Edward Mendel – Chicago Historical Society
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Huffington Post has predicted a dystopian Mad Max / Hunger Games future, if we don’t mend our wicked ways – because they think nobody will be able to cope with rising seas. History says they are wrong – even if the sea does rise, flooding problems have been defeated many times, including in America.
With Global Warming the World Will Be a Much Poorer Place
Sky Garden Cities, The Dome, AquaCities: these fanciful names are attached to renderings of cities that will optimistically tower above threatening seas.
Getting to the business of climate adaptation should be on everyone’s mind. Recently German climate scientists estimated that sea levels are rising faster than the most conservative estimates. The bright fact: climate change is an uncontrolled experiment we triggered on the planetary systems on which our species depend for survival.
…
When sea level rise ramps up, who is going to pay for all the claims? Insurance companies? No. Taxpayers? Definitely not. In Florida, one federally funded taxpayer agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, is working day and night, up and down the coastline, with bulldozers, tractors, and sand from the Bahamas and Mexico to reinforce tourist-friendly beaches against sea level rise. How long will Americans fund beach protection once sea level rise infiltrates trillions of dollars of urban infrastructure in coastal cities?
Dr. Harold Wanless, chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Miami and respected spokesperson on sea level rise, says taxpayers should be funding, now, for a rainy day when property owners will have to abandon coastal real estate in a mass migration from the coastlines. At least in the U.S., there is no indication that such common sense measures will materialize any time soon: nearly every member of the Republican controlled US Senate voted last week against acknowledging global warming is caused by humans.
I am beginning to believe that science fiction movie scenarios of the future are not so far off: some amalgam of Hunger Games, Sector 9, and Mad Max but with low-rent production values. As for gorgeous, highly-engineered futuristic cities deploying costly technologies to elevate taxpayers above rising seas? Methinks, not so much.
As WUWT reported in “Raising Chicago – how the City of Chicago defeated flooding in the 1850s”, the ancestors of today’s Americans, with 1850s technology, jacked up the entire city of Chicago to lift it out of the mud, including one building which weighed 27,000 tons.
Chicago wasn’t the only American city saved from the floods. At least one other city, the City of Seattle, the street level was raised by an entire floor to defeat flooding (h/t Harrowsceptic & commieBob).
Why does Huff Post think what Americans did in the 1800s could not be done today? Perhaps the HuffPost vision is of a future of feeble intermittent renewables and medieval deprivation. My vision is a little different.
From the first short powered flight in 1903, Americans reached the moon in 1969. Progress hasn’t stopped since that achievement – marvels like modern smart phones, which were impossible even a few years ago, are now ubiquitous. So my vision of the future contains artificial intelligence, nuclear power, vast industrial robots and an almost unimaginable capacity for engineering our world.
Of course, different regions of the world rise and fall. The HuffPost dystopia could become our reality, at least in the West, if we let it. Russia, Asia, even Africa, are ready and eager to pick up and carry the torch of progress, if we fall, if we listen to the voices of despair – if we talk ourselves into retreating, from the marvels and opportunities our ingenuity has created.
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There is no evidence HuffPo spends any waking moments in thought on any subject.
The piece does end with an apt confession from the author:
They made a punctuation mistake. It should have read “Methinks? Not so much.”
“Methinks” does not mean and never has meant “I think”. It means “it seems to me”. (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/117553?redirectedFrom=methinks#eid) You don’t have to do any thinking for something to seem to you. What depresses me is statements like “German scientists” without troubling to NAME them; this is fact-free reporting. Oh, and “faster than the most conservative estimates” without any numbers. Still fact-free. Since the most conservative estimates are “business as usual”, i.e., “maybe 30 cm by the end of the century”, 31 cm would count as “faster than the most conservative estimates.” Probably the reporter meant “faster than the most outrageous estimates”, in which case I am getting very cross with this reporter. I wonder how close to sea level the reporter’s dwelling is? Dr Wanless was warning about accelerating sea level rise in Florida five years ago; if he’s still in Miami I can only suppose that he doesn’t take it seriously any more.
If sea levels rise, there will be more water and more space for fish to thrive in. Since nature has a way of filling every niche with living things, there will be more food for humans to consume. Huff, try to look on the positive side of things. Every cloud has a silver lining. Buy shares in a fish processing plant and basically, get a life.
They Huff and they Puff and one day their house of straw will fall down! Consider the source.
What in hell is “Sector 9”? Maybe that was supposed to mean “District 9”?
We know that global warming alarmism is a piece of science fiction, but at least they should hire authors that *know* science fiction to write those pieces.
+10
Global environmental devastation is a plot device for so many science fiction stories and it seems like (as with Orwell’s 1984) some people confuse fiction for reality.
Ive read two recently, after the flood and the waterknife
I reviewed them as comedy/farce for the local librarian ..who doesnt read many books:-)
waiting for the printed reviews in the local paper:-)
Give it three more minutes before they link the Zika virus to CAGW. This rare disease has been known about for over 40 years in South America, but suddenly became a “thing” for the WHO to clutch its pearls about because some rich American chick from Hawaii came down with it. Notice when it was all poor natives nobody considered it a “problem.” ‘Nuff to make you retch at the silly, overblown hype. Whole thing could have been taken care of with a travel advisory.
I know several otherwise great sci-fi books recently that take place in the next hundred years have included a New York that’s abandoned and flooded with 10’s of meters of water. Nothing jars quite like hard Sci Fi with biblical flooding.
But no reputable authors on the subject would write such tripe!
But District 9 wasn’t a dystopia. It was just Johannesburg with desperately poor aliens instead of desperately poor Africans. Maybe Sector 9 is a book series like hunger games that hasn’t been made into a movie yet. There are sure a lot of them lately.
I,m looking forward to the sequel.
Maybe it was the third sequel of the fictional “Sector 6” sci-fi fantasy starring Brad Pitt & Catherine ZetaJones. The movie that spawned the famous “Sector 6” cigarrette brand. From the movie….
Jeff Megall: [Discussing a futuristic sci-fi movie] Brad Pitt Catherine Zeta-Jones they’ve just finished ravishing each other’s body for the first time they lie naked suspended in air underneath the heavens Pitt lights up and starts blowing smoke rings around her naked flawless body as the galaxies go whizzing by other the glass dome ceiling, now tell me that doesn’t work for you?
Nick Naylor: I’d see that movie
Jeff Megall: I’d buy the god damn DVD if the Academy didn’t send them to for free, you guys ought to think about designing a cigarette to be released simultaneous with the movie
Nick Naylor: Sector Sixes
Jeff Megall: No one’s ever done it with a cigarette
Mad Max, lions, tigers and bears?
At least it seems they should support the second amendment by default…..
Mr. Worrall…..I appreciate the last paragraph.
People constantly underestimate Africa, which IMO in the next decade or two will burst onto the world stage in a big way.
Back in 2012, an American study noticed a substantial and growing migration from Portugal to Botswana, young people looking for jobs, escaping destitution in Europe, for a better life in Africa.
http://www.cityam.com/article/it-s-time-supporters-single-currency-apologise
Sorry, Angola and Mozambique, not Botswana.
I am not so sure Eric, would be nice to see, but there is simply too much corruption and tribal tensions. I would migrate there in an instant, specifically Kenya, if I could find work.
“Africa, which IMO in the next decade or two will burst onto the world stage in a big way”
Or at least they may if they can stop relying on the rest of the world to feed their people.
Yes but that had more t do with the dire economic situation in Portugal than the wonderful life on offer in Angola and Mozambique. Portugal then was in same place Greece is today. The European Central Bank imposed swinging cuts on expenditure, taxes were raised and the unemployment rate hit 18% in 2013.
As someone in contact with several people in a range of african countries the last many years in regards to alternative agriculture I must concur. Not saying it will definitely happen, but they definitely have a portion of the population in many countries looking towards a brighter future. I certainly do not think they have more roadblocks then the west is currently constructing for itself.
Eric,
They are idiots.
They should read their history books.
Portugal was the worst European coloniser and was ignominiously booted out of its colonies, including Angola, Mocambique and East Timor.
It is true schadeenfreude that the ex-colonies have now economically overtaken the old European master state.
Ed
In that race to the bottom, Portugal is competitive with Italy (Ethiopia, Libya) but is far behind Belgium’s King Leopold in the Euro class. For true staying power, the Muslim’s local tribal rulers/slave-dealers long ago won the marathon of true evil overlords for longevity (7th century – 21st century), area controlled (all of northwest Africa, north Africa, northeast east Africa, east Africa, and most of the slave coast), and dogmatic depravity.
from Portugal to Botswana
================
out of the frying pan into the fire. very tough economic conditions in Portugal were the driving force for emigration. if you can’t afford the rent, better to be living in the tropics than Europe. At least you can stay warm in winter.
Unfortunately Africa will again be held back from developing, this time by the Paris Climate deal, which will prevent development of Africa’s coal resources in the name of “saving the planet”. As Obama said, we cannot have African’s owning cars or air-conditioning, as the planet will “boil over”.
The sort of colonial attitude drives the US dominated World Bank, which controls much of the development in Africa. Without funding to develop coal-fired power stations, the coal will stay in the ground, or be sold at fire-sale prices to the Chinese for their own industries.
Slavery for non-Muslim prisoners of war and for children of slaves is allowed under Islam.
Saudi Arabia and Yemen only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman followed suit in 1970, and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007. However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the predominantly Islamic countries of Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Sudan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery
In those countries, slavery is no longer legally supported.
I seriously doubt it has been “abolished” in actuality.
“I am not so sure Eric, would be nice to see, but there is simply too much corruption and tribal tensions. I would migrate there in an instant, specifically Kenya, if I could find work.”
Not to mention superstition.
I guess no one ever considers what the Netherlands has done for some time now.
Quite right, FJS, I’m sure we could handle it with today’s technology.
But I doubt that much is happening anyway.
As a builder of sea-front infrastructure all my life I have many benchmarks going back to WW2 that show that there has been no SLR since then in my NOTW. King tide predictions are generally lower than they were in 1946 in this geodetically stable area.
Has there been, does anyone know, a complete geodetic audit of the world’s tide gauges to show the true state of world-wide sea level rise?
Yes there has been no discernible sea level rise. Just ask Nils-Axel Mörner – sea level data expert.
.
IIRC even Morner acknowledges some sea level rise although he thinks it is overestimated. I wouldn’t argue with him on that myself.
Some sea level rise makes sense BTW, No one doubts the planet has warmed in the past 200 years. It was kind of nippy in higher latitudes in the early 1800s. Warmer water takes more space than colder water.
It should also be noted that in many places the land is rising or sinking from tectonic forces faster than sea level is rising, and that measuring that change is very difficult since all your local reference points are rising and sinking at more or less the same rate. (GPS can do it … maybe … but not easily). So some places have no perceptible sea level rise. Some have considerable. A few, like New Orleans and Norfolk, VA have a real, acknowledged, problem. Not that anyone is actually doing anything much about it.
Not that big a deal short term BTW. AR5 puts 21st century sea level rise at 1 to 3 feet (30-100cm) and that’s based on climate scenarios that are running way hot. Not that anyone actually reads the IPCC assessment reprots.
But sea level rise really should be a consideration if one is building infrastructure that will be around hundreds or thousands of years. Best evidence is that the highstand of the last interglacial was more than 5 meters (15feet roughly) above current.
Has there been, does anyone know, a complete geodetic audit of the world’s tide gauges to show the true state of world-wide sea level rise?
===============================
Most of the naval charts of the world are drawn from the British Admiralty charts drawn for surveys 200-300 years ago. There has been very little resurvey since that time due to the costs involved.
Every chart has on it a legend showing datum corrections. Basically how much the chart is offset from reality. So you will for example see a WGS84 correction for latitude and longitude, bringing the chart into line with modern GPS readings. But none of these charts have a datum correction for sea level rise!
So, why are they not corrected for sea level rise if it is actually happening? tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives depend on these charts.
What is remarkable about the datum corrections is how accurate these old charts were. Using the sextant and newly invented marine chronometer, ships sailed to the other side or the earth, and routinely calculated their position within 1 mile of modern GPS readings. This sort of accuracy is hard to achieve even today with a sextant, using radio synchronize chronometers.
Yet given this accuracy, why does it not extend to sea level rise? The obvious answer is because there has not been any for the past 200-300 years.
ferdberple: “The obvious answer is because there has not been any for the past 200-300 years.”
I suspect you are right. At some tide gauges they have installed a geodetic chip and the net result seems to point to no SLR. Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour has had 65mm [2.6 inches] of SLR over the last 100 years but the site is sinking by a similar amount. IOW nothing happening.
There is an organisation called International Geodetic Surveys which seem to be doing this at tide gauges but I haven’t been able to find out much detail.
In The Netherlands they now also build floating houses and neighborhoods. Not so much out of fear for rising sea levels – although that is one of the selling slogans of course – but because open water is cheaper than dry land and there is a lot of open water here. There are also projects running now in other pats of the world.
How did people adapt in Venice where land subsidence over many hundreds of years (and presumably rising seas) resulted in streets replaced by canals and horses with gondolas?… By becoming very wealthy via the benefits of tourism etc.
How did people adapt in Venice where subsidence over many hundreds of years (and presumably rising seas) resulted in streets replaced by canals and horses with gondolas?… By becoming very wealthy via the benefits of tourism etc.
Venice wasn’t built on land with streets or horses. It was built on islands in a lagoon. There has been building subsidence, but there never was any real “land” around or between the building foundations. It’s always been a “water” city.
http://www.localhistories.org/venice.html
Actually Alphan Venice was not built on islands. The houses were built on wooden platforms on swampy lagoon which were supported by stakes. The water city has seen subsidence and sea level rise for many hundreds of years and has coped. But you are correct – only sea horses and no roads.
Genetic engineering. Grow gills. Problem solved.
Yes, but my wife refuses to let me do genetic experiments on the pets… 🙂
[Just tell her they are only normal, routine, run of the male, generic boy and gill experiments. .mod]
She said “don’t play doctor with the fish…” 🙂
Eric
Women are like that. No sense of adventure. The nurturing gene
I have the same problem
I am forever banned form doing any quantum physics experiments with the ether the pet cat or the microwave.
I keep saying the cat will be fine 50% of the time.
Whats a mad scientist to do.
NOW I have a nice big steep garage…. here kitty kitty.
michael
Oh and the cat thinks I’m the perfect pillow… sigh
Sigh, mad scientists don’t need to spell check. Keep that in mind.
michael
mike the moorlock.
Eat her
No they don’t believe that. None of the Climate Alarmists believe anything of the alarming stuff they say, else they would be demanding complete shutdown of all industrial economies. If they really sincerely believed that human civilization will end in the next few generations due to mankind’s output of CO2, they would be determinedly and demonstratively demanding measures that immediately halt CO2 production.
Instead they’re fooling around with carbon market fantasies and taxpayer-looting subsidies for an assortment of Green projects. Lame, politically-motivated nonsense, in other words, and not the demands one would expect from people who genuinely fear for humanity.
All they’re doing is hitching their brains to a secular “cause” that provides them with faux “virtue” replacing traditional religious belief. You can see the same thing with the vegans, the anti-GMO’s, extreme fitness loons, and animal “rights” fanatics. Put solar panels on your roof and eat only celery smoothies, you’ll have big PC cred with the trendy liberal class–all 4% of them.
I agree with Goldrider. I describe it as a virtue-cult. There are all the mechanisms of a cult, except being one of the virtuous few is not attained by adopting some religious axiomatic system, but by adopting some ethical or moral axiomatic system. Same apocalypse, same good/evil story line, etc.
Show me a famous Climate Alarmist that doesn’t own seaside property and I’ll show you a person who MIGHT believe their own hype. Tell me they also promote Nuclear and I’ll accept they DO believe it.
Of course, that still doesn’t make them right, just not a hypocrite.
Hansen Support nuclear.
Let’s wait till we can at least drag a canoe to where the Romans came ashore in Britain in 43AD. Or where fleets could be moored at Ephesus and Old Ostia. Or where even the Norman invasion could land a whole bloody fleet at Pevensey Castle. 1066 and all that.
Right now, it’s still a bit of a walk. Quite a long walk, actually.
mosomoso January 28, 2016 at 8:10 pm
Tsk tsk, These were invasions with huge numbers of heavily armored and armed troops. Their extra weight in the boats caused them to displace an unbelievable amount of water. Hence at least locally sea level rise.
There now do you understand. Heavens the simplest things, must I do everyone thinking?
Now back to to my cheap wine.
Do I need a tag?
michael
Thanks for the laugh, and if that is what it takes? Stick to the cheap stuff ( btw the expensive stuff gives the same headache).
Don’t need a tag, but you’re gonna need an aspirin in the morning.
“The bright fact: climate change is an uncontrolled experiment we triggered on the planetary systems on which our species depend for survival.”
Where is the evidence that humans have caused the Earth’s climate to change? Methinks the Huffington Post and a lot of other people assume too much.
There would have to be unprecedented heat in the atmosphere/oceans to produce unprecedented weather, and the Earth’s atmosphere is not experiencing unprecedented heat right now, despite what the advocates of the global warming/climate change theory say.
When it gets hotter than 1934, was, let me know. There were some pretty severe weather outbreaks worldwide during the very hot decade of the 1930’s: lots of droughts; lots of massive heat waves; lots of hurricanes and tornados; and lots of melting glaciers. Kind of like the scenarios the advocates claim we are facing today, in our current environment.
But we are not there yet, by any credible measurement. We are not hot enough to duplicate the 1930’s weather. How do I know? Well, have you seen “lots of droughts; lots of massive heat waves; lots of hurricanes and tornados; and lots of melting glaciers” worldwide since the beginning of the 21st Century?
And humans didn’t cause the extreme overheating in the 1930’s. It was all natural.
People who assume we are experiencing unprecedented heat in the atmosphere today, are assuming too much. Most of them are assuming too much because they believe the climate science charlatans at NASA, NOAA and the IPCC, who have fooled them into believing a lie by showing them phony, doctored surface temperature charts.
TA
“… the City of Seattle, the street level was raised by an entire floor to defeat flooding ”
The street was raised. Not the building. Think of the surface of a waffle. Sidewalks and streets on the ridges, building foundations and ground-level in the depression. The problem was from building on fill flushed from the local hills. See:
Sluicing the hillsides
Much of the metro-region is built on sand, silt, clay, and gravel. In the region there is frequent flooding, with nothing to do with sea level.
The streets were definitely raised. Many of the old street level store fronts are still down there and there are tours you can take to see them.
http://www.undergroundtour.com/
A lot of Seattle was terraformed to be the place it is today using water streams to flatten the city core. Quite a bit of it was already glacial til. Tunneling under Seattle is a crapshoot because there is so much variation in soils in close proximity. When they were building the bus tunnel they found they’d removed all the soil above the tunnel and they could see the bottom of the asphalt street overhead. The soil simply collapsed as the digging proceeded. You’d think they’d know better, but dig they must. They desperately want a water front cash cow district and they don’t care who’s pocket they pick to get it.
http://www.manufacturing.net/news/2016/01/seattle-tunnel-machine-begins-drilling-after-two-year-break
A picture is worth 1000 words.
http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/sites/report/files/images/web-large/Figure-2.25-hi.jpg
Luke….so is that picture that’s worth a thousand words showing that there has been less than 10 inches rise in a millennium or that there’s been 8 inches rise/subsidence in the last 250 years at the coast in North Carolina? It looks to me like that graph might need to have a thousand words to tell us what it describes from some source one would assume.
funny that not a single naval chart has any datum correction for sea level rise over the past 200-300 years. maybe the map makers know more about sea level than do the climate scientists?
could it be that naval map makers understand that if they say that sea level is rising, and thus the water is actually deeper than what the charts shows, that there might just be some trouble if ships start running aground all over the earth? There a plenty of places where large ships transit with 1 food of clearance. Where they time their passage to match the tidal depth precisely, to save many thousands of dollars in time and fuel by choosing the shorter route through shallow waters.
“funny that not a single naval chart has any datum correction for sea level rise over the past 200-300 years. maybe the map makers know more about sea level than do the climate scientists?”
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/hydro.html
Do you really believe that water level data for nautical charts hasn’t been updated in 300 years?
So do a lot of rich people Ferdberple, I could name one very rich film star who owns an island which he is developing into a rich mans resort and recently flew on a private jet plane to a far off city in the mountains to preach global warming to a bunch of sponging bludgers.
Did you cherry-pick by any chance?
source?
That’s a seriously POXY proxy !
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=170-011
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=170-001
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=010-001
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=010-001
north carolina.. 2.1mm/year which is 0.8″/decade of totally scare SLR
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8658120
Just above the HORRENDOUS global sea levels rise of around 1.5mm/year
NO acceleration, and not that Luke’s little farce starts climbing at this rate around 1800…
…. so one has to wonder what the little child is trying to say.
There has been and still is so much erosion and deposition along the N.Carolina coast, and that’s without the occasional killer storm, that tide guages from years ago are either high and dry in the dunes or are submerged. I’d seriously question any SLR figures based on what’s been happening along the coast. Maybe in the sounds (Albemarle, Pamlico etc) there’s a real record but I wouldn’t bet on it
chris moffatt
The GA, SC, and NC coasts “travel” as the sand and muck are pushed by tides and the off-shore currents continuously north: inlets need to be continuously dredged (before, they would be storm and flood swept clear) and the coastline itself evolves. Further north, the rocks provide some permanent features, but there are no hard “features” between FL’s Cape Canaveral and Hatteras. The tide gages in this area are sticks in the mud (literally) because they can only record where the tidal mud used to be in past years.
CA’s beaches are sandy coves, separated by rocky outcroppings. But, where the San Andreus fault crosses the shoreline, a similar failure-of-gauges could be generated to make any fairy story the mythmaker wants to create.
1.5 mm? That’s like 2 of my horse’s tail hairs. How do you even MEASURE that, since the ocean doesn’t exactly stand still? /sarc
Isn’t N. Carolina one of the areas that is subsiding from glacial rebound?
I can only assume its yet another piece of climate propaganda that has misfired.
Re: Luke’s graph:
Note that the rates shown are for the proxies (whatever they are) not the data ((wherever that’s from. Slope of data is (somewhat) linear, proxy exponential. It’s hard to see that because of his flat proxy tail – another “Mann trick” by “Luke boy”.
What a massive surprise!! Yet another proxy which tells us that during the past – nothing ever happened.
Even though we know that it did. Even though we know that just 20,000 years ago, there was no Persian Gulf AT ALL. That the North Sea contained a large area of land that featured hills, once the ice had retreated – all now under water. And that a one mile thick ice sheet covered Manhattan.
But – all these lovely cherry-picked proxies show a nice zero trend for everything for the years prior to industrialization.
Living in deni@l must get tough sometimes. Go and look up some facts about the last 20K years of climate history – it may come as a real shock. Shit happened. And it happened over a geologically short time scale.
And most of us were taught about it in the 3rd grade.
Ah; so that is why the old lifeboat station at Oregon Inlet is a quarter mile inland from the beach. Sea level rise! And I thought they just wanted the extra exercise of dragging their lifeboats a quarter mile over the dunes to get them launched. Science, it’s wonderful.
“By 1988, the station was completely abandoned when the southward migration of the Oregon Inlet threatened to swallow it”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Inlet
Luke’s Rise begins in 1800. It is worse than we thought! Go solar!
That’s about as reliable as the temperature data from the ground based network.
In other words, worthless.
It’s dystopian because the left can’t create anything but dystopias. They can’t create wealth, a seawall, new technology or anything else. Well their policies do create poverty so ok they can create one thing.
Yep, Every time there is a scheme to take more money from people, chances are its been birthed from someone who has never been a part of wealth creation. There’s a lot of ignorance out there but economic ignorance is perhaps the most threatening to our way of life.
When you use your own money to buy votes, they call it bribery.
When you use other people’s money to buy votes, they call it socialism.
Actually, they’re excellent at creating victimhood, dependency, new categories of pseudo-disease, new genders, and fads like Spandex-clad contortionism and really revolting things to eat. That’s about it . . . oh, and Outrage. Lots and LOTS of High Dudgeon and Moral Outrage. 😉
Several posters here keep going on and on about how taking money from those who have earned it and giving it to those who want it, creates freedom.
Not unlike claims that a carbon tax will ruin the economy and send us back to the Stone Age. Similar imagery, opposite spin, partisan politics at its best.
Depends on what you mean by ruin the economy.
Carbon pricing does a lot of harm to employment. Even the green EU has been forced to acknowledge that jobs are being driven off shore by carbon pricing. Their policy response is to give lots of freebies to affected industries, in the hope they’ll stay – an exercise which would be utterly unnecessary, if they hadn’t imposed carbon pricing in the first place.
http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/cap/leakage/index_en.htm
Eric Worrall,
It’s not my argument, but I take your meaning.
I think it’s interesting that the world’s largest “offshore” economy leads the world in renewable investment:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2014/06/17/china-leads-in-renewable-investment-again/#12805c4246a9
http://www.ibtimes.com/china-leads-16-jump-global-clean-energy-investments-solar-wind-sectors-grow-1778744
They’re ramping nukes as well.
Here in the US we’ve been shipping jobs overseas for decades, sans carbon taxes. We like cheap labour [1] and cheap fuel it seems. Oh, and cheap plastic sh!t so long as it’s not coated with lead-based paint.
Your logic is of course unassailable. How their partisans would answer you, I cannot say.
—————
[1] Just not inside our own borders.
Renewable ‘Investments’ are scams, plane and simple. None of them could survive without massive government handouts. If you’re really surprised that China leads in scamming the West, then you’re not as smart as I gave you credit for.
Now if you’re in on the scam…
schitzree,
I think it’s a stretch to call the heavily subsidized US Interstate Highway system a scam, and would I also think it would be a gross interpretation of reality to assert that it doesn’t greatly facilitate commerce. One might also reasonably conclude that the reason heavy rail — which is more efficient — is so heavily subsidized is because Interstate freight is faster and more flexible.
Counter-point; it doesn’t take gummint to run a good scam. See Bernie Madoff. Less clear, but more impactful, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, with the main scam being how so many bad loans were securitized into supposedly less risky bonds.
You really don’t get it that the massive Chinese investments into renewables are for their own domestic use, do you.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Why pay attention how the Chinese are kicking a$$ economically when you can just make up crap about the motives of people who point it out to you.
Sometimes I wonder just how much of prior US economic success has been a total and complete accident of fate.
Well, carbon tax that would be high enough to have an effect on atmospheric CO2, WOULD ruin the world economy. Stone age maybe too much, but for some people the results would be pretty equal. There are millions of people who live in stoneagish conditions even when we are using coal and oil.
* * *
“When sea level rise ramps up, who is going to pay for all the claims?”
Estate owners. You buy seaside, you pay for the downside. Insurances are for short term accidents.
Hugs,
Here’s something I can claim with confidence: if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the world economy would tank. If the US replaced all coal- and gas-fired electricity plants with nuclear by 2050, I think the US economy would fare better than tanking.
Yup.
Wasn’t directed at me, but I do have a comment: you don’t want ocean-side property owners getting wiped out. Bad for the economy.
Perhaps some political partisan would explain to us how artificial and high increases in the prices of food and fuel and everything else is going to help the poor, which is what those same partisans are always claiming to be their goal?
Alan Robertson,
Details vary by which partisan you ask, but as taxation is often used for wealth redistribution that tends to be a common theme.
Taxing air.
Remind me why this is not sheer madness?
Future generations will look back on this whole CAGW farce and laugh their socks off. It will become the stuff of comedy legend.
David Smith,
Taxing a combustion product.
Chemistry and physics.
I love the way Brandon has to lie about what other people say in order to once again try to de-rail the conversation.
It’s the level of taxes that matter, even a brain dead liberal should be able to figure that out.
PS, the stated goal of those who push carbon taxes is the elimination of fossil fuels, and that will send us back to the stone age.
MarkW,
I chose the mildest generalization I could think of, and invoked the replacement strategy I’m most dubious of being workable. I love how you consider me expressing a topical counter-point an attempt to “de-rail the conversation.”
lol, I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Brain dead is brain dead regardless of political alignment. Speaking of:
Compare: I am beginning to believe that science fiction movie scenarios of the future are not so far off: some amalgam of Hunger Games, Sector 9, and Mad Max but with low-rent production values.
Oh BTW, since fossil fuels are a finite resource, how have you not just destined the human race to return to the Stone Age when we run out?
Ah yes, the dreaded coming of the ‘end of oil’.
That reminds me. For Christmas my sister gave me a new printing of a game I used to play all the time as a kid, CAR WARS. It took place 50 years in the future after the oil ran out and civilization had collapsed and partially rebuilt. Of course, this was back in the mid 80’s, so it took place in the 20 30’s and the oil ran out around 2000. >¿<
So care to place your bets on when peek oil will finally come, Gates? Just be aware that so far everyone else who's played has lost.
Brandon Gates
January 29, 2016 at 10:45 am
“Oh BTW, since fossil fuels are a finite resource, how have you not just destined the human race to return to the Stone Age when we run out?”
————————–
Since you’ve aligned your thinking with those who support the ideas that too many humans exist and populations must be reduced by billions and who also advocate the end of fossil fuel use, which would undeniably kill off vast numbers of humans, how is your advocacy for the deaths of billions of people and the end of civilization, going to ensure that any humans at all, survive into your dark, distant future?
schitzree,
I don’t know about dread, but a less loaded term is “concern”:
MarkW
January 29, 2016 at 10:01 am
[…]
PS, the stated goal of those who push carbon taxes is the elimination of fossil fuels, and that will send us back to the stone age.
I remember it. Never played it though. Cool-looking game.
Peak oil production is different from depletion. And no, I don’t care to place a bet on either — the uncertainty there is part of my point.
Implicitly concluding infinite supply from those failures would also be folly, especially in the face of ever increasing demand. I don’t think it’s any accident that the Chinese lead the world in renewables, nor that they’re also ramping their nuclear power program. Just the sort of thing I’d expect shrewd, intelligent, forward-looking business people to be doing.
Alan Robertson,
You’re making this too easy; I’m not sure you understand who it is that is writing the dystopian science fiction.
Compare: I am beginning to believe that science fiction movie scenarios of the future are not so far off: some amalgam of Hunger Games, Sector 9, and Mad Max but with low-rent production values.
Any more insinuating comments about whose thoughts are in alignment here, or do you have enough straw left to build another one?
Like I said, partisan politics at its best.
Brandon, Seriously… Compare: I directly quoted you, for which you claimed my commentary (certainly political,) was a strawman, for which you gave as evidence, a comment not germaine, made by someone else, i.e., a strawman.
You are correct when you speak of politics in the question of climate change, as the whole topic is rife with politics. How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political? A neutral scientific statement would certainly not be made in such terms.
Alan Robertson,
Not germane? Did you answer my question of MarkW directly? Here it is again:
Oh BTW, since fossil fuels are a finite resource, how have you not just destined the human race to return to the Stone Age when we run out?
I believe the record shows that you did not.
That’s what happens when scientific findings about the planet have global policy implications.
That depends on the context of its usage, which you did not specify.
“Neutral” is a subjective qualifier of “scientific statement”. If there’s anything I’m certain of, it’s that there is no “certainty” in subjectivity.
Brandon says in answer to:
“How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political?”
—————-
“That depends on the context of its usage, which you did not specify.”
Even though you stripped my previous sentence from your quote, the context should still have been plain enough, and I have no doubt that the context was plain enough for you, but still, you deploy semantic deflection away from my point that the phrase …”warmest year ever recorded” is propaganda.
I’ll make the context clear:
When climate alarmists like Gavin Schmidt and others of his stripe make the claim that “2015 was the warmest year in the record, going back to the mid 19th century, by far.”, then the phrase is being used as propaganda in support of the global warming meme. Schmidt is using a well- understood propaganda technique of using half- truths, lying with facts, or cherry- pickin’, if you will. The problem is, facts are not truth, but only facets of the whole truth. Schmidt is a scientist in a position of power and influence and he chooses to lie with facts, to be a propagandist. If he were truly a scientist untainted by political agendas, then he would tell the whole truth, but he is not neutral in his pronouncements, for whatever reasons.
The rhetoric issuing from the climate fearosphere is filled with such half- truths presented as truth. If Schmidt’s science could stand the light of truth shone upon it, there would be no need for such propaganda, but his brand of science does not bear close scrutiny. Many here stand up for the truth and against such rhetorical machinations as Schmidt’s deceptive artifice employed to control the lives of others.
Alan Robertson,
No, Alan, I don’t agree with your opinion. Is that clear enough for you?
It should also be clear from context that I was talking about the context in which the phrase “… warmest year ever recorded” is used by others, NOT how you used it in context. Your previous sentence was:
You are correct when you speak of politics in the question of climate change, as the whole topic is rife with politics.
To which I tacitly agreed by saying: That’s what happens when scientific findings about the planet have global policy implications.
Ok, good.
You present all of the above as if it were unambiguously factual:
“How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political?”
… which in this post has morphed into …
… ”warmest year ever recorded” is propaganda.
… a term which is arguably more loaded than “political”, and yet you cite zero evidence to substantiate any of your claims. Not even a direct quote, in context, with a proper citation — a best practice, the benefits of which I really shouldn’t have to explain to you. Looking less like science and more like partisan politics to me.
By the way, what’s this “whole truth” stuff? You don’t expect him to rattle off the entire known history of every single facet of the climate system in every press conference or published paper, do you?
Brandon Gates
January 30, 2016 at 6:34 pm
When climate alarmists like Gavin Schmidt and others of his stripe make the claim that “2015 was the warmest year in the record, going back to the mid 19th century, by far.”, then the phrase is being used as propaganda in support of the global warming meme. Schmidt is using a well- understood propaganda technique of using half- truths, lying with facts, or cherry- pickin’, if you will. The problem is, facts are not truth, but only facets of the whole truth. Schmidt is a scientist in a position of power and influence and he chooses to lie with facts, to be a propagandist. If he were truly a scientist untainted by political agendas, then he would tell the whole truth, but he is not neutral in his pronouncements, for whatever reasons.
You present all of the above as if it were unambiguously factual:
“How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political?”
… which in this post has morphed into …
… ”warmest year ever recorded” is propaganda.
… a term which is arguably more loaded than “political”, and yet you cite zero evidence to substantiate any of your claims. Not even a direct quote, in context, with a proper citation — a best practice, the benefits of which I really shouldn’t have to explain to you. Looking less like science and more like partisan politics to me.
Brandon,
You said: “You present all of the above as if it were unambiguously factual:”
—— Yes. It is factual and the truth as far as I can see. Presenting half- truths as if they were the full truth, in order to promote a political agenda is propaganda. The quote I attributed to GS was made by him recently in an interview with NPR. I think it was during last month’s full moon, as that’s a good time to listen to government radio (NPR) as it gives me a chance to yell at the radio. Get the YaYas out and all that. There’s a link on youtube. That was an enlightening interview as Schmidt et al, twisted events and data to their purpose, but gave astute listeners an earful of evidence of skullduggery from those who should be held to account for their mendacity.
———————-
“By the way, what’s this “whole truth” stuff? “You don’t expect him to rattle off the entire known history of every single facet of the climate system in every press conference or published paper, do you?”
——————-
Should I start by asking: Isn’t the whole truth worth pursuing, for you?
———-
“You don’t expect him to rattle off the entire known history of every single facet of the climate system in every press conference or published paper, do you?”
———– Not even that thin veneer of rationalization can hide the fact that Schmidt and company, in fact the entire climate fear team, never cite the history or any other facet (fact) of the climate system when they claim “warmest year ever recorded.” That is their default position, from which they never deviate into inconvenient facts (facets) like: “warmest year ever recorded” since the Little Ice Age, but not as warm as the Holocene Optimum, or as warm as the Roman Warm Period, or…”. They somehow never seem to mention those facets of the shining diamond of truth, because they aren’t interested in truth, just the promotion of their agenda, by only speaking half truths- propaganda. They are liars, bent on changing civilization, doing whatever it takes to achieve their goal. For them, the end justifies the means. I have no use for them.
Alan Robertson,
But what you … me, we … “see” in other people is limited. Neither of us are in Gavin Schmidt’s head. Either of us making suppositions about what he does when he’s not giving press conferences and why is strictly opinion on our part. Which is fine. I don’t mind people expressing opinions. I do mind people presenting opinion as fact.
I agree with your definition. I don’t agree with its application to Gavin Schmidt because “propaganda” is such a loaded word, carrying connotations that want actual evidence of malfeasance, not just personal opinion. He and I both are protected by US laws which prevail on the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”, and I’m suggesting to you that that’s something you really don’t want to erode by making unsubstantiated allegations of fraudulent misconduct. If you’re looking for a road to dystopia, that kind of rhetoric is part of the paving of it. Am I getting through yet?
Before you explicitly subbed “propaganda” in for “political” I thought you had a better point. It would be the acme of foolishness for me to believe that Dr. Schmidt has no political views, and that they don’t bias his research and public comments. I think your argument about “neutrality” is weak. It’s well known to science that scientists are not immune to cognitive biases, it’s why the peer-review process is such an important step to publication. Even that fails, obviously, and not just in climate science but all sciences. The real world I live in is not perfect, and I personally don’t want to pretend it’s possible for other human beings to be perfectly dispassionate and objective observers of the natural world by insisting, in a debate, that someone isn’t a good scientist because they’re not “netural”.
One thing I certainly can’t fault you for is passion, especially since I don’t lack my own on this topic. But passionate personal testimonials don’t convince me. Logic, reason and evidence do. Demagoguery is something I find especially offputting, but if you’re looking to nail me for being a hypocrite, that’s a promising avenue for you to explore because I’ll be the first to admit that engaging in it can feel really damn good.
Of course it is, but it’s also something I consider my own responsibility to attempt to obtain. Won’t happen in my lifetime on this or any topic, too much to know.
That’s just pure and unadulterated BS, Alan. Good grief. Anyone who reads the press releases knows how easily falsifiable that claim is. We just talked about this on David Whitehouse’s piece. You were there. My very first post on that thread …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/2015-global-temp-or-how-some-scientists-deliberately-mistook-weather-for-climate/#comment-2127478
… completely demolishes your statement, “… Schmidt and company, in fact the entire climate fear team, never cite the history or any other facet (fact) of the climate system when they claim ‘warmest year ever recorded.'”
“Never” is a really strong word. You should never use it in an argument when one example is sufficient to disprove it.
Right, this is getting back to my earlier point that I think it’s a bit unreasonable to expect Schmidt et al. to cover …
… 500 million years of temperature change and …
… 500 million years of CO2 levels when the topic of the press conference is what’s most relevant to post-industrial society and the 7.125 billion people TODAY who are dependent on the biosphere for FOOD not going t!ts up unexpectedly some time in the next century. Your accusation here is especially whacky, because … how else is it in holy Hades you know that “climate is always changing” save for the fact that these same mendacious obfuscatory lying sacks of bull excrement climatologists were the ones to do the research and publish it in the first place?!
Wake up.
Why don’t the wholly fabricated observations better match the completely useless models, Alan? Pretty inept conspiracy that can’t even get that one correct, if you ask me.
Brandon Gates January 30, 2016 at 10:48 pm
“That’s just pure and unadulterated BS…”
——————
That’s certainly the product that Schmidt, et cie provide for public consumption, every time they speak.
Sooner or later, someone in the press is going to get a clue and/or grow a pair and ask them what they mean by “warmest ever recorded” in the context of human history during the entire Holocene.
Until then,, the loudest mouths in the climate fearosphere will continue to rely on their fellow lying propagandists to provide cover for them.
Brandon Gates January 30, 2016 at 10:48 pm
“…if you’re looking to nail me for being a hypocrite, that’s a promising avenue for you to explore because I’ll be the first to admit that engaging in it can feel really damn good.”
——————–
I had no intent to point out your hypocrisy, since most (all?) regulars at WUWT are familiar with your tactics. Thanks for bringing any new readers up to speed.
Alan Robertson,
Repeating the same argument over and over does not make it any more true. Repeating it as a response to my showing it to be demonstrably false is simply bizarre.
One of these days, one hopes you will get a clue and realize that context has already been provided in literature, say Marcott et al. (2013):
http://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott.png
2013 instrumental temps dead even with the max upper bound of the 1-sigma uncertainty of the reconstruction. More importantly, look at the rate of the instrumental. The context is there. The questions you say are not being asked have already been answered. I’m beginning to think you simply don’t like answers, and frankly, I cannot fault you for that because I don’t much care for them either.
Disingenuity combined with appeal to popularity, all rolled up in a nice pretty ad hominem wrapper. Partisan propaganda at its finest.
Thanks for playing, cheers.
Brandon Gates
January 31, 2016 at 11:38 am
Alan Robertson,
“That’s certainly the product that Schmidt, et cie provide for public consumption, every time they speak.”
—-
B: “Repeating the same argument over and over does not make it any more true. Repeating it as a response to my showing it to be demonstrably false is simply bizarre.”
—————-
Except that you haven’t shown my statement to be demonstrably false. You set up a straw man and flailed away at that. Ineptly.
If you REALLY want to debunk my words and meaning, then try this: simply find (and report here,) one single instance of any public speech by Oreskes, Schmidt, Hansen or any of the prominent mouthpieces which promote the CAGW meme, which shows them speaking to the public about modern temps, in the context of man’s history in the Holocene. Just one instance is all you’ll need.
I’m not sure if it’s laughable, or pathetic that you tried to use Marcotte et al, 2013 as some sort of authority in this conversation.
Here’s a graph for you, which demonstrates exactly the temp record of the Holocene vis a vis current temps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greenland_Gisp2_Temperature.svg
Ps If there was any ad hom about your hypocrisy, it was entirely of your own making, since you outed yourself. What were you trying to do, set some sort of rhetorical trap?
Here’s another GISTEMP plot:
http://snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
Alan Robertson,
Here’s your argument, verbatim: Not even that thin veneer of rationalization can hide the fact that Schmidt and company, in fact the entire climate fear team, never cite the history or any other facet (fact) of the climate system when they claim “warmest year ever recorded.”
Notice the word “never” which I emphasized in bold text. All I have to do to falsify your entire statement is to provide one, and only one, example of that statement being untrue. Here’s a post I wrote recently: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/2015-global-temp-or-how-some-scientists-deliberately-mistook-weather-for-climate/#comment-2127478
In that post I link to this press release:
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-analyses-reveal-record-shattering-global-warm-temperatures-in-2015
Here’s the lede paragraph:
Earth’s 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Further down in the same release we read:
Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 15 of the 16 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Last year was the first time the global average temperatures were 1 degree Celsius or more above the 1880-1899 average.
Phenomena such as El Niño or La Niña, which warm or cool the tropical Pacific Ocean, can contribute to short-term variations in global average temperature. A warming El Niño was in effect for most of 2015.
“2015 was remarkable even in the context of the ongoing El Niño,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “Last year’s temperatures had an assist from El Niño, but it is the cumulative effect of the long-term trend that has resulted in the record warming that we are seeing.
Your statement as written above is demonstrably false. I have proven it wrong. Your position, as written above, is demolished. Your very own words above as written do not match reality. Am I getting through to you yet?
I gave you one instance above. Not the first time I’ve done it. Now you’ve introduced the qualifier of the entire Holocene. How many more times are you going to move the goalposts? How much climate history does Gavin Schmidt need to talk about in each and every press conference before you are personally satisfied?
Climate and weather are sufficiently complex that even discussing “all” aspects of it in a single paper, speech, press release or press conference is NOT feasible, even if the scope of the history of the system is limited to the modern instrumental period (which is most relevant to NOW), to say nothing of climate over the past 4.543 billion years — I repeat, 4.543 billion years — of the planet’s entire existence.
As such, you are ALWAYS going to be able to point out something that someone “left out”, and from that insinuate that they have some “agenda” for doing so.
I consider that to be a bad faith debate tactic, an a silly game. Worse, it’s NOT the way to learn anything. Honest and intelligent people who want to learn about the Holocene from Gavin Schmidt only need to use google and read the third link that pops up: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/MannetalGRL09.pdf
A few more links down and I find a RealClimate post authored by him: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/can-we-make-better-graphs-of-global-temperature-history/
Is that publically accessible enough for you? It contains this image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png
That far enough back for you? It contains another example I’ve already posted in this thread:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png/1600px-All_palaeotemps.png
It’s not Gavin Schmidt’s duty to spoon-feed you. It’s not my duty to spoon-feed you. It’s YOUR responsibility to learn about the details of climate, and its history, and it’s really not all that hard to find an overwhelming amount of information from people you laughably claim are attempting to suppress it — the whole reason you know that “climate is always changing and always have” is because they are the ones doing the research in the first place.
Wake up and stop being ridiculous.
Alan Robertson,
I’m not sure if it’s laughable or pathetic that you think Alley (2000) “rebuts” Marcott (2013), or that Alley is any more of an authority than Marcott. The real howler is that you think Alley (2000) has anything to say about “current temps”.
Here’s the link to the data file: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Here are the first few lines of data:
DATA: 1. Temperature in central Greenland Column 1: Age (thousand years before present) Column 2: Temperature in central Greenland (degrees C) Age Temperature (C) 0.0951409 -31.5913 0.10713 -31.622 0.113149 -31.6026 0.119205 -31.6002 0.119205 -31.598 0.125451 -31.6656 0.132407 -31.7235 0.138807 -31.7583 0.145126 -31.8098 0.152263 -31.8415Unless otherwise specified, “years before present” means “years before 1950” by convention. So …
1950 – 0.0951409 * 1000 = 1854.8591
… which is not exactly “current”.
Ah, I see your point. I actually read what you wrote this time and you are correct. That statement of mine used imprecise language and was therefore untrue. As you may be aware, you have made similarly untrue- through- imprecision statements in this post, but let’s not go there, let’s not belabor those issues. Everyone, even (especially?) scientists, can make mistakes while trying to communicate their ideas and while that is not the main point, is a valid and vital point of this entire discussion.
I am only a layman but strive for the best understanding that I can reach on scientific topics, which is an effort to get as close to the truth as I can get. That effort, in my understanding of the principles of science, is the goal of science, as well.
With that goal in mind, I think that one simple question will cut through the fog of this topic and get us closer to the truth:
Which of the following statements comes closest to the truth?
A) 2015 was the warmest year ever recorded.
B) 2015 was the warmest year in recorded human history.
By the way, that simple A or B question requires only a simple A or B answer, si’l vous plait.
Alan Robertson,
We’ve made progress, thank you.
I am aware that humans make error, that I am human, and that I err. I would prefer you to point to a specific example you think is a similar error in precision than make a generalization … which in itself is an imprecise statement.
Sure. I’ve already written that it would be folly for me to presume that Dr. Schmidt et al. don’t have political/ideological views, and that those don’t color the nature of their research and public communications. There is call for skepticism of any scientific finding for the very reason that all humans have cognitive biases to some degree. It’s not lost on me that there being so many major policy decisions riding on AGW theory warrants exceptional scrutiny.
What I don’t agree with are statements like, “they’re politically motivated, their conclusions are irredeemably tainted, should be disregarded, and they should be condemned for abusing their position to spread false conclusions.” You didn’t exactly write those words; however, be I right or wrong, that’s what I was reading into them.
Ditto for me.
(B) is my answer.
Closed-ended questions, especially binary ones, are not generally the kind that lead to further understanding of any truth. Asking them IS a common rhetorical tactic designed to pin down one’s interlocutor into an indefensible position, which you have just done here — both statements as worded are false according to my understanding (read: belief) of reality.
“Closed-ended questions, especially binary ones, are not generally the kind that lead to further understanding of any truth. Asking them IS a common rhetorical tactic designed to pin down one’s interlocutor into an indefensible position, which you have just done here — both statements as worded are false according to my understanding (read: belief) of reality.”
Brandon, why do you go to such lengths to prove you like to insinuate and assume things about people? It only makes you look paranoid and irrational, especially when the person you are speaking to already gave you his motivation FREELY:
“With that goal in mind, I think that one simple question will cut through the fog of this topic and get us closer to the truth:
Rather than stating your own personal opinion about his motivation, which is obviously different from the one he offered to you, why didn’t you just say “I don’t like either choice because….”? Because what you did ALSO looks “designed to pin down your interlocutor into an indefensible position” and does not “generally lead to further understanding of any truth.”
Trying to find ONE point of agreement in a debate is a smart and effective tactic that leads to clarity, not pigeonholing. It gives both sides a jumping off spot that eliminates a lot of assumption, insinuation, and other rhetorical wastes of time. I believe Alan asked you to simply choose A or B, in order to prevent you FROM doing exactly what you just did, complicate the discussion more by adding unnecessary and counter intuitive insinuations.
Aphan,
I explained that to him already, in the bit you directly quoted in the beginning of your post:
“Closed-ended questions, especially binary ones, are not generally the kind that lead to further understanding of any truth. Asking them IS a common rhetorical tactic designed to pin down one’s interlocutor into an indefensible position, which you have just done here — both statements as worded are false according to my understanding (read: belief) of reality.”
Was my meaning unclear to you? Do you disagree with it? Why or why not?
Aphan, why do you go to such lengths to prove you like to insinuate and assume things about people? It only makes you look paranoid and irrational, especially when the person you are speaking to already gave you his motivation FREELY:
“Closed-ended questions, especially binary ones, are not generally the kind that lead to further understanding of any truth. Asking them IS a common rhetorical tactic designed to pin down one’s interlocutor into an indefensible position, which you have just done here — both statements as worded are false according to my understanding (read: belief) of reality.”
Ok, let’s test these principles. The first instance of “… warmest year ever recorded” in this subthread is Alan’s post dated January 30, 2016 at 6:38 am:
Brandon, Seriously… Compare: I directly quoted you, for which you claimed my commentary (certainly political,) was a strawman, for which you gave as evidence, a comment not germaine, made by someone else, i.e., a strawman.
You are correct when you speak of politics in the question of climate change, as the whole topic is rife with politics. How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political? A neutral scientific statement would certainly not be made in such terms.
My post dated January 30, 2016 at 1:17 pm reads in part:
[quoting Alan]: How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political?
[Me responding]: That depends on the context of its usage, which you did not specify.
Has Alan provided a single specific context for the paraphrase “… warmest year ever recorded”?
Is a single specific example enough to draw conclusions about the “whole truth” of the motives and actions of “Oreskes, Schmidt, Hansen or any of the prominent mouthpieces which promote the CAGW meme”?
By the way, those simple yes or no questions require only simple yes or no answers, s’il vous plaît. I’m just trying to find two points of agreement with you so that we can eliminate a lot of assumption, insinuation and other rhetorical wastes of time.
Hello Aphan,
I had the briefest flicker of an urge to caution you about this engagement, but you need no warning from anyone. You have a well- established pattern of commentary here at WUWT which reveals that you are exceedingly astute, tough- minded and honest, albeit somewhat of a target for “Texan joakes”, since you married one. (Being from Oklahoma, I can’t help it.)
Engaging in extended dialogue establishes a pattern of thought and action which reveals who we are to others (and ourselves,) to the extent of the awareness and understanding of both the listener and speaker and to the extent of modifiers to our understanding such as veracity and intent, often upwelling from depths and layers of hidden agendas and convolutions of ethic and psyche, but which do gradually reveal themselves, even though and especially if, the speaker is particularly adept with the techniques of deception. This is really a whole other topic, as none of us has anywhere close to perfect perception of ourselves or others, peering as we are through the miasma of our own misunderstandings, but however apropos to this thread, back to the topic at hand.
This discussion has underscored the general primacy of patterns over single instances of speech and has established the need for context, in order to further our understanding. But more importantly, this thread underscores the certainty that the enhancement of a listener’s understanding is often far from the intent of the speaker, for the simple reason that if others more fully understand the topic, then the speaker’s agenda is undermined.
“Has Alan provided a single specific context for the paraphrase “… warmest year ever recorded”?
In the context of this post, this thread, this site and the worldwide discussion of anthropogenic climate catastrophe entire, that single sentence becomes utterly specious and profoundly revelatory.
[Excuse me, those of us from Texas reserve the term JaOKers for those north of the border. .mod]
Alan Robertson,
Speaking of profound revelations in a single sentence (but not really), I begin to understand your difficulty correctly parsing more global realities …
Has Alan provided a single specific context for the paraphrase “… warmest year ever recorded”?
Is a single specific example enough to draw conclusions about the “whole truth” of the motives and actions of “Oreskes, Schmidt, Hansen or any of the prominent mouthpieces which promote the CAGW meme”?
… because apparently you struggle to evaluate them more than one sentence at a time. Emphasis added to hopefully help you overcome your increasingly obvious selective reading disability.
Well done, Brandon!
That’s about as hilarious of a display of twisted logic as one can ever hope to see, but you even topped that off with yet another of your little retreats to your default hidey- hole, the ad hominem attack.
Has it ever occurred to you that others happily engage with you here because you expose yourself, every time you speak?
Alan Robertson,
I wish I could say your antics are more than mildly amusing.
It’s occurred to me that people who lack self-awareness AND evidence think that’s what they’re doing to me. In the meantime, the careful and honest reader will note that your various charges against Gavin Schmidt et al. have never included a direct quotation or direct citation:
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January 30, 2016 at 6:38 am: How else would one describe perhaps the most common meme provided for mass consumption, “… warmest year ever recorded” as anything but political? A neutral scientific statement would certainly not be made in such terms.
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January 30, 2016 at 4:38 pm: Even though you stripped my previous sentence from your quote, the context should still have been plain enough, and I have no doubt that the context was plain enough for you, but still, you deploy semantic deflection away from my point that the phrase …”warmest year ever recorded” is propaganda.
I’ll make the context clear:
When climate alarmists like Gavin Schmidt and others of his stripe make the claim that “2015 was the warmest year in the record, going back to the mid 19th century, by far.”, then the phrase is being used as propaganda in support of the global warming meme. Schmidt is using a well- understood propaganda technique of using half- truths, lying with facts, or cherry- pickin’, if you will. The problem is, facts are not truth, but only facets of the whole truth. Schmidt is a scientist in a position of power and influence and he chooses to lie with facts, to be a propagandist. If he were truly a scientist untainted by political agendas, then he would tell the whole truth, but he is not neutral in his pronouncements, for whatever reasons.
The rhetoric issuing from the climate fearosphere is filled with such half- truths presented as truth. If Schmidt’s science could stand the light of truth shone upon it, there would be no need for such propaganda, but his brand of science does not bear close scrutiny. Many here stand up for the truth and against such rhetorical machinations as Schmidt’s deceptive artifice employed to control the lives of others.
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January 30, 2016 at 8:56 pm: Yes. It is factual and the truth as far as I can see. Presenting half- truths as if they were the full truth, in order to promote a political agenda is propaganda. The quote I attributed to GS was made by him recently in an interview with NPR. I think it was during last month’s full moon, as that’s a good time to listen to government radio (NPR) as it gives me a chance to yell at the radio. Get the YaYas out and all that. There’s a link on youtube. That was an enlightening interview as Schmidt et al, twisted events and data to their purpose, but gave astute listeners an earful of evidence of skullduggery from those who should be held to account for their mendacity.
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January 31, 2016 at 6:38 am: Sooner or later, someone in the press is going to get a clue and/or grow a pair and ask them what they mean by “warmest ever recorded” in the context of human history during the entire Holocene.
Until then,, the loudest mouths in the climate fearosphere will continue to rely on their fellow lying propagandists to provide cover for them.
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That’s a TON of insinuation, allegation and accusation based on a single paraphrase of ”warmest year ever recorded” from a single NPR interview you simply can’t be bothered to quote directly, much less properly cite. You need a lot more evidence than that to demonstrate a persistent pattern of intent. You’ve failed to produce anything but hearsay.
And now you bizarrely whine to me about my “default hidey- hole, the ad hominem attack”. Brother, you’ve barely left it this entire exchange, and had your central argument soundly refuted several times: the only reason you know anything about temperatures in the Holocene or further back is because the people you laughably claim are suppressing that information are the ones doing the research and publishing it to begin with.
Wake up.
Australia has been in an economic disaster since the WBCT – unemployment soared at 100 year high commodity prices and peaked the month of the repeal.
In other examples, Spain and Greece had carbon prices and renewables subsidies. How are they going?
[WBCT = ?? .mod]
While I have no doubt humans will overcome any gradual danger from flooding, lifting the buildings in Chicago today is a very different task than the buildings of 1850. No doubt we’d overcome the difficulty, but I doubt we’ll jack up skyscrapers. More cost effective to backfill the lower floor(s) with concrete and add at the top I’ll bet.
[Chicago is not at sea level,
and no city needs that kind of movement at sea level. .mod]
But, but, but… in the 19th century there was no Occupational Safety and Health Administration or Building Code enforcement bureaus! We may be drowned by the time they work out the bureaucracy to let us do what’s required!
Zactly. Things were accomplished in the ages before government started helping.
Notice, by the way, the tunnel is below sea level and in an earthquake zone proving people are the craziest monkeys. The tunnel is slated to replace the double deck viaduct seen having the wobblies in this Plan 9 from Space inspired video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dtjGmrPKSI and note that the subduction and liquifaction is happening exactly where the tunnel is being bored. What can go wrong?
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/About/followbertha
Quote
one federally funded taxpayer agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, is working day and night, up and down the coastline, with bulldozers, tractors, and sand from the Bahamas and Mexico to reinforce tourist-friendly beaches against sea level rise.
Unquote
Is that the lie? Why is nobody addressing that?????
which part is the lie? The Corps of Engineers is working day and night? They certainly spend plenty of money on things like pumps for New Orleans that fail to meet specifications until the engineers adjust the specs to meet what has been sold to them. So IF they were supplying sand it would not be out of the question that it might originate in Mexico as that would be the most expensive possible sand. You see Grey you don’t want to get people started on the lies about the Corps of Engineers!
One of the great learning experiences that I have had was the reading of this book.
Dams and Other Disasters: A Century of the Army Corps of Engineers in Civil Works, by Arthur E. Morgan
At the time I was working toward a degree in Civil Eng. Of all the books on Political Philosophy that I have read since then, only Hannah Arendt, has been his equal. Adaptation to the environmental and political systems of the day is where the human excels. These leftists are only responding to the demands of the system that feeds and clothes them, without regard to testable truth. After all the game is to acquire the almighty pension, and a little fib here and there is harmless,,
the katrina problem was recognized and treated lightly from the 1930s onward, until the inevitable happened.
If they are bulldozing sand, they’re doing it the hard way.
I’ve lived near the sea all my life. Beach sand behaves like a flowing river, if you want to build up the sand on a beach, you don’t bulldoze more sand onto the beach, you interrupt and slow the flow of seawater, so it drops its load of sand where you want your beach to be built up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groyne
Eric, I’d guess that they are mostly dredging their fill material, not bulldozing it.
Maybe groynes work in your area, but along the Southern California coast, they were tried in the mid-20th century they worked poorly, Mostly they served to create hazards for late night partiers on moonless nights who didn’t always survive that first big step off the (usually rusty) edge injury free.
The sea level rise at the mouth of the Mississippi is mostly due to subsidence. Same as Venice and many other cities built on river deltas. The weight in the soil in the deltas compress the earth below, and sinks.
Much more subsidence than SLR.
.
Since we have to keep repeating this seemingly very simple explanation – I can only assume that the concept is just beyond comprehension to the libtards in MSM. Idiocracy is here.
“You say ground going down. Me no understand. Me say sea coming up. Yes?”
Fort Lauderdale is currently undergoing a long overdue beach restoration. This is necessary for two reasons. First, the beach is built. Covered with condo buildings, Roadway AIA,… Whichncreates a fixed line. Beaches don’t do fixed lines, they like to move around. Second, we cut many inlets to the intercoastal waterway. Each inlet prevents natural southward sand migration. So beaches widen hugely on inlet north sides, and disappear on inlet south sides. The work is being done by a private contractor. The 865,000 cubic yards of sand is being trucked from a sand mine in LaBelle ( just west of Okeechobee, about 110 miles away). Total cost $55 million, 2/3 state county, 1/3 federal. All info on line at http://www.Broward.org/beachrenourishment
It would have been preferable to simply dredge sand from offshore borrow pits, but environmentalists prevented that out of concern for our offshore coral reefs. That fight caused the decade delay in beach replenishment.
No Corps of Engineers, no sand from Mexico, no relationship to sea level rise whatsoever.
I grew up in Pompano Beach and in the late 60s/early 70s we would go to the beach just where A1A becomes Miracle Mile where the dredged reefs were being pumped onto the beach, standing in the sand/water mixture coming out of the pipes hoping to find a conch shell etc. I was young, so I’m not claiming any support for any theory in my observations, but as I recall there was opposition to dredging because it was destroying the inner reef. I vaguely recall my old man telling me the dredging was being done by the Corps of Engineers. Later, as a surfer in Deerfield Beach (not much surf to boast about) I spent just about every day at the beach. We all knew about the strong southerly current along the shore – rock piles had been placed at intervals to counter the southward erosion, but as you say, sand built up on the northern side and basins formed on the southern side. Further up, in Boca Raton I believe, there were groins and the same thing happened, only worse. South of Deerfield condos were built stupidly close to the high tide line and in places the beach had virtually disappeared. I only make these remarks because the article above says they’re countering sea level rise, whereas beach restoration has been going on for ages because of erosion from southward currents.
O/T but quite strange … this article showed up in The Guardian of all places …
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/29/modern-european-summers-are-warmest-since-roman-times-study-finds
The Guardian might have wanted to think twice before publishing it.. 🙂
…OMG…1.3 degree temperature rise in 2,000 years ?? We are all going to die,,,someday !
Galveston Tx was raised by 16 feet, if I recall correctly. When a similar hurricane to the 1900 storm came through (Alicia) the city survived. My brothers slept on pool tables in a pub, but except for hangovers, came through unscathed.
We can adapt.
In the average scenario – climbing onto a pool table allows a person to compensate for over 300years of sea level rise at the current highest (most alarmist) estimate of the average rate.
Unfortunately this technique is not permitted in the UK’s version of pool – snooker.
Since there is a rule that one foot must be kept on the floor at all times.
“Huffpost thinks a few inches of sea will cause Civilisation to Collapse”
Methinks that the vacuum between their ears has caused their little brains to collapse.
Oh come on now, your ASSUMING someone at the Huffy has a brain cell to collapse ! That’s really pushing the odds !
Touche!
Seems the Huffington Post thinks its countrymen are less capable than the Dutch who recovered most of their country from the sea with little more than hand tools and windmills. They then were hired in England where they drained the Fens of East Anglia turning malarial swamps into some of the most productive land in the country.
If I was a US citizen I would be insulted.
Last year’s Tour de France repeated the tradition of beginning in another country – this time Holland, with a ride across area that, without efforts to counter the sea, would have required a boat, rather than the thin-tired roadbikes that can barely handle cobbles. Millions watched, so this is no secret.
See? The windmills really CAN do anything!
…From the first short powered flight in 1903, Americans reached the moon in 1969….
I never tire of explaining to Americans that this is simplistic to the point of being incorrect.
First human flight – Montgolfier in 1783 (French)
First controlled flight – Henri Giffard in 1852 (French)
First heavier-than-air flight – Cayley in 1853 (British)
First heavier-than-air powered flight – Felix du Temple in 1874 (French)
First heavier-than-air powered flight with unaided take-off – Clement Ader in 1890 (French)
First heavier-than-air controlled flight – Otto Lilienthal in 1893 (German)
First heavier-than-air powered controlled flight – Richard Pearse in March 1903 (New Zealander) OR Orville Wright in Dec 1903 (American) (depending on what balance you give which to what historical data)
..Jumping off a cliff while flapping your arms DOES NOT count as a powered, controlled flight !!
I think the Wrights’ defenders have claimed that the NZ flight wasn’t as controlled as the Wrights’ sophisticated wing warping technique.
First heavier-than-air powered flight was John Stringfellow 1848 (English)
Yes – though that was a model, and I am thinking of human-carrying. In fact, small toy model helicopter-like machines, with feathers for blades were a toy known to the ancient Egyptians, so you could say that heavier-than-air flight preceded lighter-than-air flight, in about 2000 BC….
The reason for all this nit-picking is that the Wrights tried to make their fortune out of patents, and to do this they made grandiose claims to have discovered ‘the secret of flight’, and to have been ‘first’. To do this they had to hedge their claim around with qualifications, and later countrymen of theirs have forgotten these.
I suppose that if you want to specify these qualifications, they have a claim to have created the ‘first man-carrying heavier-than-air machine to achieve sustained repeatable controlled flight using a power source totally enclosed in the airframe.’ You also have to ignore take-off requirements – Santos Dumont took off under his own power on wheels, while the Wrights used a catapult/ramp launch into strong wind, and dropped the take-off dolly when airborne. But once in the air, there is no doubt that the Wright Flyer was the most competent aeroplane by 1906, when Dumont’s 14-bis first flew. Equally, by 1907, Dumont’s ‘Demoiselle’ was unquestionably a better aircraft, and was the forerunner of modern aviation. Dumont made his plans freely available – if you want you can even build one today. Here is a Practical Mechanics plan of 1910 – http://web.archive.org/web/20091026211607/http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/9260/demoisel.htm
Incidentally, the Wright wing-warping technique was not ‘more sophisticated’ than ailerons – in fact, ailerons are more sophisticated than wing warping, and scale a lot better. The Wright’s sophistication lay in running innumerable experiments which optimised their control system to the point where it would fly. Unfortunately, the control system they chose, wing warping and forward elevator, was a poor one from the design point of view, and you needed to be an expert to keep the craft in the air. A rear tail and flapped control surfaces are much better and more practical – they are the ones we use nowadays. There is no thread of modern aircraft design which owes its inception to the Wrights.
I didn’t say it was “‘more sophisticated’ than ailerons.” Those were invented after 1903, AFAIK. and were promoted by Curtis and others. Here’s what I wrote:
My implication was—obviously—only that the Wrights’ technique was sophisticated compared to whatever was used in NZ in 1903.
@RogerKnights
..My implication was—obviously—only that the Wrights’ technique was sophisticated compared to whatever was used in NZ in 1903…
Hmmm… there is some confusion going on here – possibly with the use of the word ‘sophisticated’. Ailerons were actually invented in the 1860s, and the Pearse aircraft used them. They are an inherently better design than wing-warping.
Claims of ‘First!’ can be made by pretty much all the early aviation pioneers, depending on which features of their aircraft you find to be important. The Pearce aircraft had far less development time spent on it that the Wrights, but in 1903 it made 4 witnessed flights in March and May 1903 – the first one a straight flight of around 350 yards – the last a flight of around 1000 yards, demonstrating both left and right turns. By contrast, the Wrights made 4 witnessed flights in December 1903 – all straight and none longer than 250 yards. They then made a new aircraft in 1904 which flew better but was still unsatisfactory – though it could turn. Finally, by Oct 1905 their third aircraft proved controllable enough to undertake long distance flights – around 20 miles.
There seems to be a tendency for people to take the performance of the Flyer-3 as applying to the Flyer-1, which is, of course, not the case. In terms of ‘hops’ and short-distance flights there were several pioneers who matched or surpassed the Wrights’ achievements in 1903, but the 1905 Flyer-3 (as modified by the end of the year) was almost certainly the best-performing aircraft at that time. By 1908, it (and the new Wright Model A) were being out-performed by Santos-Dumont’s Demoiselle No. 20.
I think that the Flyer-3 was the first usable aeroplane, in the sense that if you had one it would not be an experiment to go up for a flight in it. But the Demoiselle had wheels, and was able to fly to a destination, land, and then later take off and fly back. The Flyer-3 needed a launch rail and catapult…
If it isn’t powered AND controlled, then it isn’t human flight. It’s falling… With style!
“Dodgy Geezer
January 29, 2016 at 1:57 am
First heavier-than-air powered controlled flight – Richard Pearse in March 1903 (New Zealander)”
They claim it but in no way would his machine get in to the air by itself, it was launched off of a hill. Look at the propeller!! No way! Anyone with the slightest bit of aeronautical knowledge would know that. I have seen a full sized model of his craft and I say it didn’t fly as is defined today. It “cushioned” a crash in to a bush with its wings.
Any species unable to adapt to slowly rising sea level (with ~100 year warning) deserves to become extinct. I suggest phased withdrawal of government support and liability of near-coast properties, perhaps for one foot above sea level every 20 years.
Hopefully someday, liberalism ( insanity ) will become extinct….
Liberalism will only become extinct when we stop giving Everyone a Trophy.
Liberalism won’t go extinct until greed and jealousy go extinct.