Open Thread

Here’s a thought on what to do about government funding for global warming “research”:
Since AGW is a religion, funding its proponents amounts to creating an official state religion at government and taxpayer expense, with nonbelievers forced to subsidize a belief system they may not share. How would this differ from say, if the government said, All right, we are going to esablish and fund Buddhism as the state religion? (No offense to Buddhsim intended.)
The Constitution (First Amendment) says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”, but isn’t that what it is doing when it authorizes funding for AGWers?
Not sarc, but probably not going anywhere . . . .

pat says:
May 8, 2013 at 2:12 am
Gore should have kept his mouth shut:……….
——————————————
Just goes to show you, Gore is a has been in the US. Most people I know think he’s a joke. Al Gore does not speak for the US people or the real policy makers here.
But I do believe that Gore should stop telling fabulous stories.
cn

bathes says:
May 8, 2013 at 3:28 am
“I am writing a blog post and am looking for good information about exectly how CO2 stores energy. What goes on in the molecule when hit by long wave radiation. Why is not as much affected by short wave? Why are some molecules able to store heat while others are not? ”
LTE, Kirchhoff’s Law, absorptivity = emissivity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/

…and in 2012, “My Little Pony” bested “Global Warming”….

@ur momisugly DirkH says:
May 8, 2013 at 5:21 pm
“…and in 2012, “My Little Pony” bested “Global Warming”….”
I feel humiliated. I thought I was at least a little bit aware of the issues and currents in the world. But I don’t even know what “My Little Pony” is. I have completely missed one of the most important issues facing humanity.
Google trends is interesting. I looked at “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” myself just yesterday. My impression is that this issue actually died in about AUGUST 2011. There had previously been a strongly seasonal infuence, with July/August the low. In 2011, there was no recovery from that. It has just dribbled along since.
Interestingly, there has just been a large spike in “Global Warming”. Could it be that this reflects the mood of just the past few weeks which has discernibly changed? Is this an indication not of concern but of the opposite?
I am increasingly of the opinion that this issue actually had its greatest resonance with the public in about 2001. And that since then what we have seen is the product of a strategic campaign almost in entirety. And it has now failed.
What is very very obvious is that there is only a tiny group committed to this, and that the great majority of “public support” is now held together by the absence of reason to think differently and social conformity. This can disappear almost overnight. Which is, I think, the point we are now at.

Ugh, anyone seen this one? http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/07/1972581/99-one-liners-rebutting-denier-talking-points-with-links-to-the-full-climate-science/?mobile=nc
99 One-Liners Rebutting Denier Talking Points — With Links To The Full Climate Science
By Joe Romm and Climate Guest Blogger on May 7, 2013 at 12:37 pm
Progressives should know the disinformers’ most commonly used arguments — and how to answer them crisply. Those arguments have been repeated so many times by the fossil-fuel-funded disinformation campaign that almost everyone has heard them — and that means you’ll have to deal with them in almost any setting, from a public talk to a dinner party.
You should also know as much of the science behind those rebuttals as possible, and a great place to start is SkepticalScience.com.
BUT most of the time your best response is to give the pithiest response possible, and then refer people to a specific website that has a more detailed scientific explanation with links to the original science. That’s because usually those you are talking to are rarely in a position to adjudicate scientific arguments. Indeed, they would probably tune out. Also, unless you know the science cold, you are as likely as not to make a misstatement.
Physicist John Cook has done us a great service by posting good one-line responses and then updating them as the science evolves and as people offer better ways of phrasing. Below I have reposted the top 99 with links to the science. You can find even more here. Everybody should know the first 20 or so.
For instance, if somebody raises the standard talking point (#1 on the list) that the “climate’s changed before,” you can say, “Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time; humans are now the dominant forcing.” That is actually quite similar to what was my standard response, “The climate changes when it is forced to change, and now humans are forcing it to change far more rapidly than it did in the past” (see “Humans boosting CO2 14,000 times faster than nature, overwhelming slow negative feedbacks” and “New Science Study Confirms ‘Hockey Stick’: The Rate Of Warming Since 1900 Is 50 Times Greater Than The Rate Of Cooling In Previous 5000 Years“). Working in the “humans are now the dominant forcing” part is a good idea.
Cook explains the origin of these one-liners in a 2010 post, “Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line.” I have included the longer ‘paragraph’ rebuttals, which any CP reader who plans to speak out on this subject — in public or just with friends and associates — should also be familiar with.

Any update on the Climategate 3 emails? JP

jc says:
May 8, 2013 at 6:03 pm
“@ur momisugly DirkH
Oh, and please please do me a favor. I realize English is not your first tongue. But you obviously have facility in it. You may wonder if there are strange nuances unseen to you in “sea level”, but all I can say is there are not. Tell me, in the no nonsense way you have shown in other threads, after looking at my comments above. Am I mad?”
I don’t think so. Satellite altimetry is improbably difficult and subject to adjustments. Tide gauge measurements at the North Sea coast show no rise. Our tide gauges are not subsiding ones. Germany’s coast is neither rising nor subsiding to any great extent, different from Scandinavia or Italy.
See also
THE GREAT SEA-LEVEL HUMBUG
There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise!
by Nils-Axel Mörner
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2011/Winter-2010/Morner.pdf
Satellite altimetry only shows a sea level rise after the IPCC “scientists” applied a correction of 2.3 mm/year.
They took the 2.3 mm/year from the infamous subsiding gauge in Hong Kong.
Nils Axel Mörner interview
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf

Well if they worry a lot they sure don’t look for it on the Internet.

@ur momisugly atarsinc says:
May 8, 2013 at 8:33 pm
I expressed that poorly. What I meant was that the greatest level of “natural” interest or concern may have occurred then. What has happened subsequently, observable to anyone, is an unrelenting campaign – and that is the appropriate word – to achieve a specific effect, and this has been targeted not only only public but on public figures including politicians.
It has been a campaign of persuasion or propaganda depending on your view, with all the attendant intent of deliberate influence or manipulation depending on viewpoint. Based very heavily on claims to morality and the creation of fear and hysteria. Not science. Not rationality.
What I mean by “natural” interest and concern is that which is a response to the basic (supposed) facts of the physical implications of this.
It is hardly surprising that such a campaign, being successful, elicited the hysteria shown in 2007. The continuation of that, which seeks very obviously to try to maintain its waning impact is now focused on weather. There is however a limit to how long people can be maintained at that pitch. That limit seems now to have been reached.
Peak Hysteria was likely achieved in April 2007 in my opinion. We are now 6 years on. People start to “forget” the associations they have had, those things that seemed important, and their level of involvement after about 4 years. It exists in memory but not as an activating element in current life after that. Over the course of the next 18 months, all of that will be, in peoples response, just general history. It will not be “them”.
Your quoted survey is at odds with a recent Pew survey which indicated that the % of people who think a policy response is important falling from 37% to 34%. A minority. And a minority of Democrats as well as independents and Republicans.
By the time of the 2014 Congressional Elections, this will be a vote loser and all politicians will be aware of that. The only people who will take it seriously will be those who will vote for the same party anyway. It is on the way out. Terminal.