the very heart of the AGW controversy, a need to provide the rationale for increasing taxation.
So here is a very serious politically incorrect statement: the greatest threat to the global environment is land clearances by peasants. From Amazonia to the Sahel and SE Asia, the result is the same – destruction of the natural environment in order to grow crops.
In comparison, AGW is an irrelevance and the impact of a slight increase in global temperatures and a modest rise in carbon dioxide levels appear to be almost entirely beneficial to the environment.
So it’s all about generating baseless scare stories designed to tax all those who make our economies prosper and thrive, as this post so clearly demonstrates. The sole beneficiaries, as Karl Marx might have said, are the Lumpen Proletariat.
J.I.McKemey (06:07:11)
See my WUWT post here.
w.
A minor nit: part of the uptrend for corn is due to economic concerns – don’t forget our subsidies for ethanol production in the US!
That said, nice summary presentation… (/sarcon) but what about those AGW indiced earthquakes? /sarcoff
Come to think of it, is there any disaster scenario claimed by the CAGW crowd that is also not claimed by the fire and brimstone, Book of Revelations crowd?
Maybe snakes? Snakes on a plane say what?
😛
Mike McMillan (09:57:34) :
“Corn likes it cool … Hotter fields mean lower yields for corn ” Timothy Telleen-Lawton.
Where’s this guy from? New York City?
You get those really toasty days in Iowa, you can hear the corn growing.
Actually, he’s from San Francisco. Sorta’ figures don’t it.
Peter Miller (12:26:47)
The sole beneficiaries, as Karl Marx might have said, are the Lumpen Proletariat
Is it this way the bankers’ elite now call themselves? 🙂
Sean Peake (12:49:25) :Just don’t discuss any more. The Incas from Peru obtained more than a thousand varieties for evry weather you choose. You only know the variety used for feeding chicken. BTW one of these varieties is PURPLE in color and it is used for preparing a purple beverage and a purple dessert.
http://macapunch.com/maizmorado.htm
Sou (10:49:20) :
Jim Clarke (06:21:26) :
“Can anyone name one negative impact they have personally suffered that can be attributed solely to climate change (natural or man made)?”
Loss of about 200 lives in bushfires last year…
Humans start the vast majority of those fires, as I’m sure you know, so nice try.
Multi-year water restrictions and locals having no water supply left for domestic use. Followed by unparalleled torrential rain and hail. Record floods covering huge areas of land.
Drought, floods, and to some extent fires are cyclically-occurring events there in Oz-land, are they not? Yes, humans can and do exacerbate them through overstocking, vegetation loss, dams, groundwater and irrigation schemes, as well as the arsonists. But you can’t very well blame that on “climate change”, can you?
“Indeed, climate change has begun to affect the ability of government agencies to fulfill their missions, reports the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force.”
Yeah, sure. The inability of government agencies to fulfill their missions has been caused by Climate Change, not by bureaucratic incompetence and unproductive goals.
True, the recent record snowstorms in D.C. did cause the government to shut down for a few days. I suspect the “taskforce” wouldn’t have accomplished anything of actual value though, even if it had been “working” for its pay:
http://www.mpnblog.com/2010/03/hartzler-comment-on-federal-government.html
James F. Evans (09:19:49) :
“Falsification is a fatal blow — if the Scientific Method is respected.”
Dead right, but try pinning the slippery AGW brigade down on falsifiability criteria and it’s hard work. On a purely layman-to-layman basis, I asked the assembled brethren on a hard-line AGW site: “What future temperature record would you to consider refuting AGW hypothesis?” I got three answers: (i) (paraphrased) “Ahhhh, no! Yer not getting us un THAT one!” (ii) “It might take 20 or 30 years to answer that, but even then other forcings may drive the thermometer down, masking the global warming trend.” and (iii) “If the annual average GISS anomaly dips twice below 0.35C in the next 20 years, it’s a dead duck.”
For my part, if that same annual GISS anomaly twice exceeds 0.75C then I’ll become a warmist. And start building an ark.
Well when you look at that drought graph, it almost makes you think that warmer temperatures (say in the late 1970s/80s/90s (early)) lead to more evaporation.precipitation, which would certainly mean less droughts somewhere.
Unfortunately, since Trenberth’s energy budget cartoon shows an isothermal planet, there are no Temperature differences to cause air or water to move from one place to another; so who knows where droughts, or undroughts are going to occur.
Gaia knows where the temperature differences are; since she has a thermometer built into every single molecule/atom, so she really does good sampling.
Yes those climate models really have this problem whipped; well they are extremely good on predictions especially about the past.
“”” “ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2010) — The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the west coast of Chile last month moved the entire city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, and shifted other parts of South America as far apart as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil.” “””
I don’t think the Falkland Islands are actually part of South America. Like the South Orkneys, and South Georgia, they are part of the UK I think. Well not geologically, but culturally.
You can go to the web site of the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. On the left side of the page there is a link to “Submit a Comment” to which you can add attachments. I suggest we send them some information!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/adaptation
Upward…Downward! …The Rise and Fall of the Climate Reich ☺
There’s been a significant upward trend in hot air. Our government has even established a Deparment of Hot Air, headed by Penny Wrong … Wong, to sinophiles.
George E. Smith (13:52:06) :
I don’t think the Falkland Islands are actually part of South America.
They are geologically…and if climate change policies keep on destroying the UK, they will be politically too.
Enneagram and James F Evans:
Subduction isn’t necessarily a myth.
The Pacific plate cannot push the whole of S America east so, over time it compresses the western margin of S America until suddenly they slip past each other (ie the Pacific plate goes under S America) and S America springs back to its uncompressed position – 10 feet to the west (or whatever it was).
Enneagram (11:47:21) :
The MET office already had a detailed Map of Disaster, courtesy of Madam Kirsty Lewis:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/effects/high-end.html
If you watch her video there is a distracting screen in the background which keeps flashing ‘PROVE IT!’ !!!!!
Here are some more failed predictions and forecasts
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
I find it astonishing that many ‘intelligent’ people in US politics go along with this AGW nonsense when the facts on the ground often contradict the dire predictions and even if they didn’t the graphs would show nothing unusual on a 100 year timescale.
Here are some more failed predictions and forecasts.
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
Corn gets many people confused – in Europe, corn generally means wheat or barley, but strictly is simply a cereal grain crop. Maize was the “corn” of early US European settlement and in the meaning of a cereal grain crop is still correct. The word corn has a similar etymology to grain. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/corn
However, maize is a hot climate crop, while wheat and barley are temperate climate crops.
Without defining which corn is being considered, the statement is pretty meaningless.
“”” HereticFringe (07:41:44) :
Given that 90% of all tornadoes in the world occur in North America, I’m not sure what additional data you will get from looking at tornado activity worldwide… “””
Well actually, we are trying to improve our score; that’s why. We don’t think anyone else should be aloud to have Tornadoes.
Most other people make do with water spouts; so why do they need tornadoes ?
I’m late to the party today.
Last month, when the warmers were trying feverishly to convince the world that the east coast blizzards proved global warming, I blogged about another non-trend that doesn’t look good for the AGW’ers – precipitation. When the world gets warmer, it is supposed to cause more rain. Warmer = Wetter. Well, here is what the data shows according to the EPA.
Oops. That is a rather inconvenient truth.
The link between global warming and droughts is actually quite weak. In fact there is reason to believe that global warming may cause the exact opposite with increased rainfall across many drought prone areas.
Have you ever wondered why the cradles of civilisation in North Africa and the Middle East are all bone dry deserts today? Clearly these areas were a lot wetter back when people chose to live there and build those civilisations.
Put this together with the recently rediscovered Roman warm period and there is very good reason to believe that significant global warming might lead to a lot more rainfall across northern Africa and the middle east, and even a retreat of the sahara desert.
@Bruce Cobb (13:22:29) :
I don’t know what country you live in, so will forgive your insensitivity and the repugnant tone of your comment. Australia (not Oz) has always had fires, drought and flood – but nothing like we’ve been seeing lately. Weather and natural disaster records keep being broken every year.
And most fires get put out, including those started by humans. The devastating fires throughout the State on Black Saturday last year were started from various causes (probably most not from arson), and were uncontrollable killers precisely because of the unprecedented conditions. I cannot even describe the conditions but if you can imagine several years of below average rainfall (AKA drought) making the vegetation tinder dry, a fortnight where it reached temperatures (up to 117F) never before reached in the region (AKA a most serious and long-lasting heat wave after a long and very hot summer during a decade-long drought), and after that fortnight fierce hot dry winds roaring across the state. 200 people may not mean much to you, but almost everyone in Victoria knew some who died, and many of us lost family members and friends.
We know the weather is changing. Records are still being broken. Even this year, in what feels like a mild summer (compared with last year) with almost ‘normal’ rainfall, for the first time in the 155 years of weather records, Melbourne has had more than 100 consecutive days of temps above 20C. The closest to this was in 2000-01 when it had 78 consecutive days above 20C. It also recently had record-breaking torrential rain and hail. All consistent with predicted climate change.
If your weather isn’t changing, you’re lucky. But don’t dismiss the fact that there is a big world out there and that climate change is already well and truly with some of us.
Have a look at the State of the Climate down here in Australia. Or keep your head in the sand – whatever suits you. Nature doesn’t care much whether people believe what she’s doing or not. But she’s prepared to change if we are.
I was asked a question and answered. Some people just don’t like the answers so they belittle them. Some people will live in places where the climate won’t change so much. Others like those who live in my part of the world, see it happening in our lifetime.
Humans are extremely egocentric. Throughout all ages Man has thought that He was living at an amazing period of time which, of course, is pure BS. As depressing as it sounds, in the great scheme of things, we are really Nothing living in a Nothing time.
But, hey, life is great anyway. Let’s make the most of it.