![MalleusLatin2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/malleuslatin21.jpg)
After a 239 post exchange on Facebook, an alarmist gets the last say.
Mark Ruscoe, of Asheville NC writes.
Anthony,
Reading your latest post regarding the lengths to which “tauntology” is used by the alarmist crowd, I wanted to forward something from a long FB thread I’ve been involved in for the last 8 months or so.
I’ll also preface that besides having biological science degrees and enjoying a long career in health care, I’m a climate nobody. So it surprised me how exercised global warming disciples could be out here in the hinterlands when their faith was questioned.
This was occasioned by the Typhoon Haiyan last year, when one of my (many) liberal friends linked it as a sign of our warming planet. It piqued my decidedly non-climatically oriented interest, so I decided to delve in a bit. Lo and behold, thanks to your site and others, I found that events such as that have actually declined in the past several years. I made note of this, and expected not much more.
Little was I prepared for the onslaught to follow. One thing led to another, and I spent much of my winter brushing up on the climate war. I engaged my local FB friends in what I took to be honest skeptical debate.
In particular, one of my antagonists proved unappreciative of my arguments or my sources. Especially, so it seems, yours.
After 239 posts to this particular thread, I felt as if I had made a sufficient skeptical scientific case, and decided that enough was enough. I announced that I was through.
To which my antagonist got the final word:
“…I’ll also give you this: You and your fellow deniers are wrong, and you will be on the wrong side of history. In 50 years you will be scattered with the witch-burners, the white supremacists, the birthers and the creationists who illustrate the limits of the human mind and the danger that come (sic) with them. You’ll be crammed into historical footnotes that students around the world will chuckle at for those five minutes you are mentioned. I wish you could be around to see it, if for no other reason than to hear you bray frantically that Anthony Watts is still right.”
Climate alarmism is a mental illness. Your correspondent is but one more sad example. I’m glad you signed off that thread and let me be the first to welcome you back to the real world!
Time to start unfriending and/or blocking people, in my opinion – I don’t spend time on FaceBook to be insulted by people who resort to name-calling rather than reason – one of my LONG time friends is still blocked for just such a reason – several of my friends were discussing an article about climate change, and my ‘friend’ decided we were racists for questioning the Holy Writ of Al Gore (which doesn’t make any sense to me), at which point I blocked him, and blocked he shall remain.
“…I’ll also give you this: You and your fellow deniers are wrong, and you will be on the wrong side of history.
Time will tell.
Projection, it’s something we often see from that quarter.
Alarmism is based on a theory that has yet to be validated and violates the laws of thermodynamics and Plancks Laws. a theory that folows from a poor understanding of the planet’s energy flows and confuses heat with EM radiation.
What are “birthers”?
Desperation is never pretty.
Mark,
Thanks for posting this. I hope after 8 months and 239 exchanges something useful happened. Maybe this: You now know, and perhaps others have learned, that for many people the climate cause has become a religion. Science and religion are fundamentally different. I think it is important to note that science issues are argued with essays, religious issues are settled with guns.
RE: johnmarshall…at 8:09 am
Mostly it just doesn’t add up.
Increasing flak meant you were over the target.
I tried to carry on a conversation with two English acquaintances, one an electronics engineering professor, the other a PHD student in solid state physics. Gave up when they could not admit to the pause, wrote long beside the point critiques to essays citing structural weaknesss/logical fallacies/selection bias in both AR4 and AR5 (doubting exact citations!), and finally dismissing Lindzen and Curry as second rate or worse scientists. never could get then to engage with any factual substance.
Waste of time arguing with religious fanatics. The ‘you will burn in Hell’ response show that the responder is indeed merely one.
Dear Johnmarshall, you are wrong there: (climate) alarmism is not based on theory it is based on fear/alarm.
This sort of personal attack is become the standard way the ‘true believers’, whether it is climate change, global warming, religion or politics, attempt to run a ‘denial of service’ on anyone who dares question their ‘truth’. A study done by researchers in Canada (and published in a respectable journal) has identified this as a sign of psychopathic behaviour. I suspect that the real problem is these folk have grasped a part of the debate, and do not want to have to think, because the counter arguments may be sufficiently convincing to confuse them, or to cause them to change their position, which, in todays angst driven world, would mean leaving the comfortable and familiar environs of their likeminded ‘support’ groups and activism.
A great way to lose respect in a discussion is to start relying on one’s emotions rather than logic and reason. Once insults start flowing from one side or the other, the natural reaction for the person with the opposing viewpoint is to dig in their heels. This is why it’s so important for us to refuse the urge to snap back at insults, because others are often watching, and we need to continue to help them see what’s true. Great job, Mark, in representing the truth with reason and logic; there are likely a few people following year FB thread whose perspectives have changed as a result of your hard work in researching and sharing the truth.
It’s much easier to be part of a dumbed-down crowd than to stand on your own and really think about things.
To do so requires incredible self-reliance and the hide of a rhinoceros. I can do t but few others I know are happy with the isolation.
James in Perth said:
Climate alarmism is a mental illness.
Climate alarmism is not a mental illness, it’s simply human nature. The term for it is cognitive dissonance and it’s prevalent in nearly everything people hold opinions on. And generally the smarter the person is the worse it is.
When a person holds a firm opinion on a topic for a long time and they are intelligent, their minds won’t accept the idea they can be wrong. Evidence to the contrary is ignored with the excuse generally being about the reliability of the source of the evidence or the person presenting the contrary evidence is written off as a right winger, racist, birther, denier, or whatever label the person thinks is appropriate.
It’s so rare for a person to hold an opinion and be swayed by contrary evidence that I have the utmost respect for the people who can do it. Recognition of cognitive dissonance is what led Max Planck to say “Science advances one funeral at a time”. Cognitive dissonance is why we’re mired in a health epidemic where healthy foods like red meat, butter, bacon and eggs are vilified and absolute poisons like whole wheat, vegetable oils and fruit juice are recommended as cornerstones of our diet.
So climate alarmism can’t a mental illness if everyone does it, it’s simply one of the poorer attributes of human nature.
Did you happen to post a link to the ice core temp graphs? These are often illuminating to the ‘useful idiots’ that drink the koolaid.
there’s this one that shows our trend is still to the return of the next ice age and that our current temp bump is still lower temps than most of this interglacial
http://openyoureyesnews.com/2012/10/20/climate-fact-of-the-day-greenland-ice-core-temperature-record-for-the-last-10000-years/
I think one of the problems with this crowd is that they have the hockey stick graph ingrained in their minds and truly believe we are helping bring the end of the world by being skeptical. I carry a bunch of ice core graphs on my phone from both poles so that as I get into discussions I start with those.
To say I’ve shocked some people with these simple graphs would be an understatement. For the first time in their lives they begin to consider that they have been deceived on the AGW issue.
As some regulars may know I have written a series of parody-songs on the subject of “CAGW” and some of its more vocal supporters. My personal experience was to be trolled and lambasted by a couple of Australians. I was attacked and vilified by these idiots, initially because the song they objected to was deemed to be an ad hominem attack against Mr Banana Nuttycelli, but then (more astonishingly) because the song did not support the “denialist non-science”.
My only thought at that point was “WTF?????”
Judge for yourselves if you feel like it (this is not compulsory for this post!)
It’s also important to keep one’s mind open to evidences that either support or invalidate one’s current perspective. We all here know that many alarmists have closed their mind to any skeptical ideas; but, there are also plenty of skeptics who are dogmatically standing by their position and are unwilling to budge at all. My own personal emotional reaction is to stand firm to what I thought was true, but the logic of the scientist in me won’t let me do that, and as a result, my perspective on the “climate change” issue has evolved over the years. I am certainly a skeptic of catastrophic global warming, but I also have to acknowledge that there are occasionally some valid points made by alarmist scientists.
One thing to point out to is that they are fanatical that you must believe, but don’t care a bit how much CO2 you actually produce – especially if you join them and become an evangelist. China can increase CO2 emissions more than the entire US output and they won’t care at all, but the idea that someone, somewhere, rejects their gospel just drives them batty.
In such debates (which I have almost daily), I sometimes cite AR5 to show that they don’t even know what their own Bible says. AR5 even admits that the temperature trend since the pause might be negative, and CRUTemp IV clearly indicates that newly minted drivers on our highways are doing so in temperatures that are cooler than when they were born.
I’ve also converted warming into distances of average north/south climate variation (about 90 miles per 1C outside the tropics), and converted it to average surface altitude change. Taking the transient climate response from AR5,minus the amount we’ve already had in shifting from 280 ppm to 400 ppm), means that many people in the hills where I grew up will, when they retire, have the same climate at their house that they used to have at the bottom of their driveway.
GlynnMhor says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:10 am
—-
A birther is someone who tries to argue that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii and that the released birth certificate is a fake.
You can rest assured thats not the first time that person has cut and pasted that paragraph into a discussion, email, or blog.
I would deduce via the context clues from the author of the paragraph that he/she is an long term unemployed Obama supporter living in their parents basement in a virtual online world. I don’t believe anyone has found a cure for that illness yet. /SARC
Well I don’t know, but let me just suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss climate-change’s threat to our planet’s delicate web of relationships between animate and in-animate actors on our beautiful but demon-carbon, threatened world-stage, like polar bears, and everything!
I mean, like, just check out the Deltoid climate-blog which is currently mired, as best I can figure things out, there, in the immediate aftermath of a major hive-bot extinction event.
I mean, like, honestly, the whole blog-site has lately morphed into a Gotterdammerung-ready, clinically brain-dead Gaia-dump in full meltdown mode. Really, an astonishing, textbook example of ”tipping-point” catastrophism that uncomfortably confronts us with the spectacle of a once proud, agit-prop center of scare-mongering, eco-scam activity, with global reach, transformed before our very eyes into an over-night, lefty-loser, eyesore blight on the blogosphere. There’s some sort of cautionary, climate-change lesson to be learned here, I’m convinced.
I mean, like, did the “crusher crew” lose its funding? Is that it? Is that why Deltoid’s former, motor-mouth, hive-roach regulars have all pretty much bugged-out of the place–busting out all the windows and ripping the copper-wiring from the walls as they left? Anyone know the deal here for sure?
Why wait for the future? He can point out right now that the North Pole did indeed melt four years ago, just as the Prophet Al Gore foretold. He can produce the fifty to two hundred million Climate refugees that were displaced by 2010 in accordance with the UNEP auguries. He can demonstrate that the measured temperatures have indeed risen in accordance with the Sibylline prophecies of the CMIP5 models.
Oh wait, he can’t do that.
Well at least right now he can look in the face of a wilful denier, still maintaining his faith despite the obvious reality arond him, just by gazing into a mirror.
Psychological Projection 101: know fanatics by their own distorted view of you as a debunker. Not a pretty sight. The Global Warming fiasco carries on as a such intense activism for it affords righteous halos to angry hateful people who are not well adjusted to everyday civil society. These were just sidelined Marxist throwbacks until Jim Hansen and Al Gore pumped the likes of Michael Mann and the rest of the hockey stick team bully boys into the limelight. Now their fanaticism is doubled as their entire ego and self-worth are experienced being attached to a collapsing paradigm.
In the end it’s fantastic news that governments became Enron for a generation in order to publicly expose who is who in our world, and from what stock future leaders should be selected from, hyperactive activists versus reasonable thinkers. The way the Millenial generation now embraces the fracking revolution is the real wave of the future, alas for your Facebook foes:
http://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2014/06/16/why-millenials-embrace-oil-fracking-n1851484/page/full
By the way, Facebook is now the skeptics best friend since it formed the basis of the biggest climate con of all time, providing undeniable proof once and for all that the core of climate “science” is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, as professional mathematician Michael Mann did a Facebook Snoopy dance promoting the latest hockey stick that clearly contained no blade in the actual input data in a way that no black box theory can excuse:
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
The accumulated anger of layperson dupes will naturally turn away from skeptics and directly back onto their gurus in due time, just like investers in any exposed fraud then hire lawyers. Now that the Wall Street Journal features strong climate (model) skepticism, savvy urban professionals who lean politically left in youth are now in the loop too, though most single urban women are still clueless and throwing their sex into the argument for climate alarm in spades. When that tide turns, it’s all over for climate alarm, and possibly liberalism in general that is so firmly attached to it.
Anthony and his disciples are witches and warlocks. After each engagement against the Forces for Good, they refresh themselves at secret rituals where they “eat the babies”. Everyone knows that! I personally prefer catfish, but the evil content of a fat baby just isn’t there.
I certainly won’t be around in 2050 and neither will possibly another 2 or 3 billion who will have died of starvation because of the lack of useful energy and the much reduced food production areas in the northern hemisphere due to decreasing temperatures.
Alarmists do what alarmists do. Always vitriol never facts and reality. How ironic that the borg drone says you will be on the wong side of history. The very thing he has to ignore to be an alarmist.
Scientific American Facebook climate related postings offer similar opportunities for “interesting” dialog.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is not to try to persuade people by slinging “facts” at them. They aren’t required to accept your authority; nor are you theirs.
I try to use the Socratic method with alarmist adversaries. Question them. Ask them to explain. Often they come to realize how much they don’t know.
e.g.:
-Is the current climate “incorrect?” If so, has a “correct” climate been defined?
-What percentage of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide?
-What is the most dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere?
-What makes carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas?
-What is albedo?
-What is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation?
etc.
Mark,
Their minds are closed. Festering. For the sake of your health turn your back on them.
When it gets colder (soon) and more and more of their parents/grandparents/friends of same/the infirm/homeless/etc die from said cold these folk will still be sneering along the lines of ” …. just you wait, it’s going to get hot-damn-friable soon … scientivists told us, so it must be trooo …”.
I gave up pitying them a few years back. I gave up engaging in conversation a short while later. I am in process of giving up my anger toward them (not succeeding quickly enough on that front). True environmentalism may never recover from the steep cost of their delusions.
Near me the most active ‘environmentalists’ happen to be on long-term ‘sickness’ benefit. They are the only ones in our county with sufficient free time to write in to the local ‘news’papers EVERY damn week about how no-one should build houses near
herethem because a particular (flower/insect/bird/small mammal) is endangered by our selfish desire to house our children/grandchildren, using the fruits of our own endeavors, within walking distance, on brownfields/ex-industrial estates. Oh, and climate change. Echo… echo… echo ….@ Bob Johnson
You’ve got the definition of cognitive dissonance a little skewed. In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the excessive mental stress and discomfort experienced by holding two or more contradictory beliefs. It would be cognitive dissonance for someone to hold to CAGW and fully accept the evidence against it (the 17-year pause, etc.). To avoid CD, the alarmist crowd rejects the evidence in favor of the preferred belief. Why people like to scare themselves silly beyond ghost stories and horror movies is a psychological exploration for another time. That they like to be on a “winning side” is abundantly demonstrated. For now CAGW is winning in the minds of many so the less than skeptical pile on. The sort of attack described in this post reminds me of the mindless hooliganism at sometimes breaks out at soccer matches.
From the original post: “when one of my (many) liberal friends”….
I hope Mark Ruscoe, and others in the same boat, have figured out that this was the original mistake. People of that view are not “friends”, they can never be “friends”, because their only interest in you is either to control you, or to use your acquiescence to enable them to control other people.
You need to divorce yourself from them.
Richard111 says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:56 am
I certainly won’t be around in 2050 and neither will possibly another 2 or 3 billion…
___________________________
Hey, speak for yourself. Just because a guy’s old and ugly doesn’t mean that he can’t eat all the barbecue and chase all the women and still keep Methuselah as role model.
docstephens says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:58 am
Scientific American Facebook climate related postings offer similar opportunities for “interesting” dialog.
I had to comment about your use of ‘interesting’. I use the word in the same way. There are times when the subject is matter is too revolting and I just can’t use the word ‘interesting’.There are many warmists who are very willing to destroy anyone’s reputation to strike at skeptics. They are just borrowing their tactics from politics, which is what this really is all about. The science long ago was hijacked. I am very thankful for scientists on both sides who strive to be honest in their work.
“So it surprised me how exercised global warming disciples could be out here in the hinterlands when their faith was questioned.”
Mark,
Welcome to the club, but what took you so long to get here? ; – )
I too live in Asheville and have been addressing climate issues locally for quite a few years, but first became interested over 2 decades ago while getting my engineering degree. My college professor was a colleague of Hanson’s and worked with temperature data for over half a century.
Just take a look at the Asheville Citizen Times website to get a feel for the “climate” in Asheville. Make sure to take a look at the comments!
http://avlne.ws/1l32KIB
I travel a good bit and when people ask me where Asheville is located I describe it like this… go to Berkeley, CA and take a hard Left… keep going and you eventually come to Asheville.
MarkW says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:39 am
GlynnMhor says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:10 am
—-
A birther is someone who tries to argue that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii and that the released birth certificate is a fake.
=======================================================
Or anyone that dares to question “The ONE”
@Bob Johnston
There also an aspect of “Buyers’ Stockholm Syndrome”, also known as Post-Purchase Rationalization. If people have bought into a notion without doing their homework, there’s enormous self-imposed pressure not to question, but to dig in, defend and attack.
Gary – Perhaps I should have said “avoidance of cognitive dissonance”. But I think you got my point. 🙂
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Speed says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:02 am
“…I’ll also give you this: You and your fellow deniers are wrong, and you will be on the wrong side of history.
Time will tell.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’ve often wondered how things will play out in the next 20 – 40 years, especially if the data still doesn’t show the increased warming and correlation to increased CO2. How will the warmists likely respond?
I seriously doubt there will ever be any acknowledgement that they are/were truly wrong. There will be some honest scientists who will come out iteratively over time – much like Judy Curry did several years ago. But I think for those who are currently the most visible advocates, the talking points will be mostly about the lack of data that was available at the time and the need to rely on proxy variables. They will stand by their “science” as being the best they could do at the time, but they will also resort to the nobleness of their motivation – saving the earth. How will anyone be able to hold their feet to the fire when they had such pure intentions? It will be very reminiscent of those who were so damn sure about how Y2K was going to play out and be such a catastrophic event. They never admitted they were wrong, they just spun things to say how preparation was never a bad thing to do.
in 50 yearsyou ll see that i am right now….
do you think it helps proving me that you are right now?
no…but i said first…
In engagements like these, I’ve found it’s useful to remember several things:
1) You’re not trying to convince the true believer.
It’s not possible, don’t waste your time.
2) You’re trying to get other readers to learn, think, and reconsider their beliefs.
Those you have a chance to win over, or at least to stop spouting the warmist mantras.
3) Make your points.
Don’t make them multiple times.
4) Let the true believer have the last word.
If you both insist on having the last word, the bickering will never stop. There’s no point in continuing the discussion when everyone else has moved on to something else.
The quickest way to make someone angry is to be right.
Think about: If Mark Ruscoe was using evidence that was blatantly wrong, there would not have such anger. People would have pointed out the errors or just ignored the message. But since the evidence cannot be debated, the only option is to make the messenger look evil — The messenger is evil so don’t listen to him.
I’ve been telling people “Patience, wait 10 years and see how things have changed.
Late last year I reduced that to 5 years. By then the AMO may be flipped with related impact to reduced hurricane risk and increased Arctic Sea Ice, SC24 will be winding down and people will be looking at SC25, solar effects on climate may be more clear, the pause in global warming may longer than the climb from 1979-1998, and the pause may be looking like the start of a decline.
All these are arguably visible today, in 5 years, (a geological instant), they may be strikingly clear. Since last year, there are now predictions that Arctic Sea Ice may be above the long term average during the end of this year’s melt season. I’ll stick with the 5 years for now.
Patience.
I unfriended two childhood friends on Facebook, both highly intelligent because despite sticking to facts and hard data in my posts, and never making it personal, my friends would eventually make it personal. Fortunately, away from Facebook, they were cordial and friendly but I sensed a difference in their attitude towards me. It really is a religion to true believers and skeptics are regarded as climate apostates. I can only hope that logic and science will eventually prevail but I am not optimistic,
Tim Walker Said:
I had to comment about your use of ‘interesting’. I use the word in the same way. There are times when the subject is matter is too revolting and I just can’t use the word ‘interesting’.There are many warmists who are very willing to destroy anyone’s reputation to strike at skeptics. They are just borrowing their tactics from politics, which is what this really is all about. The science long ago was hijacked. I am very thankful for scientists on both sides who strive to be honest in their work.
““““““““`
Tim,
I dared to offer two completely civil but skeptical comments to an article posted on Facebook by Scientific American that described the “Unstoppable” glaciers in Antarctica. First, I was viciously attacked by several other commenters, then my commenting and sharing rights were revoked by SA. I contacted SA and had my rights reinstated with an apology from the Webmaster who said it was a mistake that I had been banned. I noted that I was the only commenter who was a climate realist. Either other realists like me have learned not to submit themselves to such viciousness, or SA was filtering comments deemed contrary to their agenda or politically motivated perspective. By the way, the articles shared by SA were authored by journalists not scientists.
Dyrewulf says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:00 am
“Time to start unfriending and/or blocking people…”
Not only that…start disconnecting yourself from ***ALL*** of the manic, misinformed, CAGW-supporting media, including the Weather Channel, Weather Underground, ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC news, NY Times, etc. etc. Don’t give them ***ANY*** of your precious time or money. And tell their advertisers and supporters that you no longer are viewing their shows or accessing their websites. For example, CNN is already feeling the heat of low ratings. Other CAGW media will, in the end, suffer a similar fate…if we all do our part.
And also – remember the fascism that is CAGW warmism in November when the elections are held here in the U.S.A. It is VERY, VERY SCARY what is happening to us in the name of “global warming”…and this election is really our last hope in attempting to reverse the considerable damage in my lifetime.
Bob Johnston and others:
Nick from NYC hit on the key point, which is that when people attach their EGO and self worth to an ideology, religion, belief, etc., that their reaction to being told they’re wrong essentially becomes a “survival” defense. Nick from NYC describes a collapsing paradigm, but the problem is not just a collapsing one, but the very fact that people attach themselves to things in this manner in the first place. It is the essence of faith and religion, yet obviously in this case, the issues being discussed have nothing to do with either. The nature of their belief in climate change/global warming etc, mirrors a good vs evil narrative. With them, of course, being good.
It is not just unscientific, it is the complete opposite of the scientific method and is void of any truth in analysis and facts of the given paridigm (the world’s climate and our influence).
It is no coincidence that the all of the isms of the world that have caused such destruction to mankind in the last 100+ years (socialism/communism/etc.) all have religious desriptors in their overtones.
“…I’ll also give you this: You and your fellow deniers are wrong, and you will be on the wrong side of history. In 50 years you will be scattered with the witch-burners, the white supremacists, the birthers and the creationists who illustrate the limits of the human mind and the danger that come (sic) with them.”
That Alarmist’s response only underscored the fact that this issue has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. For myself, I wouldn’t have kept up the “dialogue” 8 minutes let alone 8 months. If the answer to 4+4 was political, you can be assured that 40% of the public would say the answer was 9, and Lord help the “denier” who said it was 8.
In the words of Barney Fife, the man is definitely not “all choked up with humbility.”
And it is also no coincidence that the above isms all restrain freedom, freedom of speech, and open debate and discussion, for fear of upsetting the dogma, which their “survival” often depends on, metaphorically and often literally.
John Marshall,
And any others who know something of physics, I finally after many hours of study understand what is meant by “back-radiation.” Of course the atmosphere cannot heat itself nor the Earth’s surface. Already all the 15-micron IR emitted by the surface is absorbed and “thermalized” within a few feet of the surface, so changing the concentration of CO2 will not change anything at the surface from below
The issue is at the Top of Atmosphere/tropopause. Increasing CO2 there makes the atmosphere more opaque to 15-micron IR. Since the atmosphere only COOLS itself by radiating to space, and the relevant temperature at the tropopause is right in the area that generates 15-micron IR, the atmosphere must radiate to space at a cooler temperature if it is more opaque, and this indeed retains extra energy in the atmosphere. At the tropopause “thermalization” is much reduced by the low pressure, so quite a few photons are re-emitted by CO2. There is not much water vapor at all up there.
What does extra energy/warmth at the tropopause do down here on the surface? Well, back-radiation does indeed transmit energy downward. How much, and how is it absorbed and thermalized? That is the subject of much debate. A 0.04% fraction of the atmosphere radiating at 70 below, does not sound like it could do much, but this is electro-magnetic transmission of energy as the microwaves are re-absorbed by CO2 and water vapor down here, not traditional radiative heat transfer. The atmosphere acts like many individual “layers” absorbing, thermalizing, and/or re-emitting, quite complex. The Trenberth diagram shows it as a similar amount of energy as the Sun’s input, but this is counter-intuitive to me.
So, saying the theory violates the Second Law, not so much. But, “settled science?” No indeedy. Anybody help me out here?
@James in Perth: Climate alarmism might be a mental illness, but an extremely lucrative one.
it’s a sad state of affairs. CAGW is a suicidal religious cult – which always translates out to murder-suicide since not everyone is the true believer. The malarkey about ‘settled’ science makes things all the worse. Trying to go by data is not always going to get one where they should be. Data always has noise and can be subject to interpretation. Sometimes, it’s just plain defective. Because of this, one pretty much winds up accepting science on faith to some extent. One can usually go with the majority opinion and be safe from criticism but it doesn’t mean that the majority opinion is correct. Science is about turning over those opinions for something new – and that something new may work better than the old but odds are, it is not right either and someday it will be overturned or need to be modified due to new evidence.
I have found that the best way deal with confirmed believers is to either leave them be, or to question them. When questioning do not attempt to inform them; simply challenge them to support an assertion with evidence (that may be an educational experience in and of itself) and, where cherry picked evidence is what they have based convictions on, ask them about the exceptions. It is critical to ask though, not assert. Your questions become their questions. They become psychologically invested in answering them and not infrequently discover that their view has changed. Questions are insidious and are the actual basis for demanding a sceptical view in science.
since when is a FB comment news?
Ace wrote, “I’ve often wondered how things will play out in the next 20 – 40 years, especially if the data still doesn’t show the increased warming and correlation to increased CO2. How will the warmists likely respond?”
Maybe like this …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich
“…you will be on the wrong side of history…”, “In 50 years you will be scattered with the witch-burners…”, “You’ll be crammed into historical footnotes…”, “…bray frantically…”, etc.
You know, all that five-year-plan language, up-above, really conjures up some cherished memories of my vanished, priapic youth. I mean, like, when I was a lad I was incessantly pestered by the hive-babes, who were forever sneakin’-around and lookin’ for what their weenie good-comrades couldn’t provide–if you know what I mean.
And you might not believe this, but all that lefty-cant, top-side there, is actually a pretty good example of the hive-babe’s preferred form of “dirty-talk”. I mean, like, I admit that I felt a little awkward spouting all that silly-assed, Marxist crapola, at first. But then I thought, “What the hell!, what’s wrong with tellin’ the ladies what they want to hear–they all know it’s a big, fat fib anyway.” That, and they were always driven to such wild paroxysms of animal passion, big-time, by all that party-line B. S. deal. Win-win situation, it seemed to me.
Mark Ruscoe, Look how much you’ve learned! You have gathered to yourself treasure that no man can steal or moth corrupt. And the time will come, if you live long enough, that everything you learned will come to pass, and you are now on the right side of the future.
The parade goes by and the dogs bark.
We’re in the parade, and I propose to enjoy the event.
: > )
“It will be very reminiscent of those who were so damn sure about how Y2K was going to play out and be such a catastrophic event. They never admitted they were wrong, they just spun things to say how preparation was never a bad thing to do.”
Actually Y2K would have been a serious problem if nothing was done. But in fact thousands of COBOL programmers worked for several years (95 – 99) to fix problem code. Millions of programs were replaced wholesale by ERP systems to avoid having to do all the mitigation work of fixing them. So by the time the year 2000 rolled around 99%+ of everything was already repaired/replaced. (And of course by 2001 those thousands of COBOL programmers were all permanently laid off but that is another story.)
The far left has become bullies, and for many many causes.
Name calling (tauntology) is just one aspect of bullying, but the far left extremists act out as well — through protests, boycotts, lawsuits, even assault and intimidation (SEIU), to outright mass violence and riots (occupy).
A lot of the bad behavior is prefaced with tauntology, and most of the extremists have their own chief “tauntologists” (people like Al Gore or Michael Mann). But there’s plenty of others out there taunting for various other extreme causes, Tauntologists like Al Sharpton, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Maddow, (maybe even…. the President).
One common thread seems to be – the more extreme and indefensible their position is, the less apt they are to listen and the more they try and bully for their cause. It seems to be a law of nature.
Speaking of nuts, AlGore is spreading his BS in Rolling Stone (fitting, eh?)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618?print=true
Michael Moon says:
June 18, 2014 at 10:09 am
Increasing GHG concentrations increase the longest potential departure paths an IR photon can take leaving the planet. That in turn would mean that a fraction of those photons simply hang around longer. The gotchas are the other dissipative system that interact to collectively create what we call climate. If the science were really “settled,” that would mean that useful models would tend to track the real world varying randomly above and below that real world mean. Since the models used by the IPCC show a bias, running “hot” compared to reality, the self-evident fact is that the models contain an error and it is pervasive affecting all current theory that is widely used.
Gary: Re cognitive dissonance (CD): A salesman friend explained it to me thus: You’ve just paid a huge price for the car of your dreams; as you drive home you wonder, was it money well spent…
“…I’ll also give you this: You and your fellow deniers are wrong, and you will be on the wrong side of history” Letting this guy have a last word like that was probably so satisfying to him that you did him a huge favor. I don’t think people like him care about what actually happens, only what they can say and feel right about. You can have the satisfaction of making a fellow human being’s day and move on with your life.
But it can be very effective to counter THEIR facts with a correction. Counterpunching–and going no further–has worked for me.
One more point: This is a debate in which the alarmists should want to be proved wrong. That they seem not to is telling. When have you have heard an alarmist say to a skeptic, “I hope you’re right, but I’m very worried that you’re not.” They don’t want to be wrong because being wrong will interfere with their agenda. Skeptics are doubters, and alarmists have an ideological fever that won’t break.
Ive attempted honest debates on this topic for years. Several dozen now. I have yet to find anyone who doesn’t simply resort to calls to authority and or name calling. I actually first studied it to figure out how to better prove it to people and convince them to care.
It is glaringly obvious if you study that things are hardly settled. We often hear, if you do not include co2 as a dominant factor then we cannot explain the last 30 years! Doh! well if we DO include it we cannot explain it either. There must be over a dozen completely different peer reviewed cases published trying to explain this lack of warming.
The media and many governments want to portray all of this in a way the data simply does not support. This tells us without any doubt there is agenda here, that knowledge and data are NOT driving this issue at the level this agenda does.
This should be very alarming to anyone who cares about truth and the environment for that matter. We have real enviro issues whether or not co2 is one of them.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this final post is that it describes the warmists’ collective future to a T.
Re Climatism as a ‘religion’: The vast majority of religious believers in the United States (not to speak of other countries) have gotten accustomed to the principle of living cheek-by-jowl with people of other faiths. How many even waste time discussing matters of doctrine? Except, of course, where it affects public policy, as with abortion or same-sex ‘marriage’. And that is the nub with Climatism: it’s basically an argument about public policy, where True Belief and politics intersect. And that’s why Climatism has become dangerous. You are not just a heretic; you doubt the validity of the Movement. What should happen to you, then?
The Puppet President has become a spokesman for the Movement. He makes speeches disparaging skeptics are “flat-Earthers.” What’s next? What should happen to people who stand in the way of “saving the Earth”? It is not hard to imagine the directions this misguided man and his handlers could take us.
/Mr Lynn
Guys it is a Cult. What they say about deniers is projection. What they say will happen to deniers is what they secretly fear will happen to them. They know that something is not right, they know that 20 years of no warming is not a good sign that they are right, they know that their arguments are weak, they know. They just can not face the fact that their noble cause is a load of cr@p and that they are puny worthless nobodies.
I consider it an honor being lumped with creationists. Name calling doesn’t bother me. When they start throwing stones, that bothers me.
People get brainwashed, I have tried many times to convince others that global warming is essentially trivial and can be ignored and in any case cooling looks more likely. But I have not succeeded. How do you convince people, even bright university students are taken in by the sustainibility label of co2 global warming.
Wow, you have much more patience than I. And the final retort is some rather sophisticated and polished prose. Makes me wonder if it’s original. I had a couple of tauntologers on my case until suggesting they sounded similar to those call centers out of Mumbai with set piece arguments, epithets, and a list of skeptics they were paid to engage and pester. Never heard from them again.
Actually we climate change skeptics are already the same side of history as the cold fusion skeptics, the WMD skeptics, the big foot skeptics, the geocentric universe skeptics, etc.
It may be time to change our name to “nonconformists” as we become more mainstream.
Tell you friends that “Climate Change is very real” and send them over to my data page. No hype, no commentary. Just data.
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/ofcl5g9r00bhfyf/AAAa7MpBm1zUsmm4D_qnWRbfa
Maybe they will actually absorb some facts for a change.
This is one of the reasons I create my lists. If I get into what looks like endless too and fro, I present them with a list of peer reviewed abstract rebuttals. At which point they start to struggle and look for one iota of info to back their argument.
Whenever one of them makes a claim, ask them to present the scientific evidence from the literature. Weird weather evidence makes them struggle.
“In 50 years you will be scattered with the witch-burners….”
The reason people were afraid of witches is because they supposedly could bring curses, hexes, evil events, and misfortune on people through use of inanimate objects which the victim might have touched. Most people do not believe in the ability of a material object such as a coin or a rabbit’s foot to actually attract certain types of people or events to themselves – nor do people believe in the ability of a spiteful woman to use a lock of hair to do harm from a distance.
It is because of our ability to reason away these kinds of superstitions, by using tests and repeatability, that the fear of witches has largely been eliminated, in my view. However, if there is a resurgence of people who claim to have supernatural powers to curse and bring misfortune – or even to promise some success by a magickal shortcut – than the fear of these powers will also return. Old women will frighten the younger ones with omens and all will use the power of suggestion to convince others that they read minds or can foretell events, or bring a desired result with some ritual. Bringing back the superstitions will not be a laughing matter. It is the superstitious, irrationalist mixture of new age hodge podges with science that is very popular among young people right now, and it is very unfortunate. They will be open to all kinds of unnecessary fears.
Steven Mosher says:
June 18, 2014 at 10:22 am
since when is a FB comment news?
News – not so much but the paragraph in question certainly created commentary on one of the puzzling things in life.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SunSword says:
June 18, 2014 at 10:53 am
“Actually Y2K would have been a serious problem if nothing was done. But in fact thousands of COBOL programmers worked for several years (95 – 99) to fix problem code. Millions of programs were replaced wholesale by ERP systems to avoid having to do all the mitigation work of fixing them. So by the time the year 2000 rolled around 99%+ of everything was already repaired/replaced. (And of course by 2001 those thousands of COBOL programmers were all permanently laid off but that is another story.)”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m not denying the fact that a lot of work needed to be done to prevent problems. What I was trying to get across in regard to Y2K was that, despite all that work performed, there were quite a few folks who were so cocksure that chaos was going to reign starting on Jan 1, 2000 that it was like a religion to them – right up until Dec 31, 1999. They believed it was going to happen and would argue their point to anyone who’d listen. Prepare or die.
My point is: the faith-based dogma of AGW is eerily familiar to that of the Y2K doomsdayers/preppers. The response, once they’re wrong, will also be similar.
Brad Rich wrote: “I consider it an honor being lumped with creationists. Name calling doesn’t bother me. When they start throwing stones, that bothers me.”
Modern science says that in the beginning there was nothing: no matter, no energy, nor any space. There was not even “emptiness” because there was nothing to be empty. Then all that nothingness exploded. On the other hand, the religious (or spiritual) say that something created or caused our universe and they sometimes name that thing “god”. (I prefer The Tao myself)
But you know that when some twit calls you a “creationist” they are attacking the cartoon version of some ignorant people and their claims of an earth created almost exactly 6,000 years ago. By the same token, when you are called a “denialist” the twit means you don’t believe every word uttered by Saint Al Gore and Mikey Mann. (Mann is the patron saint of Hockey in Roman Catholicism by the way)
As for myself, I have always liked the old saying that “if everybody claims a thing to be true, it is most likely false”. Science is not about voting on “truth”.
——-
Off topic question for the Mods. I composed a really nice comment on another thread a day or two ago (trust me, it was a good one) and I used a profanity advisedly. Well, when I hit submit the screen went to the top of the page and the comment was lost to prosperity (unless the NSA has it still). It has been a while since I read the rules. Is it against the rules to say G** D*** It here?
Who are the witch-burners? Who? Those that are skeptical are the witch-burners? Hmm… seems to me that they got that one backwards. If “deniers” are such a tiny and pathetic bunch, then who cares! Let us piddle away our tiny little lives in denial. What’s the harm? We’re pathetic little nobodies. Why the worry? Why the argument? Just ignore us. We have no bullets, no ammo, no facts, no education, no grants, no adverts, no nothing. If we’re such a worthless bunch, why do these lofty and gifted geniuses even bother? For fun? Hmm… Could it be fear? Really? Little ol’ us? What could they possibly be afraid of…
And, yes, we will indeed see what comes in the next few decades. I will live to see that much at least.
Admad:
Nice work; critical thinking must run in the family 😉
GlynnMhor asked, “What are ‘birthers’?”
Birthers are people who suspect that President Obama might have been telling the truth when he told his publicists that he was born in Kenya:
http://t.co/G2A6YMjoJt
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii
The reason it might matter where Obama was born is that if his parents were legally married, then he was only entitled to U.S. citizenship at birth if he was born on U.S. soil. Under U.S. law at the time (1961), and because Obama’s father was a foreigner, if his parents were legally married and he was born outside the USA then he would only have been entitled to U.S. citizenship if his mother had resided in the USA for five full years since her 14th birthday. But his mother was only 18yo, so she could not have met that requirement. So, if Obama’s parents were legally married and he was born outside the USA then he was not legally entitled to U.S. citizenship.
Here’s a chart which explains it:
http://www.ilrc.org/files/documents/natz_chart-a-2014-05_01_final.pdf
However, it has now been pretty well established that Obama’s father was a bigamist. That means his parents were’t legally married when he was born. So he was a bastard, which means that different citizenship rules applied. As the bastard child of an unmarried U.S. citizen mother, he was entitled citizenship by virtue of his mother’s citizenship alone, despite her young age, even if he was born outside the USA.
Here’s a chart which explains it:
http://www.ilrc.org/files/documents/natz_chart-b-2014-05_1_final.pdf
When it was convenient for his narrative, Barack Obama claimed to be Kenyan-born. Now he claims to be Hawaiian-born.
He will claim whatever is convenient. The truth is irrelevant to him, and he has surrounded himself by people who share his mendacity. I’m appalled by such dishonesty.
However, honesty is not a constitutional requirement for natural-born citizenship. On the weight of the evidence, I’m confident that he can claim citizenship from birth (i.e., “natural-born citizenship”), both by virtue of being probably born in Hawaii (despite what he told his publicists), and also by virtue of being the bastard child of a legally-unmarried American citizen mother.
@Dave Burton – First I beg Anthony’s indulgence as I understand this is off topic.
But Second, David, according to your first link (parents legally married), I come down to the years 52-86, and that only one parent was a citizen (natural). It states that his mother had to have lived in the US for at least 10 years, 5 of which were after age 14. And that alone qualified his citizenship. I think it is clear that she (his mother) did live in the US the requisite time, so would that not make (leaving aside the legally married part for the moment) him a Citizen regardless of where he was born (since there are no qualifications on the location for that line)?
That “Tauntology” has , unfortunately WARPED me some. I now look forward to undesirable climate change- global cooling, which will undoubtedly result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions, as an “in your face” to CAGWers.
When debating alarmists it’s best to use sources that they have faith in such as the IPCC reports Working Group I and scepticalscience.conjob if you can. For instance you can use scepticalscience.conjob trend calculator to show there has been no statistically significant warming for between 16 yrs to 23 yrs, and you can use the working group I report to show no increasing trends in extreme weather, etc. Alarmists try to neutralise your argument (regardless of how good it is) by denigrating your source. If you use the sources they have faith in you can hoist them on their own petard and there’s nothing they can do about it except start spluttering like the village idiot choking on a chicken bone. Same thing goes for political debates.
Jimbo says:
June 18, 2014 at 1:18 pm
“This is one of the reasons I create my lists…”
Jimbo, have you ever thought of writing a book with all your lists..?
The ones with actual newspaper clips from 100+ years ago are fascinating.
And the links are great!
You need a good book title and good cover artwork
Regards – JPP
It bears saying it again…
philjourdan says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:13 am
Desperation is never pretty.
I live near Asheville. I almost feel that some of his alarmist relatives have me surrounded.
I would like to second Mr Peterson’s suggestion.
I personally would pay for such a publication. Jimbo, just so you know, when I am slightly pressured for time I will very often just rapidly skim down a long comment thread to pattern-recognition your name and will make a point of only reading your contribution.
Hope that doesn’t embarrass you mate. It’s only a compliment.
Would anyone else reading in like to offer a view?
So funny … so sad.
I will take bets that the alarmists will be the footnote not the skeptics.
Mark Ruscoe, I recommend you invite readers here to engage in a bit of skeptic activism on your Facebook debate. I doubt the Kool-Aid drinking counter-party could endure the vast knowledge that would immediately support your arguments.
“Climate alarmism is a mental illness.
Climate alarmism is not a mental illness, it’s simply human nature. The term for it is cognitive dissonance and it’s prevalent in nearly everything people hold opinions on. And generally the smarter the person is the worse it is.
When a person holds a firm opinion on a topic for a long time and they are intelligent, their minds won’t accept the idea they can be wrong. Evidence to the contrary is ignored with the excuse generally being about the reliability of the source of the evidence or the person presenting the contrary evidence is written off as a right winger, racist, birther, denier, or whatever label the person thinks is appropriate.”
Many know that environmentalism and climate claims are just used as a platform to promote leftist solutions and ideology. They have invested heavily is this since the late 1980s and will never give up on this so close to victory nationally and internationally?
[yeah, lets not go there – mod]
I’ve been wracking my tiny little brain trying to find the hidden gem in your comment above, but the only conclusion I can come to is that you’re a [self-snip].
Warmists feel self assured to put 100% of their faith in the AGW line because they feel mistakenly that there is no downside. They have swallowed the idea that even if they’re wrong about AGW they’ll still be cleaning up the planet and only good things will result from that campaign. Economic hardship, enforced population control, and curtailment of liberty are too arcane to enter into their thinking.
“I’ve been wracking my tiny little brain trying to find the hidden gem in your comment above, but the only conclusion I can come to is that you’re a [self-snip].”
Strawman builder? No-one even claimed it to be “news”, and I don’t recall any laws stating that WUWT posts have to be.
No matter how the real believers react, there is a positive side on this kinds of debates: there are always lurkers looking at the arguments from both sides, but who don’t interfere. If one of the sides start name calling without arguments, they lost and the “silent majority” knows who is right: if you stay calm and simply put the right arguments out, you have convinced them.
That is personal experience in several fierce debates I had in the past (not about climate, but about dioxins and chlorine/PVC).
In these debates the thing which undermines any reasonable discussion is the reductionist idea that you are either a ‘denier’ or a ‘warmest’ In reality there is no such thing either way, it’s a continuum where people sit in a position where the majority of their beliefs tends to push them one way or the other. For example there a probably many things you agree on, the planet is warming, the Arctic is decreasing in size and Co2 is rising. That is a major area of agreement. The questions of how fast, for how long and why are not issues which should be that divisive. It is perfectly possible to take two pieces of fact, draw two differing conclusions which can be both correct, dependant on your stance. In reality there is a substantial body of evidence which links Co2 to climate change, but there are also a substantial amount of questions still to be answered. You chances are that you have more common ground with your adversaries than you realise.
I read somewhere that plants are growing 14% faster due to elevated CO2. Just tell them their marijuana will be cheaper and you all will be best buddies again.
Gareth Phillips:
You provide a nice try but fail to get the coconut when you write in your post at June 19, 2014 at 12:44 am
NO! There is no evidence of any kind “which links Co2 to climate change”; none, zilch, nada.
Three decades of research at a cost of over US$5 billion per year has failed to find any such evidence.
There are good reasons to suppose that if all other things remaining unchanged then increased atmospheric CO2 concentration would affect climate, but the climate system is never unchanging, and so those reasons cannot be “evidence which links Co2 to climate change”.
But you are right when you say “there are also a substantial amount of questions still to be answered”. Those questions pertain to every aspect of observed and potential climate change.
Richard
They are locked into what they believe. Truth or facts don’t matter. Worse they use propaganda to back up their already false statements and false science. Once the person is locked into their ‘system’ of belief nothing will shift them, it doesn’t matter what you present to support your argument, they will not be moved! This is fact.
John F. Hultquist says:
“Maybe this: You now know, and perhaps others have learned, that for many people the climate cause has become a religion. Science and religion are fundamentally different. I think it is important to note that science issues are argued with essays, religious issues are settled with guns.”
I see statements like this often and it bothers me. It gives way to much credit to “science” and far too little to “religion.” Science and religion are both institutions of mankind, setting up a process of which we use to answer questions. Science is a process we use to study our surroundings and religion is a process we use to answer questions that tend to extend beyond our physical surroundings. Both are actually closer in essence. This comment takes the end actions used by the people themselves and attributes them to the institution, which I believe is a fallacy.
Manmade global warming is proof and point as you have scientists who have not followed the scientific process and followers that do not care to understand and challenge even the basics, so they resort to blame and violence, both of which are historical attributes of mankind, which can be channeled through any institution (politics comes to mind for some reason). The same happens in religion, if you set up a rigorous doctrine and you push your theologians to study and train under disciplined guidelines and processes, then you end up with people debating and writing essays and studies as honorable men, who then lead the followers and edify them. Otherwise you end up with catastrophes such as the Crusades and more recently, exact and false predictions of “end times.”
Right now science is treated more like some almighty entity and not a process by which to study, which is why we teach our children the studies themselves instead of the means of study and the proper way to perform that study. I think the blame game and violent nature we see these days are more attributed to lack of self-control and humility, which is why it shows up in scientific, political, and religious avenues.
To the people wondering how these people will be doing 20-50 years down the road and reality has diverged even more from The Models That Be: it’s very easy to foresee.
We’ve been there before, actually.
I have long kept a close watch over the soviet/Mao/khmer/Castro apologists back in the 60s. I’ve also taken note of the neo-malthusians of the 70s. Half a century down the road, they’ve basically grown weaker and weaker, with a main base eroding slowly at first and then faster and faster, abruptly leaving just a core basket of nutcases on the day the Wall was teared down by Berliners. A core that grew more radical as reality assaulted their beliefs harder and harder. Nowadays there is but a handful of them “first-day true believers” left and they have become absolute parodies of the very caricatures of them that we would draw back then. “In denial” and “delusive” does not even begin to describe them. I liken that mental illness to a form of senility: the neuron pathways have become burned, etched-in far too long to rescind, so something else has to give way: perception of reality does.
The sad thing is, the main base has simply moved to something else to fill in the void. AGW has replaced Mad Cow Epidemic has replaced Ozon Layer Gone has replaced New Ice Age Now has replaced Mass Starvation Inevitable. Every single time, the Numbers Are Irrefutable and You Are Evil for confronting it.
As with all great scientific truths it goes:
– Experts promptly dismiss the theory as garbage, won’t discuss further
– Core expert group mounts devastating rebuttal to theory, proclaims case is closed
– Experts call for government intervention as the very foundation of science, wisdom and knowledge is threatened
– Experts generously admit they knew theory was right all along
Even if our theories are false and our facts are contrary to nature, it’s still the right thing (TM) to do!
The TAO of Liberalism.
A man cannot serve two masters, nor can he have liberals for friends.
Re Eustace comment earlier, It occurs to me, that if the alarummist type is outraged merely by
encountering contrary opinion, unleashing the whole 9 1/2 yards of Socratic method would
only purpulate them into a howling rage, worthy of the great Fawlty one.
Mark,
As far as Climate Alarmists are concerned, they have a need to believe, they want to believe and g**d***it, they’re gonna believe no matter what. Even when you go to the great lengths you did, to spell it out clearly by presenting them with the facts. The best they can do is to claim you are wrong.
You could make exactly the same claim he signed off with, against him. His is an act of faith and not scientific proof. Indeed, we’ll see who has the last laugh in fifty to a hundred years from now. You or him? Well, I’m laughing at that one now.
James in Perth says, ”Climate alarmism is a mental illness.” Yes. There’s madness in their method.
If Global Cooling begins in earnest, will we burn more coal, to create more CO2, to warm the Planet?
I think it best to not call leftists “liberals”. Liberals believe in liberty. Leftists do not.
It hurts my brain every time I hear the term “Liberal” used in that way.
There are some democrats who are liberal. There are some Republicans who are liberal. But mostly, the main parties function to promote ideology at the expense of liberty.
philjordan replied to my comment and asked, “according to your first link (parents legally married), I come down to the years 52-86, and that only one parent was a citizen (natural). It states that [Obama’s] mother had to have lived in the US for at least 10 years, 5 of which were after age 14. And that alone qualified his citizenship. I think it is clear that she (his mother) did live in the US the requisite time…”
No, she didn’t live in the U.S. the requisite time. Stanley Ann Dunham, was born November 29, 1942, and Obama was born August 4, 1961, so Dunham was only 18 years, 8 months & 5 days old when her baby (the future President Obama) was born. That means only 4 years, 8 months & 5 days had elapsed since her 14th birthday, which is less than the 5 year minimum needed to qualify her baby for citizenship on that basis.
@Dave Burton – I appreciate the information. I was not aware of her age.
We are not “deniers” or “skeptics” we are “realists” because our beliefs are based on real world data, not a computer model or a show of hands.
probono wrote, “I read somewhere that plants are growing 14% faster due to elevated CO2…”
The improvements in plant growth rates from elevated CO2 levels vary from one species to another. All crops benefit, but C4 plants like corn benefit less than C3 plants like wheat, rice & soybeans.
Overall agricultural productivity is considerably higher at 400 ppm than 300 ppm CO2, and it will be higher yet at 500 or 600 ppm. If you look at plant growth rates in response to CO2 enrichment & depletion, that conclusion is inescapable.
Greenhouses are commonly run at ~1500 ppm CO2, to improve plant growth.
America’s most illustrious living scientist, Prof. Freeman Dyson, told Paul Mulshine of The Star Ledger / NJ.com that, “about 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO2 we put in the atmosphere.”
In fact, that’s a conservative estimate because, Prof. Dyson told me, “I like to be more cautious in my public statements.”
(Note that “15% of [current] agricultural yields” means a 17.6% improvement over what yields would be without anthropogenic CO2.)
I would say “at least 15%“, for two reasons:
1. Bunce (2012) finds that the Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) methodology results in an underestimate of the agricultural productivity improvement from higher CO2 level, as also explained by Prof. George Hendrey.
2. The intuitive reason that, as decades pass, natural selection will cause plant phenotypes to adjust to environmental changes, enabling them to better utilize higher CO2 levels, compared to what shorter-duration studies measure.
Scientific American began using articles written by their staff journalists in the 1990s while also reducing the content written by frontline researchers. It was worst mistake they ever made in my opinion, but perhaps SA could not have survived in any other form. Perhaps the market for general readership articles with deep content in slickly published magazines began to vanish in the 1990s and is now essentially gone.
Whenever faced with a ‘warmist’ trying to convince me that the world is in danger from CO2 emissions I just ask, ‘what is the actual % of CO2 in the atmosphere?’
Answers, so far, range from 10% up to 60%… When I confirm it is 0.04%, and have they heard of the organisation called 350.org (most have) I just suggest that the answer is the nearly same, but in different units. They either walk away or change the subject.
Folks, thanks for your comments. Even more chilling than my antagonist’s final passage were the several times throughout the debate when he suggested I didn’t even deserve the right to an opinion. In a sense, it was worth engaging this further as I felt the vituperative, desperate
nature would not be lost on other participants in the thread (even though, given the orientation of most of them, they never made note of it).
I should also say that, as basic as my understanding of climate science is, I get the the scientific method and consider myself versed in logic. This gentleman’s grasp on the science was truly poor, and virtually all he could offer was repeated ad hominem.
However insulting the tone of much of the 239 post exchange, I nevertheless valued the experience. First, I took none of personally. It was merely a reflection on the state of his level of knowledge and intolerance for debate…nothing else. Which is always valuable to expose. Second, I remain fond friends with other left-leaning participants in the thread, and have hopes that the experience will prompt positive change for them as they see how silly comments can become when taken to the extreme.
Cheers.
FB is useful because many “friends” do not know that there is another side to this story. That fact is news.
Umm, why are you quoting me? I was referring Mosher’s drive-by, not the OP.
I guess thats what happens when somebody questions the Global Warming dogmatic psuedoecotheocratic beliefs.