No joy in Mudville – mighty Gavin has struck out

The original poem (reproduced here), is awesome…..
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day;
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that –
They’d put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a pudding and the latter was a fake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey’s getting to the bat.
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and they saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.
Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.
There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled Casey’s lip.
And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-
“That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one,” the umpire said.
From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted someone on the stand;
And it’s likely they’d a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand.
With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, “Strike two.”
“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.
The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

This is very cleaver. I we were talking about science, sadly pathetic. Since we are talking about “true belief” what one would expect.

Thanks News Staff, John West. Great! 😉

In Clima-ball, the Consensus gets an unlimited number of strikes, in hopes of getting a squibber which will justify all. So far, no luck.

I started looking at the CO2 – climate scare about when I retired about10 years ago because the whole Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming paradigm seemed extremely unlikely for a few basic reasons. My approach to science is very empirical – in the oil business your ideas will soon be tested by the expenditure of sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars – hard data is everything.
First – Anthropogenic -CO2 provides 0.12% of the greenhouse gas effect.
Check http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
for details. Suppose CO2 doubled – right off it seems most unlikely that such a little tail would wag so big a dog as earths climate. – particularly when the evidence of solar control via orbital and solar changes ( eg Milankovich Cycles) is very clear in the geological record.
Even the alarmists -eg Hansen and co are willing to concede that a doubling of CO2 by itself would only increaae temperatures by about 1degree therefore they have to say that increases beyond that are driven by positive feedbacks – most notably by an increase in humidity. A system with positive feedbacks always runs away to disaster . If feedbacks were in fact positive – since CO2 levels have been much higher in the past – up to several thousand ppm – we wouldn’t be here to talk about it . For a good discussion of this based on data check the following. http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf
The climate wars have been carried on to a large extent in the blogosphere . I have posted to various threads on various websites from time to time . Here is a post which briefly outlines my basic views.
” Climate Metric – and current trends.
There is currently a difference in approach to climate science between the sceptical Baconian – empirical appraoch solidly based on data and the Platonic IPCC approach – based on theoretical assumptions built into climate models. The question arises from the recent Muller – BEST furore -What is the best metric for a global measure of and for discussion of global warming or cooling. For some years I have suggested in various web comments that the Hadley Sea Surface Temperature data is the best metric for the following reasons . (Anyone can check this data for themselves – Google Hadley Cru — scroll down to SST GL and check the annual numbers.)
1. Oceans cover about 70% of the surface.
2. Because of the thermal inertia of water – short term noise is smoothed out.
3. All the questions re UHI, changes in land use local topographic effects etc are simply sidestepped.
4. Perhaps most importantly – what we really need to measure is the enthalpy of the system – the land measurements do not capture this aspect because the relative humidity at the time of temperature measurement is ignored. In water the temperature changes are a good measure of relative enthalpy changes.
5. It is very clear that the most direct means to short term and decadal length predictions is through the study of the interactions of the atmospheric sytems ,ocean currents and temperature regimes – PDO ,ENSO. SOI AMO AO etc etc. and the SST is a major measure of these systems. Certainly the SST data has its own problems but these are much less than those of the land data.
What does the SST data show? The 5 year moving SST temperature average shows that the warming trend peaked in 2003 and a simple regression analysis shows an nine year global SST cooling trend since then .The data shows warming from 1900 – 1940 ,cooling from 1940 to about 1975 and warming from 1975 – 2003. CO2 levels rose monotonically during this entire period .There has been no net warming since 1997 – 15 years with CO2 up 7.9% and no net warming. Anthropogenic CO2 has some effect but our knowledge of the natural drivers is still so poor that we cannot accurately estimate what the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is. Since 2003 CO2 has risen further and yet the global temperature trend is negative. This is obviously a short term on which to base predictions but all statistical analyses of particular time series must be interpreted in conjunction with other ongoing events and in the context of declining solar magnetic field strength and activity – to the extent of a possible Dalton or Maunder minimum and the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillationa global 20 – 30 year cooling spell is more likely than a warming trend.
It is clear that the IPCC models , on which AL Gore based his entire anti CO2 scare campaign ,have been wrongly framed. and their predictions have failed completely. This paradigm was never well founded ,but ,in recent years, the entire basis for the Climate and Temperature trends and predictions of dangerous warming in the 2007 IPCC Ar4 Summary for Policy Makers has been destroyed. First – this Summary is inconsistent with the AR4 WG1 Science section. It should be noted that the Summary was published before the WG1 report and the editors of the Summary , incredibly ,asked the authors of the Science report to make their reports conform to the Summary rather than the other way around. When this was not done the Science section was simply ignored..
.Most of the predicted disasters are based on climate models. Even the Modelers themselves say that they do not make predictions . The models produce projections or scenarios which are no more accurate than the assumptions ,algorithms and data , often of poor quality,which were put into them. In reality they are no more than expensive drafting tools to produce power point slides to illustrate the ideas and prejudices of their creators. The IPCC science section AR4 WG1 section 8.6.4 deals with the reliability of the climate models .This IPCC science section on models itself concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC itself says that we don’t even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- i.e. we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t yet calculate the climate sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway. Nevertheless this statement was ignored by the editors who produced the Summary. Here predictions of disaster were illegitimately given “with high confidence.” in complete contradiction to several sections of the WG1 science section where uncertainties and error bars were discussed.
A key part of the AGW paradigm is that recent warming is unprecedented and can only be explained by anthropogenic CO2. This is the basic message of the iconic “hockey stick ” However hundreds of published papers show that the Medieval warming period and the Roman climatic optimum were warmer than the present. The infamous “hide the decline ” quote from the Climategate Emails is so important. not so much because of its effect on one graph but because it shows that the entire basis if dendrothermometry is highly suspect. A complete referenced discussion of the issues involved can be found in “The Hockey Stick Illusion – Climategate and the Corruption of science ” by AW Montford.
Temperature reconstructions based on tree ring proxies are a total waste of time and money and cannot be relied on.
There is no evident empirical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, In all cases CO2 changes follow temperature changes not vice versa.It has always been clear that the sun is the main climate driver. One new paper ” Empirical Evidence for a Celestial origin of the Climate Oscillations and its implications “by Scafetta from Duke University casts new light on this. http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf Humidity, and natural CO2 levels are solar feedback effects not prime drivers. Recent experiments at CERN have shown the possible powerful influence of cosmic rays on clouds and climate.
Solar Cycle 24 will peak in a year or two thus masking the cooling to some extent, but from 2014 on, the cooling trend will become so obvious that the IPCC will be unable to continue ignoring the real world – even now Hansen and Trenberth are desperately seeking ad hoc fixes to locate the missing heat.
I’ ve dumped a number of posts on my website at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
There is a lot of repetition because the same points needed to be made again and again.
Obviously all this has political implications – but the science has to come first- I confess I am embarrassed to find myself on the same side as Limbaugh ,Santorium etc – but probably by chance they have got the science right. Personally I would describe myself as a rational Libertarian not quite a la Paul – but any philosophy carried to extremes -self detructs.
Check my website for my views on Waxman Markey if you’re interested.
As an afterthoug re melting Arctic ice — check http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
to see the actual current situation.
Today all the basic data re climate is there on the web in real time – while the details of climate change mechanisms are horrendously complex – if you stand back – .the gross picture is reasonably clear -cooling is more likely than warming for the next thirty years and beyond that we really can’t say much at this time. Cooling would be more dangerous than warming – for possible problems see . http://www.iwp.edu/docLib/20120312_FourHorsemenPart2.pdf

Foul Ball. Misdirection doesn’t answer the question. SLR is one of the claimed major impacts of AGW and often presented as evidence for GW.
The link below shows 879 (at last count) the number of things presumably caused by global warming. How many of these have not happened as well in addition to no SLR?
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/causedby.html

@ur momisugly hagendl
Yep “picture” should have been pitcher!
Brain f:;t. LOL
How come stuff like that doesn’t jump out until after you hit the button?

Why would you bring a hockey stick to a baseball game?

Only in government programs do we have this notion that everybody plays and everybody wins. Regardless if you stink at the game. I should know. No one cares if my students are showing progress (and they are, significantly). What matters is governmental red tape, aka the filling out of useless forms that have no bearing on outcome.
These “researchers” just keep generating pages and pages of blather on my dime and yet they still get to play the game.