As you may know, I’m traveling this weekend to be with the founders and pioneers of The Weather Channel in Atlanta for an informal 30 year reunion, which I talked about in detail here.
Thanks, sincerely, to everyone for the help and support!
Blogging will be light this weekend, though I will post highlights and other items from the event when I can.
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Watch this video:
Seriously, everyone should watch this.
Actually, this posting on Mr. Briggs’ blog kills two birds with one stone:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5548
So… what happened in Mexico about 200,000-250,000 years ago climate wise? Haven’t finished reading The First American by Hardaker but this one got my head scratching big time… I only have it on Kindle. I need to get a cheap book so i can flip through faster to cross reference some things. 200,000+ years ago that humans (or pre-homo sapiens) first got to Mexico… Amazing if that’s true but it is like Alfred Wegener’s theory that took a long time to be accepted so I probably won’t be alive to see that happen…
Thanks to Scott for pointing out my mess-up yesterday.
Really people. It should not be left to me to do math.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
Current Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area sq km
(ave) 12,913,000 – (current) 12,866,000 = -47,000
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Current Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area sq km
(current) 6,327.000 – (ave) 5,647,000 = + 680,000
12,913,000 + 5,647,000 = 18,560,000 Total World Sea Ice (Average)
680,000 – 47,000 = 633,000 Total Sea Ice above World Average
633,000 / 18,560,000 = 3.41056% above the 29 year average
Not much but a win is a win.
Have Some Sympathy for Scientists.
No I’m not a scientist. I even need spellcheck to spell scientist right and spell check.
I am starting to develop sympathy for the AGW true believers.
Being a scientist, mad or otherwise, must be hard. They have to have a high tolerance for tedium. All day it’s measure, record, measure, record… Boring.
Then after a couple of years working on something they passionately believe in, they prove themselves wrong. That has got to be tough to take. Sure the other scientists are saying things like “good job”, “You proved that something doesn’t work. That saves the rest of us a lot of time.”, “Great integrity”, “Can you reproduce your failure? Wouldn’t want to say something doesn’t work when it does because who would peer review that? It would be lost forever.”. But the company or university doesn’t make money and maybe loses prestige and you don’t publish.
Wait. Why don’t they publish? Knowing how something doesn’t work is important. That should be worth an abstract and a link. Hey Anthony. Start a publication. It could be called The Watts Up With That Scientific Journal of It Doesn’t Work. The studies must be properly done and reproducible. Preprints would be free but to see what passes peer-review is a $50.00 subscription. Don’t you have a regular contributor who needs a job? They could be the editor who convinces other scientists to peer-review for free. Well, I suppose they would have to be given a complimentary subscription. I like this idea. It would be great for somebody else to do.
But I digress.
There have been some recent articles on scientists with insufficient integrity. This means integrity can be hard in a normal climate. (pun intended)
Now let’s go back 30+ years. We had just gotten out of a period of very visible pollution and were becoming aware that the invisible pollutants were worse. There were a lot of unknowns that are now common knowledge, at least they are on WUWT. One could be excused for believing that human activity was changing the climate of the world toward our destruction.
Now let’s consider money and power. Because of our survival instinct you can scare people in a sound bite but it takes a long time to counter that. So equal time does not have equal effect. This issue was made for politicians and it was real. No lying or exaggeration necessary. The scientists and political leaders were legitimately going to be the heroes who save the world. So thousands of political leaders and many others associated with government were justified to hook their political power wagon to AGW. Poor countries were justified in guilting us out of money. And speaking of money, if you want to get rich, watch which way government wants to go and get out in front.
This has been going on for decades. What is the scientist going to do now? Say “Oops. Never mind.” They would have a lot of powerful people upset with them. All this time they were the heroes along with the scientists saving the world and now the scientists tell them they have spent all this time, money, power and they never were heroes. They would look like fools. Powerful rich people don’t like looking foolish because that perception of them is a big threat to their power. You think integrity is hard in a normal climate? Try standing against all of that and knowing you are going to lose your own power and future income would be in doubt. Sure the scientists would respect you and with that and a dollar you can buy a cheap cup of coffee. The mighty don’t like to fall so they are not going to fall alone. We have a very strong instinct to gain and hold onto power. Power will spin you head around.
Self respect is how much you like yourself. Self esteem is what deep down in the foundation of your psychology you “know” to be the real truth about yourself and how you fit into the world. So for decades you were the respected world saving hero and now that is all destroyed. That would be a severe psychological reality shift and terribly rough for anybody to handle.
So why would a slow typist like me write all of this? Because when people know that somebody, at least a little bit, knows what they are about to go through it’s a little less hard.
How do you change the mind of a person for whom the answer to the following question is a firm yes and how will that way of thinking effect their life?
If I am right and you are wrong does that make you a bad person?
I think this explains a lot. Especially if what they believe makes them a hero or gives them their sense of value as a person or defines their place and value in life. On those issues they don’t experience a discussion as an interesting talk. Instead it is a threat to everything that they are.
As we are aware, Hadcrut4 has replaced 1998 as the hottest year with 2005 and 2010 being warmer. The average anomalies for these three years are as follows according to the woodfortrees numbers: 0.523, 0.535 and 0.5375 respectively. However when one digs a bit deeper, an interesting fact emerges. The hottest consecutive 12 month period is still from the previous century. The hottest 12 month period around 1998 is from September 1, 1997 to August 31, 1998. Here, the anomaly according to Hadcrut4 is 0.5675. 2005 is not changed by adding or subtracting months. However for the period around 2010, the hottest 12 month period is from August 1, 2009 to July 31, 2010. And for this period, the average anomaly is 0.565, which is 0.0025 below the 1998 value. Of course I am not going to suggest any significance to this, just like there is no significance to 2010 being 0.0145 warmer than 1998 with the error bar being about 0.1. But it is something to keep in mind in case someone comments that 2010 was the warmest year due to the “fluke” of how our calendar is constructed.
I want to start a new expression.
Don’t Break The Dinosaur.
But I cannot find the story that inspired it. Many years ago on PBS there was a dinosaur show. This is the only part I remember. At a museum, I think it was in the US and over a half century ago, they had received an excellent dinosaur skeleton. It was maybe 6 feet tall. It had an anomaly. The tail was rather straight almost like a pole that could be used as a counter balance.
Well, at the time everybody knew that the dinosaur tail drug gracefully on the ground. So after careful consideration the scientists decided to do the right thing. They broke two vertebrae of the dinosaurs tail so that it would lay as it was supposed to.
This expression could be used whenever someone ignores an anomaly and/or makes adjustments so that the outcome matches the preconceived belief.
Just two problems. I cannot find the story and when it is found it has to be made famous.
The above pst by Metcalf is a “goodun”. His last few sentences are what stands out. Always, always, be aware of how a person defines themself; for some it’s their job, their wife, their class, ancestry, the house they live in and now we have people defining themselves because they are trying to “save the planet”. Once a person begins to believe the latter, there is simply no obstacle to what they will say or do, no matter how horrible it might be.
So far, none of the resident skeptics on Climate Etc. accepted the Sea-Level Rise Book Challenge. Perhaps the folks here at WUWT will be more daring in their opinions!
To review some basics, a balanced book constitutes an offer to accept either side of a set of propositions that comprises the book. Thus a non-skeptical book for sea-level rise by the year 2100 might be give-or-take bets on the following propositions, at the listed odds:
• Rise of 1 meter (or greater): 5/7 odds;
• Rise of 2 meter (or greater): 2/5 odds;
• Rise of 3 meter (or greater): 1/8 odds;
• Rise of 4 meter (or greater): 1/15 odds; and
• Rise of 5 meter (or greater): 1/20 odds.
• Over-under: 1.8 meters rise in the year 2100.
Here “5/7” odds means, a bet of 5 receives a payout of 7, for a net better’s profit of 2 (in practice, the book takes a commission on payouts either way, and tries to balance its give-and-take for each proposition, so as to be guaranteed an operating profit).
In any case, what is a reasonable book for climate change skeptics? Please note that books that offer excessively skeptical odds such as this:
• Rise of 2 meter (or greater): 1/10,000,000 odds
will be swamped by shorefront property owners looking to purchase one-dollar insurance for million-dollar properties. Are even the most ardent climate-change skeptics willing to accept a billion-dollar liability exposure, for a mere hundred-dollar profit?
For any and all climate-change skeptics who are willing to quantify their skepticism, the following template is provided:
• Rise of 1 meter (or greater): ____/____ odds;
• Rise of 2 meter (or greater): ____/____ odds;
• Rise of 3 meter (or greater): ____/____ odds;
• Rise of 4 meter (or greater): ____/____ odds; and
• Rise of 5 meter (or greater): ____/____ odds;
• Over-under: ____________ meters rise in the year 2100.
Given the immense public interest in these propositions, there is little doubt that someday (possibly soon) such a sea-level book will be established. Indeed, a substantial business opportunity might perhaps be associated to it. What do thoughtful climate-change skeptics think the initial odds offered might prudently be?
People on the left & in the Obama administration really need to learn a wee bit about history and perhaps they could start with the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover who ran it from 1924 to 1972; a man who U.S. presidents were afraid of; a man who kept files on people such as Martin Luther King. Perhaps it’s just me but it seems like Obama’s creating the same kind of monster in the EPA. No Mr. Obama, you’re not the 4th best president we’ve had.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Antibiotic Resistance…or not.
http://www.gizmag.com/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-lechuguilla-cave/22198/
RE: Theories
Theories are like children. There are good ones and bad ones. Just because there are some bad kids does not mean that we should stop having them from now on.
In their own words;
http://drtimball.com/2012/consensus-argument-proves-climate-science-is-political/
Can someone explain, or post a link to me, why the PDO oscillation should change the heat of the world?
I realize there is an idea it will affect surface temperatures, but what about the total temperature of the earth? Does it increase the export of heat out of the earth? If so, how.
Marlow Metcalf says:
April 27, 2012 at 5:41 pm
I do not feel sorry for those who are “going along to get along”. I feel for the guy who did decades of research that resulted in a conclusion that was the OPPOSITE of the “concensus”. What is an honest person to do? Pocket the cash? What would you do?
All rhetorical questions. I do not expect a response, ….
Something that has bothered me for a while. A while back, Willis talked about “sustainable developement” and how, say, making a shoval was not really susdtainable no metter what you did. He also did not consider space traval at all.
However…if you want REAL sustainable developement, you MUST have space traval. Lets make that shovel again.
First, get cheap access to space (that means, NASA, stay out). Once you can get cheaply to low earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere, literally. You want to do this anyway, because if the human race is to survive, for most of our history, the word for ship must mean spaceship. If you don’t beleive me, ask the dinosaurs.
Now make mirrors, lots of mirrors, they don’t have to be huge, and take them to space.
Find yourself a nice asteroid, pretty much any one will do, use the mirrors, shine sunlight on it, melt it. If you picked the right one, eventually, with it’s rotation, all the heavy elements will migtrate out to the outside, and light ones to the inside. You also want to make one light concentrator, basically like making a laser, mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a beam. Use the beam like a cutting laser and you can peel the asteroid like an union, getting the seperated out elements, fairly pure. You can use sunlight to power smelting to purify it more.
Now, using the silicone, plus the ever present iron and nickle, make more mirrors, lots more mirrors, tons more mirrors (you can make sheap ones just out of nickle). You will also want more “lasers” and a lot of cheap say ion powered things to slowly move the mirrors where you want them and to aim them.
Now you are ready for the serious smelting. Need a shovel, grab a nickle and iron asteroid, smelt as needed (it’s pretty pure as is) and cut it up. Mix the parts with the smelted out carbon from one of those kinds of asteroids (add other alloys as needed), heat, melt together, you now have, say, a cubic mile of unusually pure nickle steel. Now, how many shovels can you make from a cubic mile of pure nickle steel?
See, sustainable developement IS possible.
Ninety percent of our resources are out there.
BTW, a book that shows the whole process is “Live Free Or Die:, by John Ringo (it’s also a pretty good yarn). You can read some sample chapters here (it just starts to get into it by chapter 6 though) .http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133328/1439133328.htm?blurb The book “cheats” a little using alien tech to get it started faster, but they were in a hurry for reasons seen in the book, you can still do it with just earth tech if you are not in a rush.
@ur momisugly crosspatch says:
That video is seriously good. I’ve had similar thoughts about theory, but never articulated them so clearly.
̶N̶u̶c̶l̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶ Climate disruption is back on the table.
Global famine if India, Pakistan unleash nukes: study
http://news.yahoo.com/global-famine-india-pakistan-unleash-nukes-study-175608208.html
More than a billion people around the world would face starvation if India and Pakistan unleash nuclear weapons — even if that war is regionally limited, a study released Tuesday warned.
That’s because the deadly and polluting weapons would cause major worldwide climate disruption that would dramatically drive down food production in China, the United States and other countries.
Excellent video, crosspatch.
@ur momisugly crosspatch says:
Watch this video:
Seriously, everyone should watch this.
Please look at it, it blew me away.
Thanks Crosspatch.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5548
I found crosspatch’s comment and it is :
This is one of the most important videos that has ever been placed on youtube. It is very important that people grasp the concept that the love of theory can cloud the perception or interpretation of reality.
Vince Tzandler,
I will give you odds of 1,000,000 to 1.
Please send me all your money.
I promise to pay you in full if you win the wager.
Live well and prosper.
Mike Flynn.
Excellent vido Crosspatch. Any warmers prepared to comment?
Marlow Metcalf – re: Don’t Break The Dinosaur – maybe this is the story you were thinking of. Not quite the story of your recollection …
http://dml.cmnh.org/2000Jan/msg00456.html
… but WTH, let’s go with “Don’t Break The Dinosaur”. It sounds better than “Don’t Glue The Dinosaur”, and let’s face it, a lot of famous stories are based on fiction (An Inconvenient Truth, for example) so it must be OK to make the story famous without actually finding it. Mustn’t it?
All, this video extends to MORE than just climate. This is about all these nincompoops who seem to believe they suddenly become a superhuman intellect as soon as they are elected, appointed, or hired to a government or academic position. They they go about screwing up the lives of millions of people with their various theories and experiments. The ONLY approach that has EVER been shown to work is for government to get out of the way and that millions of decisions made by millions of individuals according to their unique situations and their unique resources always works best. Once size fits all solutions mandated from a central government NEVER works.