Ridiculous loaded gun analogy: '…staring down the barrel of climate change'

From Stanford’s News Service, comes this hyper PR. Red mine. In case anybody wants to go or watch, there will be a live feed.

Stanford climate scientist to discuss state of climate science, coming risks

WHO: Chris Field, professor of interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Working Group II.

 WHAT: The world is staring down the barrel of climate change that is faster than at any time in the last 65 million years, says climate expert Chris Field. He will speak on the topic. 

WHEN: Friday, Feb. 14, 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. CST.

WHERE: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting, Hyatt Regency, Grand Ballroom B, 151 E. Wacker Dr., Chicago.

Field will discuss “Research Challenges in Managed and Natural Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change” as part of the “Research Challenges in Climate Change: What’s New and Where Are We Going?” symposium.

Field will also take part in a related news briefing on Feb. 13 at 2 p.m. CST in the Vevey 3 Room of AAAS Newsroom Headquarters in the Swissôtel, 323 East Upper Wacker Dr. The briefing will be streamed live on EurekAlert.org.

In a talk based on a paper he co-authored with Stanford Associate Professor of Environmental Earth System Science Noah Diffenbaugh, Field will describe what analysis of 27 climate models revealed about the pace of climate change and what risks and emerging challenges we should expect.

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GregM
February 13, 2014 11:40 am

Who is financing Stanford University? U.S. tax payers?
Why???

kenin
February 13, 2014 11:44 am

” staring down the barrel of climate change ” Really? Actually he’s right, and that barrel is loaded with Aluminum, sulphur, strontium, silver iodide, barium etc
Staring down the barrel of climate change…… give me break.

george e. smith
February 13, 2014 11:45 am

Well Just in time; one of our SF Bay area T&V stations, just last night broadcast (6PM news) that the LL laser squisher had just made a thermonuclear reaction that put out more energy than was put in. Er ! ********* some asterisks there; just WHAT energy was put in ??
I think they mean the energy of the single laser splat that squished their fuel chamber into nothingness, compared to the mini Hydrogen; excuse me that’s Tritium bomb explosion energy.
Well maybe they would do it again today, but now they are off somewhere building a brand new fuel chamber / gas can * because the last one got broken by the power generation.
Now I don’t think they count the energy * it takes to round up some tritium, and then build a nice and spherical gas can around it to then squish that..
I’m fairly certain they don’t count all of the gridded electricity * that it takes to fire up that laser for just that one blatch . Not to mention powering all the computers * that just sit there and watch this, and count the calories as they come out of the gas can when it ruptures / implodes.
Now how many minimum wage jobs do you think it is going to create for people to pick up those itty bitty fuel cans, maybe with gloved hands, and tweezers * to pop them on the chopping block ready to go splatsville.
Well I see that they probably won’t use their laser splatterer to squish Tritium fuel capsules; they are building * going to build 8 or thinking of building tthis Tomahawk; er, Tokomak to try squishing gallons of Tritium, to get some electricity worth putting on the grid. Well I think they have built a big building in France somewhere to hold their Tokomonster.
Like Mrs Nancy Pelosi says; “we have to build the thing to see if it works.”
Where are the nearest Tritium mines to earth ??

RACookPE1978
Editor
February 13, 2014 11:48 am

Oh no!!!!!!
The Antarctic sea ice extents INCREASED AT A DISASTROUS RATE THROUGHOUT ALL OF 2013!
January 1, Antarctic sea ice extents were only 7.0 million km^2,
but by 31 December – only 12 months later – Antarctic sea ice has crept up closer to the increasingly vulnerable South America shores to a record-breaking 9.0 million square kilometers!
At this rate, Cape Horn will be blocked to all sea traffic in less than 10 years!

GregM
February 13, 2014 12:00 pm

Richard S Courneys post at: February 13, 2014 at 11:31 am
I admire your patience and perseverance when dealing with all kind of trolls.
Though this one was no challenge at all. Some of them really don´t understand when to yield.

john robertson
February 13, 2014 12:01 pm

Actually the minion is correct, he is staring down the barrel of a change of political climate.
Remember it is 100% projection, what they accuse= what they are.
It is over, the biggest scam ever attempted by the UN is collapsing, the political climate is changing, angry citizens are turning on their elected and appointed fools, at an ever increasing rate.
The kind of rage I feel toward the persons involved, will not fade gently away.
I have been betrayed,impoverished and assaulted by fools and bandits.
My tolerance for the petty corruptions, the minor power abuses and bureaucratic over step is gone.
Left unchecked politicians and bureaucrats will always produce these kind of fiasco.
So whether an individual has acted from personal stupidity or for personal gain is irrelevant, their actions have damaged us all.
Our civic structures stand revealed as infested with useless parasites.
Any clue as to how one negotiates with a parasite?.

Matt G
February 13, 2014 12:07 pm

jai mitchell says:
February 13, 2014 at 11:15 am
1.5×10^22 joules reach the planets surface every day from the sun.
5.48×10^25 joules reach the planet surface every decade (2 days for leap year included)
For Northern hemisphere 5.31×10^21 joules is only 0.00969% of the suns energy over a decade.
For Southern hemisphere 6.91×10^21 joules is only 0.0126% of the suns energy over a decade.
Therefore one percent increase in solar energy reaching the ocean surface due to declining global cloud levels for a decade represents 5.48×10^23 joules.
The energy rises demonstrated in the ocean for NH and SH are orders smaller than even solar increase by just a one percent decline in global low cloud levels for the same period.
Those energy changes are tiny to any change in global cloud levels.

RACookPE1978
Editor
February 13, 2014 12:09 pm

george e. smith says:
February 13, 2014 at 11:45 am
There is a large amount of Tritium in the oceans, ….
But it “is” radioactive … and so will be prohibited once collected from being used as fuel in California. (Modestly “easier” to separate compared to U233, U235, U238 though.)
Then again, you could “re-cycle” and separate the Tritium you create inside light water reactors ….but those are also frowned upon by Pelosi’s and Feinhelm’s California voters.

James Strom
February 13, 2014 12:14 pm

Ric Werme says:
February 13, 2014 at 9:39 am
–The two Wacker locations are close, so perhaps Heartland could run over there and stage a protest.
http://tinyurl.com/n3mf2gr

rgbatduke
February 13, 2014 12:19 pm

I’m fairly certain they don’t count all of the gridded electricity * that it takes to fire up that laser for just that one blatch . Not to mention powering all the computers * that just sit there and watch this, and count the calories as they come out of the gas can when it ruptures / implodes.
Actually, nearly everything you assert is wrong, and getting past break even is actually a fairly exciting milestone in controlled fusion. Yes, they have a ways to go, but break even is way better than lose a bit or lose a lot. Fusion, if we ever work out the kinks, is basically an inexhaustible energy resource.
Tritium is easier to break even with than Deuterium (and hence an obvious choice for an initial fuel) but if they get to where they can fuse Deuterium, we will simply never run out of fuel and if we did the solar system is lousy with the stuff and even with “shipping” (from, say, Europa to the Earth) it would still be profitable. Also, if they ever get fusion plants running, they can probably run them (or fission plants now) in breeder mode and create more tritium out of Deuterium plus surplus neutrons produced by some of the fission pathways.
To put it another way, if fusion ever does work out to become an economically and technically feasible energy supply, human civilization will be able to run for millions of years at 21st century standard of living consumption rates before significantly depleting the fuel reserves cheaply available in the oceans, let alone the solar system. Deuterium is common as dirt, in a manner of speaking.
As for loaded gun analogies and much more — until AR5 is directly addressed and its shortcomings made public in an open, extended, statistical “peer review” process, even people who are completely honest and truly do mean well are going to make mistakes. Every additional year without warming adds statistical weight to the probability that the GCMs are broken and completely without skill in their long range forecasts. The problem is that I would bet that most climate scientists have not read chapter 9 of AR5, and if they did their eyes glazed right over the part where it basically admitted that the models in CMIP5 could not be used to make predictions with any statistically defensible confidence at best, nor did they critically examine the figures that more or less directly demonstrate their inability to hindcast even the immediate “past” prior to the first reference year, 1961 or the immediate “future” of the last reference year, 1990.
rgb

Robert Clemenzi
February 13, 2014 12:19 pm

Field will also take part in a related news briefing on Feb. 13 at 2 p.m. CST in the Vevey 3 Room of AAAS Newsroom Headquarters in the Swissôtel, 323 East Upper Wacker Dr. The briefing will be streamed live on EurekAlert.org.

This is the announcement – http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-02/su-scs021314.php
However, I can not find the video feed or any related link on their page. Any ideas?

February 13, 2014 12:26 pm

What makes a “professor of interdisciplinary environmental studies” a climate expert. A sewage expert, or landfill expert, perhaps, but doesn’t he know this climate science requires a knowledge of physics, chemistry and geology (paleoclimate). “Staring down the barrel of a gun” is one of those subliminal images that probably all alarmist clisci types are feeling these days.

Jimbo
February 13, 2014 12:30 pm

Here is Stanford staring down a fully ladened oil barrel.

Exxon-Led Group Is Giving A Climate Grant to Stanford
Four big international companies, including the oil giant Exxon Mobil, said yesterday that they would give Stanford University $225 million over 10 years….In 2000, Ford and Exxon Mobil’s global rival, BP, gave $20 million to Princeton to start a similar climate and energy research program…”
Source: New York Times – 21 November 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/21/us/exxon-led-group-is-giving-a-climate-grant-to-stanford.html

This is just one of the ’causes’ of ‘climate change’.

February 13, 2014 12:32 pm

“The world is staring down the barrel of climate change that is faster than at any time in the last 65 million years, says climate expert Chris Field. He will speak on the topic.”
Don’t sit in the front row! It sounds like the audience will be staring down the barrel of a loaded bull’s lower intestine.

Ralph Kramden
February 13, 2014 12:34 pm

“If the data don’t support you, you’re wrong”, A. Einstein. I think many climate scientists are digging a hole deeper and deeper, that they may not be able to climb out of.

Jimbo
February 13, 2014 12:35 pm

Stanford Global Climate & Energy Project is funded by the following.

ExxonMobil
The world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas company.
GE
The world leader in power-generation technology and services.
Schlumberger
The world’s leading oilfield services technology company.
DuPont
Providing world-class science for the global marketplace since 1802.
Bank of America
One of the world’s leading financial institutions.
Former GCEP Sponsor:
Toyota
The leading global auto manufacturer of hybrid and advanced technology vehicles.

We must fight climate change and the causes of climate change. We must act now!

Robert Clemenzi
February 13, 2014 12:37 pm

Never mind – I found a link via Google.
http://meetings.aaas.org/live-video-stream/
It costs $30 to watch! You get the live url after you pay. And the Field lecture and press conference are not on the list of available videos.

Jimbo
February 13, 2014 12:37 pm

I forgot the link for the funder of Stanford Global Climate & Energy Project
https://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html

Berényi Péter
February 13, 2014 12:50 pm

Paywalled, computational models all the way down, need to say no more.
Science 2 August 2013:
Vol. 341 no. 6145 pp. 486-492
DOI: 10.1126/science.1237123
Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions
Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Christopher B. Field

ABSTRACT
Terrestrial ecosystems have encountered substantial warming over the past century, with temperatures increasing about twice as rapidly over land as over the oceans. Here, we review the likelihood of continued changes in terrestrial climate, including analyses of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project global climate model ensemble. Inertia toward continued emissions creates potential 21st-century global warming that is comparable in magnitude to that of the largest global changes in the past 65 million years but is orders of magnitude more rapid. The rate of warming implies a velocity of climate change and required range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems, especially in the context of extensive land use and degradation, changes in frequency and severity of extreme events, and interactions with other stresses.

Matt G
February 13, 2014 12:53 pm

ai mitchell says:
February 13, 2014 at 11:15 am
Therefore one percent increase in solar energy reaching the ocean surface due to declining global cloud levels for a decade represents 5.48×10^23 joules.
This value I might add was if the planet had 100% ocean surface.
The ocean surface is 71% so this value changes to 3.89×10^23 joules, still orders larger than any calculated ocean energy rise in both the NH and SH.
Finally those rises would cause 20f ever day over a decade?
No, they wouldn’t.
That would mean over the same period the sun would cause 1296 f increase for one day.

Jimbo
February 13, 2014 12:56 pm

WHAT: The world is staring down the barrel of climate change that is faster than at any time in the last 65 million years, says climate expert Chris Field…..

The abrupt climate change of the Younger Dryas occured over a decade or so.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v362/n6420/abs/362527a0.html

Scott Basinger
February 13, 2014 12:56 pm

“Field will describe what analysis of 27 climate models revealed about the pace of climate change”
So, an analysis on the pace of models of questionable veracity when compared to measurements in nature. What a waste of time and money. It seems like insanity to base so much other work on models that don’t forecast well yet. Doesn’t anyone in this bizarro-science field say to themselves “Hey, why should we base our research on these models when most of them are starting to fall outside of their 95% CI when compared with measurements in nature?”

Andyj
February 13, 2014 1:07 pm

Chris Field, professor of interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University …..
Beats me how anyone can become a professor and keep his post after telling a deliberate lie. Never mind keeping it after a mistake as severe as this statement, “staring down the barrel of climate change that is faster than at any time in the last 65 million years,”.
But lets face it, “evironmental” has less to do with “environ” as “mental”. Its a code word for political sociology.
Where is he heading? For the money of course!

Two Labs
February 13, 2014 1:10 pm

“Field will describe what analysis of 27 climate models revealed about the pace of climate change…”
Wow. They really don’t get it, do they?

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