Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 12:19 am
Thank you all for clarifying your positions. I guess it’s hard to know which temperature charts to believe. What I do know is that regardless of the position you want to substantiate you can find the numbers to do just that. But to me, I guess it all comes down to this. What’s the harm in trying to clean up the environment? Surely you don’t think that fracking, or deep water drilling, or dirty-no-matter-what-you-call-it coal, or high risk nuclear power are ideal ways to answer our energy needs?

Yes I do think they are the better ways to answer our energy needs.
If we adopted more solar and wind it would not reduce man-made co2 in the atmosphere. Power stations have to be kept running for when the wind ain’t blowin or the sun ain’t shinin’. If I see a suitable alternative I would be the first to jump on it. Who doesn’t want clean, efficient, reliable energy???? Find me realistic alternatives.
Toxic lake in China as a result of windpower manufacture. Farmers health damaged while you sit comfortably pining for wind.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html

It is worse than we thought
The winter temperatures for Contiguous United States has been dropping for 20 years since 1990 at -0.26 F per decade [per NCDC]
The annual temperature for Contiguous United States has been dropping since 1998 at- 80 F per decade[ per NCDC]
The winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 mean normals for land and sea regions of Europe have been flat or even slightly dropping for 20 year or since 1990
Yet the IPCC assessments of projected climate change for Europe was:
Annual mean temperatures in Europe are likely to increase more than the global mean. The warming in northern Europe is likely to be largest in winter… . A similar prediction was for the North American winters to warm

Joe Prins says:
December 1, 2012 at 8:14 pm
Always thouroughly enjoy the play on words as plied lively by the lord. “rebarbatively” is masterful.
Well done, sir.

IpeCaC is my personal favourite. What they do it in there makes me want to throw up, just like the ipecac syrup.

thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 2, 2012 at 2:52 am
Pat, you asked on your blog what would be the harm if we all went German style.
You must mean getting into coal power and nuke power from the neighbours.

…and cutting solar-power subsidies. I agree on that too.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2012/02/why_germany_is_phasing_out_its_solar_power_subsidies_.html

Pat Ravasio: it isn’t that hard. Your brilliant esteemed “sciientists” wrote computer models and predicted warming. Said warming has not happened. So they are wrong. Even laymen can see that.

Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 12:19 am
… But to me, I guess it all comes down to this. What’s the harm in trying to clean up the environment?
____________________________
And the third thought about CAGW is Who Benefits? and Who is in control? Who is behind the “Global Warming” scare is pretty darn clear if you bother to look and so are their ultimate plans.
If you go back to the U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917, page 2947 you find J. P. Morgan bought controlling interest of the press. Nothing much has changed since then.

JP Morgan: Our next big media player?
(April 13, 2010) JP Morgan controls 54 U.S. daily newspapers,and owns 31 television stations…

GE owns 49% of MSNBC (a left-leaning news station) and J.P. Morgan was lead financial advisor to GE with Goldman Sachs and Citi acting as co-advisors
At the Copenhagen climate summit Developing countries react furiously to leaked ‘Danish text’ The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank
Why did the developing countries reacted furiously? Because the IMF and the World Bank is much hated. SEE: Structural Adjustment Policies and Mr. Budhoo’s Bombshell ” senior economist with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for more than 12 years, publicly resigned in May, 1988.”
WHO had their sticky fingers in the IPCC? Why the World Bank of course:

globalcentres.org
Dr. Robert Watson (World Bank), has been designated as Chair-elect of IPCC and will take over from Professor Bert Bolin (Sweden) after the September 1997 Plenary Session, at which time a new Bureau and the leadership of the three Working Groups will be decided. Professor Bolin has very effectively chaired the IPCC since its organization in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress
Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis “own” the U.S. Congress — according to one of that institution’s most powerful members — demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is….

Then you have Pascal Lamy of the World TRADE Organization (WTO).
If you have never read F. William Engdahl’s comments on the WTO I suggest you do so now.
The WTO and the Politics of GMO
Reviewing F. William Engdahl’s “Seeds of Destruction” – Part I
Reviewing F. William Engdahl’s “Seeds of Destruction” – Part II
Reviewing F. William Engdahl’s “Seeds of Destruction” – Part III
(My problem with GMOs is that Monsanto’s lawyer Robert Taylor while working at the FDA waved them through the FDA WITHOUT TESTING declaring them to be equivalent to natural.)
All that is saying is that the International corporations RUN the WTO.
Then look at what Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the WTO, has to say about Global Warming and the current financial/economic crisis giving “Legitimacy” to “Global Governance” (aka world government) and the need to get rid of National Sovereignty.
He uses the “worst-ever economic crisis” created by the bankers in the first place as one reason. And “our planet deteriorate due to global warming. We see droughts and violent floods. We see entire islands disappearing under water.” also hyped by banker media and the World Bank as the second reason. Both are CREATED to purpose crisis. SEE: Global Governance: Lessons from Europe

“Global governance requires localising global issues”
the international system is founded on the principle and politics of national sovereignty: the Wesphalian order of 1648 remains very much alive in the international architecture today. … In fact, the Wesphalian order is a challenge in itself. The recent crisis has demonstrated it brutally. Local politics has taken the upper hand over addressing global issues. Governments are too busy dealing with domestic issues to dedicate sufficient attention and energy to multilateral negotiations, be they trade negotiations or climate negotiations….
…There is one place where attempts to deal with these challenges have been made and where new forms of governance have been tested for the last 60 years: in Europe….
on the question of efficiency, Europe scores in my view rather highly. Thanks to the primacy of EU law over national law.…
…the issue of leadership. Europe has had a relatively good record in terms of leadership as long as the leadership of the Commission was accepted.
Finally, legitimacy is the area in which, in my view, Europe scores less well. We are witnessing a growing distance between European public opinions and the European project. One could have expected that the European institutional set up, with growing powers entrusted to the European Parliament would have resulted in greater legitimacy…. Euros cepticism is on the rise, often encouraged by politicians who are tempted to use Europe as a scapegoat for the difficult decisions they have to take at home, a fortiori in times of crisis. Legitimacy remains a litmus test for Europe…

Two other Lamy essays:
Of What Use is Global Governance?
Europe Needs a Legitimacy Compact

At a time when the first snows have fallen across much of the UK it worth remember the MET’s forecast that ‘children would never know what snow is like ‘ many a few years ago. The person that made that claim has never admitted they got it dead wrong and is still happily ‘forecasting ‘ away.

The whole issue of fossil fuel induced climate change can be compared to Lewis Carroll’s famous evaluation of Christianity: It’s either a fanciful storydesigned to get us all to behave better, or it is the single most important fact of human existance. So come on, oil guys, what’s the harm in moving ahead and doing things a better way? Isn’t it time for all of you to come over to the side where there don’t have to be any real losers?
First, it is C. S. Lewis, not Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) is a famous mathematician and logician who wrote Alice in Wonderland. Clive S. Lewis is a famous Christian Apologist who wrote the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Second, you have clearly illustrated the fact that the argument is religious, not scientific. You don’t really care if the science is correct or not, because it agrees with your personal political beliefs. If a scientific claim helps you convince those who are too ignorant to think for themselves, it is “good”; otherwise it should be ignored. I am a scientist (a physics Ph.D., actually, although I’m professionally competent in physics, statistics, mathematics, philosophy and computer science in addition to writing novels and poetry). I write extensively about the philosophy of science and what it is “best” to believe, given our experience and the data. Sadly, my personal philosophy forbids lying to myself or others in argumentation because nobody is served by either lies or errors, however “well intentioned”.
To put it bluntly, we are all better off armed with a full knowledge of the truth (and a full acceptance of the limitations of our knowledge where it is shaky) and then making informed decisions than we might be basing those decisions on lies or errors by those who — with the best intentions in the world — try to impose their own beliefs on us. Don’t you agree?
Third, C. S. Lewis was fond of advancing his own versions of Pascal’s Wager, and this has indeed — as you clearly indicate — become the fundamental subtext of the climate debate. Pascal’s Wager, you might (or might not) recall, is the idea that whatever it costs one to believe in God, and if you do and God does not exist, there is a finite loss. However, if you choose not to believe in God but God exists, the penalty is infinite. Therefore one should believe in God.
Hopefully you can recognize your own argument above in this. Quite aside from the fact that this argument is the open expression of several logical fallacies (argument from fear, for example) that have no bearing on the actual probable truth of the proposition, here is the real problem. Your idea is a good one — cost-benefit analyses are good things, at least when one can reasonably accurately account for the risks — but it requires one to fairly count the costs and benefits!
You seem to believe that it costs us little to politically pursue the abatement of carbon dioxide at all costs, because we derive at least some benefits from some of the actions being taken. Of course, in your reply you reject the one practical solution that we currently have available — nuclear energy — that does not generate carbon dioxide and is capable of sustaining civilization at a high level worldwide for at least centuries. If you truly believed in the catastrophe predicted, then you would believe that whether or not we might be able to make wind and solar generate enough energy eventually, we should be building nuclear plants as fast as we can now in order to stave off the disaster. But you don’t, not really, or else you haven’t really thought about the costs of the disaster versus the costs of nuclear power.
The situation is actually far worse that this, of course. The current costs of Carbon Abatement — aside from not working even according to those that have designed them for any purpose that would suffice to prevent their predicted catastrophe — are a catastrophe in and of themselves. Consider: Europe is in the throes of a major monetary crisis. The money Europe spends in a single year on Carbon would eliminate the crisis in an instant, and if it had not been spending that money for the last decade and a half there might well not be any crisis. The money California has spent on Carbon over the last decade would have prevented 100% of the human misery of the economic collapse there at the end of the Bush administration. It would also make electrical power there cost around 2/3 of what it currently costs even now, putting money in every citizen’s pocket.
But this is chickenfeed. The real human cost of carbon control is vastly greater; it is a catastrophe now, a certain, ongoing catastrophe. Perhaps you do not appreciate it, but something like half of the world’s population lives in abject, miserable poverty, energy poverty. They live in rude huts and cook on animal dung fires, and if they have light after dark at all it is in the form of crude oil lamps. They have no hospitals or refrigeration — those require electrical power and infrastructure and wealth. They have little or no industry — that requires electricity.
Perhaps you have a “Noble Savage” illusion about the beauty and joy of life in this “natural” state, but if you do, walk to the master circuit breaker in your house and switch it off for a month, turning off your natural gas feed (if you have one) and dropping the keys to your car into a jar by your front door. Turn off your cell phone (you can’t charge it anyway). You may have two sets of clothes, but bear in mind that the only way you may wash them is by hand in a local creek or river — if you have one — so choose wisely. You may use a hibachi or small grill to cook food. If you get seriously sick I’m afraid you’ll just have to die — no medical care that requires energy to deliver, which is nearly all medical care.
Live that way for a month. Then imagine living a lifetime that way. Imagine growing up in that sort of poverty, without any real prospects or way out of it without cheap and abundant energy. That’s reality for some two to three billion people — the ongoing catastrophe of the human species.
Now you have a dollar to spend. You can choose to spend it all on measures that even proponents agree will not prevent a hypothetical and somewhat implausible future catastrophe, or you can spend all on improving our current energy generation infrastructure globally to try to reduce the costs of electrical power to where it is as cheap to those in the third world as it is to those in the first world, the world of energy wealth that you currently inhabit, or you can split the dollar up and spend most of it one way or the other but hedge your bets.
If you are honestly informed about the probabilities of the competing disasters, both the ongoing one and the hypothetical future one, you can make sane decisions about what to do with your dollar given — as I truly do believe — that you have nothing but the best of intentions and wish to behave as ethically as possible. Misinforming others or yourself concerning the true risks and costs and benefits, however, makes you ethically complicit as the direct cause of human suffering. You cannot avoid the choice, you can only do your best to make the best possible one (or blow the whole thing off and ignore it, or rely on what people with a clear vested interest one way or another tell you, as most people do in religious argumentation).
I cannot tell you what to do; I can only tell you what I myself believe to be the best choice. I think that the risk of the future disaster is small. The climate models that predict it have little statistical skill — witness their failure to accommodate the last fifteen years of effectively zero temperature growth. You are routinely being lied to in the most time-honored of ways (by presenting the truth — highly selectively) in ways that prevent you from learning this because those who are doing the lying are horribly sincere in their beliefs (and generally benefit in various ways from the hypothesis of disaster). For example, they trumpet Sandy as “proof” of anthropogenic climate change disasters, but fail to point out that we are in the longest stretch in recorded history when a category 3 or higher hurricane hasn’t made landfall in the US, with no end in sight. They fail to point out that last year had fewer than normal numbers of tornadoes. They exaggerate the drought last year to the worst ever even though it was not, in fact, even close to the sustained drought of the dust bowl years and was comparable to the completely natural cyclic drought visible in the historical record.
Even many of the climate scientists who do think that there is some degree of anthropogenic global warming are starting to speak out about this horrible abuse of any sort of scientific objectivity to further a political end.
So how would I spend my dollar? I’d invest a bit — a nickel, maybe as much as a dime — in continuing development of e.g. solar energy and improved energy storage. As you note, those things will be beneficial no matter what, so they are investments, not wasted money. In time, solar, nuclear, and storage will make the issue of carbon mostly moot, but that time is not for a couple of decades because the technologies are not mature. As they make cost-benefit sense, no one will have to push or subsidize them — people will make informed choices to implement them because they are the cheapest alternatives.
The rest of the dollar I would spend to make energy — absolutely including carbon based energy — cheaper for everyone. Perhaps 40 cents to make it cheaper here in the US (as the fundamental scarce resource, cheaper energy is a direct benefit to every single aspect of civilized human existence, enabling everything from clean water to recycling to more, better jobs and improved, cheaper daily lives for every person). The rest to help the poorest of the poor overseas to have the things they so desperately need — especially access to cheap and plentiful electricity, which at the moment means electricity made by burning natural gas, coal or uranium. I’m perfectly happy for that energy to be generated in as clean a way as possible, but not in a way that treats CO_2 as a pollutant, because it is not. And I wouldn’t spend all of that money on electricity even for the poorest countries — they need other things — roads, schools, medical care, jobs, the entire infrastructure of civilization. Their children need hope — the hope that the world they grow up in will eventually make them precisely as wealthy as you no doubt are — wealthy in that they too will have instant access to energy that is so cheap compared to their income that they do not have to conserve it, they do not have to choose between electric lights and food or clothing or shelter.
You have to do what you think best, of course. But inform yourself first; don’t suggest that we should all accept the great Climate Wager as a religious and ethical necessity.
And by the way, an oft-repeated lie is that everybody that is a “denier” of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is either uneducated, or ignorant, or stupid, or in the pay of Big Oil or Big Coal or the like. Please. You cannot possibly be that naive. I will cheerfully place my own educational and professional accomplishments up against anybody’s — I’m not stupid, not ignorant, not uneducated, and I am not in the pay of any energy-related company. I have a patent pending in a methodology involving the extremely advanced application of Bayesian reasoning in statistical analysis of certain kinds of problems. I teach physics at all levels. I have three physics textbooks I’ve written available online. I teach independent studies in computer science (and have a book on beowulf style computing available online).
And while I — like Christopher Monckton — think that there is very likely some anthropogenic component to the global warming that the world has experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age (when global temperatures were at the lowest point of the entire Holocene — the last eleven thousand years since the glaciers retreated), I doubt that the warming the world will experience by the year 2100 will be catastrophic. If it will, there is damn-all sign of the catastrophe so far, and it is just plain silly to spend tens to hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide per year to avert an uncertain and dubious catastrophe when there is an ongoing and certain catastrophe — global poverty and ignorance — that is far more demanding of our attention.
rgb