Guest Essay by Eric Worrall
Piers Sellers is a NASA climate scientist with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. His dying wish is that we should listen to his concerns about CO2 – but with the greatest respect, he is not saying anything new.
Cancer and Climate Change
I’M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?
…
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.
…
As for me, I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.
And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/cancer-and-climate-change.html
As someone who has also been at death’s door, when my appendix ruptured two years ago, I have the deepest sympathy with Pier’s condition. Its horrible to look at your loved ones, and know that this might be the last time you see them.
However, it is disturbing that Sellers would attempt to use his dire personal health issues as an appeal to emotion, to promote his views about climate change. Science is supposed to be about reason, logic and evidence, not desperate appeals for sympathy. To me, Sellers’ attempt to conflate empathy for his condition, with an appeal for climate action, betrays the weakness of his science, and is symptomatic of the utter fanaticism which I believe lies at the heart of the climate craze.
When I was in hospital, I wasn’t thinking about the subject of my next climate post. I had other things on my mind.
This is a hard post. Having lost both of my parents, I agree Eric, that most people have different things on their minds at times like this. My heart goes out to him and his family. But I think it’s truly sad that he can view the Earth from that perspective, and be subject to the incredibly powerful forces it exhibits and realize how microscopic humanity is and still feel like he needs to, or even can, save it from us.
People often cling to their religion at times like this. Sellers is clinging to his.
Exactly this ^^
It’s not religion, it’s science.
Chris, the SCIENCE indicates there is NO GLOBAL WARMING. In fact, we’re seeing a slight DECLINE in temperatures and some of the most respected climate scientists on the planet–those in Russia–predict a cooling trend for the next several decades.
Certainly, CO2 is NOT the control knob some wish it were–politicians can’t control it or us even though they’ve tried. Global Warming is nothing more than a meme–it doesn’t even rise to the status of an hypothesis.
So please get over your obsession with so-called climate models, for they start with erroneous assumptions and *surprise*, end with erroneous predictions.
Standard New York Times journalism. I’ve had enough personal experience with The Press to know well how they distort, spin, and outright misquote interviewees in order to stick with the meme they want to express. Honest–he might not even have really said this!
OTOH, I can well understand how someone who’s devoted his life to what he devoutly feels is a compelling, over-arching cause wants to depart the scene believing his life and work had meaning; “Oh, whoops, AGW’s not a thing” would deprive him of that scant comfort, so he’s going down with his colors nailed to the mast, at least as quoted by the NYT.
But I would think the greatest comfort of all would BE to know that the Earth is in no particular danger, and will keep on turning tomorrow.
What is sad is when he mentions seeing hurricanes in the past. They seem to become rather scarce lately.
“It’s not religion, it’s science.”
The brilliant people who helped him get into space used The US Standard Atmosphere Model and real, un-adjusted observations to put him into space. The US Standard Atmosphere was a massive effort and was critical to the entire space program and aeronautics in general — and mentioned no CO2 warming at all. None. Nada.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-us-standard-atmosphere-model.html
There is no CO2 “control knob” and only the deluded, propagandized, misled, or the dishonest believe that.
Chris, it is science and the science says there is at present no global warming and that the climate is changing, for the better, at least during my lifetime.
Change disturbs many people. They worry that things will be different from what they remember, which of course is not reality, but what little they remember of it.
CAGW is not science, it is emotional constructs based on some of the available science.
Chris,
Just because many people believe in a lie doesn’t make it a truth.
Millions of Muslims believe that Jihad is the path the salvation. Followers of the IPCC believe that redistributive economics under the guide of climate reparations will save the world (although many don’t realize that this is what they have embraced). What’s the difference since neither is supporter by physics, both have ostensibly righteous ends that they believe supports self destructive means and the followers of both are driven by faith alone?
If you are deluded into believing that physics supports CAGW, what is the specific physics that overrides the requirements of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and corresponding sensitivity range of between 0.2 and 0.3 C per W/m^2 in order to support the incredibly insane sensitivity range claimed by the IPCC of 0.4 – 1.2 C per W/m^2? Bear in mind that the only thing that supports the IPCC lower limit of 0.4C per W/m^2 is that below this, the IPCC can’t justify its existence.
Jay Hope,
Apropos your last name I would agree that some people often do, unless they are haunted by their self-perceived sins … at which point I’d imagine that their dying wish is that they didn’t have faith. Other people staring death in the face profess faith at the final moment on the off chance they actually still have something to lose.
Some people also consider that putting too much stock in their own abilities as a clairvoyant to be a form of unfounded faith, and look askance at comments which don’t evidently allow for the possibility of being wrong.
I personally think “religious faith” a very different form of belief from that which is based on trusting empirical evidence, physical theory and mathematics — and trusting the vast amount of work done by others who do what I don’t have the time and expertise to investigate myself. Many of my own conclusions are almost certainly wrong, perhaps even fatally so. I frankly hope they are, and what gives me any chance of finding that out is that they’re testable and therefore falsifiable.
I can’t imagine Eric Sellers AGW “religion” is materially different from my own. Of course, I could just be projecting my own motives and values on him for the sake of advancing an argument.
Jay I think that’s very insightful. In this situation I find it hard to express my feelings about that, but I do believe you’re 100% correct.
While it may seem harsh, the plain facts are that almost everyone reading this post will be dead long before we see 1.6 C rise in temperatures from pre-industrial times. And from the IPCC’s numbers, global warming will be a NET BENEFIT for that entire time. It is only after temps rise more than 1.6C that we return to break even then go negative.
So while Eric spends his time worrying about CO2, with the likely negative impact of this stress on his health, he should instead be rejoicing that at this present time the world is enjoying the benefits of global warming. We are feeding more people and keeping them in better health and giving them longer lives and much better standards of living than at any time in history.
For my part I refuse to be negative about CO2 and global warming. I’m old enough to remember the famines we had 50 and 60 years ago, when temperatures dropped and crops failed. Mass starvation is like climatologists snow, largely a thing of the past in a warmer world.
And if one looks at the accrued benefits from global warming, from pre-industrial times to around 2070 when we reach 1.6C of warming, that represents trillion upon trillions of dollars of benefits we would not have received without global warming.
So while the benefits of global warming will turn negative around 2070, we still have these trillions upon trillions of dollars of accrued benefits. it isn’t until about 2150 that the accrued cost of warming finally equals the accrued benefits of warming, and we finally truly have a negative result from global warming.
And for my part, I firmly believe that by 2150 there is a pretty good chance that we will have perfected fusion power, that every household will have a Mr Fusion, that we won’t throw out garbage. Instead we will use garbage as feed-stock to our Mr Fusion and our 3D printers. Anytime we need something, we will simply print it out, using recycled garbage. One man’s trash will truly be another man’s treasure.
Here is how the accrued benefits and costs of global warming play out at different interest rates. These are based on the IPCC’s own figures. As you can see, if real interest rates are zero, it isn’t until 2150 that Global Warming finally turns out to be negative. If real interest rates are positive, the accrued benefits of global warming last even longer.
http://oi65.tinypic.com/2dhb1nk.jpg
I think you mean Piers, Ferd.
Eric is the WUWT moderator and frequent guest writer, who does not promote alarmism.
ferdberple,
Concern for future generations is arguably one of our species’ best survival traits.
Since we’re taking the IPCC at their word for the moment, it’s also their considered opinion that staying below the 2 C target is going to be difficult to do while at the same time not destroying the economy trying — the latter of which being something that no one who is sane and caring wishes to do. Eric echoes those very sentiments in his op-ed. Some people apparently can see beyond the end of their own existence AND feel a sense of responsibility for some portion of the possible impacts of their own (in)actions; one hopes you won’t require a terminal cancer diagnosis to awaken that perspective. Or at the very least, honestly recognize it for what it is even if you don’t agree with it.
One might also hope you avoid a terminal cancer diagnosis altogether; however, as you allude above, something is going to get all of us eventually … and I am struggling at the moment to keep my comments on the more charitable side of critical.
He’s going to die no matter what he does. I think he “should” be spending his time doing whatever it is he most wants to do with what precious little time he’s got left.
Gates says:
Concern for future generations is arguably one of our species’ best survival traits.
If so, then an elite has commandeered the trait, and they’re spending our descendants’ money.
And:
Since we’re taking the IPCC at their word for the moment, it’s also their considered opinion that staying below the 2 C target is going to be difficult to do while at the same time not destroying the economy…
A couple questions: who decided that 2ºC has to be the cutoff point between a benign climate and climate catastrophe? And is destroying the economy any concern to those folks? Because it looks like an elite clique of self-serving hoax promoters in the UN is trying to make the largest fraction of humanity poor, while they cash in. Plato proposed the same rules a couple thousand years ago.
I don’t pay much attention to what politicians like the UN say, so I question their plan. They started this scam with a preconceived conclusion, and everything they say and do has supported their ready-made conclusion. Any contrary facts, evidence, observations or data is either disregarded or jettisoned, leaving only what supports their confirmation bias.
So go ahead, call me crazy. But I can practically feel their fingers rooting around in my wallet…
dbstealey,
My cynical reading of history is that the elite have been doing this as a form of self-preservation (and yes, enrichment) since, well, the dawn of history. Remarkably, it’s worked out rather well for some of us. Let it not be said I don’t agree that greed can be good.
That’s a good question, Stealey, who DID say that?
It is to me, and I don’t consider myself alone in that.
The largest fraction of humanity is already poor, DB. It’s not at all evident to me that cheap clean fossil fuels are the magically universal boon to humanity you so often portray them to be. That isn’t to say that to date they haven’t worked out quite well for me and mine. I do think your first-world concern for the third world is touching, however. Would that we could all be so altruistic.
Well yes, one common effect of ignorance is that it leaves open questions. At least you’re asking them …
… or not. You just said you don’t pay much attention to them. Now you’re convinced that what they’ve written — which you admit you don’t know much about — is a scam based on preconceived conclusions. Congrats, you’ve claimed my fourth and your second irony meter of the year.
You’re killing me here. First thing that comes to mind is all the times you’ve posted this plot …
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Omlo7ioHN_w/VOennahXbCI/AAAAAAAAAWQ/tJ5tB7kdSF4/s1600/CO2%2Bnormalized%2Bvs%2BRSS.png
… and declared victory. Never mind this one …
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rTuLMZXv8jM/VLdp7K9eZoI/AAAAAAAAARQ/RBXphKnvD6c/s1600/image_thumb265.png
… which is a master exercise in obfuscation, or this one …
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8jirwsbMKpM/VM-QdaKirrI/AAAAAAAAAUU/A_II4eShjHQ/s1600/Climate-Model-Comparison.png
… wherein it is suddenly ok again to scale the y-axis so that it actually conveys useful information …
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wGX4QFvJi34/VM-Qy5dKHZI/AAAAAAAAAUc/4ga4Xt01E_s/s1600/Climate-Model-Comparison%2BSpencer.png
… but which is a master exercise in playing games with short (5-year) trends in a dataset exhibiting a dominant 5ish year pseudo-periodic oscillation.
But tell me, how often have you posted this one, Stealey?
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
The vast majority of the energy going into the climate system is represented by that curve, and not a “pause” in sight. Whereas the majority of YOUR argument boils down to …
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lUy0GCecNd8/VptNBZ7AdOI/AAAAAAAAAjI/5VNCTB9GODw/s640/xhs8j.jpg
… which observations only estimate what’s going on in less than a percent of the total energy in the system, and quite possibly some part of it that we expect to be cooling due to rising CO2 concentration …
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rgGRw3GZqN0/VnBiqxSngtI/AAAAAAAAAgE/Qb_cVR0At9I/s640/RATPAC-A%2BTemperature%2BTrends%2Bby%2BAltitude.png
… and which balloon-born radiosondes with far better vertical resolution from inside the atmosphere are telling us is already occurring according to the prediction of stratospheric cooling.
Your little narrative about confirmation bias looks a bit … what’s the elite word to use here … risible. As in, laughably not robust. As in, go ahead Stealey, pull my other one.
My guess is not particularly self-aware, and more than a little intellectually dishonest. But I’m only guessing. I defer surer knowledge about what other people are thinking to those of you here who confidently claim to know the innards of everyone else’s brains.
I know, right? Think of all the poor Africans we could help with charitable contributions of our own volition if the IPCC wasn’t out to tax carbon and keep the proceeds for themselves!
Gates, it’s amusing how easy it is to get you spun up. ☺
But to pick one sentence that encapsulates our disagreement, it’s this:
It’s not at all evident to me that cheap clean fossil fuels are the magically universal boon to humanity you so often portray them to be.
I’d bet it’s evident to the folks who don’t have access to ‘clean cheap fossil fuels’.
dbstealey,
Except that I don’t disagree with you on that point. Try again.
Brandon Gates January 17, 2016 at 1:54 pm
Except that I don’t disagree with you on that point. Try again.
dbstealey January 17, 2016 at 1:33 pm
I’d bet it’s evident to the folks who don’t have access to ‘clean cheap fossil fuels’.
Brandon Gates, before you carry on with any more graphs, etc., do first learn some reading skills.
Your approval or disapproval was not the focus of dbstealey’s statement. To be blunt, you don’t count
nor I, nor dbstealey. Its the people he was referring to. Let’s see if you can put the sanctimonious ego aside and learn. Re-read, until you get it right, then say Mike, dbstealey, oops, and we (at least me) will let you down easy. I have found you to be intelligent, please don’t prove me wrong in that regard.
michael
P.S. I hate gristle.
He’s intelligent, just not logical. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Foot meet mouth. sorry Brandon Gates it is I who needs the lesson on reading (you were agreeing)
Again Sorry sorry sorry
michael
and I really really hate gristle
Mike the Morlock,
One apololgy was quite sufficient and accepted. I’ve been known to screw up my own double-negatives from time to time. Horrors.
If it helps any, davidmhoffer served me a whole platter of crow the other day …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/12/claim-greenland-ice-sheet-melts-more-when-its-cloudy/#comment-2119003
… and I had no choice but to masticate every bone and feather of that sucker. [burp]
Yeah, tastes even worse the 2nd time around.
Cheers.
Aphan,
You’ll correct me if I’m wrong, I’m sure, but my recollection is that you’re just not that big on statistical inference.
So are entire systems of logic, especially the one upon which much of empirical science has been done since the concept was invented.
Some words of advice for you, Gates:
http://americandigest.org/sidelines/aa380croppedamaythe_babyjesus.jpg
I don’t feel sorry for him at all. He admits that what he expected at this point in his life has not happened and yet he wants to continue wasting precious resources that could be used to solve real problems and new cures for disease including cancer.
Well I lost two members of my family last year in the most horrible way one could even imagine.
Using such personal situations to advance some cult credo, is to me beneath contempt.
g
No , please don’t respond to this.
With all due respect, Eric, an out of control peritonitis may be pretty horrible and dire, but that is not quite the same one way, dead end street as is stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
As is evidenced by your subsequent recovery.
All the more credit to Piers for having time for concerns other than his own. Be those concerns correct or not.
Markx
With all due respect, Eric was told in the hospital that he wasn’t going to live. He wasn’t given any hope of even leaving the hospital. It was a dead end street and he was told he’d reached the end of it. You trivializing one man’s imminent death over another’s as somehow “less” fatal is insulting. Life ends in death for all of us.
Piers has not saved the world. He will not save it. No one can or will. Piers is wasting his last days on the planet on a fool’s errand, and using his own death trying to either paint himself as a hero, or manipulate others into carrying that torch after he’s gone. His delusion is all that much sadder because his days could be spent doing things that really matter.
Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
John Donne.
“His delusion is all that much sadder because his days could be spent doing things that really matter.”
A “delusion” that the world’s scientific organizations, the Fortune 1000 and the world’s largest oil companies share.
Chris,
A widespread delusion is a delusion nonetheless.
The entire history of science is a litany of things people were sure of that turned out to be wrong.
Strength of conviction does not equate to objective truth.
That is the difference between science and religion…a lesson you have apparently never learned.
Besides, many of the people and entities to whom you refer know that the meme is false…they are in it for the money.
Chris the world’s oil companies pay lip service to Climate Alarmism in order to put the coal industry out of business. Meanwhile global oil production is at an all time high. Hardly a record indicating a retreat from fossil fuels. There is of course no science in the article just an appeal to authority. Last but not least the greatest threat to the Amazon rain forest is the deforestation taking place as famers rush to clear areas to grow bio fuels. Closer to his home we now see entire forests in North Carolina being felled for biomass and producing in the process 20% MORE CO2 than burning coal.
Since when did burning trees that are still growing become more beneficial for the natural environment than burning the fossil remains of trees that have been dead for millions of years ?
“A “delusion” that the world’s scientific organizations, the Fortune 1000 and the world’s largest oil companies share.”
That is the argumentum ad populum logical fallacy. Miasma theory was once consensus too. Did that make it true? Saying you believe something to be true does not make it true, and just because you are educated does not make your untrue statement true.
Quoting from Judith Williamson’s 1978 book, “Decoding Advertising”:
” . . . there is a big difference between saying something is true (which admits the potential of the opposite), and saying that the truth of something NEED NOT BE QUESTIONED–which admits nothing, and claims nothing either. In ideology, assumptions are made about us which we do not question, because we see them as ‘already’ true . . . ”
There, in a nutshell, is the method the CAGW camp, including Piers, are using to continue filling this meme with hot air. They are now doing it so transparently that it smacks of desperation.
Chris – Every time I hear another repetition of your argument from authority it merely reinforces the larger truth:
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view
of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.”
– Bertrand Russell, in A History of Western Philosophy
Aphan,
No, it’s not insulting. It’s just that Eric does not recognizer the difference between the terminal stage of “This is usually something we can save people from these days, sir, but it’s a bit too late for you now, you are not going to make it” and;
“You have stage 4 pancreatic cancer, sir, and though you may feel relatively fine right now, and there are numerous treatments we can put you through, the reality is most succumb in 3 months to one year, with a few struggling out to 5 years, and it is a pretty painful thing. You will find, once you are in the end stages, you will feel like Eric did during his peritonitis episode, and peurile matters like climate issues will be far from your thoughts”.
It is very plainly not the same situation at this stage.
I for one do not have his certainty that we are dooming civilization by our current CO2 emissions, and I think it is a bit of a pity he makes this issue his highest priority.
But I do admire and respect his dedication to his beliefs.
“Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world.” — Frank J. Sheed, Theology and Sanity (1946)
Keith:
Burning biomass does not produce more CO2 than burning coal, not by 20% or any other %.
Not per MJ of energy released.
Not per MJ delivered.
Any process that strips the oxygen and hydrocarbons out of biomass increases the CO2 released per MJ of what remains because carbon tends to remain.
BobM
“Chris – Every time I hear another repetition of your argument from authority it merely reinforces the larger truth:”
Chris was not arguing from authority, his argument was “ad populum”. If a thousand people believe it, it must be true. That’s what propaganda videos are all about. Goebbels made them, Stalin made them, the CIA makes them, ISIS makes them, 350.org makes them. They have the same sort of message: because lots of people believe this, you should too.
The cure is simple: apply the principle of the independent investigation of truth.
If a thousand corporations ‘believe’ it is moral and ‘part of the game’ to evade taxes, it is not moral and it is not a game.
What BS Markx
Eric has looked death in the face the same way as anyone with stage 4 cancer has. It doesn’t matter what terminal diagnosis befalls you, the result is the same. Clearly markx you have NEVER faced such a situation (and I sincerely hope you never do). The fact that Piers intends to spend his last days defending a “science” with as much credibility as astrology is his choice, but it is NOT the reaction of the bulk of people faced with a terminal diagnosis. Eric is right, faced with a terminal diagnosis CAGW would normally be the least of your worries.
Chris: I fear that all those organizations are looking out for self-interest, and the politics of the day mandate compliance.
BTW: Can someone explain to me why we do not expect the planet to continue warming during this interglacial period? Until it doesn’t? Then back into an ice age.
He, and all of us, should be reminded to be very thankful for the life we have AND that none of us will live to see the kickoff of the next glaciation.
We hope. The Younger Dryas demonstrates that full blown Ice Age conditions can come on in a mere few decades. 😉
That is the difference between an idealized version of science and religion. Science as it is actually practiced is quite a different thing.
Scientists are not godlike dispassionate creatures. They are just as venal, pig headed, stupid, and political as anybody else. The field suffers accordingly.
commieBob
“That is the difference between an idealized version of science and religion. Science as it is actually practiced is quite a different thing.”
That is the difference between one of several concepts of ‘science’ and a cartoon concept of religion, particularly the modern European misconception of it.
It is always interesting to see how religion is misrepresented as ‘stuff you decide to believe’ and science as ‘stuff that is true’ as if deciding that ‘stuff that is true’ is somehow more true than ‘stuff that is believed’.
There is Revealed Knowledge in religion – “split the atom and you will find the sun” – but no revealed knowledge in science. Religious studies includes reviewing texts and opinions and contains no systemic disadvantage. Science is a tool and is not the foundation of civilisations which are more than the product of tools.
My comment is so far out of context in both of the above responses, that I will just let it go.
Say what you will.
Mike Mann?
Markx
We’re all on a dead end street. Many people survive illnesses today that were death sentences 50-100 years ago. A ruptured appendix was one of those. Why the advances in medical treatments? Science, not witch doctors!
Bill: Excellent point! Just imagine if, like CliSci, some medical field was overtaken by “scientists” who realized their jobs and funding depended on endless research which never leads to a cure. Like cancer, diet, heart….Oh wait.
True points, Bill.
But, we all already knew every one of those …. didn’t we?
Cannabis cures cancer: http://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Cannabis_and_Cancer_ARblog_081115.pdf
We have tremendous numbers of animal studies and copious anecdotal evidence plus the epidemiological studies of Donald Tashkin.
I should note that the Tashkin studies had a sample size too small to show statistical significance. No larger study has ever been done to confirm or deny the results Tashkin got. The studies are now over 10 years old.
Diagnosed with a type of malignant melanoma in 1977, Bob Marley died on 11 May 1981 in Miami at the age of 36. (source wikipedia).
If only he had had access to the miraculous cancer curing properties of cannabis.
Sadly, I don’t think that they have cannabis in Jamaica.
I’m going to quote this… good one 🙂
I’ve heard rumors that cannabis exists in Jamaica, but they’re only rumors.
No munn, dey call it Gungi !! LOL
People who smoke pot do not get cancer?
The idea is ludicrous.
The more you know about cancer, the more you know that there will never be “a” cure.
(Unless it is with the power of our own immune system.)
Every cancer is different (which is why there are a lot of things that will defeat cancer, but nothing that will defeat them all…not even the same type of cancer in the same type of cells of everyone who has it.)
Recognizing this has been one of the great advances in the science of cancer research.
I agree with Eric.
I myself have been at death’s door on more than one occasion…in one case I was all but dead, with massive internal organ damage as a result of a head on automobile collision.
Many of us are intimately aware of our frailty and how short our time on this world is. I see what this person is doing is very undignified, as it puts people who know different than him in the position we find ourselves discussing this morning…having to reject the emotional appeal of a dying man.
I have utmost sympathy for him, and his for his family.
But no one gets off this planet alive. We all love our Earth. His implication that people who do not share his beliefs are somehow uncaring is a grave insult.
I wish him well, and would remind him and everyone that where there is life there is hope.
May he fight and prevail, in spite of the odds he faces.
His comments are more proof that it is a religion, not science !!
Sure we’ll beat cancer. Didn’t you hear the POTUS’s State of the Union speech? Joe Biden will be the one to do it!
sarc
Marcus, talk to Bob and Crispin, who think science has no value and religion answers all question.
Menicholas: one of the things to avoid on a blog is putting words into the moths of others to bolster ‘something’. The record is there so you are contradicted.
Not only did I not say ‘science has no value’ I said it was a ‘tool’ which is an allegory for ‘set of tools’. Allegories are helpful instructional devices for illustrating abstract concepts. Religious studies frequently use them to educate people about the higher nature of Man, or humankind if you wish to be PC.
Most tools have a use and can be applied to problems. ‘Science’ does not gain the status of being a ‘materialistic religion’ merely by praising famous scientists as having achieved ‘superhuman’ things, nor by projecting onto all religious matters the hagiography prevalent in the ‘scientific community’. Hagiography also has nothing to do with how religions are founded and spread. The idea that ‘religion’ consists only of ‘statements of faith’ is silly and demonstrably false. The statements of fact contained in the founding Texts and later confirmed by scientific investigation, frequently by people ‘of the cloth’, exist for all to see. Denying that there are revealed scientific facts in all the great Scriptures demonstrates ignorance, literally. One does not need to model the content of the great Books.
I realise that in the western world it is de rigeur to look to ‘science’ as a replacement for all inspiration and social guidance that has historically come from the great religions, even though that science is conducted in societies founded on centuries of development guided by religious teachings. The hypocrisy is evident to the theists, as evident as the hypocrisy that serves as the shaky foundation of the CO2 climate cult and it’s anti-scientific behaviour. It is very easy to project the evident fakery of the CO2 Cult onto the great religions, but it is not reasonable to do so. To do so is unscientific because it presupposes the attributor is no familiar with the Literature.
I know how you feel. Sucks to be misrepresented, no?
Crispin in Waterloo,
Richard Dawkins and PZ Meyers come immediately to mind. There’s another one, name I can’t remember, on the lecture circuit, gave a Ted talk with the basic premise that morality is something that he thought could be objectively evaluated on appeals to empirical evidence. He gave some pretty extreme examples, IIRC female genital mutilation being one that I had a lot of difficulty arguing against. OTOH, I can think of several examples where the morality is much grayer, say physician assisted suicide for children who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer. How does one even begin to objectively test for whether or not that is a “good” or a “bad” thing for society as a whole to condone or prohibit?
Main point is that not all scientists I’ve known personally have been angry atheists. There’s also no doubt in my mind that the world would be a worse place if not for the likes of Bacon, Mendel, Kepler, Galilei, Newton, Planck and Einstein … all of whom professed some belief in a higher being and/or whose work was directly supported by a religious organization.
Final point is that I don’t think that rejecting belief (or in my case, attempting to wilfully suspend belief) in Supreme Powers necessarily entails having to embrace “science” or any other named, but amorphous, epistemology as some sort of surrogate moral value system. I’m perfectly content to define my own morality solely according to my own intellect and will while simultaneously bearing in mind that not everyone is going to agree with me … nor do I think they should.
I agree with that; however, I find it difficult to argue that most extant religions require adherents to accept their major premises without direct, independently verifiable evidence that their claims are correct. My reading is that when your fellows here mock people like Piers Sellars for accepting the evidence of AGW — and in his case, contributing to it — for having a “religious” belief, what they’re really saying is that no such evidence exists.
Which isn’t very “scientific”, because it’s non-falsifiable.
Sorry Crispin, I see you are being serious. I am a person of faith, but do not subscribe to an organized religion.
I am sorry if you are offended, but I feel that my simple response was taken way out of context.
Once by conflating the word science with the practices and moral failings of scientists. And once by ascribing the appellation of cartoon religion to a one word reference to the difference between science and religion.
When the “religion” in question was that of CAGW.
If it make you feel better, I am sorry if you are offended. I like you, and did not mean to be insulting.
I apologize.
Dear Leader tossed Joe “What facelift?” Biden-his-Time a bone. You see, Joe lacks his own Nobel Prize. Unless he was shirttailed in on his boss’.
As usual, the replies will miss the NIH/FDA intent. Seen the new Opdivo ads? Provides a 50% chance for a 3 month life extension for ~$80,000 in terminal small cell lung cancer, Wow, does that sound like good payback value. At that “fix” rate I’m sure that many herbal or other cheap drugs would be just as good, but no will ever find out because the NIH/FDA corporate cronies wouldn’t then get their paychecks. The FDA/NIH are ONLY in the business of fixing a medical issue ONLY so long as it benefits their pharma buddies. As much was said by a previous FDA commissar in the Burzynski movie (no reading between the line required). Sure no one compound will “cure” all cancer, but with active knowledge suppression and ridicule of those that might, a rational person should at least do independent research outside of corrupt mainstream circles. And by the way, there are examples of Cannabis curing people who where terminal and written off, but to those who are religious believers in authority, they could, I suppose, also be “miracles” or “cheats”.
The main take away, as the climate frenzy should have shown, is that although many aspects of American government are superior (a relative term for sure), that face still has a lot of pimples and boils; which are not all difficult to see if any bother to actually look and then remember as a future precaution.
I think the people who have spontaneous remissions did so because their immune system kicked in and did what is does for every person many times in their life…attacks malignant cells and eliminates them.
Cancer grows by becoming invisible to our immune system, and spreads by hijacking the abilities of B cells, which re some of the only cells in our body able to infiltrate and spread into existing tissue.
It must also co-opt the vascular system, and induce neovascularization into the growing tumor.
Interrupt any of these tactics of a cancer, and our bodies will quickly eliminate it.
It is thought that most if not all people have incipient neoplasms during their life, and it is only when our immunity fails us that they can grow and proliferate and spread. It takes many mutations to produce a cancer…they all start from a single defective cell that for some reason does not undergo apoptosis when it becomes defective…and this takes time.
The interplay between vigorous immune response and an overactive one may be why so-called autoimmunity disorders are so common…it is a fine line between an appropriate and precise immune response, one which is too slow or too selective, and one which is too aggressive and attacks “self”.
My views and understanding of these topics.
YMMV
There are people who believe that every “natural” remedy is safe and effective, and every pharmaceutical drug is worthless poison.
I am not one who holds such views.
I do not scoff out of hand at more holistic and natural remedies, but neither do I place inordinate faith in something just because it is touted as natural.
Having been infected with the HCV virus during my above mentioned near death experience, I know the value of pharmaceutical cures…i was one of the first people in the world to take Harvoni in a clinical trial, and was cured. I know of many people who insisted on only natural remedies and are now dead after spending every cent they had on such things as colloidal silver and (incredibly) the miracle drug, sodium chloride.
You do not need to be trained as a chemist, as I was, to know bullshit when you hear it, but it takes a special kind of brainwashing to ignore medical science when ones life depends on it.
Count me out of the antivaccer movement, the FDA is the devil crowd(although I know that they are not as rationally scientific as many would like to believe…they are a political organization), and all similar crap.
/rant off
Cancer arose wholesale in isolated, traditional populations who had virtually none before, within 5 years of adding large amounts of refined white flour and sugar to their formerly evolutionary diets via trade with the industrial West. This has been well-documented for over 75 years with many citations. The West’s consumption of processed foods made of precisely these ingredients has been increasing exponentially since WWII, and consumption of sugar specifically has risen in the U.S. population from an average per capita of under 10 lbs. in 1860 to over 170 lbs. today. It is thought in some research circles that cancer is the body’s last-ditch attempt to sequester an amount of blood sugar that’s beyond it’s ability to metabolize. What’s the favorite driver of metastasis and growth of tumors? High circulating blood sugar! THIS is where we should be putting our research dollars–but we’re not, because no one makes money on “primary” prevention, NOT doing something to eliminate the cause.
“I think the people who have spontaneous remissions did so because their immune system kicked in and did what is does for every person many times in their life…attacks malignant cells and eliminates them.”
Fully concur, except that you are overlooking the immune boosting support of several herbs and possibly Cannabis and even infections (such as Coley’s germs which worked sometimes). To ignore ways of natural immune system support/boost is being “blindered”. Most even overlook the obvious for prevention such as enough vitamins/protein intake (difficult with diet, especially if vegan).
“every pharmaceutical drug is worthless poison.”
As I recall, all except the most modern cancer treatments reduce immune system function and in fact are violent poisons which attempt to kill the cancer before they kill you. Even the modern ones can have severe side effects. Agree lot’s of medicine is a wonder and wouldn’t do without but some areas can certainly be corrupted such as this one. One example is when Linus Pauling, based on his preliminary research, requested injected Vitamin C study for some cancers (Injection required because the body eliminates C so fast orally that high blood levels cannot be maintained), The NIH refused to test any but oral administration which almost sounds like a pre-admission of knowledge that oral wouldn’t work. Also, not difficult to find other “squelches” such as this one. It is also easy to forget that cancer fixes don’t always work, and sometimes they are simply life extending; except in the case of those that are natural which are of course automatically assumed to never work.
“are now dead after spending every cent they had on such things as colloidal silver and (incredibly) the miracle drug, sodium chloride.”
As you stated earlier, the immune system and it’s boost is the key goal for attack and I wouldn’t think that the two referenced would have any effect in that area. Never said that weren’t charlatans in this area also so individuals have to be more logical about choices. My only point is that because of the FDA/NIH intercourse with big pharma, they will be of no help.
I know all about toxic drugs, and the cure being worse than the disease too.
My great good fortune in getting in an early trial of Harvoni(It was not called that yet, at the time) was not my first go at getting rid of the virus which was gradually destroying my liver. Prior to that, I took Interferon and Ribavirin for 48 weeks, back in 2003. It did not work, but did make me as sick as a person could feel, induce a severe case of hemolytic anemia which lasted for the duration of the treatment (normal Hemoglobin for me is 17. I was down near 10 for most of those 48 weeks.), and a laundry list of other side affects that are as bad as any chemotherapy. That was pretty bad, but no where near as bad as when I tried again, and in 2006 got into the PROVE2 clinical trial for what was then the most promising new hepatitis drug in over a decade…a direct acting antiviral which became known as Teleprevir. I took it plus the Interferon for 24 weeks, and in made the first trial like a fine Sunday picnic at the beach in Summer. It was too awful to describe. I never have recovered 100% from some of those side effects, like having food pass undigested through my body (turns out you need to break down the proteins you eat, and protease inhibitors inhibit that), and having my thyroid gland stop functioning. Luckily, levothyroxine is cheap and easy to take. I will take it for the rest of my life, every day.
But even that experience was a walk in the park compared to a wonderful drug called Debio 086, which I was enrolled in a clinical trial for in 2008. That stuff was a soap like liquid you had to mix with a tall glass of water and drink every morning on an empty stomach. I am not sure what dirty dish water tastes like, but I suspect it may taste rather like Debio 086. It is a cyclophilin inhibitor, derived from cyclosporine. Now, you might ask, as I did, why anyone would think a drug that turns off the immune system would be helpful as an adjunct to Interferon and Ribavirin in fighting off HCV, but it turned out that they were able to modify the cyclosporine (an amazing drug, derived from a soil fungus from a single soil sample found somewhere in Northern Europe. Why anyone was checking for such things is another very interesting story. Check out how they discovered the other antibiotics after penicillin) in such a way as to preserve the cyclophilin inhibition, but turn off the immunosuppressant characteristics. I took that horrible crap, along with Interferon and Ribavirin (both highly toxic, but in different ways) for 72 weeks(!) It very nearly killed me of multiple organ system failure, when 13 of my blood volume was hemolyzed so quickly that I turned yellow from bilirubin buildup and my kidneys started to shut down.
That did not work either. But Harvoni did, with one pill a day, twelve weeks, no side affects except the stress of knowing it was likely my last chance to be cured, and at that time I was almost convinced that the first three tries had morphed by virus into a strain so resistant, nothing would ever cure it. It was resistant, but Harvoni cured it anyway, in about the first three of the twelve weeks.
I know what it is like to suffer. Through it all, I never gave up on trying, and never missed a day of work, and my job is both outside in Florida, and a mental and physical challenge, as I frequently have to troubleshoot and repair electrical machinery.
Trust me, I know the FDA and how they work, and know what big pharma and biotech do do and do not do.. I am alive because of the hard work and dedication of medical and biotech scientists. And I never forget it.
Oops, I said do do, and that 13 should be 1/3. Makes no sense that way.
BTW, none of those drugs, or any antibiotic, kill viruses or bacteria. They only keep them from reproducing, while our immune system mops up.
It is our own bodies natural defenses that eliminate all infections…the drugs merely give the immune system time to get the job done.
Better is the Cat’s Claw Swanson and lycopene.
It is good to eat fruit stones. Amygdalin is toxic to cells of sick, indifferent healthy cells.
The strong anticancer properties also has a curcumin.
Lots of people who expected with some certainty that they were going to live to personally witness the extreme empirical demonstration of the reality of alarmist climate predictions – aren’t.
Sadly many of them will have convinced themselves that the failure of their global warming predictions can be somehow explained away by reference to a rag-bag of “extreme weather” phenomena and distorted interpretations of natural variability.
Personally, I’m hoping to live long enough to see what load of bullshit replaces climate fear when people finally realize that not much is actually happening.
+*some number…pick one*
I have to agree; regardless of my emotion, empathy and wish that his cancer could be cured.
Two additional things (one observation and one question)…
1. My personal extensive dealings/interactions with NASA (mostly Goddard Space Flight Center), causes me to conclude that there are hordes of NASA employees who regularly exhibit their weaknesses of science, engineering and leadership. It’s now not even close to the organization that got us to the Moon, IMHO.
2. How much closer to a cure for pancreatic cancer would we be if all of the 100’s of $billions spent on climate science rent-seeker salaries, renewable energy subsidies and tax-free contributions to green eco-terrorist organizations had gone into pancreatic cancer research instead?
Aye!
I keep checking on the Webb telescope they’re planning to put into space. And I keep thinking that NASA is going to botch years of work.
I feel sorry for Piers.
What is worrying is that Piers, by his essentially dying wish declaration has identified himself as a believer, not a scientist.
Piers claims to have spent his life ‘thinking’ about climate science, not actually practicing it. He appears to have bought the party line, bait, hook and sinker without ever checking into some of the datasets.
As an astronaut, who spacewalked, he should be intensely aware of the care and study put into every space walk and experienced what happens when any small part goes wrong. Had Piers ever actually studied some of the data and asked a few questions, I doubt he’d be such advocate.
From his own admission, he feels Earth is so small and fragile; and he feels guilty. Another highly educated elitist with a guilt complex.
I hope for the best for him and also for his enlightenment.
“Another highly educated elitist with a guilt complex.”
+100
Yes, I observe this is a far more important forcing than CO2 to create CAGW!
‘How much closer to a cure for pancreatic cancer’
No closer. Throwing money at it won’t cure it. Few things in America are underfunded.
Throwing people concerned about research can only help.
Your belief that some things are beyond hope is contradicted by the great advances in treatment that are indeed occurring on an almost daily basis.
Your attitude is puzzling.
Research is NOT underfunded.
Nixon declared a “war on cancer” with the National Cancer Act of 1971. You would think that after $500 billion since then that something would have budged and it did, big pharma’s pockets.
BFL, are you saying that it is your belief that no progress on cancer has been made since 1971?
SpaceX launched another sat today, Jason 2 for ESA’s study of sea level rise ans all other things related to Oceans) It is great to see the enthusiasm of their people ( BBC science) on SpaceX’s web site you can see the video of their December 23 2015 successful launch and return of the launch rocket to earth. At the time I thought to myself that use to be the 60’s enthusiasm at NASA . It was remarkable ( and no, I don’t own any stocks).
Sorry it is Jason 3 and apologies for spelling mistakes, ( stayed up way too late )
Boulder S:
Your point 2 is spot on. If the ghastly waste of money spent on ‘climate correction’ were instead devoted to solving real problems, we would have already eliminated polio and sleeping sickness and maybe malaria and Ebola. It really matters.
After all these years of ‘climate change’ one would expect to find the science explaining how the trace gas, carbon dioxide, causes a global temperature rise. Statistics are not verifiable. My untrained studies on the internet teach me that CO2 in the atmosphere is a coolant.
Four months ago I spent four hours on the operating table undergoing heart surgery. No firm guarantees for my future but this has not changed my opinion.
Cancer is horrible. I’m really sorry to hear that Sellers has it. Please spend your last days taking care of you and your loved ones. God does play dice and man does not control the weather.
This is extremely sad for several reasons. That he’s going to leave us and his family is certainly sad. That otherwise intelligent people believe the global warming hoax is also sad. That he wishes to fight to the end for his cause is noble. But no matter how tragic and noble this is, we must not be silenced.
Warmists have with considerable success used most of the fallacies known to man: red herring, strawman, ad hominem, appeal to authority, post hoc, argument from ignorance, false analogy, and any of an odd dozen of risk fallacies, etc. This false logic is often accompanied by attacks on our freedom of speech. Should we now be silenced by an appeal to pity? No. The potential loss of freedom, loss of human life, and economic destruction that will result from attacking harmless CO2 are far too great.
joregekafkazar,
You speak with wisdom. You always have.
+ 1,000
This guy is Gavin Schmidt’s boss.
AGW has always been an appeal to emotion. Feelings and beliefs trumping data and experimentation.
This is just pitiful. And disgusting.
Yeah, oil companies are known for making decisions based on emotion. They believe AGW is real.
Chris,
Oil companies exist for one reason…to make money.
And they know a gravy train when they see it…better than anyone.
Especially one which they are in a unique position to profit from.
Funny Chris, how skeptics and climate realists must now point out the fallacies of people who argue oil companies are the only ones who reject the warmista meme, and now those like you who attempt to use their profiteering as proof that the CAGW lie is a reality.
Incredible.
I suppose that you totally abstain from using fossil fuel in all its form in order to starve oil companies. How about getting rid of your PC, made from derivatives of fossil fuel …
Are you really that stupid or are you just practicing to be a liberal politician ????
ExxonMobile, BP and Shell are three of the sponsors of the on-going alternative energy UN/sustainability conference in Abu Dhabi. They are there to be in on the money play if warmists win. Subsidies, grants, loan guarantees and guaranteed markets are very attractive to “private” enterprise. Strange bedfellows indeed. But then, if they go “green” they are no longer oil companies and will be fine. Kinda like the Rockefellers!/sarc
Chris – “Yeah, oil companies are known for making decisions based on emotion. They believe AGW is real.”
Therefore:
http://ca.equities.com/wp-content/plugins/RSSPoster_PRO/cache/874e9_ENGY-The-Rise-of-Oil-Production-in-the-United-States-01022015.gif
There might be proof that Global Warming is happening. The majority of skeptics, I think, question the anthropomorphic part. Which is how alarmists try to scramble the opinions saying that support of one is automatically support for the other.
The Planet has warmed and cooled too many times for it to be likely that Man in only 200 years has managed to have caused any current global warming. And this is where belief and emotion come in to play.
philincalifornia,
+10, nice hockey-stick graph!!
Which is why the people pitching it are usually English lit or sociology majors when you lift up the rock, not scientists or engineers. They’re all about emotion, belief and expression, the facts be damned. An educator friend of mine put it best: “Why let the facts get in the way of a great story?”
What a silly judgemental view by Eric Worrall. The climate says it as he sees it, from his new health situation, his view has not changed, he has every right to do so.
I meant “climate scientist’, I was in a rush.
And how about the judgmental view of Piers Sellers, who describes those who hold a different view than his as akin to people who deny the holocaust?
And his implication that only those who share his mistaken views care about the Earth?
Menicholas,
He only mentions the French Revolution. Different era. It could be argued that the French Revolution helped give rise to the sense of nationalism that the Nazis later cultivated and manipulated, but even as Sellers says history is clear, it still can be awfully murky. Much depends on who is telling the story.
The first thing I’d do if I were him is question you about how it is you know he is mistaken, and why you’re so much more sure he’s wrong and you are right.
Brandon, I have no idea what you mean with your reference to the French Revolution.
I was talking about his use of the hateful “den!er” sort of language that he chooses to use. IMO, anyone who refers to those on the skeptical/realist side in those terms is denigrating the original context of the word. You are free to believe otherwise, but the original usage was clearly meant to denigrate skeptics on an emotional level that I consider vile, by using a phrase which had previously only ever been used in reference to those who cast doubt on the historic reality of that event.
And whoever is right (I believe I am, and many here share my views, if not totally, then mostly), he is the one who wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in which he implied that only those who share his views care about the welfare of our planet.
As to why I think I am right and he is wrong…I consider the question dishonest. You have months and months of me discussing my reasons, along with hundreds of others, for why I think that. Including many conversations with you, although in your case I have chosen to not engage you, for the precise reason you just made clear with this comment.
I don’t equate the word “denier” with the holocaust, did Sellers at some point, or are you generalising? I think you might be generalising about implications as well. Did he say that “only those who share his (mistaken) views care about the earth”? I happen to think the majority scientific view is correct, but I am not completely sure. Nothing is proven until it happens, even then the causes can be disputed. I am amazed at some of the absoluteness from many in this debate.
Geoffrey Preece,
The “denier” label is a specific reference to Holocaust deniers, as confirmed by a nationally syndicated American columnist, Ellen Goodman. It is a pejorative, and labeling anyone a “denier” or “denialist” is against this site’s written policy.
“I happen to think the majority scientific view is correct, but I am not completely sure.”
What is the majority scientific view? And I mean one in which all of the scientists involved in climate research are ASKED, individually and specifically to illustrate their own views on global warming/climate change, and a majority were proven to sustain a specific scientific view on it?
Oh wait….that’s right. No one has EVER done such research. EVER. But there are a LOT of people and organizations that like to state that a consensus of some kind HAS been established. Piers Sellers is one of those people, a man who proudly declares something to be a fact that has NEVER BEEN PROVEN to exists. And then, literally on his death bed, he announces that WE are the “deniers” of science and fact, and that Denial has died.
Sounds pretty absolute to me.
I did not say he said it. I clearly said, two times, that he implied it…which he clearly did.
I suppose some people may be more attuned to reading between the lines.
If you cannot see how he implied this, I cannot help you. I do not teach reading comprehension or inductive logic.
And thank you DB.
Menicholas,
It’s the only historical event Sellers mentions in his op-ed.
Yes, I know, and I’m telling you it is my opinion that use of that term does not necessarily imply the speaker is comparing anyone to revisionist “historians” who argue that upward of 6 million people were slaughtered by fascists in Europe during the 1940s by the Third Reich. I also note that he didn’t label people, he labeled the action:
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial.
[…]
The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat.
Note how you transformed that to the noun form of the word: denier.
The word “deny” pre-dates 1938 in English by a long-shot.
I think it’s a harsh term, and I don’t doubt you and others here bristle when it is used. Consider however, that he and his colleagues are often accused in mainstream press and on blogs such as this, without warrant in most cases, of being engaged in a massive fraud. Express whatever opinion you wish, however you wish, but my unsolicited advice is that one who throws stones ought not heave them from a position protected only by thin glass.
That cuts both ways of course, and I’ll note that I have thought there have been times on when those on “my side” of the fence could stand to either have thicker skin, tone it down, or both. I sometimes find myself in need of taking my own advice.
I would not be surprised to learn he actually thinks that, or even that he’s actually written it in public commentary previously. Certainly others with similar views on the potential dangers of AGW have explicitly written it in the past. But he did not make that view explicit in the article so far as I can tell, mostly he wrote about his personal concerns for the welfare of future generations of humans, which I thought was refreshing because I myself tire of hand-wringing about the planet which I think will almost surely trundle on no matter what we do. It’s been through a lot worse than us, and I don’t see any reason for that to change.
Mmmhmm. I’m saying that he would ask you to list your reasons, which I have read, but I assume he has not. And my prediction would be that he would disagree with your arguments for similar reasons that I do, and as it is his field not mine, possibly a number of others which would not and have not occurred to me.
I’m not entirely sure that you’re clear the message my comments on this thread are intended to convey. It is pretty clear to me that on this forum it is frequently the case that when I say something folk disagree with (which is most stuff I write) then I’m being deliberately dishonest. Which gets pretty annoying, let me tell you. OTOH, I’m clearly not above trading barbs or making disparaging comments about the … honesty … of arguments in this forum elsewhere, so kindly don’t take any of this as some sort of complaint on my part — I totally get it that when one engages in a mud fest that one should expect to get muddy.
Gates writes on…
…the potential dangers of AGW
How ’bout the potential dangers of an asteroid strike? Based on all available evidence, that’s a lot more likely than a climate catastrophe from rising CO2.
When you reply, make it about twelve paragraphs. I’d feel dissed otherwise… ☺
Ok db…that was the grin I needed to end this day! Brilliant comment. The Logical term is GishGallop, and BG can RIDE like he was born on a gish. 🙂 If you’re lucky, he’ll throw in some flawed statistical method before he reports back to Nurse Ratched and the other Cuckoos before bedtime meds.
dbstealey,
In other appeals to authority, NASA lists several US national and international organizations who confirm that AGW is, like, for real and stuff:
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
A syndicated newspaper columnist “confirms” it … oy, my aching sides.
Those are the specific terms prohibited, but the policy as written is far more inclusive:
Trolls, flame-bait, personal attacks, thread-jacking, sockpuppetry, name-calling such as “denialist,” “denier,” and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted; also posts repeatedly linking to a particular blog, or attempting to dominate a thread by excessive postings may get deleted.
I’ve long-since lost count of how many times someone has called me “alarmist”, “warmunist”, “idiot”, “delusional” and a litany of other things which I certainly don’t think were meant to be complimentary with no reprisals I’m aware of against the parties saying things so arguably “denigrating”. Curious to be sure; I figure that all those comments were deemed to be in furtherance of the discussion so I have mostly left it alone.
That, and, if I thought I needed moderation and site policies to protect my tender feelings, I wouldn’t go into hostile blog territory full of snark and packing contrary opinions.
Gates,
OK, you made it about twelve paragraphs so I’m happy. It takes nothing to spin you up, does it? This is fun!
For one thing, you’re replying to stuff I never said. But keep it up, it’s amusing. Your getting all worked up over a word (“confirms”) is also amusing. I like it when I see someone without a life.
Since you always like to try to ‘dominate a thread by excessive postings’, I await your next twelve paragraphs, parsing and nitpicking every conceivable slight. And I admit, I provide you with plenty of fodder there. ☺
Gates, I am weary of your sophistry. Others who know you better have accused you of being intelligent, so I should wonder if it is lost on you that the reference to denial only makes sense in the context of those who are skeptical being known as den!ers.
Every thing else you said is equally easy to counter.
But I am not as patient and am a slower typist than DB and some of the others here, so I will not bother with the actual counter. Just pretend I made mincemeat of your other arguments as readily as that one.
dbstealey,
I think we have the means to prevent them given enough warning, and should be doing more to develop a defense system than we are.
If by “catastrophe” you mean total extinction of our species, I’d tend to agree with you. Catastrophe is a subjective term and hence comes in many forms depending on the POV of the person using it. For instance, I think the 2007–08 global financial crisis was arguably a catastrophic failure of the systems which typically allow banks to facilitate liquidity of the money supply.
For one thing, I didn’t say you had.
Well then we’re both amused.
Look, I can’t award you with your third irony meter on the same day, these things aren’t cheap you know.
I like it when your main response to me pointing out the inconsistencies of one of your arguments is schoolyard taunts. It makes a nice giant whooshing sound.
Oh damn, I nitpicked again, and saw a ticky-tack sleight where none was intended again, didn’t I. And I swore. Why oh why in the hell am I not banned yet???
Gates sez:
If by “catastrophe” you mean total extinction of our species…
I mean the ‘carbon’ scare. It’s the fright that counts.
And the ‘dominate the thread’ comment was just a cut and paste of your own words.
Face it, Gates, the planet just isn’t doing what the alarmist crowd wants. Everything’s normal. DAGW is politics, not science. The public is slowly (as usual) coming around to that realization. And once you take their hands out of the thumbscrews, they won’t put ’em back in again. ‘Jumped the shark’ is the current idiom.
There’s so much taxpayer loot involved that the scare, which should have been dead a long time ago, will zombify for a while. But there’s an election coming in less than a year, and unless the hag cheats her way into office on the backs of millions of illegals, the new prez will slash globaloney funding.
Then it will die a well deserved and long overdue death.
Menicholas,
And I am weary of you missing my point entirely.
Some wag in some Usenet group on the topic of Godwin’s Law once wondered in view of my eyes: What did people use for hyperbole prior to WWII?
Brandon,
I will offer a compliment: You either have great patience or are a skilled typist. I am way to quick to get my thoughts down to bother with typing out the command for blockquotes, especially since if you type one character out of place, it makes all manner of crazy things happen to a post.
I tire readily of sophistry, you tire of people missing your point. Hmm. Perhaps if you were more concise and less wordy, that would happen less. Just a guess…what do I know?
However, I cannot help but thinking you are missing my point, even though it seems crystal clear to me.
So, how to say it in a way which is not hard to grasp?
I know…let’s review:
Sellers said:
“Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.”
Death of Denial. Capitalized. Not the word used as a regular word, but as a noun. A specific noun, referring to a specific phenomenon, which he apparently feels needs to be put to death, and perhaps has. he then went on to make his series of logical fallacies which have been labelled above as to their specific type. Argumentum ad populum, argumentum ad passions, argumentum ad verecundiam…you name it, he made it. All are well known to be used in a certain context, to defend the CAGW meme, albeit, logically speaking, falsely. So we know that the antecedent was also referring to CAGW. But, now to the important part: His use of the phrase did not only refer to a specific person, but to EVERYONE who has any skepticism of the idea that CO2 is going to cause a global catastrophe of proportions so Brobdingnagian, it must be carried forth as a warning even while he lives his final days on this Earth. Moreover, his usage and subsequent verbiage makes it clear this Denial he hopes is Dead, refers to not just the people who are skeptical, but to the entire edifice of CAGW skepticism. Because, as he points out, unless it is Dead, we cannot move on to the really hard part. (I will leave aside his implicit belief that proving that we are all going to roast was the Easy Part!)
Does anyone think instead of the above, that he believes that from now on there will be no such thing as denial, small “d”, and that there shall heretoforth be nothing on Earth ever denied by anyone, about anything, ever? That the word itself can be retired?
No, clearly that would be ridiculous, and clearly he was speaking of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming denial, and only that, and the people known as DEN!ERS in the context of CAGW, and only them.
Otherwise what he said has no antecedent. Makes no sense whatsoever. Has no reference, and thus no one should understand what and who he was referring to.
And, just as clearly as all of this, the term was applied to climate realists, who understand the scientific method and the skeptical nature of true scientific inquiry, and are thus rightly skeptical of a hypothesis with no empirical evidence to back it up, no falsification possible, no single measurement of the fraction of any warming which may have occurred as being attributable to CO2, and most stunningly, not one single accurate prediction that was subsequently borne out by observations…not even as many as a monkey could get right by throwing darts at a dime sized dartboard from a hundred meters.
*sorry, my cat just walked across my dart board I mean keyboard and interrupted my train of rantthought*
Where were we….hmm…
Oh yeah!
So, there is no doubt among honest people, debating honestly, that the appellation in question only applies to one group of people, and that it was applied to them in a cynical and hateful attempt to silence criticism by comparing them to a known group of egregious and racist haters who the term was originally used to describe. I dis not know Ellen Goodman said so…i know because I was here arguing when it happened. I remember it. I have seen references to how many times the word was used in any context in any publication ever, prior to this new usage (apparently one can look such things up).
So, spare me, OK?
I know it, and now you know it, even if you did not know it before (although you should have).
As for your long winded observations about sharp elbows and bruised egos and hurt fewings…blah blah heat…yada yada kitchen…yak yak stay out…
Now, I knew all of this the second I read it, but that is me. I do not need anyone to explain such things, because…um…just because. Neither should you.
Oh, yeah…and the reason I do not choose to engage with you anymore is because every conversation with you feels and sounds like this one: A lot of talk, nothing said, and you do it just for kicks anyway, most likely.
I respond here for old times sake, and for any lurkers who may not be familiar with the flavor of your discourse hereabouts.
Stick around…it is going to get interesting. Just do not fell all put out if I do not chime in on your long winded blockquote filled Q and As.
Menicholas,
My typing is 40-60 wpm. My patience varies like the weather.
My last comment to you was two whole sentences. My longer posts are often in response to an interlocutor who has a lot to say to me. One thing I’ve learned is that when someone doesn’t like what I have to say, they will find any means possible of diminishing it.
That all said, I do know that I have a tendency to be prolix and pontificate.
I get your point, I don’t agree with it. I don’t dispute that it’s possible that when Piers Sellars uses the d-word that he means to associate AGW contrarians with revisionist historians. However, I am telling you that neither of us are in his head and NEITHER of us know exactly what he was or was not thinking about when he wrote those words.
Sweeping generalization and a special pleading, “all are well known to be used in a certain context”. Yeah, the context of being a human being.
Oh. Well I’m skeptical of that myself, and I don’t feel any ire toward anything he wrote.
I guess I missed that bit. While we’re on the topic of being weary of the other guy’s habits, I’m really weary of folks in this forum saying “so and so said such and such” without providing a direct quote and full citation to the entire context. It makes forming my own opinion about who said what and when a real bitch.
Anywho, if that’s actually what he said, I disagree with him on that one.
Recall above when I wrote: I’m saying that he would ask you to list your reasons, which I have read, but I assume he has not. And my prediction would be that he would disagree with your arguments for similar reasons that I do, and as it is his field not mine, possibly a number of others which would not and have not occurred to me.
What you just wrote above is the exact kind stuff which explains why I cannot take your views seriously. The thing about absoulte statements such as “there is no evidence of X, therefore X does not exist” is:
1) It’s not possible to prove a negative, and is therefore a non-falsifaible statement of belief, and
2) It only takes one example of X to disprove it …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
… shows warming has occurred and …
http://www.realclimate.org/images/Minnett_2.gif
… shows that LW radiation can indeed affect the rate of heat loss from the oceans. CO2’s radiative properties are well-known from laboratory-controlled experimentation, and in situ measurements from both ground and satellite-based instrumentation, and line-by-line radiative transfer codes (aka: models) are in good agreement with them both because … duh … they were developed in conjunction with those observations. Harries et al. (2001) is a favorite citation of mine along those lines: https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/physics/Public/spat/John/Increase%20in%20greenhouse%20forcing%20inferred%20from%20the%20outgoing%20longwave%20radiation%20spectra%20of%20the%20Earth%20in%201970%20and%201997.pdf
I’m only just scratching the surface with these paltry pieces of evidence, literature is awash with it. That you evidently do not accept it for whatever of a litany of reasons does not mean that it does not exist.
That’s an appeal to popular opinion, and a hasty generalization, fallacy boi.
That’s not really obvious to me as a good portion of your posts today have been about hateful comments in a piece that is one of the least polemical op-eds on AGW I’ve read in quite some time. Not that you should believe me, but most of the AGW op-eds I read are from this very website. But I’m sorry, you know all this. It’s just that I can’t help but wonder how you’ll act on it.
I use blockquotes so as to minimize misunderstanding about what I am replying to. It helps reduce misunderstanding, and — in conversations with people prone to quoting out of context, reading between the lines, or manufacturing others’ words out of whole cloth — hopefully allows lurkers to decide which participant is acting in better faith.
We can all reset our watches. The Tangaroa study shows up like clockwork to “prove” that the cold air “heats” (and by heat we mean slows the rate of cooling) the warm ocean.
Human exhale contains orders of magnitude more CO2 than the air. Open a can of soup at room temperature and blow on it until it is piping hot. The CO2 concentration of your breathe should slow the rate of cooling right up to boiling in no time. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy your soup. Of course, if it gets too hot, don’t blow on it, it only makes it hotter.
“I do not teach reading comprehension or inductive logic.” You were not actually using these, you were actually using pseudo mentalist buffalo chips based on a thin veil of nothingness. You should not make things up. Stick to what people say, not what you think they are saying.
FTOP_T,
Solar energy is aborbed at depth, among other things like surface windspeed and relative humidity, downwelling LW modulates the rate at which that absorbed energy is dissipated at the surface. So long as you persist in wrongly stating the argument, you will persist in failing to rebut it.
Put on a jacket which is at an ambient temperature lower than that of your skin. Tell me if the reason you warm up is due to the placebo effect or by the correct application of correct physics.
No matter how sad the story it has zero weight as scientific evidence. The AGW crowd are forever trying to make up for lack of evidence by substituting emotion. I am glad someone called it out.
I’m not sad, Something’s going to get you sooner or later.
How many would-be astronauts would trade lives with this 60 year-older?
I think many would, just for the spacewalk experience.
This man is a LUCKY man.
God bless him.
It seems to show a certain level of desperation.
Someone on their death bed might well make an appeal on subjects that are important to them. Most, scientists in particular, would use the occasion to present hard evidence, or even soft evidence, or even anecdotal evidence to support their position. Sellers does none of these.
Sellers calls last year the “death of denial at the beginning of his rant, and went on to quote a Monmouth study claiming 70% of Americans believe the climate is changing, but doesn’t seem to mention by how much or how harmful it will be or even it it will be harmful at all. Quoting selective research out of context and the exclusion of contrary evidence is the hallmark of press release written by a paid shill and I expect Siers was “encouraged” to sign it as his own.
“Sellers calls last year the “death of deni*l at the beginning of his rant, and went on to quote a Monmouth study claiming 70% of Americans believe the climate is changing, …”
This is just like the 97% sc@m. The 70% includes folks who know the climate is always changing, those who don’t think it matters, etc.
The 30% who think climate does not change are ignorant.
Poll questions like this are one way warmistas distort the truth.
I’m glad I’ve taken the time to read through these posts before I posted.
“…And most Americans – 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. ”
Only 70%? I’d really like to talk to some of that 30% who don’t think the climate changes.
On the other hand, maybe it would help to see the exact wording of that Monmouth University poll. In my un-scientific data collecting, I’ve noticed that over 90% of Americans are sometimes mislead by the wording of a poll question.
The other 10% don’t read the question.
/grin
People who actually spend time working outside are the first to reject the CAGW meme. The urban, upper-middle class 4%, educated beyond their intelligence and looking for a fashionable “cause” to hitch their ideological wagon to, are the EASIEST to convince; they’ve lived their entire lives without ever experiencing the weather, hell, they’ve never even gotten dirty!
150,000 people die each day. I’m in the queue and so are you.
In the case of horrible diseases death is a most merciful event. I watched my father wither away and die a slow agonizing death because ending his suffering by our hand is illegal. We should reexamine our “humaneness” in these matters. Perhaps Sellers and his family could do more good by using his position to draw attention to this and hopefully cause a more reasonable end of life policy to be enacted.
One of the regrets of men at the approach of death is the knowledge of the lost opportunity which may not be rectified.
What we individually achieve depends upon the work of others, we must trust that others will complete necessary work and validate it.
When Steve Jobs died I listened to an interview on Radio 2GB discussing the treatments available to those with neuroendocrine pancreatic disease.
The interviewee was of the opinion that with the technology then available in South Australia, Jobs could easily have two of three years of active symptom free life rather than having already passed.
The technology involved inducing an antibody reaction to the tumour, harvesting the antibody then tagging it with a radioactive isotope and re injecting it into the patient.
The antibody /radiation then targeted the cancer and destroyed it.
The advantage was that the patient had few side effects, such as hair loss, emaciation and nausea, as no chemotherapy was used.
The patient went back to work.
The treatment could be repeated once remission ended.
Despite his intellect, Jobs chose holistic treatment and died prematurely according to this interview.
Having lost a colleague to pancreatic cancer before the latest treatments, it would be worth while if you have a friend with the disease to research carefully the options, including what is available overseas.
Piers Sellers deserves our respect and prayers.
At this stage the fact that most on this site don’t think the IPCC CO2 climate models are valid is irrelevant to recognising his belief and sincerity.
Upon reaching a higher jurisdiction, that’s all that counts.
What is it with pancreatic cancer?
It seems to have become a more regular cause of death in the last few years (3 in my own widest circle of acquaintance) – is it becoming more common?
Are more people developing it because their lifestyle has meant they haven’t already succumbed to something else (say, lung cancer) compared to previous generations?
Or is it just that I’m getting to the age when my contemporaries are more likely to drop off the twig anyway, and I’m more likely to learn their cause of death than those older or younger?
As people live longer, more will die of things that cannot be detected by routine physical exams, and that take more time to develop. Yes, as you said, people die less readily of things that used to kill many at younger ages, so ailments that used to be less common can become more so.
Infections are known to be correlated with some forms of cancer, but not others. Is this only because the infections that cause them are not detected, or because cancer has many causes?
Of two I can think of straight away one was a fencer and exposed for years to chlordane as a white ant deterrent for fence posts.
The other had exposure to formaldehyde and radiation.
As Menicholas points out, people only lived to forty five or so during the Middle Ages, so did not have time to get cancers before they died of something else.
The subject of this article was presumably exposed to a lot of radiation as a pilot and during space flight.
No doubt someone will find a genetic predisposition.
Decision makers have decided to trust the “evidence” so they have decided to do nothing. Good to see them following the evidence.
Which is why you want to be reading what Forbes thinks about it instead of the NYT.
Let’s hope this is spontaneous and not prompted. Because we are heartily sick of stunts, and the bidding up of stunts to the point where any event or misfortune is confirmation of the claims of alarmists.
And let’s hope that the research and prevention dough goes where it should in future. Billions for cancer, zero for climate dialling…that should give a nice balance of values.
Unfortunately, I doubt it’s spontaneous. This is a well established tactic of the left: bring a sick kid, a sad kid, a dying man, a sexually assaulted woman, a mother whose son was shot, whatever it takes to appeal to emotion and empathy while presenting a ludicrous position.
I mean, come on, the man is dying! How can you not listen to his last message? Are you heartless? Can’t you see? Maybe we’re heartless, soulless racist bigots… or maybe we’re looking at the SCIENCE behind their attempt to use SCIENCE as a political club.
I’m an a*hole. I couldn’t give a sh*t. I’ve lost many friends over the years. I couldn’t give a rats about some guy I have never heard of and his dying wish.
I’m just surprised he didn’t blame Glo.Bull Warming for his cancer !!
“I mean, come on, the man is dying! How can you not listen to his last message?”
But I did listen. Sad that he is dying, but that does not make his bull shit any more true.
It’s sad to see a life end this way, but how much sadder to see a child’s life ended by an incurable disease. I too wonder how many children might have been saved if the 100’s of billions of $ wasted on climate sc@ms had been used to fund children’s hospitals.
Is he an astronaut or a climate scientist? If he’s not an astronaut, why is he wearing astronaut gear? It seems to me that he’s trying to create a false impression. In other words, he’s lying about his status. While I feel sorry for his medical condition, we should understand that there might have been a cure available if he and his cohorts had not diverted 100s of billions that could have been spent on medical research into the AGW religion.
According to Wikipedia Sellers is both.
Eric My Grandmother passed with Pancreatic Cancer in 1983.It is a horrible disease unbelievable suffering. The reason I follow this debate on Climate is because I have first hand experience with how the Government deliberately changed our nutrition in the 70,s. to make is all sick and make their friends all rich. Three years ago I was rushed to emergency 3 times in 6 month because my heart rate was between 150/165 beats a minute for 9 hours each time. Blood Pressure all over the place. I was on six different Meds over 10 years for many various chronic diseases. I like you had no time to be concern with anything else. I will be 71 next month and pleased to say No Meds, No Inflammation no health problems what so ever. My heart rate is constant at 65 beats a minute just like the Climate is so constant. Thank God for the Internet. The attached will give you some insight on health. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwX8Ip_RAq0
In reply to Russell. My brother gave me the book , “The Big Fat Surprise”. I discovered that
“diet science” is about as meaningful as “climate science”, and equally corrupt.
A bit of anecdotal evidence. My father ate bacon and eggs for breakfast for most of his adult life.
When he was 84 years old, my sister drove him to a nearby VA hospital for a checkup. His doctor
told him he should eat more fruit and vegetables My father replied,
“Look, I’m 84 years old. Just how much longer do you expect me to live if I start eating that crap!?!”
My father is still living at age 96,
I have made a habit of paying attention when very old people are asked how they lived as long as they have done.
One thing that seemed to be a recurring theme is that many if not most of them said they eat exactly what they feel like eating.
I suspect that our natural instincts are our best guide, and those who try to follow the contradictory gobbledygook of the food Nazis are only confusing their own natural sensibilities.
Our nose is connected directly to our brain at the most basic, ancient and instinctual locus, and directly so. Our nose tells us what our body needs.
After all, it is the only way people had any idea how to survive for all of time, and is how every animal on the Earth decides what it should eat.
And that is good enough for me.
@ Alan… Hooray for POP! When the time come I hope I have the chance to say one last time the cook’s line from the Edmond Fitzgerald “fellas it’s been good to know ya”
“One thing that seemed to be a recurring theme is that many if not most of them said they eat exactly what they feel like eating.” “Our nose is connected directly to our brain at the most basic, ancient and instinctual locus, and directly so. Our nose tells us what our body needs.”
At one time I suddenly began to like eating yellow onions the way most eat apples, they suddenly became quite tasty. Maybe a TIA or, preferably, an example of which you speak. After a while I didn’t care for them anymore. Of course I have to admit up front that I like a lot of things that most in the office wouldn’t go for, such as native persimmons, wild cherries (the small pea sized ones that you have to handpick from a tree and have a wine flavor), wild grapes, raw black walnuts and the really juicy sweet black plums that drip everywhere (very hard to find).
Some people have the urge to eat a certain kind of dirt at times, and many other strange things. Pregnant women are known to completely change the foods that they want to eat.
Some have documented these apparent oddities, and found they are not so odd at all, but rational responses to some or another need or imperative that we are consciously unaware of, but our brains know and tell us on some instinctual level. Often the level is at that of olfaction.
100s of billions? Do you have a source for that figure?
Doesn’t your search engine work? You just employed a very obvious and well- known propagandist’s trick and it isn’t your first in this thread.
It’s simple, Chris. All you have to do is prove him wrong.
I agree with Alan…do your own homework Chris.
Better yet, Chris, just go back to playing your video games. Your drive-by type comments give indication that you are an adolescent high school or early college student who just finished a semester course being brainwashed by some teacher or professor about the “truth” of climate science, which has stirred in you a need to “do something” about those “deniers”. You’ve done your duty, child; now either go back to play or spend some time getting a real education before you make any more of those comments. “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain
Come on guys. if Chris had made a similar claim with no cite you would call him out for not providing one. Let’s not be hypocrites.
I do not think so Jeff. The money spent is a topic of frequent posts and long discussions threads that have followed.
Asking for references for something which is, or should be, common knowledge, as a time worn tactic of time wasting trolls.
I for one am sick of it, and no longer play the game.
If someone seems to have a legit question about some obscure bit of information, or engages in any sort of polite way to request said information, then I feel differently.
In one budget year, the US federal government alone, in the following report, details over $20 billion in climate related expenditures. It is certainly not all of the money spent by that single entity that year. Many other entities on the state and local level also spend considerable sums every year, and then there are all of the other countries of the world. And every other year.
See here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fcce-report-to-congress.pdf
In fact, that document details well over $80 billion over just 4 years, from the US federal government alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Sellers
“Sellers’s work in the field of meteorology focused primarily on computer modeling of climate systems, but he maintained his aircraft pilot skills”
His focus on models instead of observational meteorology is the problem. He won’t accept that the models do not work as they should. To accept that would be too painful for him just as it is for so many others.
Politicians may be believing the models at present but the real world is digging away at those models day by day.
Agree. Maybe his appeal marks him as a true believer rather than one of the climate liars.
But it also marks him as a person who has spent his life on a failed hypothesis. As have many people, in many fields of science.
Should we expect a person to have an automatic epiphany at this point, and admit they have been laboring in support of a fallacy?
Good observation Stephen. I totally agree.
How they use models always cracks me up. There is some input to the model that says CO2 will increase the temperature, then they ‘run’ the model, it shows an increase in temperature and they tell us the ‘result of the study’ is that CO2 is causing temperatures to increase.
This is the same man who thought he could be a United States Astronaut without being a United States citizen.
We are spending too many of our limited resources on climate change. I’d expect him to ask for a change of research policy and divert some money to cancer research.
to “believe that climate is changing” does not address the real issue here which is the push to reduce fossil fuel emissions. for that, it is necessary to show that climate change is related to fossil fuel emissions and further that reducing fossil fuel emissions will make a difference. the only such connection in climate science is a correlation between surface temperature and “cumulative” fossil fuel emissions. this correlation is spurious. please watch this video.
The left panel shows the correlation between two sets of random numbers and the right panel shows the correlation between their cumulative values. The video demonstrates that integration of unrelated variables can yield spurious correlations. It can be shown that the finding by climate science that surface temperature is correlated with cumulative fossil fuel emissions is spurious because there is no correlation between the rate of fossil emissions and the rate of warming.
dbstealey January 17, 2016 at 2:09 am
I’m not sure if I got J. Munshi’s point. I think what he is trying to show is that you can take any set of random numbers and after correlating you can produce a pattern which will give the impression that the random numbers have an actual effect or relationship with one another. Add some ponied-up context to the first set of numbers, and shazzam, you now have a correlated graph.
Garbage in garbage out, but with an explanation for the left hand numbers your eyes can trick you into thinking that there is a pattern in the right side.
Does it mean anything? Or is it a good example of errors the warmists are making …No clue!
michael
Munshi is a very good statistician. He has taken on several of the bad statistical arguments of the warmists and demolished them. Try any one of the following papers. My worry is whether he will be able to keep a job in academia.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75831381/Munshi%20decadal%20emissions%20vs%20temp.pdf
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75831381/Munshi%20trend%20calculation%20for%20temperature%20data%20SSRN-id2631298.pdf
dbstealey, I too was confused at first. In his second graph each point is the sum of the previous point plus the corresponding point in the first graph. No matter what random numbers you start with, the running sum will continuously increase and the average rate of increase makes a good fit to the points. His claim is that CliSci is measuring the fit to a running sum.
He should answer those who inquire about his posts, then.
If anything it should be Net CO2 emissions from all sources, not just anthropogenic.
Thanks to everyone who provided some sort of explanation. It would have helped if Munshi added an explanation himself.
I was already in attack mode, because it turned out that the identity thief who uses other commenters’ names had used “Jamal Munshi” at one time. Apologies to the legit Mr. Munshi for assuming it might be the same site pest.
It never ceases to amaze me that people presume they will be alive tomorrow, you don’t know, no one knows. I took time to see my brother after living abroad twenty years, when leaving he said to me “ I have never felt so good” two days later I got the word he had died from a heart attack. If you are not content with your life, tomorrow may be too late. Fix it.
The neighbor of a co-worker told his wife out of the blue: “This is just about the nicest day of my life.” He keeled over and was pronounced dead by paramedics within 15 minutes. A good way to go.
Perhaps not for the wife was it a very nice day.
Firstly, reading the comments, it is clearly difficult to say anything without it being possibly perceived as some kind of attack of the guy, As for drawing attention to his status as a ‘climate scientist’ – you would think that if he was a real scientist he would look down on the Earth as an astronaut (as he describes) and simply think ‘Effing heckl! How the hell are we going to get a decent set of measurements on THAT chaotic system?’ Basically, in his own words, he has pointed out how big and variable the climate and the Earths bio/ecosystem is – and getting any kind of handle on it is virtually impossible!
A friend died of Pancreatic cancer recently, he concentrated on his family life in his last few months (it was very quick). I feel Piers should be doing the same – and not trying to be a political tool for the ‘team’ – I would think his loved ones would appreciate that much more than trying to publicise a long dead message?
All that said; he still needs to make his own ‘peace’ and pass away happily in himself. I can only wish him luck and strength on his journey.
The problem, Kev, is that he has expressed a dying wish that attacks a large group of people who are very caring and compassionate, and see CAGW alarmism, and the proposed “solutions”, as incredibly harmful.
So I am not so sure that responding as many of us have done is an attack…but rather is more like a response to being attacked.
“…a large group of people who are very caring and compassionate…”
Except, perhaps, for Alex.
🙂
The climate changes every time the Sun rises. It’s quite noticeable actually.
No. Weather changes.
Climate change is made up of lots of little weather changes…sorta !!
Eventually.
“Eventually”? How about several times daily?
IPCC AR5 & WMO define climate as weather averaged over thirty years. In geologic time that’s nanoo seconds.
Yes, thirty years was the definition when I studied climatology back at the end of the last ice age.
Is 30 years an arbitrary number? Or is there some logical reason for choosing it?
Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.
I don’t know who first said it but when you really think about it, it is a statement of truth.
“Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking ”
This rather proves how totally out-of-touch he is on the GW subject Globally speaking.
He was a Climate MODEL scientist, that tells you all you need to know !!
But yet true to form even at this point, note the words “may” “in hindsight”
real maple syrup with the waffle words please.
michael
MMMMMMMMMmmmmm…Real Canadian maple syrup !! LOL
Alright Marcus, don’t go getting all mushy on us now!
Think about it. NASA today is but a vestige of what it was in 1969; people playing with space-things and trying desperately to retain funding by spinning “meaning” that justifies their jobs.
What better “model,” (pardon evil pun) for the rent-seeking syndrome that drives alarmism?
Saw “The Big Short” last night. Read the book years ago when it first came out so I knew the story. Excellent movie. The CAGW cabal are the banks and brokerage firms riding high on an illusion. NOAA and NCDC are doing to the temperature record what S&P did to the bond ratings.
Read another interesting book, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” the history of cancer. The book hit home with me since last June I was diagnosed with CML. There are a couple of chapters on the cancerous carnage of tobacco and the tobacco industry. CAGW tries to demonize skeptics as similar to the tobacco industry. Sounds like transference to me. It is the CAGW crowd on the defensive, trying to choke off debate and discussion, fabricating, falsifying, climate gating.
CAGW is a scientific bubble with a needle in the future, possibly near future. Too bad we can’t figure out who and when to short sell and make a billion bucks.
RIGVIR.com
well worth a go to
and for those who only accept the pharma etc side
its legit and used widely and works..in EU
why the hell we waste billions when proven products are out there- just not FDA bribed to market…
Having worked on Wall St. at the start of the Mortgage Backed Securities era, and having traded them quite profitably in those early years, I truly enjoyed “The Big Short”. It was well told and offered a clear understandable explanation of the MBS. The social behavior of those blindly promoting and over trading/over analyzing the mortgages was eerily similar to the climate obsessed behavior of today, as you note. Good catch.
I am so sorry to hear about your diagnosis and wish you a complete remission and cure.
“I saw how fragile …. the Earth is”. It seems pretty robust to me.
Earth does pretty well. I think some of the astronaut experience involves realizing that nearly all life on Earth depends on essentially a thin film of chlorophyll.
I guess that argues we should feed it better. 🙂
Indeed, It’s the ISS that is fragile. Not The Earth.
As George Carlin says, ” The Earth isn’t going anywhere, we are ” !! LOL
Here’s the way I see it. If you use your last gasp to tell someone, “My husband shot me”. The court may ignore the hearsay objection from his lawyer, but it will still require a bullet hole.
Yes!
+100
I’m not particularly impressed with this. Any intelligent, diligent scientist can very easily see that CAGW is wrong. Yet the professional rewards for promoting it are vast. Having done so for however many years, now he finds he is dying. Is he going to confess his dishonesty and/or carelessness in examining the evidence now? A better man would. A small man will simply go on promoting the case to go on collecting kudos until it no longer matters to him. The “tell” that this is what he is doing is his comment:
“And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing.”
Well DUH! Climate is always changing! Every (sane) skeptic and every alarmist and every (sane) informed person of no opinion about CAGW believes “climate is changing”. This man must know that a belief about climate changing is not any indication of belief in the alarmist scare. Yet he misconstrues it as support for his position. This gives every indication of very carefully worded misdirection; even in his extreme state, he still shows no sign of speaking from the heart. Seems like nothing more than dishonesty to the very end.
He didn’t dare say the verboten words: global warming. None of them say this now. It is quite deliberate.
“
Ron House
January 17, 2016 at 3:40 am
I’m not particularly impressed with this. Any intelligent, diligent scientist… ”
You just eliminated virtually all of the supposed scientists that support CAGW.
Hate to say it but there are a lot of people on this site with illness and age related disease and cancer that post here regularly. So, yes, the death of some denialism is certain. For some of us who have been given a particular probabilistic time frame, we won’t live to see the results of the discussion. But really, it is a poor argument that endeavours to gain sympathy through whining about the state of anyone’s Heath. That doesn’t change the science. It has been argued about for some generations now. It may be several generations before the issue is resolved. Any one person’s health is irrelevant since every single person who has ever posted on this site could be dead before the science is “settled”.
Sad in two ways, both his personal situation that I wouldn’t wish on anyone and the fact that what he considers his life’s work is turning out to be not only a waste of time but real damage to real people.
He’s going to work tomorrow? What an absolute loon. Doesn’t he have a bucket list or something?
I was teaching teachers in China and I asked the question ‘ What would you do if you new you had one month to live?’
An answer
“I would have a good rest’
WTF
Sorry. ‘.Knew’ .I’m supposed to be an English teacher (hang head in shame)
As a fellow teacher I find some of the best teaching points come from my own mistakes. Forgive yourself 🙂
We gnu what you meant.
Alex, what was that about a ‘.canoe’ . ?
“We gnu what you meant.”
gnu =“GNU’s Not Unix.”
🙂
Reminds me of the lady from Tennessee who just won $300 million dollars, and is going to go to work anyway.
Many put themselves in cages of their own making, that they can never break free of.
At the very least, both show a startling lack of imagination for how many interesting, satisfying, or useful ways to spend one’s time, even knowing better than most how short it is.
There should be a simple test for lottery winners of such large amounts of money. Just ask them “Are you going to continue to work?” If they answer “Yes”, they don’t get the money being too stupid to know what to do with it.
🙂
It is likely that I also would continue to work if I won the lottery. I’d take a vacation but otherwise life goes on. I enjoy work and I provide meaningful service to others by doing so.
Tom in Florida, agree 100%. If you depend on going to work for your self-worth then you can continue to do so without the extra money.
Michael, if you enjoy your work that much, it is not really work then, is it?
But, do you not have any ideas for starting a business of your own (assuming you do not own one already…if you do, that is not really the same as what I was referring to…going to a job), or travelling, or setting up a charitable institution and running that?
$300 million is enough to give away, conservatively, $15 million a year without spending any of the original 300, or making risky investments.
I would likely spend much of my time reading, writing, taking classes, travelling, collecting rare plants, setting up a botanical garden of rare plants to be preserved in perpetuity (faster than I am already very slowly doing), and doing charitable endeavors of as many sorts as I had time for.
Going into work (for a day, anyway) could be a sign of loyalty and dedication, of valued friendships, not wanting to leave without handing over the reins cleanly to someone else. And gloating. Don’t forget gloating!
Oh, yes. Definitely show up to quit.
Do not want to be all abrupt. Just fairly abrupt.
If they asked very nicely I would consider sticking around while they interviewed replacements.
Plus there are a few people I would want to give enough money to, so they could retire early.
Too many fantastic sights in the world to see. With that level of economic freedom, one could travel in luxury while seeing the most awe-inspiring places our great blue orb has to offer.
In endurance horse riding we have a saying: “You can rest when you die.” Not always possible but we can try.
$300 million is plenty enough to take up a fun sounding sport like endurance horse riding.
I think I should like to have a horse and take it riding on spring mornings at Playalinda Beach.
Going to work at some humdrum job is what people do when they have to do it, IMO.
I have always loved and enjoyed everything I have ever been involved with, and in that I feel very lucky and blessed. Some people hate everything they do, no matter how many times they switch jobs.
Student, nurseryman, renovating historic mansions, repairing high voltage underwater electrical equipment, electrical safety instructor…I have done these and lots more, and never regretted the time spent. But I would try new things very much more often, and travel widely, if I was wealthy. I would not go to a job working for someone else if I did not have to.
What a cheap shot this is. I will give him a small benefit of doubt considering his profession as a trained Astronaut and a ‘climate *%#4)?^!$$$t.’ But to me it reeks of political manipulation from someone who was manipulated or shoved into this statement of his… Whatever the benefit. Perhaps obama care wasn’t working out for him in his condition and he is getting some extra consideration for his stated position on climate.
What a horrible thought…But not actually out of bounds considering the current state of the BS, lies, manipulation, complete crap coming out of the Government funded and controlled climate science and the obama administration. I do not believe anything he or anyone in the government says any longer.
It occurs to me that it seems I am becoming aware of my having been sort of in a brainwashed state of mind over the last quite a few years or so. Realizing now how much this political correctness and associated similar BS has had an effect on my thinking as ‘being just a normal state of things’. It is not and it is quite refreshing to listen to some of it and to be aware just how much BS it really is. These days, I question with a very large amount weight on my BS meter, anything any politician, group, government official, news organization, authority, etc, etc. has to say. The effect is one of having become immune to a situation or the way of normalizing everyday things that we become immune to them and begin adjusting to or accepting them as normal and acceptable. The light has come on and brightened, shining a light and awareness of much of the crap and PC BS that is being constantly thrown at us. I hope others are waking up to some of this as well. I blame it on much of the media and liberal groups who push their out of bounds agendas on the public as being acceptable. Why isn’t Hillary currently in prison for violating so many obvious laws and regulations? Laws that if you or I had violated we would be sitting in prison for life without a doubt right now. Why isn’t obama being impeached for his many violations of the Constitution and other laws when other Presidents would have been run through the ringer for and ran out of office? Why isn’t there a huge outrage about Iran getting the green light for it’s nuke program and today getting 150 billion dollars to wreak hell on the world? We have become immune and the media and the people we elected to office conspire to keep us stupid, quiet, uninformed and accepting of outrageous situations.
Thanks for reading…Wake up you zombies!!! The reason there’s so many zombie shows out these days is so that you will feel more comfortable with like minded people on TV and continue to be complacent. ; ) Sarc
I feel exactly the same way and it has taken a few years to come to that realization.
And the people responsible for us thinking this way can’t figure out why one particular candidate for the nomination is doing so well…
Hah! Y’mean crap like “gender is fluid, and whatever you believe you want to be?” Last time I looked, it was pretty damn biological. Look down, and you’re either a yin or a yang. I actually got thrown off a sport-oriented forum for daring to say so . . . which I consider a feather in my cap!
I just can never understand why the thinnest skinned person in the world now gets to make the rules that everyone else must follow.
Plus, I suspect most of the people who act offended are now doing so just for attention, and are not really offended in any meaningful way at all.
Actually they’ve annexed the word “gender” instead of using the proper word “sex”. Gender means masculine and feminine, behaviors. Sex means male and female, physical traits. Transgender just means putting on a dress if you’re a dude. Transsexual requires surgery and hormone treatments. Every time I hear someone say transgender when they mean transsexual, I shake my head ruefully.
And transvestite actually means the choice of wearing a mans style vest or a womans style vest. Pant suits are a sexless and gender neutral style of clothing… There is no specific word for it yet, but if there was one it would describe someone who has given up on, or lost all semblance of a gender, yet still, for personal and political gain, speaks as an authority for others about that which is no longer a reality…Similar to roll playing, where the participants endow the individual players with a fantasy, pseudo-realistic authority for the character which the player has chosen to become.
What? /Sarc…? Help me out menicholas
No worries, you are doing fine.
Although, the “vest” in transvestite, I always took to be short for vestments, another word for clothing in general, although it does have other specific meanings, such as in particular the liturgical garments of clergy.
But I do not think it means that specific sort of clothing…at least…it may not…unless…um nevermind.
Perhaps he should talk to the only scientist to have walked on the moon. Or the engineer who built Spaceship One.
It’s always sad to hear that a man will die from cancer. But it’s also sad that he will live the rest of his life deluded by this poisonous nonsense. Fortunately many Apollo-era astronauts and engineers do not suffer from this delusion.
Chris
Chris ; Sellers must believed in the new UN / USDA Food Guide Lines created with Fake Science; By Sen., George McGovern.in the late 60;s. It also happens that Sen., Albert Gore Senior was part of this discussion. Go to the 18 minute mark to the 28 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY
I nearly lost it when I read that “Friends of the Earth,” an eco-loon dot-org, actually influenced the Govt’s “what to eat” chart with their “carbon footprint” crap. More “consensus” “science,” aka political lobbying for more revenue.
If Piers has his way, there is going to be far less wealth around to tackle cancer and other problems that are far more deadly than climate change.
The diversion of billions of dollars of research money to climate pseudoscience during the past 15 years may have already had an effect on our ability to treat pancreatic cancer.
The thing that’s bothersome is: Why should we listen to an astronaut on any topic of scientific importance? Astronauts are not selected based on their scientific acumen. in fact it is often the opposite. When you have a gasket blow out in a zero gravity environment you don’t want someone who sits and “ponders” the possible alternatives. All one need do is look at John Glen, and his experience with Keating to know that once these guys get outside of the narrow confines that are required of their aerospace training they are often in over their head.
Apparently climate scientists are not selected for their scientific acumen either, or we would not be in this ridiculous and expensive debacle.
Mark, keep in mind that what we call astronauts include not only command pilots but also mission specialist who are scientists. However I would agree that they do need to stick to their respective areas of expertise.
At least he was not an actor who pretends to be knowledgeable of a subject because he played a part in a movie.
“Why should we listen to an astronaut on any topic of scientific importance?”
Astronauts are the pointy end of the spear of a massive engineering and scientific effort. They must trust the scientists and engineers that built the rocket and gave the whole venture a purpose. Astronauts also tend to be drawn from the ranks of the military where trust and obedience is a vital and essential quality.
The carbon footprint of a rocket launch is doubtless substantial. But it could also save humanity someday.
There are things we know “intellectually” that we don’t really know “personally” until it affects us personally. Everyone knows we’re going to die, but most people are generally shocked to learn that they personally are going to die, and how and within what time frame.
We have a whole community of scientists who have recently discovered that climate changes, and now one of them has discovered that the human condition isn’t a permanent Edenic steady-state either. Both conditions are typically blamed on humanity’s sins.
I regard this as a general failure of Western culture and belief systems to fully accept our physical reality. For all our proclamations of independent thinking, genuinely humanist feelings and impulses, and real desire to make the world a better place, when the world affects us personally we still become bewildered children of Adam and Eve standing outside the gate to the Garden wondering just how stupid our parents could have been to have left us in this condition.
It is the ancient question, isn’t it? What will our own response be like when we contemplate our impending arrival at ‘our long home’?
Over the years I’ve observed friends and relatives take the floor to perform that final dance. The ones whose lingering death you could describe as being more ‘successful’ than others have departed best when they have tried, as well as they were able, to put friends and loved ones at ease.
Why place unimportant extraneous worry on your loved ones? They will have enough to cope with in the coming days.
Rick, another cogent and insightful view.
Agreed.
Sellers states… ” And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing.”
Wow, I’m very disturbed that only 70 % of people know that the climate changes ! The climate has been changing for about 4.5 billion years.. That means 30% of people , like Peters, are the REAL climate change deni*rs, who think the climate has never changed before !! Sad…
Marcus I bet 95% believed the Government High Carb / Low Fat Diet is health. That is way Chronic Disease is so Prevalent including all CANCERS. Sorry to bring this up all the time but the Government Lied / just like their doing on Climate.
+10!
The question of whether one “believes the climate is changing” is not an honest one. It is a “gotcha” question. We skeptics/climate realists know what they mean by “climate change”, and it has nothing to do with what climate has always done. Therefore, those who answered “no” to their question were, likely in most cases simply gainsaying the question.
But many who answered “yes” may well have been climate realists who answered honestly, and are now being used out of the context of what they actually think.
This is apparently the poll referenced:
https://www.monmouth.edu/assets/0/32212254770/32212254991/32212254992/32212254994/32212254995/30064771087/bbab2f4a-3eef-4772-9b82-8fbdd996452a.pdf
The actual question was: “Do you think that the world’s climate is undergoing a change that is causing more extreme weather patterns and the rise of sea levels, or is this not happening?”
So I would have to go with the 22% who answered “no” (8% didn’t know). Yes the climate is changing, and yes it’s probably causing a steady (not increasing) rate of sea level rise, but no it’s not leading to more extreme weather.
I think this overly complicated question would work better as three simpler questions:
(1) Is the climate changing? Yes
(1a) If yes, is climate change causing an increasing rate of sea level rise? No
(1b) If yes, is climate change causing more extreme weather patterns? No
That Sellers puts any credence in such a sloppy poll is indicative of confused thinking. In the time left to him perhaps he should “think” a little harder about the “science” of climate change.
For what it is worth, I never quote polls to make a point. Only do so in response to others who quote them, and rarely even then.
90% of polls ask loaded questions…the other half can prove anything.
Menicholas – Yep, with “questions” like theirs, it’s heads they win, tails we lose.
Marcus
“…who think the climate has never changed before !! Sad…”
The fundamental premise of the hockey stick argument and IPCC AR5 Fig 6.1 calcs is that prior to mankind’s anthropogenic contributions the atmospheric CO2 concentration was effectively constant, steady state, unchanging, sinks and sources and reservoirs all in wonderful balance. Suddenly and for no apparent natural reason at least to them CO2 step change increased between 1750 to 2011. Ergo & ipso facto anthropogenic must be the only explanation. However mankind’s C output in the same time frame was 555 GtC, equivalent to twice the hockey blade ppm increase (8.9 Ptg/y). Oh, what to do? Well, kick half of it, 315 GtC, (4.9 Ptg/y) under the rug by claiming some suddenly appearing natural sinking crawling out of the ooze, Table 6.1, with uncertainties orders of magnitude large than anthro’s share. So in order to make it all balance IPCC AR5 partitioned the anthro portion 57% sequestered/43% retained. How convenient. How totally dry-labbed. World Bank 4C and IGSS have slightly different partitions. so much for consensus.
See my other postings about the three failures of CAGW.
” Too bad we can’t figure out who and when to short sell and make a billion bucks.”
Warren Buffett already did. After hurricane Katrina, the AGW brigade planted the idea that extreme hurricanes and more hurricanes were the way of the future,
Buffett bought casualty insurance companies. They collected increased premiums as the result of all the hype. There have been no hurricanes touching down in Florida for the last 10 years.Thus, his companies pocketed the high premiums and did not have to pay anything out.
Yes indeedy, and premiums absolutely skyrocketed…and have remained high ever since.
Good eye, Walt.
Yes they did however wind insurance also covers other wind events such as what we had over the last two days and nights here in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. Homeowners around the area are glad they had that insurance I am sure. Personally, my wind insurance is lower this year after being fairly flat for a few years. And don’t forget that insurance companies reinvest portions of those premiums providing capital for others. The returns on those investments are used to help keep premiums lower than they ordinarily would be.
He’s certainly no scientist. No true scientist would spout the pure drivel he did in this editorial. What he comes off as is a True Believer running through all the talking points of what has all the hallmarks of a religion. He thinks the planet is in trouble, and we are the cause, so therefore we have to “save the planet”. How noble. And idiotic.
He’s a “Government Scientist”.
A “Government Scientist” need not be scientific,
but he must be politically correct.
“I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is…”
Please!
The only thing ” fragile ” is his mental state !!
Maybe he should be more concerned with Magnetic Pole shift and Cosmic Rays during a Maunder Minimum !! I’ve only just begun to look into this, so if anyone has an opinion I’d love to hear it !!
https://youtu.be/vJKTLuvGAU4
Just to be clear, what they consider a ” Super Flood “, I would think it would be maybe a new little Ice Age !!
I am more concerned that there may be something to the hypothesis that volcanic and tectonic activity will increase if we have a Maunder Minimum type shutdown of the Sun. And that we really will have a return to LIA conditions.
I for one am hoping it is wrong, but am very concerned that it may be a true causative correlation. Because if so, that will be a real disaster scenario, and not in a hundred years, either.
Massive crop failures, such as occurred during the Year Without a Summer, would be far worse in the 21st century than they were in the early 19th century, when people were generally far more self sufficient, and there were fewer people by an order of magnitude or so. People stored food back then, often enough on hand for many months. The world food supply today is far to short to compensate for widespread failure of grain harvests…one can visualize a scenario where a billion or more starve to death…and I doubt they will go quietly.
There were very good reasons why wars and pestilence were far more common during global cool periods.
Taken out of context – and people will do so – some of your phrases sound, … odd.
This for example: “shutdown of the Sun”
Other ideas expressed in your comment are debatable. The year without a summer (1816) seems to have not been a global event, and I wonder what that would mean if it were.
With the technology and infrastructure in place now, crop failures and resulting famine can be handled (unless, as in Syria, other issues get in the way). Many tons of hay were shipped (trucks & rail) into drought areas a few years ago (2011?) in the USA. In 1816 this could not have been done even if the need was known in advance and folks wanted to ship into the region.
And “world food supply today is far to short ”
In fact, grain is in such abundance it is frequently piled on the ground or left in fields for lack of storage facilities. Search ‘images’ for: ** corn ground pile **
Text material from March 31, 2015:
Corn Stocks Up 11 Percent from March 2014
Soybean Stocks Up 34 Percent
All Wheat Stocks Up 6 Percent
Source USDA
John, yes, “shutdown of the sun” is sloppy shorthand used to economize words…I am surprised you are not familiar with the reference. It refers to a halt of sunspot activity.
And I did not mean to imply that I am advocating these to be true…I hope that none of these things ever come to pass.
But do you think a midsummer hard freeze in the key growing regions or the US, Canada, and Eurasia could not cause a massive enough shortfall in harvests to endanger huge numbers of people?
And I think you are mischaracterizing the YWaS…it was a widespread phenomenon. It caused crop failures on a widespread basis throughout the Northern Hemisphere, with summer freezes lost crops from North America, to the British Isles, Europe, and even into Asia, where China was particularly hard hit.
Grain is abundant, and we rely on this abundance. During the YWaS, grain prices rose some five to tenfold.
There may be grain on the ground, but it is not enough to withstand loss of a years harvest. An extreme possibility, but there is not a multiyear supply of food for the world. In general, food is consumed about as fast as it is grown, and the overall supply at any given time is said to be about 3 to 6 months, taking the world as a whole.
As i said, this is not something I stay awake at night over. I am not a prepper, but many are. Looking back at history, it can be observed that we have been incredibly lucky as a society in terms of major disasters, and I am not speaking of localized droughts or floods or even country wide famines…but global scale events.
Cold kills plants and animals…not slowly, but all the way dead in one night if it gets cold enough.
Contrast that with predictions of doom over a 1.6 degree temp rise, which some people have said is unsurvivable and actually threatens humanity.
Little Ice Age conditions froze up rivers in places like New York and London from November to March, and hindered commerce on a wide scale.
Look what occurred last winter…when cold caused a virtual shutdown of economic activity in the Northeast US for months. And that was just a single cold winter.
Besides, I only said when asked for an opinion that I am concerned that there may be something to the idea that these events were related to solar activity. No one, especially not me, has any idea if it is true or not.
But if it is true, and if the sun is going into some sort of grand minimum, which it appears to be doing, there may be trouble. Or modern technology and agriculture may render similar events as occurred in the past as no big deal.
But I do not think technology can prevent crop failures if there is a freeze in the middle of summer in key growing regions. If it happened in the past, it could happen in the future. (or do you disagree?)
Big ifs.
We will know a lot more in 15 years, I think.
Grand minimum + extended La Nina. Might just make for interesting times in the US.
The Global Warming hoax has similar effects on people as dangerous religious cults.
Note to Piers Sellers.
Dear Piers,
I am truly sorry to learn of your illness. The following will be difficult for you to accept, but the evidence points strongly to the following conclusion: There is no global warming crisis.
Set you mind at ease and focus your last days on those you love.
God bless, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Allan MacRae, Calgary, June 12, 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4
I’m not somebody who thinks that one’s “carbon footprint” is meaningful at all,
but,
since he apparently does, I wonder what additional “footprint” is caused by attempts to cure or lessen his illness?
I believe that if I were on my deathbed and believed in CAGW, I would somehow apologize to my family survivors for the size of my carbon footprint. I expect many of us here would, again, IF we believed in CAGW.
Many CAGW supporters, like Al Gore, have carbon footprints many times that of an average person, yet they don’t apologize for their excess while they do proclaim that others must reduce their carbon footprint.
I guess there is no apologizing for hypocrisy.
He liked flying planes, etc. All the global warmists love long distance travel. None use sail boats and camels to do this, either, well, there may be one or two…
Fixed your little typo 😉
My bad.
Does that mean we’ve found Big Foot?
While his situation is certainly sad, his statement disproves itself. Equally sadly, last year was apparently not the “death of denial” , at least for him and his fellows.
Who doesn’t believe that climate is changing ?! Who does not think it was colder 300 years ago. When was it ever not changing ? That is to completely miss the point.
If that’s the sum of his critical scientific thinking I suggest he makes the best of the time left to him to do something more useful.
Disturbing perhaps that he would use his impending death for climate propaganda, but not at all surprising. In the game of propaganda, everything is fair, including telling children their parents are evil for using cars, that there’s a conspiracy of oil producers while calling skeptics conspiracy theory believers and threatening to kill or jail all those who disagree. This is the precise behaviour of a three-year-old who gets caught doing something bad so he starts crying and saying he’s hurt to avoid getting punished for lying and breaking rules. Again, proof that science has nothing to do with global warming. Note the man is appealing to the consensus of political leaders now.
I wonder how empathetic the reaction would be if his position was viewed from a more Malthusian view. These “save the world” appeals to the fragile earth always leave me with the odor of $100 cigar smoke from a back room filled with elites deciding who has the right to life by controlling the earth’s resources.
http://thetruthwins.com/archives/30-population-control-quotes-that-show-that-the-elite-truly-believe-that-humans-are-a-plague-upon-the-earth
Shouldn’t archeology show us that man’s footprint on the earth can be swept away in a few thousand years, while the earth’s calendar is measured in millions of years. To worry about curbing photosynthesis when faced with one’s mortality shows how powerful the psychology is behind AGW.
A puzzling paradox regarding the above quotes: Many of the countries and organizations who the quoted individuals represent are advocating policies and actions in direct contradiction to their above stated views.
If CAGW is such a threat to people, why are they trying to stop it?
If they want to reduce populations, why do they want to bring hordes of immigrants from places where people reproduce like bunny rabbits?
Why do they want to pay people to have more children, via social welfare programs that actively encourage the exact behaviors they decry?
They all have their head so far up their @$$e$, it is almost more worse than the shocking things they say in public (which raises the question…if this is what they are willing to declare publically, just what are they saying behind closed doors?).
Unfortunately, the answer is probably more grim and malevolent than we would like to admit. The war against fossil fuels for the elites is not driven by a belief in the dangers of CAGW. It is driven by a disdain for the freedoms inexpensive fuels afford.
If everyone is dependent on green subsidies, public transportation, justified rationing of resources and is convinced to vote for these shackles under the guise of compassion for the refugees, love for the planet, helping the poor; it allows the powerful to do great evils with the full support of those they enslave.
We see Soros buying up coal. Bill Gates funding vaccines and population control measures. The masses are the useful idiots to confirm the elites power only to be sacrificed later at their various altars.
I hope he lives long enough to have it proven to him how foolish he has been and what a waste the post-astronaut stage of his career has been. My guess is the collapse in temps after the current El Niño should be enough to do it.
Optimist!
Clearly a religious view, most americans “believe” bla bla bla..
If they like their belief, they should keep it.
Looking at science, no room for the AGW hypothesis. In reality no warming caused by CO2 in the atmosphere has been measured, ever. The real question is, who’s the denier?
Not even capable of being honest, not even at the end of his life. Of course, we can’t exclude the possibility he never actually did understand the science.
“And most Americans … believe that the climate is changing.”
Yes, the climate is changing. It has gradually changed several times in my lifetime.
I have gotten to the point that I expect all climate alarmists to for example, connect sneezing to increased epi pen use because of fossil fuels driving CO2 driving warming driving climate extremes driving allergies driving asthma driving death. So the title of this post made me immediately think that this NASA employee was proposing that fossil fuel use is now touted to be driving cancer rates.
Wait…they have already said that. My bad.
That he has been diagnosed with cancer is terrible. But this article he has supposedly penned is just plain silly and is another example of the main reason no one pays attention to this kind of alarmism. They should stop the snake oil method all together, we ain’t buyin it, and get back to dry old science.
I was having a great day, as usual.
Then I read your comment.
I have (hate) to admit I agree with everything you wrote.
However, there were no sources listed, or footnotes!
The title of the article “Cancer and Climate Change” in the NY Times, was almost certainly chosen by editors, not the author, and misrepresents the article: There is no claimed relationship between cancer and climate change in the article.
So it seems both the author and the newspaper have used the word “cancer” to get attention, twist reader emotions, and promote their secular climate change “religion”.
Both the newspaper editors and the author are smarmy leftists using a personal crisis to promote their “religion” — true leftists never let a crisis go to waste (don’t you agree?).
Sorry. I should have been clearer. The pronoun in “They” have already said that” was referring to numerous claims from climate catastrophy media sources that cancer is connected to, or will eventually be, climate change. I didn’t mean to imply that Piers has claimed it.
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/climatechange/health_impacts/cancer/index.cfm
There actually IS a connection between astronaut cancer rates and the amount of time spent in space, particularly on space-walks. Big-time. They absorb a tremendous amount of radiation, and all go in knowing and accepting that risk. Probably seems abstract to them at the time . . .
Goldrider,
And none of them withdrew from the program after Grissom and a couple others were incinerated in a launch pad fire. They were all real heroes to my generation.
Now we have ‘Muslim Outreach’. ARRRRGH!
But they did install devices and enact measures to prevent a repeat of that grisly accident.
At the time, there was no way for the astronauts in the capsule to open the hatch, or put out the fire, and no way for anyone outside to get there quickly enough to help. Oxygen fire. Must have been a bad way to go, trapped and burning…yikes!
I have always thought that the astronauts are incredibly brave. That anyone could climb on top of a rocket in the early days, after watching most of the developmental rockets explode soon after launch, takes a seriously large set of brass ones.
Eric’s situation is unfortunately ironic.
Had Eric championed cancer cures instead of climate fears, cancer discoveries could have been made to cure pancreatic cancer. For all anyone knows, funding for 1 lone researcher could have made all the difference.
No doubt, now that the Climate Treaty is completed, Joe Biden will get to take all the money now being spent on climate fears and put it towards cancer cures.
The unfortunate reality of this situation is that the money we waste sponsoring corrupt scientists, lawyers, environmental groups, governments and undermining capitalism, won’t be spent finding a cure for cancer. We will waste trillions without any real way of proving we ever got any benefits. What control will we use to prove the climate would have been any different after we spent all this money on the impossible task of stopping the climate from changing. BTW, how do we know more CO2 won’t result in a better climate? The unproven assumption is that climate will change for the worse. It is unfortunate that this astronaut chose to use his misfortune to promote the societal misfortune of the fraud called AGW. Million and millions of hospitals, schools, water treatment plants, roads, vaccines, bridges, drugs, etc etc etc won’t be built or discovered. This will be the greatest waste of resources in the modern era. Gas prices are now $1.31/gal. Falling gas prices will undermine every penny we’ve spent on alternative energy sources. No one will continue to buy electric cars, and once Obama is gone, coal will be back powering our plants…just like it is in China and India.
Yeah, how ’bout those electric cars?
/sarc (Gas $1.31/gal).
WUWT, please commission a series of articles regarding the “opportunity cost” of climate change. With the money we will waste on controlling the climate, we could possibly have found a cure for cancer. How many schools could have been built with the money lost to Solyndra?
Forgive me for being callous, but not only is he wrong, he is dead wrong.
Best hopes and wishes to Mr. Sellers,
He states:
“… have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions.”
And that:
“Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term impacts to the climate.”
He also states: ”
Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place.”
The data from the sets contained below 1995-2015, and more, do not show significant or material changes in the planet, or any trajectory to an “uncomfortable” or “dangerous” place. All available data do not show changes in the planet (the earth’s system) outside of natural variation or outside of any Holocene trends at all, we know that 2015 was not anywhere near the hottest year on record, or especially warm at all, neither was 2014, and that 1998 was 0.26C hotter than 2015 (both El Nino years, (according to RSS TLT data and validated by radiosondes and crosschecked by UAH data V6).
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2015/plot/uah/from:1995/to:2015/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2015/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1995/to:2015/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1995/to:2015/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1995/to:2015/plot/esrl-amo/from:1995/to:2015
I hope the data matters more to Mr. Sellers than the models, and I wish him well and I wish him peace.
My grandfather had a hernia operation in his 60s. When they opened him up they found that his appendix was exploded. It happened 50 years earlier during a scarlet fever epidemic. The doctors just thought he had scarlet fever.
Dr. Sellers, Bless you. I will pray for you.
I hope you and your family can use and make the best of your time on earth.
What is frightening to me is that such an intelligent scientific man could be so BLIND as to not look at all the sides of the science !!!!!!! …… It is his unwavering trust in Computer Models that has me baffled.
How dose he square the satellite temperature data with what Nasa has done to alter the records ??? etc etc , there is so much to say about so much corruption in the system …… !!!
My underlying thoughts are how SAD that an obviously good man cannot see the wood for the trees.
Politics should not be a factor in ones Climate thinking …… look back into the logic of the earths past history and not be brainwashed about Co2 and the picture becomes clear.
( I also have life ending cancer but am able to see the Climate for what it is …… ever changing, I have walked on a FROZEN river Thames, seen the sun and moon rise from an Ocean of a Baja Beach …… I know where my mind rests )
Whilst I am not a zealot about energy conservation – I do hold to some basic principles regarding responsible energy use.
Firstly – if I am traveling somewhere then I ask myself – “is this journey really necessary”.
Secondly – I have purchased a vehicle that uses the lowest amount of energy per unit of distance travelled.
Piers Sellers is one of the rare individuals who has made an unnecessary journey to a place where nothing was achieved, whilst consuming at one point in the journey an amount of power probably equivalent to approximately the total maximum output of a medium size nuclear power station.
Piers Sellers is a veteran of three space missions. The man should be deeply ashamed.
Rarely in the field of human energy wastage, has so much energy been wasted for the sake of so few legitimate scientific goals.
Even Al Gore’s private jet, at take off, doesn’t consume as much fuel, as a couple of shuttle boosters!!!
And, let’s be clear about this – Al Gore is a heavy man.
Correction – I checked my informed guess on wikipedia:
Apparently the space shuttle power consumption exceeded the output of the world’s largest nuclear power plant. So silly me. I will have to try harder in future to furnish my jokes with more reliable stats.
8.21 GW – tech: capacity of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, the world’s largest nuclear power plant.
11.7 GW – tech: power produced by the Space Shuttle in liftoff configuration (9.875 GW from the SRBs; 1.9875 GW from the SSMEs.)
Look at this chart, nothing seems be be unexpected when put into context. We are late in the Holocene. Most glaciers have melted due to natural events, the flow of cold water into the oceans has basically stopped. The oceans have started to warm. The water was abnormally cold due to the little ice age, which ended around the time the CO2 chart starts. As the H2O warms, its net absorption decreases, and outgasses on a relative basis. I would have expected this chart with or without man. Does anyone know how many PPM CO2 increase does a 1°C cause? Is there a tight correlation in hte past with increase ocean temp and increase in CO2? what is the slope and R^2?
http://www.teachoceanscience.net/images/SST-over-time-plot.jpg
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo336s2/lectures/sec3/co2_1850.gif
CO2 is life
How about some uncertainty zones on those pencil thin lines? Let’s see how easy it is to pick those crisp definite lines out of the total cloud of data. Refer to IPCC AR5 Table 6.1.
We are going to experience a Heinrich event due to current abrupt change to solar cycle so there is no worry about global warming. The number one planetary problem is going to be abrupt cooling due to the solar change and the start up of the solar cycle after the interruption.
The geomagnetic field intensity of the earth has dropped 10% (this observational fact provides support for the existence of the mechanism, there must be a physical explanation for all observations including a 10% drop in the field strength of the planet’s magnetic field, the sun is significantly different than the standard model, there are hundreds of astronomical observational anomalies and paradoxes to support that assertion) in the last 20 years which is 10 times faster than any change in the liquid core is physically capable of causing, if there was a mechanism that could suddenly in the 1990s cause massive changes of liquid movement in the earth’s core. In response to the unexplained sudden change in the geomagnetic field that started in the mid 1990’s, the Europeans launched a set of three specialized satellites that provide whole earth laboratory accuracy measurement of the earth’s geomagnetic field.
http://news.yahoo.com/european-satellites-launched-eye-earths-magnetic-field-202607407–sector.html
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Courtillot07EPSL.pdf
Are there connections between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/pdf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar…than-expected/
The discussion concerning ‘climate change’ is going to change when there is in your face global cooling.
As millions and millions of lives per year can be saved and/or torture by modern medicine/ loss of quality of life due to the symptoms of chronic illness avoided, let’s discuss the research support facts as how to prevent roughly 90% of all US diseases including cancer.
What we eat in the US is the explanation as to why the US spends twice as much on health ‘care’ per person than any other developed country in the world.
http://dels.nationalacademies.org/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/LessMeat.pdf
There is a direct correlation of meat and dairy consumption and the incidence of cancer, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, blood diseases, liver disease, kidney diseases, brain disease, arthritis, other immune diseases, and so on.
The bottom line is meat and dairy consumption causes the diseases and plant consumption protects against the diseases.
For example those eating a traditional Japanese diet have 48 times less incidence of prostate cancer, almost no atherosclerosis, and six times less breast cancer than those eating the US standard diet (SAD).
Interesting the specialists in the last decade or so have discovered why that assertion is true (have worked out most of the mechanisms). As there is no profit in telling people they are getting sick due to diet (too much meat (factor of 10), too much dairy (almost zero is optimum), too many eggs (almost zero is optimum), too much processed grains (almost zero is optimum), too much refined sugar (almost zero is optimum), too much alcohol and too little vegetables particularly leafy green vegetables, too little fruit, particularly berries, many of the 1000s of cancer stopping chemicals are in the skin of the plants)..
Roughly 90% of the diseases which we are treated for in the US (arthritis, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, blood diseases, brain diseases, cancers including for example, prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes and so on) could be prevented if we changed our diet to a near vegan diet.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/
http://nutritionfacts.org/2014/07/08/a-low-methionine-diet-may-help-starve-cancer-cells/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-tumors-use-meat-to-grow-xeno-autoantibodies/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-answer-to-the-pritikin-puzzle/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/cancer-proofing-mutation/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-inflammatory-meat-molecule-neu5gc/
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/nonhuman-molecules-lining-our-arteries/
This is the most recent research (from a book written by the doctor/researcher that has written the below book and made the above videos, all book sale profits go to charity) concerning pancreatic cancer which shows one of the consequences of factory farming, which is due to species to species virus transfer. There are other studies that show how cancer and organ damaging molecules are concentrated in animals which we eat. There are both natural damaging molecules in meat/diary and foreign molecules that cause the damage to our organs and cause cancer.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Die-Discover-Scientifically/dp/1250066115
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study
We evolved as carnivores, sorry to rain on your parade. That’s how we got through the glaciations, differentiating ourselves from the apes by our larger brain size as we went. Veganism is a newfangled fad diet devoid of essential fatty acids and other nutrients essential for life–which makes it look just about as fruitbatty a religion as CAGW, and has about as much fact behind it.
Your moral high ground is a sandy anthill.
In reply to Goldrider’s rhetoric and scientifically baseless statements.
Gee must be someone from the meat industry.
Do you have any scientific papers to backup your hot air?
There are 1000s and 1000s of peer reviewed studies, including more than a hundred based on the data from the China Study that support the assertion that roughly 90% of all US diseases: Heart disease, circulatory diseases which are the consequences of blockage of the arteries including dementia and hypertension, kidney disease, liver disease, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and all of the most common cancers are due to the US ‘diet’.
I can will support that assertion with an explanation of the mechanisms with links to supporting peer reviewed studies. The ‘war’ on cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, could be won tomorrow if the US population understood what an ideal diet was and how different our diet is from the ideal.
Currently 1 in 10 people in the US have type 2 diabetes. Based on projections that percentage will increase to roughly 50% by the end of this century.
The ‘cure’ for the US dietary diseases is a change to a near vegan diet and stop eating the junk food group, including sugary, fizzy drinks.
The US consumer is top of the food chain. We are the ‘winners’ in terms of amount of meat consumed. As we feed our farm animals ground up non eatable pieces of dead farm animals our meat is highly contaminated with organic chemical pollutants.
This is interesting. Multiple studies have found a strong correlation between the consumption of organic pollutants and the occurrence type 2 diabetes which is epidemic in the US.
The analysis has found that there is a direct correlation between the amount organic chemical pollutants in the study subjects and the occurrence of diabetes. This explains why obesity can occur without diabetes. The causal factor is the amount of organic pollutants that accumulate in people depending on their diet. If the obese person consumed large amounts of foods that are contaminate with organic pollutants then they get metabolic syndrome and become diabetic, if the food they consumed does not contain organic pollutants, they become obese but do not get metabolic syndrome.
http://jech.bmj.com/content/56/11/813.full
William Astley
Most of us here on this site have had our fill of useless “peer reviewed studies”. Personally my weight has dropped and my overall heath has improved since I switched to a low carb diet. I also know many other people that have made the same change with a similar result. It might not be a “peer reviewed study” but it is a real world experiment. Our teeth tell the real story. What use is an incisor to a vegan.
One thing I have noticed is that after changing to a mostly meat diet my digestive system produces a lot less gas. This probably means that I am producing less methane and that should be good for the environment. 🙂 Really this just shows that my digestive system has an easier time dealing with meat as opposed to complex sugars. Humans developed as hunter/gatherers and various forms of meat and fish provided the majority of our diet for nearly 200,000 years.
Our dentition is omnivorous. We are not strict carnivores.
Its very hard to be Vegan, ie not eat anything of animal origin, as we need essential amino and fatty acids found plentifully in meat eggs and fish.
weird to be debating diets at WUWT – but i can’t help noticing how vegetarianism resembles AGW Global Warming’s “settle science” status – and it’s adherents resemble Alarmists/Evangelists
Just imagine if this were a Climate Skeptic pleading his case on his death bed, the alarmists would be screaming ” hurry up and die you pig ” !! I have seen this on many blogs ! Sad….
Not to nit pick, but in your post or in the referenced article I find no “dying wish”. All I find are simple facts of where we are now in addressing CC and that he is happy to be part of it.
The NAIRAS model predicts atmospheric radiation exposure from galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and solar energetic particle (SEP) events. GCR particles propagation from local interstellar space to Earth is modeled using an extensionhe Badhwar and O’Neill model, where the solar modulation has been parameterized using high-latitude real-time neutron monitor measurements at Oulu, Tomnicky, and Moscow. During radiation storms, the SEP spectrum is derived using ion flux measurements taken from the NOAA/GOES and NASA/ACE satellites. Transport of the cosmic ray particles – GCR and SEP – through the magnetosphere is estimated using the CISM-Dartmouth particle trajectory geomagnetic cutoff rigidity code,driven by real-time solar wind parameters and interplanetary magnetic field data measured by the NASA/ACE satellite. Cosmic ray transport through the neutral atmosphere is based on analytical solutions of coupled Boltzmann transport equations obtained from NASA Langley Research Center’s HZETRN transport code. Global distributions of atmospheric density are derived from the NCEP Global Forecasting System (GFS) meteorological data.
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/nairas/index.html
It’s not unusual for a dying person to turn to religion.
The Coming Climate Change Catastrophe Cult is a secular “religion”, in my opinion.
This article in the NY Times just goes to show that an educated person — intelligent enough to be an astronaut — can still be an imbecile when it comes to climate science.
The man could have looked out his window for 60 years and observed that the climate had barely changed in those 60 years … but he doesn’t need to observe the past climate — he can see the the future climate … and he “knows” a climate catastrophe is coming that will end life on Earth as we know it.
That’s a climate change religion, not climate science.
It’s sad, and also smarmy, that he’s used his cancer to get attention to promote his “religion”.
If he wanted to use his cancer to promote cancer research, that would have been wonderful.
This is yet another example of a leftist not allowing a crisis to go to waste — they always use a national or local crisis, such as a mass shooting, to promote their leftist views .
In this case, a personal crisis is being used to promote a leftist belief.
Sickening, isn’t it !
Dear Mr Sellers
It is sad to here that you, like so many other undeserving people have been diagnosed with a terminal condition. My own partner had a major tumour removed last year. Very few people are untouched by such misfortune.
I know that you must now find yourself in a difficult situation. Having formerly assumed that you would live long enough to witness the vindication of your confidence in alarmist prognostications, in the form of the visitation of angry and destructive “global warming” catastrophe upon the people of the planet.
And I know that you also hoped that you and other alarmists in a similar situation would live to see themselves raised up as the “last hope” technological masters and saviours of mankind.
But, alas, nature has not been kind – and basically shit all of any note has actually happened.
And long after all the alarmists are dead – they will quite possibly be ridiculed as the errant fools of their age. Especially because they worked so hard towards resisting the discussion of all alternative hypotheses.
But do not worry, because this has occurred on many occasions in the past and it will continue to occur into the future. The list of similar delusions has grown so long that this episode will at some point become only another footnote in the description of man’s propensity to generate apocalyptic panic.
The desire to build up apocalyptic myths and then to elevate oneself to the status of potential saviour is clearly a powerful force in men’s hearts.
Until this day, all those who predicted apocalypse have been disappointed.
News of the end of the world is generally exaggerated or at least premature.
Predicted apocalypse, is an extraordinary claim.
And we should require extraordinary evidence (of very high confidence) to support it.
At some point the scientific community may back away from this monomaniacal obsession sufficiently such that they are able to contemplate a range of alternative hypotheses for the vast number of observations so far manipulated.
This will only occur in an age where we do not mistakenly conflate emotional issues such “saving the world” or a personal cancer diagnosis with the development of scientific ideas.
Ideally, let’s keep science away from powerfully emotional affairs of the heart.
Whether they are self-glorifying e.g. journeying into space or a confident belief that we are saving the world (again), or personally distressing affairs e.g. distress experienced at the failure of an apocalyptic prediction or a cancer diagnosis.
This attitude would certainly help us to preserve the integrity of science in the future.
With sympathy towards yourself and your loved ones.
“Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial.”
———————–
In others’ view, in light of the sheer amount of propaganda required to sell just the notion of “climate change denial”, 2016 is looking like the year of the death of at least, some denial.
…+ 10,000 likes
+10,001…
SOLD to db !!
How do you settle on how many likes to give a post?
Is there an Algoreism for it?
. . .I have a computer model !! LOL
Now THAT was funny!
A computer model!
Why didn’t I think of that.
I’m old school using tree ring data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/the-right-stuff-what-the-nasa-astronauts-say-about-global-warming/
http://www.livescience.com/19640-nasa-astronauts-global-warming-letter.html
Piers Sellers should, perhaps, commune with his fellow colleagues before encountering the great universal truth. There is still some time for some enlightenment. GK
Or 49 out of hundreds of thousands amounts to a hill of bean.
So by your logic, I guess one sick astronaut is only worth a half bean. GK
49 is an unusually high number of individuals within an organization to be publicly critical of that organization’s official message.
How many Enron employees spoke out publicly against Enron?
How many Lehman Bros employees spoke our against the excess leverage and exposure of Lehman?
How many employees of Thiokol tried to warn about the “o”-ring problem leading to the destruction of challenger?
To my knowledge, approximately ONE in each case.
One whistle-blower is worthy of note. By comparison, 49 is a mass-movement.
When working within a large organization – it is certainly preferable to “keep your head below the parapets” and keep taking the pay-checks. Hence this is what the vast majority of employees choose to do. Whistleblowing is usually a career ending move. It takes guts to speak out against a culture of rent-seeking and politically motivated science corruption.
Unfortunately, unlike Enron or Lehman Bros. — NASA can never be brought down by its own tendency to generate spectacular nonsense, since it is supported by the public purse and can therefore expand it’s access to yet more cash by increasing the perceived scale of the problem that it claims to be studying.
Follow the money. Nobody is willing to pay for scientists to tell them that sea level rise or antarctic melt are not abnormal or concerning.
100’s of thousands ??? Come on Al Gorey Baby, stop masquerading as Margaret !!
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. I sympathise with Piers Sellers, having to suffer both terminal cancer and the willing ignorance of the assemblage here.
[well, we suffer you, so I suppose it’s even -mod]
“if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you aint gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”
Lennon/McCartney
You forgot to quote the rest of the lyrics.
“Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
It’s getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me
No one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
That is you can’t, you know, tune in
But it’s all right
That is I think it’s not too bad
Always, no sometimes, think it’s me
But you know I know when it’s a dream
I think I know I mean a yes
But it’s all wrong
That is I think I disagree”
Is this the song upon which you base your analysis of life?
It’s true that it “must be high or low”
You say high, we say low.
You say YES, we say NO NO NO…
Margaret,
Don’t worry, you may well live to see the truth exposed, unlike Piers Sellers who will die embracing a wish propagated by the IPCC in its over zealous pursuit of justifying redistributive economics under the guise of climate reparations.
For the record, the 49 at NASA are right and Hansen is to climate science as what Madoff is to investing, although the fiscal damage of the malfeasance enabled by Hansen (and now Schmidt) is far greater.
The truth is out there. All you need to do is look for it with your eyes open. Pay attention to details and don’t be swayed by unsupportable predispositions.
Margaret,
You must be the Fool On The Hill.
“[well, we suffer you, so I suppose it’s even -mod]”
Really????
Yes, REALLY !!
Margaret, since you have nothing to say, why don’t you just STFU with your elitist vacuous comments. Go the same way that the similar pompous elitist empty heads Ed Davey and Ed Miliband went.
…. or show some data.
You don’t know what that is do you ?
I’m sorry for anyone who has received such a dire prognosis. But the sympathy ebbs when their response is to write a first draft of the script for a three-hankie movie about how they fought for the cause to the end.
Besides which, as scripts go it’s not exactly “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion”, is it?
Hey, what ever happened to hankies?
Now they are just pocket squares, and no one uses them to wipe up snot anymore, do they?
…That’s snot funny !!
If you have to wipe up snot after you sneeze, you are not using the hankie properly !!
I think it may be no one uses them anymore is due to modern hygienic sensibilities.
If someone put a cloth with snot and boogers all over it, back into their pocket, that would be… the last party they ever got invited to…the end of the date…reason for a pink slip…just name the ostracism of your choice.
I’m all in on WUWT, but at this point in Seller’s life, I don’t think this blog post was necessary. It adds nothing, let’s pick on someone else.
If you stop feeding Cancer Cells Glucose the die. Dr.Otto Warburg Nobel Prize Winner 1931. And what does the USDA and the UN promote; that we all eat Cabs, Wheat Corn Rice which as soon as it hits your gut it turns to Sugar. The Bad things Government does to us. http://www.chimachine4u.com/cancer-diet.html
It’s a question of balance and temperance and what works for one person, or many people, may be the worst thing for another person. There are any number of diet “positions” supported all over the internet. Very many of the various proponents are selling something. Unless one of those diet advisers is prone to the ill effects which their advice might cause in some individuals, then they may be overzealous in their advocacy. For instance, unless the diet- daktari has suffered through an episode of ketoacidosis, or a diabetic coma induced by low blood sugar, both caused by a lack of carbs in the diet, they may not appreciate the role which carbohydrates play in our diet, in which case, they could be setting themselves up for a hard lesson by following their own advice too rigorously. Even worse, they could induce someone who’s system is less attuned to their advice to become a “believer” and thus cause the death of some adherent to their methods.
While there may be a kernel of truth in just about any given dietary advice, one should become exceptionally skeptical of any and all diet programs/advice given by others and find out what works for themselves. One must take the best knowledge available and test it- carefully.
Or just follow Toucan Sam’s advice.
Let me see if I’ve got things correct. . . .
1. Piers Sellers, scientist and astronaut who has done space walks, is a fervent believer in Global Warming.
2. Harrison Schmidt, scientist and astronaut who has walked on the moon, is a Global Warming skeptic.
Obviously, two opposing opinions from two impressive individuals. . . . .
In trying to decide which is correct, one major thing to consider is I should embrace the Global Warming belief system is because. . . . . Piers Sellers is dying of pancreatic cancer????
Got it!!!
The bad thing Government does to us.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei2wUzrXRyU
But think of the movie they could make. At the end:
“I have seen things you people would not believe.
I have seen hurricanes pin wheeling of the shoulder of the Bahamas
I have seen t-storms glitter in the dark at the equators gate
All these memories…lost in time…tears in rain…”
Sorry Vole, had to.
I agree with you saying, although I feel sorry for Seller’s condition. Indeed, climate change is pure science, is about data, facts and events and not about…. feelings. And, last but not least, sometimes (probably not in this case), there’s a long way to understand climate, as shown here: http://oceansgovernclimate.com/the-long-way-to-understand-climate/.
While the medical issue is sad, those of us past a certain age have seen a lot of sad things. In this case, I guess the man’s care is being paid for and the survivors will not be destitute and end up homeless. Counseling will be available, if needed.
Meanwhile, many millions (billions?) of folks are being denied (or there is the attempt to deny) basic services that carbon based energy can facilitate. Look for reports by Indur M. Goklany or Bjørn Lomborg for elaboration of this issue.
Climatism is a sort of cancer of humanity.
Irony.
I’ve also had cancer. I certainly didn’t use it to sell anything.
Sellers real illness is mental – Munchausen syndrome
I too have been through a life threatening situation involving my appendix. I ignored abdominal pain that progressively got worse over a two week period, then it got a little better and I thought that I was on the road to recovery. Actually my appendix had ruptured and was spilling nasty stuff into my abdominal cavity. A few days later after I developed a fever and started changing colors I ended up in the hospital with a severe infection. The doctors gave my wife and I a bleak prognosis which I admit to still not taking as seriously as I should have. But I have to admit that it seemed an opportune moment to make numerous promises to my maker if I was lucky enough to be granted more time in this world.
Piers Sellers facing a similar dilemma probably has most likely made some promises to the entity he feels is his maker. There is no doubt that many Warmists have a religious component to their belief system and this is how I would expect them to react. It is human nature and predictable. When his time to move into the great beyond comes I wish him the best.
0. ICRP: International Commission on Radiological Protection
1. Real-time radiation exposure is computed as an effective dose rate, which is a body-average over the radiative-sensitive organs and tissues, in units of microsievert per hour (uSv/hr). Annual or flight accumulated effective dose is reported in units of millisievert (mSv; Note: 1 mSv = 1000 uSv).
2. ICRP recommended annual limit for occupationally exposed radiation workers (including aircrew) is less than 20 mSv. If the predicted exposure is less than 1/3 of this limit, the safety signal color will be green – indicating minimal radiation exposure. If the predicted exposure is between 1/3-2/3 of the ICRP recommended limit, the safety signal color will be yellow – indicating that close tracking of individual radiation exposure is advised. If the predicted exposure is greater than 2/3 the recommended limit, the safety signal color will be red – indicating exposure to maximum recommended limit is possible.
3. ICRP recommended annual limit for public sector radiation exposure is less than 1 mSv. If the predicted exposure is less than 1/3 of this limit, the safety signal color will be green – indicating minimal radiation exposure. If the predicted exposure is between 1/3-2/3 of the ICRP recommended limit, the safety signal color will be yellow – indicating that close tracking of individual radiation exposure is advised. If the predicted exposure is greater than 2/3 the recommended limit, the safety signal color will be red – indicating exposure to maximum recommended limit is possible.
4. ICRP recommended limit for prenatal radiation exposure is less than 1 mSv annually and less than 0.5 mSv in any one month during pregnancy. The signal indicator color is based on the 0.5 mSv limit. If the predicted exposure is less than 1/3 of this limit, the safety signal color will be green – indicating minimal radiation exposure. If the predicted exposure is between 1/3-2/3 of the ICRP recommended limit, the safety signal color will be yellow indicating that close tracking of individual radiation exposure is advised. If the predicted exposure is greater than 2/3 the recommended limit, the safety signal color will be red – indicating exposure to maximum recommended limit is possible.
5. The predicted aircrew exposure is based on the current NAIRAS modeled exposure rate multiplied by the maximum annual flight hours for pilots, which is 1000 hrs. If an aircrew member, for example, expects to fly only 600 hrs per year, then multiply the NAIRAS predicted radiation exposure by 6/10. If an aircrew member expects to fly 800 hrs per year, then multiply the predicted radiation exposure by 8/10, and so on.
6. The predicted public and prenatal exposure for the representative high-latitude flights is based on the current NAIRAS modeled exposure rate multiplied by the average flight time.
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/rtimg/dose.11km.png
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/rtimg/dose.15km.png
Very sad that this man is dying of cancer at such a young age, it’s also sad that a false fear narrative like cAGW is what this dying man is clinging to, how did it come to a sorry story like this?
Can someone please remove Eric Worrall from Internet?
Trolls like you are a much more deserving target !!
Eric,
There is, in my opinion, a larger dimension of which we’re all a part; an energy of which we, and the universe are a part. The ancients recorded a raw form of this energy as it appeared to them in their skies; chiseling what they saw onto their petroglyphs, and painting it onto rock.
The images are the same worldwide.
This documentary lays out the theory behind what the ancients saw.
Symbols of an Alien Sky (Full Documentary) – YouTube
Researchers now are pushing forth new findings and research and theories that turn on an electrical, energy-based universe that will further lead from whence we came, IMO. What’s known so far is that we did not evolve or crawl up out of a primordial soup. Dr. Hugh Ross, scientist and founder of “Reasons to Believe” and other scientists, have established this point numerous times; often in calm, direct debate with atheists and evolutionists alike on stages before packed, hostile houses in places like Berkley. Dr. Ross and his colleagues use, as the basis of their arguments, mathematical probabilities and accepted, acknowledged, current principles on which science is based; facts the opposition could neither counter nor explain in open debate which is, there had to be a designer.
So if not the soup, from whence? It is my belief this question is just now coming into view; the findings of which will displace established “facts” as a growing focus on an electric universe sharpens. In so doing, humanity will further see they’ve been lied to—a process already begun by the Internet—by a tiny handful of deceptive keepers of the keys (call them a collective Oz behind a curtain); individuals so wadded in wealth, greed, and avarice they feel entitled and qualified to judge what’s best for humanity; individuals without heart, soul, or conscience; who start, and profit from, chaos, revolution, and war; who direct history; who tell the world we’re over-crowded when, by 2050, replacing ourselves may be humanities biggest concern; who keep Tesla’s and hydrogen-to-energy research locked away in vaults.
Global warming is one of their lies. What the Paris Climate conference was about was establishing a predetermined Global Warming tax on all nations paid directly to the UN (owned by Oz) to fund a foundational financial trough of bureaucrats to administer their unelected world government with themselves in charge. CO2-caused global warming—easy to proffer when you control the world’s MSM; which Oz does—was their strawman, scarecrow, Trojan horse.
In peace and love Eric, God is with you.
…WTF ????
Well, at least you got the Agenda 21 part right, so only half a WTF !! LOL
Polar bears, the end of snow, and now dying astronauts. What’s next in the appeal to emotion game from these anti-science ideologues.
I’m sorry for your dreadful situation, Peter, but your appeal is utterly unconvincing.
a sanctimonious appeal to authority – where authority derives from dying
alarmists will relish his statement – skeptics will – well – be skeptical – which is what it deserves
No, in logic it’s a straight up appeal to emotion, which is the logical fallacy argumentum ad passiones not Argumentum ad Verecundiam or appeal to authority.
I think he threw in a few of those other ones too.
RD –
technically – according to the categories laid out on fallacies – you are correct – i merely pointed out that behind Piers’ appeal to emotions is an attempt to claim an expertise that should be heeded – but dying doesn’t make him an expert
But, but…he has a model of a model that tells him the models are right !! So his model must right…right ?
BE…. GGGRRRrrrrr……..
V’Ger?
Too much Star Trek ?? LOL
@Crispin: I found some figures for CO2 from various sources at
http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=75,163182&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
I have some trouble believing, because much trouble understanding, those figures.
For example, biodiesel is said to be 338 g/mile “on combustion” but 60 g/mile “life cycle equivalent GHG”; the only way I can make sense of that is “extra”. What I’d like to know is TOTAL CO2 per MJ (energy) or km (transport). Since you make a strong claim about biomass vs coal, can you point me to better, or at least more comprehensible, figures?
I think there are better reasons to be critical of chopping down forests to burn as fuel for electricity than a comparison of the carbon dioxide produced vs coal.
Hell, it has not been that long since they outlawed paper bags to save trees, even though they use mostly mills dust and scraps.
And paper use in general was seen by the green hawks as basically sinful, as if trees should never be touched.
And these criticisms were not 100% ridiculous, just overdone.
Worrying about “carbon” emissions is ridiculous, given the alternatives, and the fact that they are even stronger against such clean sources as hydro and nuclear.
Lets use the wood for it’s God given purpose…to make furniture and houses.
They’re grown as a crop for paper, etc. “Recycle your breadcrumbs! Save the wheat!” makes as much sense as paper recycling, e.g. But it’s widely admired as good environmentalism!
The chemical conversion of an HC fuel to CO2 & H2O is a strict chemical equation as is Btu/kJ content. So for any fuel one can calculate E15 g/Gt/Pg CO2 per Btu or kJ.
Giga tonne = E9 tonne = E9 * E3 kg = E9 * E3 * E3 g = E15 g = Peta g
Next there is efficiency of application. Need to know Btu /mile or Btu/MWh to calculate E15/Ptg CO2/mile or MWh.
A combined cycle power plant has an efficiency of around 60% and on NG produces about 750 lb CO2/MWh. A typical Rankine steam electric plant has an efficiency of about 35% and produces about 2,200 lb CO2/MWh using coal and about 1,200 lb/MWh using NG.
338 g/mile is 100% efficiency. 60 g/mile considers cycle efficiency. 60/338 = .178 or about 17.8% efficiency for the life cycle equivalent. I wouldn’t do it this way, but my goal is not obfuscation.
PgC * 3.67 = PgCO2 * 0.1291 = ppmv atmospheric CO2
He could have chosen to spend his final times with dignity. Instead he chose to be a schill for climate imperialism.
Sadly the attitude from the man made global warming crowd has been that all medical research should stop so we can ‘save the planet for unborn great, great grand children’. Last week Obama made a pledge to ‘end cancer’. I can see that Sellers is trying to bring his pet cause to the forefront of attention and try to take away that medical research cash as to add it to the 83 trillion dollar “climate fund”.
Sadly I wish this man made global warming crowd would leave us all alone and let us cure cancer and other maladies. Please stop taking away cash from all other sciences!
As Ren suggests, space time is fraught with some long-term peril for astronauts. They are outside of the Earth’s protective atmosphere. If one were to believe in the greenhouse effect, a question might be whether it actually offers some prophylaxis to people on the planet’s surface from ionizing radiation. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Sellers logged some 35 days of space time, including numerous space walks. The acute effects of cosmic radiation on astronauts is well known, and using wrist bands they keep track of its effective dose in units called milliSieverts. The stochastic effects are less well-known.
Perhaps there have been some records kept on the incidence of cancer among astronauts.
NASA’s own “Fact Sheet” on the subject is here: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/radiation.pdf
Condolences and best wishes to Mr. Sellers and his family.
The radiation is particularly strong if the solar activity decreases.
http://oi63.tinypic.com/r0xlar.jpg
When astronomers worked long like my parents, on high mountains, various cancers were the result. It is even worse with astronauts.
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/globeView.html
Keen sense of the obvious. What is present below 10k and not present above 10k? What is present both below and above 10k in the same concentration in PPM? Answer to Q1=H2O, answer to Q2=CO2. Funny how temperature follows H2O exactly, and doesn’t follow CO2 at all.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rgGRw3GZqN0/VnBiqxSngtI/AAAAAAAAAgE/Qb_cVR0At9I/s640/RATPAC-A%2BTemperature%2BTrends%2Bby%2BAltitude.png
Brandon Gates,
wrt “I’ve long-since lost count of how many times someone has called me “alarmist”, “warmunist”, “idiot”, “delusional” and a litany of other things …”
Before you lost count, how high did you get? Why would you want to keep track anyway … is it like a badge of honor or something?
DonM,
I stopped counting after it became apparent that the site policy against personal insults doesn’t generally apply to visitors here who have opposing views, and especially not against lying fraudulent climate hoaxers. OTOH, I’ve gotten off a few of my own here and not been banned. Warned once and put into the penalty box once. [shrug] Anthony’s blog, Anthony’s discretion. As I think it should be.
You didn’t reply directly, but per your response it appears that you actually did keep a count …. Wow!
“You didn’t reply directly, but per your response it appears that you actually did keep a count …. Wow!”
Be skeptical DonM. Don’t just take his word for that. Ask him what he actually “counted” specifically. Did he only count direct insults at him personally? Or did he count insinuations too? Or attacks on his arguments?
It’s one thing to say “You are an idiot” to someone-and another to call their arguments “idiotic”. It’s one thing to say ‘”That is stupid”, and another to say “You are stupid”. Words matter, and so do intentions.
BGs posts here demonstrate that he likes to make assumptions about what other people meant or were trying to do, rather than focusing on their actual statements. He reads between the lines a lot. Says things based on his own perceptions whether they can be proven correct or not. That is just a fact. So when he says that he counted them, if you want actual clarity on that statement, you’ll have to ask him very direct questions.
Gates is usually johnny-on-the-spot with his long replies. I wonder what happened?
Re: astronauts, I hope Sellers finds a miracle cure. But as far as the DAGW scare goes, he’s simply wrong. And he’s not even in the consensus.
This is from eli’s site, but captures the view of real scientists:
“Having read the article Eli takes away the same feeling that one of the writers to the Times, nick fras did. An amazing piece, wise, terrifically eloquent, modest and momentus.
I have never read anything that captures so well the joys, privileges and responsibilities of being a scientist.”
As a scientist, I agree.
As a scientist, I agree.
Honest scientists are skeptical of every conjecture. They’re skeptics first and foremost. I guess they didn’t teach you that part of the job.
A lab coat and a BS Degree do not a scientist make.
From a very selfish perspective, I wish that Mr. Sellers would/could be around to see the end of the climate hysteria; I wish everyone could.
Mr. Sellers said “And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing ….” Is he saying this to mislead or is he just ignorant; If the poll is accurate and 30% of the population think the climate does not change then we have a lot of stupid people answering to such polls. (My guess the people answering the poll question knew the pollsters were trying to slant the outcome, so the respondents lied in their answer). In any event, if the poll is correct and 70% of the population think the climate is changing, what does that have to do with the general public coming around to the CAGW point of view.
I don’t think that Mr. Sellers is all that ignorant.
There are polls taken and worded and designed to find out what people actually think.
Then there are the polls taken and worded and designed for a press release.
During an election year politicians pay attention to the former but they pay for the latter.
What do either have to do with genuine science?
PS Kudos to WUWT for airing his dying wish. And kudos to the commenters here for pointing out that a person’s dying wish doesn’t change the facts.
If the World goes to Hell in a hand basket, CO2 won’t be the cause.
The wicker of the basket will be more robust. Thanks to atmospheric CO2 increase.