The Sun reports that in London, some supermarkets are rationing purchases of vegetables like lettuce, which is in short supply due to Southern European crop failures.
SALAD SHORTAGE What is the 2017 vegetable shortage, which supermarkets are rationing broccoli and lettuce and what’s the cause of the crisis?
Tesco and Sainsbury’s are rationing iceburg lettuces and broccoli as cold weather in the Med causes a vegetable shortage.
BY ELLIE FLYNN 4th February 2017, 2:29 pm
THESE are dark times times for British vegetable lovers.
A veggie shortage plaguing UK supermarkets has worsened – with Tesco and Sainsbury’s now forced to ration iceburg lettuces and broccoli.
Customers will only be allowed a maximum of three lettuces per visit after poor growing conditions in Europe caused a shortage.
Why is there a vegetable shortage?
Poor growing conditions in Europe – mostly Italy and Spain – has meant there is a lack of vegetable stock.
This comes from a combination of flooding, cold weather and poor light levels.
In winter months Spain’s Murcia region supplies 80 per cent of Europe’s fresh produce.
But the area has suffered its heaviest rainfall in 30 years – meaning 70 per cent of the growing fields are unuseable.
Italy has also suffered a cold snap – meaning the region is having to import vegetables they usually export at this time of year.
The effects of shortages are particularly notable in Britain, which imports an estimated 50 per cent of its vegetables and 90 per cent of its fruit.
…
Why do I describe this as a possible early taste of Maunder Minimum like conditions? As WUWT has reported, solar activity has been unusually low this cycle, and appears to be trending downwards, leading to predictions we are entering a new solar grand minimum.
While the connection between solar activity and weather is controversial, in Europe, Solar Grand Minima appear to be associated with cold, rainy weather, and growing season difficulties.
Consider this description of the Little Ice Age, one of the most brutal periods of which coincided with the Maunder Minimum (1645 – 1715). The description is from Hubert Lamb, founded of the Climatic Research Unit.
Hubert Lamb said that in many years, “snowfall was much heavier than recorded before or since, and the snow lay on the ground for many months longer than it does today.” In Lisbon, Portugal, snowstorms were much more frequent than today; one winter in the 17th century produced eight snowstorms. Many springs and summers were cold and wet but with great variability between years and groups of years. Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened, less reliable growing season, and there were many years of dearth and famine (such as the Great Famine of 1315–1317, but that may have been before the Little Ice Age).
Read More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Obviously in today’s connected world high speed transport will soon solve the shortage in England. It is possible to fly or ship vast quantities of food from other regions to make up for any lack.
However this unexpected food shortage should be a wakeup call to Europe and the world, that there are potential climate problems other than global warming which should occupy some of their attention.
If current conditions worsen, and crop losses in Europe and other Northern growing regions become the norm, at the very least poor people will begin to suffer from the impact of rising prices.
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Urederra posts a very interesting image of all those greenhouses in Spain. What struck me was that presumably the infra red radiation goes through the glass and warms up growing conditions but much of the rest of solar radiation appears to be reflected back into space because the albedo effect of greenhouse glass looks like ice.
What am I missing here?
Should we – if we believe in AGW – not be building greenhouses like crazy.
It’s plastic sheet. If you zoom in with google earth you find it’s not that reflective. Most SW will go through. Of course, a certain amount will be reflected. I’m not sure if it would be aesthetic visually to cover the landscape with plastic sheet, windmills and solar panels. I would prefer to die in The Thermageddon.
Khwarizmi
After checking your link, it confirmed my thought that it was a nightmare.
You may be right…
========
“But 35 years ago, this region in the southeast of Spain was dry and arid, and desert-like, receiving an average of 200 mm of rainfall a year. In fact, Spaghetti western films were once shot here, because the land was so dry and barren. But with imported soil and fully hydroponic systems that drip-feed chemical fertilizers into grow-bags, over the last 35 years, the area has been intensively used for agriculture.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/-IHVqCZRVzzo/UiGekR4rgEI/AAAAAAAAr6M/eOxFxGxMse8/greenhouses-almeria-2%25255B5%25255D.jpg
[…]
Almeria’s sea of white-roofed greenhouse is so vast that researchers from the University of Almeria have found that by reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere, the greenhouses are actually cooling the province. While temperatures in the rest of Spain have climbed at rates above the world average, the local temperature has dropped an average of 0.3 degrees Celsius every 10 years since 1983.”
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/the-greenhouses-of-almeria.html
==========
not to mention that the fertile plane is covered with solar power plants, with subsidies more profitable and less work required than cultivating vegetables. (sarc/)
http://www.earthtimes.org/newsimage/helios1-solar-power-plant-spain_28612.jpg
The link (click on the ‘Earth’ icon) shows one of the largest greenhouse areas (about 26km long and 16km wide) covered with glass
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@36.7458518,-2.6569392,11104m/data=!3m1!1e3
No surprise the area’s climate is changing.
Well, that’s what they get — all those pinwheels and solar panels reducing the CO2 output. (▰˘◡˘▰)
I think it has rained in Spain before!
There is even a song about it – the rain in Spain falls mainly…
Gotta love the concern trolls with their panties in a bunch over articles like this. The point is, the Warmunists deny all day (and night) long the possibility of cooling because of “manmade warming” aka “climate change”.
The possibility of cooling is very real though. One scientist who is predicting significant cooling by 2030 is Valentina Zharkova. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/10/physicist-who-foresees-global-cooling-says-other-s/
Let them eat kale.
+1
Seriously? Have you tried it? Ugh. worse than lettuce. Or cardboard.
There is plenty of kelp around coastline, far healthier than the Spanish GM lettuce.
The Welsh eat it (never tried)
http://www.bodnant-welshfood.co.uk/blog/laverbread-2900.html
Maybe you forgot this map.
I would not be so quick to cite solar as the cause. It could also be the AMO decline and or other factors or just cold here and not there as the map says.
If you looked at one with a polar projection showing air temps below the troposphere, you’d see a wide area across the artic of 50 degree F warm anomalies
I’m more interested in what lies beneath as stored energy.
http://climate4you.com/
Kwarizmi neatly confirms what looks clear, whether it is plastic sheeting or glass building greenhouses is a win – win. You use the energy from infra red to grow food, but the heat stays mostly where you want, being converted into food. You can give up crap solar panels which are about as useful as a hamster wheel in a cage for producing energy and in the process stop frying bird life. Unless you really think robbing the poor to subsidize richer house owners with big roofs and unscrupulous solar farmers is a social good.
One thing Griff is absolutely right about is Kale – you’d be better off eating soggy newspaper, especially if you have had your taste buds removed.
Lets start an anti kale club!
but do note solar panels don’t fry birds… that’s solar CSP – except they fixed the bird frying
I really worry about all those who are able to compare kale and the like with cardboard, wet newspaper and the like. What other experiences have they had which we should know about?
My brother has a yuge garden in Northern Ontario. Very sort growing season compared to Spain, let me tell you. But he knows what he is doing, does some hydroponic stuff to start his seeds, etc.
He gave me some kale once (I’m not actually his favourite brother, so no carrots, beans or beets). I tried to make kale chips. Don’t believe everything you read on the intertubes, kids. You can’t.
One would have to be desperately hungry for a healthy snack, me tell you. Better to empty a bag of potato chips (i.e., “crisps”) and eat the literal bag.
Psst…wanna buy some grain?
WSJ today
The Next American Farm Bust Is Upon Us
Corn and wheat output has never been higher, and never has so much grain been bunkered away.
BZ
Hey, why don’t we just grow food in cities? Here in Toronto, there is a very noticeable Urban Heat Island, where we get very little snow now. This of course leads to idiots who don’t actual travel out of the city much: there is snow just a few miles outside of the city, and I spent last weekend frolicking with a puppy and a four year old in a foot of white power (on top of two feet of other snow), just two hours north.
A new enterprise in London grows salad in old air raid shelters…
http://www.agritech-east.co.uk/advances-in-underground-growing/
Must have a few old warehouses or something in Toronto?
Some are trying:
http://torontoist.com/2013/01/public-works-urban-greenhousing/
http://torontoist.com/2011/11/freshness-in-frosty-times/
http://torontoist.com/2017/01/ontario-food-and-nutrition-strategy/
http://torontoist.com/2015/07/pilot-project-could-turn-hydro-corridors-into-urban-farms/
http://torontoist.com/2013/02/fresh-city-thinks-toronto-can-grow-its-own-veggies/
http://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2009/03/feed_yourself_with_architecture/
although I was speaking more of outdoor growth, not hydroponic. Canada is already a world leader on indoor pot production, something friends of mine were well ahead of the curve on back in the 80s. Some still have the arrest records to prove it.
Yes… I didn’t think I should mention the techniques used for marijuana also work fro spring onions!
Few think about corollaries these days. ‘If on the other hand the climate warmed up a couple of degrees plus enrichment in CO2, all of Europe would be a Mediterranean cornucopia of produce plenty, lower prices and less spent on heating. Hey, and the beaches of UK would compete for tourists with southern Europe. And the wines! Another Holocene Warm Period anyone?
Few days ago NASA has published the latest total solar eclipse (for the USA) map due on Aug. 21, 2017
click on the map for more detail of location and time.
if a double click on the map above doesn’t provide sufficient resolution for your area of interest there is also Google-map driven interactive website
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug21Tgoogle.html
click on the map provides far more detail, as in this example
St. Louis
Lat.: 38.288° N
Long.: 90.2417° W
Total Solar Eclipse
Duration of Totality: 2m23.8s
Magnitude: 1.009
Obscuration: 100.00%
Event Date Time (UT) Alt Azi
Start of partial eclipse (C1) : 2017/08/21 16:50:05.0 58.9° 143.1°
Start of total eclipse (C2) : 2017/08/21 18:17:28.4 63.4° 187.4°
Maximum eclipse : 2017/08/21 18:18:40.3 63.4° 188.0°
End of total eclipse (C3) : 2017/08/21 18:19:52.2 63.3° 188.7°
End of partial eclipse (C4) : 2017/08/21 19:44:51.4 55.3° 227.1°
“I’ve been insulted by experts…”
Tony M, sounds like a challenge. However, you have to give me something to work.
“Unlike some parts of the world who do actually have food shortages.”
If you look closely I think you find a surplus of corrupt or inept governments.
“If you look closely I think you find a surplus of corrupt or inept governments.”
Embrace the power of “and,” Kit.
“Unlike some parts of the world who do actually have food shortages.”
I was merely pointing out to those claiming shortages that we in the west don’t really no what hunger is.
Well, something’s going on. What I offer for consideration (and rubbishing, if anyone has real data) is this anecdote:
I’m outdoors a lot. Across my part of West Kent (High Weald), since at least the last Winter (and I think a little before December 2015, but didn’t make a note), the most frequent wind directions (I hesitate to say “prevailing” as I haven’t had a look at any windrose data) have shifted from W’ly/S W’ly to S E’ly to E’ly.
This apparent shift is noticeable because (1) far fewer aircraft have been using the Westerly approach to Gatwick (and I don’t recall reading that Gatwick traffic declined this year?); (2) all the 2016 growth on pruned back plants and trees has a distinctly SE to NW “bend” to it; and (3) my daily (cursory I grant, as its a case of “it’s weather, get on with it”) observations of wind and weather while in the fields have been that the wind/weather is E’ly a lot more than “normal”.
I’m inclined to think (assuming what I note is not a purely local phenomenon, or imagined) that tells us something about what’s happening to the Atlantic sea surface temperatures (AMO?) and to the position of the jet stream.
Let’s get past “Dalton” before we start to talk about “Maunder”,
Exactly. see mu comment February 8, 2017 at 5:13 am
If Maunder type minima are reoccurring events then another one, I would think it is unlikely before some time around 2200.
In other weather and physics news, it is evident that freezing rain is just as slippery and hazardous no matter where you are.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/boston-freezing-rain-30-car-pileup-state-route-128/
“However this unexpected food shortage should be a wakeup call to Europe and the world, that there are potential climate problems other than global warming which should occupy some of their attention.”
It SHOULD, but it WON’T. >:-(
The governments won’t take action simply because there is no food shortage!!! The story is fake news.
It is winter in Europe and it is normal for it to be cold and to have ice and snow. In northern Europe we don’t generally eat salad in winter. Lettuce isn’t even bought for food, it is mainly used as side decoration or to add colour to an otherwise bland sandwich.
Supermarkets ‘rationed’ imported Spanish lettuce to THREE per person PER VISIT Nobody normally buys three lettuce per visit anyway. The whole story was largely fake and the rest was grossly exaggerated by the Biased Broadcasting Corporation and other MSM who broadcast this ‘news’ as though it was some national disaster. The lower intelligence elements of society then went out and panic bought lettuce thus compounding what issue there was.
“Obviously in today’s connected world, high speed transport will soon solve the shortage in England” (thanks to fossil fuels).
It’s a plot by the health fanatics to get us to eat more greens. As soon as there is a shortage of anything people rush out to buy it whether the need it or not. So having bought the greens, they eat them because hey don’t want to waste what they’ve queued up for!
The deep, expansive cold spells in Siberia over the last 2 years made me wonder if we are on the doorstep of the next GSM. During the first week of this January the coldest part of the cold wave stopped in Eastern Poland. If it had moved another several hundred miles to the west, then Europe would have been severely impacted with -10C or lower temps. That was a close call, imo.
It doesn’t help that the EU is heavily protectionist levying huge import duties on 3rd world producers of fruit and veg. Condemning farmers to poverty.
Leaving that aside the ‘AGW’ Green Blob happily prevents 3rd world countries from developing adequate low cost energy that would help lift them out if poverty.
The greatest suffering in this world over the last 100 years is as a direct result of left-wing marxist-socialist ‘liberal’ thinking and dogma.
Meanwhile in the Netherlands the “Elfstedentocht”, the ice skating 11 city river race which only happens every few decades in the coldest winters, came within a hair’s breadth of happening this week:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16965620
The officially sanctioned fiction of never ending warming, backed up by falsified climate data, will soon suffer a catastrophic loss of credibility among even the general public.
Whereas last year the Iditarod Sled race in Alaska had to truck in snow…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/03/04/alaskas-winter-is-so-warm-the-iditarod-is-importing-snow-and-shortening-its-ceremonial-start/?utm_term=.d0ac93451d33
It seems that, driven by the need to continually support the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming thesis climate scientists are examining the temperature record at altogether too fine a scale, month by month, year by year. Viewing the Holocene interglacial at a broader scale is much more fruitful, on a century by century and even on a millennial perspective.
Our current, warm, congenial Holocene interglacial has been the enabler of mankind’s civilisation for the last 10,000 years, spanning from mankind’s earliest farming to recent technology.
However Ice Core records show:
• the last millennium 1000AD – 2000AD has been the coldest millennium of the entire Holocene interglacial.
• each of the notable high points in the Holocene temperature record, (Holocene Climate Optimum – Minoan – Roman – Medieval – Modern), have been progressively colder than the previous high point.
• for its first 7-8000 years the early Holocene, including its high point known as the “climate optimum”, have had virtually flat temperatures, an average drop of only ~0.007 °C per millennium.
• but the more recent Holocene, since a “tipping point” at ~1000BC, 3000 years ago, has seen a temperature loss at about 20 times that earlier rate at about 0.14 °C per millennium.
• the Holocene interglacial is already 10 – 11,000 years old and judging from the length of previous interglacials, the Holocene epoch should be drawing to its close: in this century, the next century or this millennium.
• the slight beneficial warming at the end of the 20th century to the Modern high point has been transmuted into the “Great Man-made Global Warming Scare”.
• the recent warming since the end of the Little Ice Age, (Black death, French revolution, etc.) has been wholly beneficial
• eventually this late 20th century minor temperature excursion will come to be seen as just noise in the system in the longer term progress of comparatively rapid cooling over the last 3000+ years.
• other published Ice Core records exhibit the same pattern of a prolonged relatively stable early Holocene period followed by a subsequent much more rapid decline in the more recent past.
As global temperatures have already been showing stagnation or cooling over the last eighteen years or more and as the sun spot record is diminishing substantially, the world should now fear the real and detrimental effects of cooling, rather than being hysterical about limited, beneficial or now non-existent further warming.
A real tipping point towards cooling and the end of the Holocene interglacial occurred about 3000 years ago.
This point is more fully illustrated here:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/
“As global temperatures have already been showing stagnation or cooling over the last eighteen years or more”
Mmm, I see what you mean:
Especially in the Arctic (from http://data.remss.com/msu/monthly_time_series/)
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1838.0;attach=39984;image
Oh it’s just plummeting! Warning Maunder Minimum, Warning!
Tony, isn’t the real issue raised by Edhoskins that we are possibly not long from a return to extremely hostile conditions and that if CO2 really is the cause of the uptick in temperature in Bob’s graph we should be welcoming it – especially as the rise is small over quite a long period.
Let’s leave aside that the Earth has never gone into a runaway greenhouse as we are constantly threatened with, but most certainly has gone into catastrophic for life ice ages. In the Jurassic period with CO2 at 7000 ppm temperatures were 4C higher. That would be uncomfortable and extremely so in the Tropics accepting for the sake of argument a causal link. But it would be survivable; not so an ice age.
But so far the argument is about the reality or not of this causal link. At the moment very smart people on both sides of the argument cannot produce an indisputable piece of evidence that shows CO2 is the lever that drives global temperature rather than all the other factors. The rise in the graph you choose to display shows a temperature anomaly over 40 plus years that is not only well within natural climate variation (even within the variation caused by a decently sized volcanic eruption), but arguably within the margins of instrumental error.
Yet we are being committed to an expenditure of £100 trillion by 2050 which is and will cause incredible damage to the life prospects of billions of the world’s poor on essentially a speculation.
Last week we heard news that cases of resistance to the latest Malarial drugs now threatens a return of the greatest killer of mankind. (Of course it has never really gone away) That is where I think we should be putting money and in helping poor countries catch up with the richer nations, with all sorts of benefits for everyone.
If you can show that CO2 really is the danger that is claimed and that if rapidly reducing our emissions could make any difference to the variation in temperature I’d be impressed. In the meantime I think we should deal with the real problems at hand and IF down the line it can be shown we are causing the temperature anomalies then we will be in a stronger position to take concerted action.
CO2 was last 7000 ppm in the Cambrian Period, when average temperature might have been 21 °C, or some seven degrees C higher than now. According to IPCC, these over four doublings should have raised temperature more than 12 degrees C. Granted, the sun was four to five percent weaker in the Cambrian, but again according to IPCC, solar activity has a trivial effect on climate.
During the Jurassic, CO2 averaged an estimated 1950 ppm, with temperature of 16.5 °C, perhaps 3 °C above present.
These paleotemperatures comparisons are based upon a current 13.5 to 14.0 °C, which is lower than estimates used for anomaly purposes by mad “climate scientists”. According to them, earth must average a mean temperature of around 15 degrees by now.
In the Jurassic (~155 Ma), solar power was only about 1.5% less than now, and the continents were assuming modern positions, Pangaea having started breaking up, so it may be a more valid comparison than the Cambrian. Even with a high level of ocean heating from active seafloor spreading volcanism, well over two doublings of CO2 raised temperature then less than three degrees from present, yet IPCC imagines that a single doubling would have that effect.
In the last few hundred-thousand years, every time CO2 is at its highest level we re-glaciate. How is that for warming?
“especially as the rise is small over quite a long period.”
Would if it were true. Take a look at the trends on the graph in edhoskins’ link – 0.137C/millenium. I can see the possibility that humans might actually be forestalling the end of the inter-glacial warmth and that would be a good thing in theory – if – we were clever enough to engineer a gentle rise by increasing CO2 from say 280 to 295, then from 295 to 300. That might have been enough for a few thousand years more of Holocene. Who knows.
Nuh. We’ve dumped 30Gt (so far) into the atmosphere in an uncontrolled experiment which will not end for a long, long time and the temperature is rising at 0.1/decade (so far). Talk about overshoot.
Its not a small rise over a long period, its a massive rise in the blink of a geological eye. The problem is not change its the rate of change. The climate system is incredibly complex, delicately balanced and somewhat chaotic. Whacking it with a sledgehammer is not going to result in the “cornucopian, plant-food bonanza” many on this site seem to think. Pity, but it won’t.
“the temperature is rising at 0.1/decade”
What are the error bars? Can we accurately actually measure such a small “rise”?
What was the rise rate as compared to coming out of the Little Ice Age? The last glacial?
Tony, I admire your confidence but wonder if it is misplaced. 30Gt sounds scary but there is a context and that is the planetary rollover of CO2 which occurs naturally and which dwarfs this accumulated total. Heck, we have no real notion of the amount of CO2 churned out by undersea volcanoes every year.
And anyway the underlying assumption that the planet can’t cope with the addition of CO2 we are making seems dubious. If the planet has survived being whacked by multiple asteroids and comets which instantly raise or lower temperatures by whole degrees in an instant suggests anything, it suggests that a new – not necessarily same – equilibrium is soon established.
The problem is that all the scare stories we have been threatened with for some thirty years have turned out not to be true. If the increase in CO2 really is increasing temperatures ON ITS OWN then the effects so far are benign.
But the question stands – can you demonstrate a causal link to justify unbelievably costly actions when we know so little about the complexity of climate.
Let’s put the money into context – UNICEF Estimated that to eliminate world poverty would cost £17 billion (their figure not mine). Alarmists urge us to spend £100 trillion on a track record of failed to materialize threats.
And let’s be clear, the money for this is not coming from the people who can most afford it, but from the pockets who can least afford it. Not very credible nor very impressive.
“the planetary rollover of CO2 which occurs naturally and which dwarfs this accumulated total”
Sure, but the atmospheric concentration continues it’s steady rise.
I wouldn’t say I’m confident – I’m only an amateur and I sincerely hope my concerns are misplaced. There may not be any way to “prove” to the doubters a causal link between CO2 and temperature – until it is too late. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look at all the circumstantial evidence and the risks.
tony mcleod February 9, 2017 at 4:51 pm
Thanks, Tony. So … what “circumstantial evidence” are you proposing we look at? You need to show some EVIDENCE for it to be circumstantial … so where is the evidence that out of a million things in a hideously complex chaotic system, the level of atmospheric CO2 is the secret temperature control for the entire planet?
Next, to me that claim is extraordinary, the idea that CO2 roolz everything. It’s a childish wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Now, they say, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. However, in this case you’re talking about, not even ordinary evidence, but circumstantial evidence. At that point, while it is an interesting intellectual exercise, it’s certainly not something to be worth estimating risks on.
And given that the uncertainties are enormous, what exactly are you claiming about the risks?
My best to you,
w.
If an accused was seen in the vicinity of the crime at the time of the crime; that is not proof but circumstantial evidence.
CO2 is a radiative gas. The atmospheric concentration is increasing. In theory the temperature should increase as the atmosphere becomes more opaque to wavelengths associated with CO2’s spectrum. It is. The rise in temperature should mean more water vapour – there is. If it is warmer the ice should melt – it is, Obviously none of that is causative proof but I would argue it is fairly robust circumstantial evidence.
I’m not saying there are not other explanations some more plausible than others – that is the risk of using circumstantial evidence.
Your argument about requiring extraordinary evidence is pretty weak because the claims are in no way extraordinary. In fact the “circumstantial” evidence is entirely logical. Pretty basic, garden-variety physics.
Proof? No.
To see the accused near the scene and allege guilt is not that extraordinary.
Anthropogenic CFCs caused the ozone hole. Species loss is partly caused by habitat loss. Milankovich cycles contribute to ice-age formation. Any actual proof?
Science is all based on balance of probabilities isn’t it? Nothing outside of mathematics is certain.
tony mcleod February 9, 2017 at 6:52 pm
You said (emphasis mine)
First, theories are not evidence.
Second, because correlation is not causation, and because CO2 has generally been increasing for the whole century, your argument applies equally well to say population or hemlines.
So in answer to a request for evidence, you have provided a theory and a correlation … not working.
Claiming that the future evolution of the temperature of an entire complex chaotic system is ruled by the level of a trace gas, with everything else averaging out, is a stunningly extraordinary claim. You only think it is ordinary because you’ve heard it so much …
It is absolutely extraordinary. A crime takes place in a building. There are hundreds of people near the scene. You are seriously claiming we are able to allege that they all are guilty.
Similarly, there are hundreds of climate variables near the scene—clouds, ocean-atmospheric momentum interchanges, geomagnetic variations, volcanoes, CO2, solar variations … according to you, we can allege that they all are guilty.
All I can say is, if I’m ever accused of a crime I didn’t commit, I hope you’re not on the jury …
Proof? You can’t prove anything in climate science.
Agreed. But running up to some guy and slapping the cuffs on him because next in line at the bank at the time it was robbed is hardly “balance of probabilities”, is it?
w.
“First, theories are not evidence.”
You’re not wheeling out the “if it’s only a theory” tactic I hope?
I’m not saying they are. And there is no ‘theory’ linking CO2 with hemlines, but there is plenty of lab evidence to say it acts as a GHG and satellite data is consistent with that lab evidence.
“Proof?You can’t prove anything in climate science.”
No but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the ozone hole for eg.
So why demand it? Is it true looking at the balance of probabilities? I would say yes. Is it beyond reasonable doubt? I would say yes to that too.
If the crime was at 2am and you were seen on CCTV at 2:25 then that would be more compelling. However you have an honest face Willis so you might get away with it.
If, as you suggest, I am premature with my verdict, at what point should I say to myself; on the balance of probabilities it does look like AGGs are the main cause of the warming? How long should I wait? Until next NH summer when we might get a blue water event in the Arctic? Would that swing the balance? If 80 something above average months in a row are insufficient, how many more would be?
tony mcleod February 9, 2017 at 9:51 pm Edit
Huh? I made a clear statement. Theories are not evidence. You believe a theory that CO2 is the secret control knob for the temperature. I think that’s simplistic nonsense, but more to the point, it is simplistic nonsense for which you have no evidence.
I love people who wave their hands and say “satellite evidence” and expect me to be impressed … nice try. I asked for evidence, not rumors of evidence. Does CO2 “act as a GHG”? Of course, but that’s not the question. The question is, does CO2 control the global temperature … and for that, lab evidence is meaningless.
Since I never said we should “ignore the ozone hole”, that’s a straw man.
Demand proof? I never demanded that you present proof, that’s just your fantasy.
More importantly, to date you have presented exactly zero evidence that CO2 is the secret knob that controls global temperature, and despite that you say the theory is valid “beyond a reasonable doubt”??? Say what?
Well, considering that to date you haven’t produced a single scrap of evidence that CO2 roolz everything, you might want to wait at least until the first piece of actual evidence shows up that supports your theory …
No way to know, since people have been chasing evidence for this theory for decades and haven’t found any …
Next summer? You’ve lost the plot entirely. I will bet you $10000 today that the Arctic will not be ice free next summer. Dear heavens, do you know how many fools have garnered nothing but laughter peddling the “arctic death spiral” nonsense? LEARN FROM THE FAILURE OF OTHERS!
The global temperature has been warming in fits and starts for about three centuries. At any point in that three centuries you’d find that recent months are above average, and earlier months are below average. Surprising? Not.
If you think that means something, let me offer you the following list of that and other non-events.
Best to you,
w.
. “Theories are not evidence. You believe a theory…”
That statement tells me you really don’t understand what a scientific theory is.
Apart from not supporting your misapprehensions what could possibly have against “satellite” evidence?
“lab evidence is meaningless.” Really? Where do you think most scientific evidence is produced?
I said “No but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the ozone hole for eg.”
That’s not a straw man, its an example – that’s why I wrote eg.
I never said Ice-free – there’s your straw man. You obviously don’t pay much attention to the state of the Arctic sea-ice. If you did you would know that it is in an incredibly vulnerable state this freezing season.
But as with your “global temperature has been warming in fits and starts for about three centuries” statement I see you really don’t know much about the rates things are changing right now.
It’s the rate of change Willis that is what is unusual.
You are obviously so invested in your entrenched point of view that you will be unable to look with an open mind and nothing I say will change that. Not that I care.
Do you ever look at something like this
and say to yourself: hmm that’s a bit odd? Ever?