Written by Geraldo Luís Lino, special to Climate Change Dispatch – reposted here at WUWT by request – Note: the opinion of this author is not necessarily the same as mine. I provide this for discussion by CCD’s request. – Anthony
In the not too distant future, it will likely be difficult to understand how so many educated people believed in and accepted uncritically for so long a scientifically unproven theory like the so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
Taken almost as a dogma, the AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks and is volleyed relentlessly upon us by the media and many scientific institutions (including some pseudo-scientific ones), while gullible or opportunistic politicians devise all possible means of inserting climate-motivated items into their power-seeking schemes.
The threat allegedly posed by that supposed world emergency would justify the need of at least halving the human carbon emissions until mid-century, meaning a draconian reduction of the use of fossil fuels worldwide. Despite the drastic potential impact of such measures upon the living standards of all nations, the failure to do so and of establishing a “low-carbon economy,” we are told, would usher the environmental apocalypse in. Well, fortunately for Mankind it won’t.
However, that avalanche has gone too far. So, it’s high time to turn the alarmist page and discard the buzzwords with which the subject has been marketed once and for all: (undeserved) hype, (unmotivated) scare, (unnecessary) restrictions and (unacceptable) sacrifices. In their stead new keywords are needed to put the climatic phenomena into their proper perspective again: proportion, knowledge and resilience.
Let’s begin with trying to give the climate theme the right proportion concerning its nature and relationship with Mankind.
The environmentalist propaganda machine has ascribed an intrinsically negative and threatening connotation to the expression climate change, as if the climatic oscillations of the last century and a half were something unprecedented and implying that it should be combated at any cost – even if this would hamper the development perspectives of most of the developing countries (and as if Mankind had the necessary knowledge and means to do so). Notwithstanding, changing is the natural condition of the Earth’s climate – in the historical and geological time scales there has never been and there will never be such a thing as a “static” climate (so, climate change is sort of a pleonasm). As a rule of thumb, during 90% of the Phanerozoic eon (the latest 570 million years) the Earth has experienced temperatures higher than the current ones, and 90% of the Quaternary period (the latest 2.6 million years) have elapsed under glacial conditions and temperatures much lower than the current ones.
The Quaternary has also witnessed the most frequent and rapid climatic oscillations in the Earth’s geological history, alternating between cool glacial and warm interglacial periods in 41,000- and 100,000-year cycles. In the last 800,000 years the longer cycles have prevailed and the Earth experienced eight Ice Ages approximately 90,000-year long separated by eight interglacial periods averaging 10,000-11,000 years (although there are controversies about their length).
During the Ice Ages the average temperatures were 8-10°C lower than the current ones, the sea levels were 120-130 m lower and much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered by an ice pack up to 4 km thick, down to the 40°N parallel (the latitude of nowadays New York). During the interglacials the average temperatures reached 4-6°C and the sea levels 3-6 m above the current ones. Our own interglacial the Holocene, which started 11,500-11,700 years ago, had average temperatures up to 4°C and sea levels up to 3 m above the current ones between 5,000-6,000 years ago (Middle Holocene).
The transition periods between the warming and cooling phases and vice versa, when the average temperatures rose or fell the 6-8°C that make the difference between an interglacial and an Ice Age, have lasted from a few centuries to a few decades. [1]
The genus Homo appeared on Earth soon after the onset of the Quaternary. Our species the Homo sapiens sapiens emerged during the penultimate Ice Age, somewhere between 150,000-200,000 years ago. And our problem-solver, city-builder, technological, scientific, industrial and artistic Civilization has been existing entirely in the Holocene and its warmer temperatures that allowed the advent of agriculture.
Some useful tips emerge from such facts:
- The wild oscillations of the Quaternary are the general climatic condition faced by Humankind ever. We have been coping with them quite successfully and nothing suggests that we cannot continue to do so (as long as common sense and non-partisan science prevail).
- They outline a background “noise” that by far overshadows the tiny rise of the temperature and sea levels (and their gradients) that have occurred since the late 19th century – respectively 0.8°C and 0.2 m, according to the IPCC. [2] This simply means that there is no scientific way to attribute causes other than natural to these, because the background “noise” has yielded much wider and faster oscillations of the temperatures and sea levels occurring before the Industrial Revolution.
- The Quaternary climate dynamics seems to be “self-adjusted” to the boundary conditions outlined by the Ice Ages and interglacials. So, the suggested risk of a “runaway warming” or some kind of climate disruption from the human carbon emissions is far-fetched, specially regarding the much ballyhooed “magic number” of 2°C warming that supposedly could not be exceeded (a political contrivance admitted by its own author, the German physicist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in an interview to the Spiegel Online website). [3] During the interglacials there were higher temperatures without any kind of “runaway” disturbance.
Real global emergencies
As to the real global emergencies requiring urgent actions on new levels of international attention, cooperation, coordination and funding, there is no shortage of them. For those seriously interested in this business, here are some that do not exist only in supercomputer-run mathematical models and that would benefit very much from fractions of the colossal amounts of money – and human resources – that have been wasted with the non-existent AGW:
- The world’s most serious environmental troubles, particularly in the developing countries, are those related to the lack of water and sanitation infrastructure, like water pollution and the water-borne diseases that kill a child every 15 seconds in the developing countries, according to the World Health Organization. [4] A 2007 poll conducted by the British Medical Journal among physicians all over the world elected fresh water and sanitation infrastructure as the greatest medical advance of the last 150 years – a “privilege” still unavailable for over 40% of the world’s population. [5] In Brazil, less than half of the population have access to sewage systems and two thirds of the child internments in the public health system are due to water-borne diseases. [6] (I’ve never seen Al Gore, Hollywood stars or the major environmental NGOs campaigning for sanitation.)
- Hunger and its consequences kill a child every six seconds, according to the FAO. [7] Almost one billion people all over the world suffer from chronic hunger, a scenario that will surely worsen due to the current speculation-driven price rise affecting some basic staples. [8] Besides the immoral waste of productive lives, the annual economic cost of such a tragedy in productivity, revenue, investment and consumption losses is estimated in the order of hundreds of billion dollars. [9]
- The lack of access by much of the world’s population to modern energy sources. Dung and firewood, the most primitive fuels known to Mankind, are still the basic resources for the daily needs of most of the Sub-Saharan Africans (besides being major sources of deforestation and respiratory diseases). Although with lower figures, the same happens in much of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. And, as over 80% of the world’s primary energy needs are provided by coal, oil and natural gas, it’s not difficult to ascertain the potential consequences of the intended restriction of their uses, as proposed by many scientists, environmentalists, politicians, carbon traders and all the people terrified by the AGW scare stories. Besides that, thermoelectric plants generate about two thirds of the world’s electricity, the rest being almost totally provided by hydroelectric and nuclear plants (also increasingly targeted by the environmentalists). [10]
The list of real troubles is much longer, but these few examples suffice to demonstrate the distortions of the agenda of global discussions, both among the policymakers and the public opinion in general (which, in the case of the climate issues, also reflect a widespread deficiency of scientific education among the educated strata of the societies).
In any case, make no mistake. Barring an unforeseen technological breakthrough, there won’t be large scale replacements for the fossil fuels until late this century at least. Massive national and international investments in efficient and integrated multi-modal and urban transportation systems may and should help to reduce the use of automobiles and trucks, particularly in the overcrowded big cities. For power generation, there are the options of harnessing the hydroelectric potential still available, the expansion of nuclear energy and the interlinking of continental and even inter-continental power grids in order to enhance both the energy efficiency and security for all countries involved (forget the current “alternative sources” for large scale uses, they are not technologically and economically feasible for energizing urban and industrial societies). However – and hence –, coal, oil and natural gas will continue to be sources of development and progress for a long time yet – and it is unacceptable that its growing use be hindered by an imaginary threat.
The author is a Brazilian geologist and author of the book “The Global Warming Fraud: How a Natural Phenomenon was Converted into a False World Emergency” (published in 2009 in Portuguese, with over 5,000 copies sold so far, and soon to be published in Spanish in Mexico).
Sources:
- The Paleomap Project, website of University of Texas (Arlington) geologist Dr. Christopher R. Scotese, provides a good overview on the Earth’s geologic, geographic and climatic evolution over the past 1.1 billion years, with a well-written text and didactic animated maps that are useful and interesting for general readers and professional geoscientists alike (www.scotese.com). For an excellent description of the Quaternary climatic history, see the Chapter 2 of Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science (Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2009). Spanish language readers may find particularly interesting the website of Dr. Antón Uriarte, a geographer at the Universidad del País Vasco, Paleoclimatologia: Historia del Clima y Cambios Climáticos (http://homepage.mac.com/uriarte/).
- IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report – Summary for Policymakers, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf.
- Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufette, “A Superstorm for Global Warming Research”, Spiegel Online, 1/04/2010, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697,00.html.
- Oliver Cumming, Tackling the silent killer: the case for sanitation. London: WaterAid, July 2008, http://www.wateraid.org/documents/tacking_the_silent_killer_the_case_for_sanitation.pdf.
- Sarah Boseley, “Sanitation rated the greatest medical advance in 150 years”, The Guardian, 1/19/2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jan/19/health.medicineandhealth3.
- Marcelo Cortes Neri (Coord.), Trata Brasil: Saneamento e Saúde. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 2007.
- Bread for the World, “Hunger Facts: International”, http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html.
- FAO, “Hunger”, http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/.
- FAO/Alessandra Benedetti, “Hunger on the rise: soaring prices add 75 million people to global hunger rolls”, 9/18/2008, http://www.fao.org/news/story/ch/item/7544/icode/en/.
- International Energy Agency statistics page, http://www.iea.org/stats/index.asp.
Geraldo Luís Lino is a Brazilian geologist and author of the book “The Global Warming Fraud: How a Natural Phenomenon was Converted into a False World Emergency” (published in 2009 in Portuguese, with over 5,000 copies sold so far, and soon to be published in Spanish)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
eadler says:
“Modelling by Susan Solomon shows that the C O2 in the atmosphere is reabsorbed by the earth’s oceans very slowly.”
————–
“Modelling….. shows” is a silly phrase, if “shows” is meant as “demonstrates/proves” or anything along those lines.
Modelling shows what you’ve shown the model. So “modelling by Susan Solomon shows” should be translated as “Susan Solomon says”.
The NYT article you link also says that models gave the following insights:
* Every 1 degree Celsius of warming — roughly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — would reduce rainfall in the American Southwest, the Mediterranean and southern Africa by 5 to 10 percent.
* Stream flow in SOME river basins — including the Arkansas and the Rio Grande — would drop by 5 to 10 percent.
* Yields of SOME crops, including U.S. and African corn and Indian wheat, would fall 5 to 15 percent.
* And 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of warming is enough to double or even quadruple the area burned by wildfires in the American West.
So we may ask: how do models know, for example, that higher temperatures produce less rain?
The answer, plainly, is that the models “know” this because this is what the models were told to know. And how did those who tell them know? Well they didn’t know either, but they told them all the same, as if they knew, so that once the models regurgitate what they were told, the modellers can claim they know because the models told them so.
Climate models are a merry-go-round for some adults who like to play at being “the scientists.”
@article:
“In the not too distant future, it will likely be difficult to understand how so many educated people believed in and accepted uncritically for so long a scientifically unproven theory like the so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).”
It is likely that we will find that this hoax is not accidental stupidity, but rather a well-funded and expertly orchestrated campaign perpetrated on these educated but hapless dupes, by rich and powerful forces, the same ones who invented the monikers “big oil” and “conservative conspiracy” to divert attention from them.
It is no accident that mainstream broadcasting and newsprint outlets suffer horrendous ratings decline and subscription losses by “stubbornly” following the CAGW line. These are mostly “for profit” organizations (except NPR) whose boards of governors instinctively “follow the money” for raising the profit margins.
So what were they thinking? Why not ‘pander’, as they always do, for the highest ratings? Are they making an exception on CAGW purely for idealistic reasons?
It’s hard to believe they could all be that naive/stupid. I submit this prima facie ‘pattern of stupidity’ as prime evidence that there is another force motivating their quest for profit and/or power.
Having said that, I believe these commercial media companies should remain free to conduct their businesses as their boards see fit. Let the market decide who shall remain in business. You don’t want to defeat economic fascism by using the same fascist methods.
NPR is a different story. As a federally funded ‘public’ media outlet they must have “no business” in promoting activist causes such as CAGW. Of all the networks, they should strive to be the most ‘fair and balanced’ of them all.
NPR has excellent programming, which I have enjoyed for years. Where else can you hear classical and bluegrass music? (cough.pandora…xmradio..cough).
So, for the first time in my adult life, I would not be dismayed to see Congress pull the plug on all of their funding unless they clean up their act.
Let the Congressional Subpoenae roll!
Article from Danish Niels Bohr Institute 11/February 2009
I feel that what is being claimed here is [snip ~ E] even if I was to except the fact that co2 can keep us out of the next ice age (unproven they use the word could) we have other sources of carbon that we can oxidize besides fossil fuels (grow trees for instance) or we could release the co2 in limestone ,we could even start to manufacture co2 as we do nitrogen if we believed that this would keep us out of an ice age.
Que barulho emmm meu amigo…aja mangas, aja panos…
Kev-in-UK November 7, 2010 at 7:26 am
Missed the point of the article? Global warming, etc., is bunk. Diverting resources to “fix” a fraud is simply foolish.
About waste. You’re being a bit extreme about calling things wasteful “greed”. Most systems are inefficient. Usually highly inefficient. For starters, check your toilet sometime and measure your intake versus what your output is in fluids and solids to get an idea of how efficient the own body processes stuff. Can’t think of anything that doesn’t produce waste. Usually lots and lots of waste. What we have done is become better stewards. Not long ago an ag professor said that modern agriculture uses everything in a pig except the squeal and they’re working on that. Go back and read the part about being a good steward. Stewardship is a never ending balancing act. Capitalism and “greed” are what makes folks want to figure out a way to use the squeal. Point is just about everyone except the greenies (like Gore, Cameron, attendees at the yearly save the universe vacation spot) are pretty good stewards since they understand that the better steward they are the better life they can live. You object to someone deciding to buy a car each year. I’d agree it would be a poor choice but I support their freedom to forswear other stuff and buy that yearly car. I’m just not that much of a socialist or dictator.
I’ve no idea what “helping the environment” means. If it means being a good steward, then I’d agree. If you mean something other than being a good steward then perhaps you can explain?
don penman says:
November 7, 2010 at 11:12 am
Article from Danish Niels Bohr Institute 11/February 2009
I feel that what is being claimed here is [snip ~ E] even if I was to except the fact that co2 can keep us out of the next ice age (unproven they use the word could) we have other sources of carbon that we can oxidize besides fossil fuels (grow trees for instance) or we could release the co2 in limestone ,we could even start to manufacture co2 as we do nitrogen if we believed that this would keep us out of an ice age.
Well, the limestone would work. But growing new trees actually withdraws CO2 from the air (that’s where they get their carbon), so you’d have to burn old trees, not grow new ones. And neither CO2 nor nitrogen can be “manufactured” in that sense.
Kev-in-UK;
Your arguments are entirely specious, as they covertly presume a “zero-sum” game for the products of economic activity. When pressed, Greens always fall back on some version of, “Well, x, y, and/or z have to run out some time! This will deprive future generations/poor nations of their fair share, so they shouldn’t be used now!” This is fallacious on so many levels it’s hardly worth debating, but I will at least suggest you take a sabbatical and study “economic substitution” and its history.
CO2 didn’t stop Antarctica from glaciating over – it was 1,400 ppm during the initial glaciation.
Just as CO2 was falling, getting close to 280 ppm (for perhaps the very first time in Earth history), Antarctica promptly melted back again. So, yeah, CO2 has never stopped an ice age from starting up – like 34 Mya, 160 Mya, 360 Mya, 440 Mya, 635 Mya, 715 Mya, 2.2 Bya and 2.4 Bya.
The time it takes for CO2 to be returned to 280 ppm (after we stop adding it to the atmosphere) should be the exact amount of time that we have been adding to it.
CO2 is being absorbed by plants and oceans at 50% of our emissions. As the concentration has risen, the amount absorbed by plants and oceans rises proportionately (other scientific fields would be able to explain this to climate scientists like Susan Solomon and her silly model – I don’t know, maybe it will have something to do with partial pressures or something non-silly and scientific like that).
So let’s say at 1935, CO2 was 300 ppm (which it was). If we stop emitting in 2085, it will take 150 years to get back down to 300 ppm.
@Cedarhill
wooah! I wasnt interested in either economics or philosophy – just the good stewarding bit, which I am happy to say, makes relative sense to me. My point about wastage was simply that – it’s wastage, and largely unnecessary and can be avoided by largely practical means and simple adjustment of human attitude. I have no objection to anyone wanting a new car (I didn’t say that at all – what I said (or tried to say) was that everyone covets such things, which is natural but impractical and also wasteful) – all I said was 6.6 billion people want the same thing but its not a practical proposition to give it to them! and would probably be wasteful (of resources) to boot! A basic car is good for at least 100000 miles easy (is it not?) – so why do some folk want a new one each year? I don’t know, I am just posing the question! Whether they can afford it is kind of irrelevent – nevertheless, if they can afford it, but don’t need it – the logical conclusion is that its wasteful!
@Brian H – I must have written my post badly – I was not advocating (or trying to advocate) some green policy (I am not even a member of any green organisation) – merely that wastefulness is pointless! The resources aspect is simply fact – ‘saving’ or rather ‘being careful’ with resources makes sense, does it not? – do you not do the same with your salary every month? I wasn’t posing or even considering any economic view – something I openly admit to knowing nothing about – I was merely presenting (what I consider) a logical view of human nature and the needs and greeds which ultimately result in the actions you and I take as individuals. Why do you vote for who you vote for? – I presume that its because you believe it will benefit yourself in some way? I am saying that that is normal behaviour, a la the ‘selfish gene’ – one follows self preservation?
What I am advocating, as opposed to demanding, is that a little restraint and common sense may reduce the human selfishness and demands thereby imposed upon the planet to satisfy such selfishness! Does that not make sense? What is wrong with that? Yes, I am sure such an attitude would alarm the big corporations as they couldn’t ‘sell’ stuff to us as easily, and presumably the economic growth figures would stagnate? But I know nothing of economics and seriously have no desire to understand them! To me, as a scientist, bankers and economics are way above my head!
and finally, as for a sabbatical, being a self employed engineer, thats kind of impossible – I have to work to put food on the table, etc, etc – and reading about economics is the last thing on my mind and is certainly not something that I can have any effect thereon!
Kev-in-UK says: all I said was 6.6 billion people want the same thing but its not a practical proposition to give it to them!
You don’t give it to them, they earn it by creating wealth. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Look at Microsoft, they created a vast amount of wealth with only brain power as inputs.
The entire world could have an American standard of living if they would fixed their problems, which are almost 100% government.
Kev-in-UK;
OK, as an engineer, consider that if “waste” is occurring, then there’s implicit inefficiency going on. Unless blocked by misconceived “regulation” or other distortions, that necessarily offers opportunity for someone else to come to market with something better (= more economical, less wasteful).
Neither restraint (i.e., gubmint regulation), nor common sense (unless it is well-informed about “unseen” second-order consequences), nor deploring of “human selfishness”, will avail. Only better alternatives (hence my reference to “economic substitution”) will work. Consider as an engineer: if platinum is too expensive as a catalyst for a process or device, discovery that titanium will work as well transforms the equation.
Kev-in-UK says:
November 6, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Well stated, sir!
eadler says:
November 6, 2010 at 4:59 pm
You, sir, are an idiot. Can you prove me wrong? Thought not. Case closed.
eadler says:
November 7, 2010 at 6:10 am
davidmhoffer says”Left off your list is also a matter that another commenter referred to, which is death by politics. Millions live in daily fear of death from agents of their own government…”
As a government’s power becomes more centralized and concentrated in one person or small group, it becomes less representative of the people and more likely to kill its own citizens, believing that it must do whatever is necessary to achieve what it believes is best in the minds of the one dictator or small group of elites. This condition has actually been a historical reality through most of history right up to the present.
From <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM": “Communist governments have almost without exception wielded the most absolute power and their greatest killing (such as during Stalin’s reign or the height of Mao’s power) has taken place when they have been in their own history most totalitarian. As most communist governments underwent increasing liberalization and a loosening of centralized power in the 1960s through the 1980s, the pace of killing dropped off sharply.
Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked. But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives are to be sacrificed. This is but one reason, but perhaps the most important one, for fostering liberal democracy.”
II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing
13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse
Depending on your source, these figures can vary, but I think the point is made.
@Sam Hall – ok, my bad writing again, I guess – I wasn’t implying ‘giving’ as in for free but really meaning ‘supply’ to them – as in manufacture and distribute something that they see as desirable. My basic point is that human desires i.e. ‘greed’ as opposed to human ‘needs’ are poles apart. If everyone actually had a sunday sports car and a 2nd (holiday) home, etc, etc this would, in my opinion, be wasteful of resources.
@Brian H – yes, I agree. I think you are simply saying that increasing efficiency reduces waste, which of course is true, and further, is indeed common sense and part of the manufacturing and ultimately the environmental stewardship process. However, in the ‘meantime’ – i.e. whilst waiting for all these efficiency developments to arrive, personal choices are being made by essentially everyone on the planet (at least in developed countries) which contribute to the current wastefulness, and a little self control from everyone would reduce this waste.
I keep seeing the argument being made that goes something like: “It was 4 degrees higher in the past and humans coped so no big deal. But what if warming really is human caused and we are going 6 degrees higher? Shouldn’t we be taking steps to control our production of CO2 (carbon, coal, oil, cow farts, meat consumption, whatever)??? It’s a crisis we can’t take a chance on allowing to happen!”.
I really don’t understand how supposedly competent scientists can come to the conclusion that CO2 is a driver of earth’s temperature???
I know I’m a broken record, but here’s another ice core graph, from a NOAA webpage showing that the warm temperatures we are enjoying at present, could fall off a cliff at any moment and plunge us into the next 100,000 year glacial. That’s why they call this Holocene warm period an “interglacial”, right?
From the mouth of NOAA: “Large, continental ice-sheets in the Northern Hemisphere have grown and retreated many times in the past. Times with large ice-sheets are known as glacial periods (or ice ages) and times without large ice-sheets are interglacial periods. The most recent glacial period occurred between about 120,000 and 11,500 years ago. Since then, the Earth has been in an interglacial period called the Holocene…
Notice the asymmetric shape (from the above linked graph) of the Dome Fuji temperature record, with abrupt warmings shown in yellow preceding more gradual coolings.”
JoNova has a series of graphs here that show CO2 and temp with temp leading the way, generally. And of course there is the article (eadler tweak) by Frank Lansner using Vostok data that was published in WUWT
As a simple minded technical type non-scientist, very visually oriented type guy, I draw two main conclusions from all this:
1. CO2 is a ruse being used to draw off resources, political, academic and financial, of those who would continue to do actual scientific inquiry rather than accept the conclusions of the power elite statists.
2. We are living on borrowed time. With every year that goes by, we are another step closer to the next glacial period. We need to start preparing. But I’m not going to hold my breath. I’m just going to stock up on warm clothes and stuff. But there’s probably no need to go overboard there either, as I may be dust by the time it arrives.
cohenite: re: eadler, a true AGW believer. Well said!
Kev;
your calls for self-control are hand-waving. Be an engineer, not a preacher.
“no scientific way to attribute causes”
Consider a parcel of air that you’ve tracked in space for some time. Then imagine you force the air into a balloon and then run up a hill with the balloon.
If you graph the movement of the air, the movement in the balloon is smaller than its historical, “natural” movement. By your logic, there is no scientific way to demonstrate that the air moved because it was inside the balloon and I was pulling it around. I think that there is.
There might not be a statistical way to distinguish the movement based only on position(time) data, in the same way that perhaps you can’t determine that temperature(time) of Earth allows determination of a human cause (I haven’t done the statistics so I don’t know). But since we have a lot more information than that (i.e. physics and other observations – I saw it was put in a balloon and then dragged along!) we CAN use science to determine attribution.
Sure, if you ignore the vast majority of evidence, you can conclude what you want: but the scientific community has chosen not to do that.
I’ve seen some reports that Obama was one of the original players (along with Gore, among others) involved in the establishment of the (hopefully dying) CCX – The Chicago Climate Exchange !
… and he is still regularly referring to “climate change” !
I see the makings of a youtube video. Make it so!