I wanted to highlight an interesting article by Dr. Daniel Botkin. It seems that it helps to be a Professor Emeritus in order to be able to speak your mind freely. Among other things, Dr. Botkin says:
Whatever is happening to Earth’s climate does not seem to be our fault.
What he said …
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Climate Is Changing, And Some Parks Are Endangered, But Humans Aren’t The Cause
Editor’s note: The climate is changing, but is it humankind’s fault? Daniel B. Botkin, professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at University of California Santa Barbara, doesn’t believe so. In the following column, he dissects the conclusions reached by the Union of Concerned Scientists in its report, National Landmarks at Risk, How Rising Seas, Floods, and Wildfires Are Threatening the United States’ Most Cherished Historic Sites.
Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge The only wildlife refuge in the National Park System lies within New York City, and is not on the Union of Concerned Scientists List. The refuge is the largest bird migration stop in the Northeast, and serves as a buffer protecting urban development from major storms. Its well-developed paths among birds and flowering plants and along inland wetlands and waterways are available by public transportation to the 8.6 million residents of New York City. (Photo by the author)
See the full article here.
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Willis is right.
We’re slowly winning the battle, but the pace to ultimate victory will quicken with each passing year of low~falling global temp trends.
Just to achieve CAGW’s low-end projection of 3C by 2100 would require a CO2 induced warming trend of about 0.3C/decade for the next 85 straight years starting from tomorrow, which isn’t going to happen.
The CAGW alarmists will, of course, move the goal posts downward, but there is the Catch 22 in doing so…
CAGW alarmists’ current plan is to waste $100’s of trillions to cut fossil fuel emissions 50~80% to achieve a global-warming goal of 2C by 2100…
However, If CO2’s projected ECS is equal to or less than 2C, it would be completely insane to waste $100’s of trillions to achieve a goal, which will occur naturally if we don’t spend a dime…
Obviously, the way around this Catch 22 is to lower the 2C target, but in doing so, even low-information voters will realize the dishonesty and theft on display…
It’s fun watching the alarmist squirm…
This will be the warmest year on record.
Not too surprising as it has warmed and wiggles at the top can easily put us over the last high. Even though there has been no real trend this millennium and no correlation with CO2 either.
But the media will have a field day with that little nugget.
It ain’t over yet.
Why does Botkin or anyone else think that all of 7 inches of sea level rise in one hundred years is ‘definitely a problem’? Nobody would have noticed if it hadn’t been measured.
UoCS splatted and debunked 100% What will happen to Kenji’s membership now. If I were him (Kenji) I would write in and resign my membership.
Since this is truly not about the weather and climate we so dearly love, the fact we are right means nothing given the true agenda of the people that oppose us on this. They could care less about what is right and wrong, and its impossible to fight a fight that isnt the real fight. Until the people that pull the strings of gvt change, and its not going to happen, it doesnt matter what is right and wrong on a whole host of issues today
We have to face facts. we are right, they are wrong on the climate. But it really doesnt make a difference since that is not the fight they are really fighting
I have often said that it’s not about the (climate) science. It is about their goals. One of them is to force renewable energy on the planet. Another is to curtail industrial development and thus capitalism.
Also to curb individual liberty and free will.
Joe, you are on target. Watch for flak.
RC blog appears to be down
http://www.realclimate.org/
Anne Widdecombe has an interesting article in the Daily Express name ‘Fighting the nonsense’
Forgot the link (doh!)
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/528569/Ann-Widdecombe-on-Climate-change-Ched-Evans-and-Fiona-Woolf
I read the original and the responses at the National Parks Traveler site. The response by Burnett included comments supported by distorted information. And this is the problem I see with this whole issue, it seems we are trying to engage in a civil debate about an important issue, but we can´t trust the numbers used by the government or quite a few of its supporters.
Somebody ought to ask Burnett what caused the increase in the firefighting budget, was it a government decision, or was it global warming when the budget TRIPLED in 1999?
Here is the full article as a PDF with discussion included:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RXGJAF_XL5VzdVUjd3VldDVkk/view?usp=sharing
The comment by Alfred Runte is noteworthy:
Submitted by Alfred Runte on October 28, 2014 – 10:47am.
Just for the record, Dan Botkin has more scientific credentials than anyone could shake a stick at. And is that not the point? Doing science is far different from arguing about it. Dr. Botkin has done science all his life. Most of the rest of us are just tossing out opinions, nor does it matter which side we’re on.
As responsible citizens we should be open-minded, but no, that is not what the media teaches these days—or higher education. It is all about guilt, guilt, guilt. Who is guilty of slavery? Who is guilty of poverty? And now: Who is guilty of warming the earth?
Again, for the record, Dan Botkin agrees about the need to replace fossil fuels. But that is based on science and not on guilt. I have read his book on renewable energy. It is another masterpiece committed to solving the problem rather than passing out guilt, guilt, guilt. No wonder the press ignores it. No, I don’t agree with all of its conclusions, but the science behind those conclusions is eminently sound.
This is to explain the source of so much anger here—and downright anti-intellectualism just to make a point. We get angry when we are made to think. Take that business about the 97 percent of scientists who believe in global warming. Well, what other choice do they have? As Dr. Botkin has carefully explained, global warming is an observable, scientific fact. What the press keeps leaving out is the timeframe, a mere 10,000 years. Dr. Botkin dares complete the thought. Just because we think global warming has gone on far too long, how are we to stop it? No one has been able to suspend the earth at the point he wanted—or thought he wanted—and no one ever will.
Say we could reverse global warming. Then what? What if somehow we reversed it much too far? A scientist allows for that possibility—all possibilities. The point about dispensing guilt is to gain an advantage based on assertions that no one dare dispute.
We are barely allowed to call it political correctness. Fake courses in African-American Studies? Did the University of North Carolina really do that? You bet it did, and you bet “scientists” are doing it, too, for that is exactly how political correctness works.
We prefer our thinking “light.” Lite beer, lite thoughts, lite research—go to commercial. I can just imagine Barbara Walters in 10,000 B.C. reporting on the disappearance of the Bering Land Bridge. “My God, how did the Mastodon Party ever allow global warming to happen? There goes the only bridge we had!”
Well, we seem to have invented more bridges. Which remains the scientific point. Human beings have needed to adjust for three million years. When the Bering Land Bridge finally disappeared, somehow Asia and Europe learned how to sail. And yes, if the Bering Land Bridge had been a national park, it would have been wiped out in the rising seas. No national park is “guaranteed” to us. Even Yellowstone cannot assure us with absolute certainty that one day soon it won’t blow its top.
If you want to blame someone, blame the creative forces that made the system, over which we have absolutely no control. Yes, Al Gore will assert we do—and has a prize to prove it—but every graveyard in this country says something else.
How ironic we no longer ask the question why we would ever want a colder planet. Our ancestors most certainly ran from that. Just as many now hope to run from Africa and escape the Ebola scourge. I would welcome them were it not an infectious disease, but again, who dares say how infectious? Why interrupt a wonderful story of humans doing good? Why? Because it was disease, not global warming, that depopulated the world in 1347, and in 1918 contributed far more deaths on the planet than even World War I.
Come on, Mr. Gore. You have time to write another book. Or do you? Sorry for the inconvenience, as you say, but Ebola kills you in a week. And with a mortality rate of 70 percent, I would say that is a bit worse than global warming.
I agree that Runte did a good fending off some of the more extreme commenters. I hear echoes of Simon, Wildavsky and Lomborg in the Botkin piece. I also see the Ehrlich inspired scare mongering Malthusians, Utopians and Marxists, who essentially want to rid the world of you and me, but not themselves. Pot banging drowns out facts, discourse and debate.
I recently read Botkin’s book, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell. It’s mostly about ecology, and his objections to the environmentalist orthodoxy that an ecosystem is a stable equilibrium until humans disrupt it. But there is a chapter or two on climate change as well, and the perils of relying on models. Well worth a read, as it comes at the topic from a very different perspective.
Thanks Willis.
Slowly is the wise word.
Most candidates in municipal elections either belief eco-alarmism or pander too it, all are control-minded, most shallow.
A shining exception is Scott Attril at http://www.mayorofesquimalt.com/, who is clear on his views and values.
Winning? Maybe.
Yesterday I attended, at the University of Pittsburgh, the “Jonas Salk Centenary Symposium on Sustainability: Survival of the Wisest” (Survival of the Wisest is the title of a book published in 1972 by Dr. Jonas Salk who developed the polio vaccine here in Pittsburgh).
Invited speakers about “Sustainability” used the following equations (although not always present on their slides):
Fossil Fuel = CO2 + H2O + Heat
CO2 = Heat
So, no more coal, oil or natural gas. Only solar panels or wind turbines permitted.
Widely applauded by the audience, even here with all the jobs created from natural gas extraction and lower cost of energy.
Forget the photosynthesis equation presented above by Mike Maguire. They don’t know anything about it.
The last speaker, Nick Kristof from NYT, did not speak on this topic but did mention briefly malaria in Africa and the fact that yes, malaria has been declining with the more recent introduction, again, of DDT. No applause for this. You can guess the country supplying DDT. Something long denied to Africans by the Western World in now supplied by China! Maybe Africa will continue to win against malaria.
Reflecting on this Symposium, the war against fossil fuels will change terminology.
First is was Global Warming. This worked for a while. It was changed to Climate Change. Probably still working, but not so well. So to stay ahead, Sustainability has been introduced and will slowly replace Climate Change.
Heh, Alfred Runte’s last word is good, too. I encourage reading through the comments. I’ve only seen the um ‘edited’ comments so I might have missed some of the early flavor, but the comments definitely indicate a movement to skepticism.
Just look at the tone of what remains among the comments. The fever of madness is passing in this grandest yet example of an ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusion and Madness of the Crowd’.
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I dearly hope you are correct, my dear.
Willis Eschenbach,
The Botkin article was refreshing after suffering through the UCS report’s lack intellectual integrity levels.
Botkin’s reasonable discussion in an even toned manner had a wonderful communication value for me.
John
In his article I think Botkin correctly states the UCS’s single fundamental premise of their whole report. Botkin wrote,
&
In his article I think Botkin correctly identifies nature’s root contradiction of the UCS’s premise. Botkin wrote,
Right now after the passing of >>25 years since the same premise as the UCS report’s premise was first asserted to be unquestionable there exists insignificant support of it in corroborated and multiple observations of the EAS.
The UCS report relies on a false premise.
John
More.
“Editor’s note: Adam Markham, director of climate impacts for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy Program and a co-author of the report “National Landmarks at Risk,” has written the following rebuttal to Dr. Daniel B. Botkin’s column on climate change and his thoughts on what is, and isn’t, driving it.
My colleagues and I wanted to respond to a recent column by Dr. Daniel Botkin that criticized a report we wrote regarding the threats climate change poses to historic places and landmarks in the United States.”
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2014/10/guest-column-defending-science-explains-climate-change25839
Meh.
Hmm. Reads like a straight out appeal to authority. Sad times for science.
” As a consequence, native villages such as Kivalina and Shishmaref will have to relocate to protect their residents, and archaeological sites that are more than 4,000 years old are being washed away.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/02/the-sixth-first-climate-refugees/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/09/breaking-news-seventh-first-climate-refugees-discovered/