Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Global Warming (or not)

this quote from TEEEJ was interesting:
They're trying to FORCE this plan on me. That is, rather than trust me to use MY resources(that is the money I earn with my time spent working), there are folks who have decided that they know better than I do how to spend MY MONEY.


Those same folks in the government decided it was a peachy keen idea to spend billions and billions of dollars on the Iraq war. I resented that waste of my resources too.

Ann said posted from USA Today about this October being the warmest recorded.

However, another article I just read said that:
The reason for the discrepancy?

Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures...used September's data.

(Source article)

Bethy

It could be that the USA Today article is wrong, Bethy.

But I must disagree with TEEEJ (and Joy Moony) here:

The resources we are ultimately talking about here is the Earth's resources. Really that is what it is about. Can we really use up the Earth's resources as we please and say that they are OUR resources?



Ann

I don't think we're disagreeing. Teej expressed that she didn't want her money wasted on something she disagrees with. I think that climate protection can't possibly be as expensive to the taxpayer as a war of choice (which I disagreed with). I thought that bringing the "MY $" argument into it was not a valid point.

Conservation of resources is one thing, but to impose large taxes and unfairly burden an economy to solve a non-existent problem is a bad thing.

In Oregon, the Democrats are poised to impose huge taxes on businesses here by implementing a system of trading emissions credits, all in the midst of a recession. They control all levers of government, just as they will shortly in Washington. While they say it's for fighting global warming, in reality they just want to take more money to spend since emissions aren't actually going to go down. They also want to impose considerable energy taxes on consumers. And since consumers are moving towards more efficient cars, the politicians want to mandate GPS units installed in every car so they can tax you by the mile instead of by the gallon because they'd lose revenue with more efficient cars. Where's the ACLU on this? They oppose listening in on terrorists but don't mind the government tracking everybody's car? It isn't about saving the planet. It's all about getting as much money out of us as the left can get. Follow the money.

And naturally, we also have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation at 7.3%.

Yes, I also heard the Goddard data was badly flawed as they carried over temperatures from a previous, warmer month and assumed they would work for a colder month, which totally invalidates their conclusion. That's basically saying that the world is warmer in the summer than it is in the fall. Duh. I could have told them that without bothering to do a study. You wouldn't even have to pay $1.50 to get the paper.

Consider that temperatures have been dropping for ten years. We're actually in a period of global cooling. Does it make sense to fight global warming while the globe is cooling?

Interesting, I just found an article from the exact same USA Today paper dated September 9, 2008 that predicts the exact opposite.


Old Farmer\'s Almanac: Global Cooling May Be Underway

And more contradictory evidence for this year:


Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling


Four Scientists: Global Warming Out, Global Cooling In


Global Cooling Gains Momentum Among Scientists


Global Cooling is Here

Another story about how the NASA data was seriously flawed:


Deja Vu All Over Again: Blogger Again Finds Error in NASA Climate Data

While this isn't about global warming, it is about treating the Earth's resources as if it was OUR resources (from USA Today, 11-19-08):

Ann

Here's another article against the prevailing global warming theories:


Global Warming Predictions are Overestimated, Suggests Study of Black Carbon

Here's the most salient point:

No one denies the climate is changing. That's like saying water is wet. The climate has always changed and will always change. The left wants us all to believe that humans are the main cause of it all and that the trend points in only one direction: warming. Of course 30 years ago these same people were warning about cities being overrun by glaciers because of global cooling. Except then it stopped cooling. Now that we're cooling again, when are we going to get all the hysteria about global cooling again?

That's the fundamental problem skeptics have. There's no proof that humans are to blame, seeing as even the left uses the sun and other factors as a caveat. Hey, it would be warming except for the sun getting in the way there. Of course we'd be an airless frozen ball of rock without the sun. But humans are more powerful somehow according to Al Gore and his disciples. Nature has always been more powerful than anything we puny humans can do short of a nuclear holocaust, and we don't even have a consensus on what that would do.

Scientists can't even agree on what direction the temperatures are taking. Is the world getting warmer or getting colder? When you can't even agree that the world is getting warmer, how in the world can we institute plans to stop whatever it is that we can't even agree is happening? As Kat's video clearly points out, don't we need actual warming to say there's global warming?

You know, I'm almost astounded that no one on this site has commented on the ongoing climate change data dumping story.

The Times of London has this on the story.

I think it's a huge deal. Being a computer programmer, I know how data can be manipulated and massaged and made to point to one conclusion or another. I'm disappointed that the scientists involved have destroyed the raw data from which they drew their conclusions.

I know, all of the raw data is still available, but not in one place. And but without knowing exactly what data the UEA was working with (which data points were used, which were discarded, which were "corrected"), there's no way to test their conclusions independently. One of the determining factors of a scientific conclusion is that the results are reproducible by others using the same beginning data and same processes. That's why the huge furor in the mid-80's over two chemists "discovering" table-top cold fusion blew over so quickly - no one could reproduce their results, and therefore their claim was determined to be unfounded.

This is a big deal to me. One person who commented on this story wrote:

Interesting analogy.

There's no doubt that the climate is changing. There's no doubt that the climate has changed before and will change again. But there are huge doubts that we humans are primarily responsible for this change. There are also huge doubts that anything we do will slow down or even reverse the change.

And even if we do affect the climate change, there are immense doubts that it would be a good thing. If we don't have a consensus on whether or not humans are causing climate change, we for doggone sure don't have any firm grasp on what might happen if we're successful at making an impact on that change.

Let's assume that humans can reverse a global warming trend. Let's further assume that we cool the planet down a bit. Now let's assume that we can't stop that cooling trend - one which we, the humans, have initiated - and the Earth enters a new period of ice ages. Don't mock. If we can reverse global warming, it's entirely possible that we won't be able to stop it on command.

Will we then warm the Earth up again? Will we just hunker down and accept an ice-locked Atlantic US east coast ten months out of the year? What about the farmers across the temperate zone who feed the entire world? What about the tropical zone ecosystems? Wouldn't they freeze to death? Would sales of fur coats in Hawaii skyrocket?

I'm not a doomsayer. And I'm not saying that those who take a human-caused global climate change position are totally wrong. I'm just saying that without the base data, the conclusions drawn from this data can't be verified or shown to be erroneous. The conclusion that the Earth is warming and that it's humankind's fault can't be tested, and that isn't science, it's speculative assertion.

The best way to find out the result of a research survey is to look whose funding it. Follow the money and you don't even need to read the survey to know the conclusion it'll draw.

With the base data all but gone it'll be difficult to find out whether the yeahsayers or the naysayers are correct, although one of those two positions would sure be a hell lotta more profitable and convenient than the other.

It's a scandal of the first order with billions of dollars at stake. Scientists who are advocating the existence of global warming have been caught destroying data and performing all sorts of illegal and unethical practices in order to push their ideology. Those illegal acts include the destruction of emails that would avoid the Freedom of Information Act plus the attempt to blacklist scientific publications that didn't agree with their ideology. Obama's chief advisor on global warming is one of the perpetrators of this fraud on the scientific community and is directly implicated in the email destruction scandal.

The most significant data that was erased was that of the history of tree rings, which supported warming all the way up to around 1960. Then this data stopped supporting any sort of warming. The inconvenient tree ring data was then erased and replaced with surface temperature data that directly contradicted the tree rings. That data is potentially unreliable depending on where these sensors are placed. Some were placed in high population density areas where temperatures are higher than in the surrounding areas. Regardless of whether that data is accurate or not, even a non-scientific person can see the fraud here. You can't report a trend using one set of data and then prove the trend is continuing by swapping in data from another source.

That's just a small sample of the information that was uncovered by the hackers.

It'll be interesting to see how this scandal plays out. It's lovely timing that it's occurring just as the Copenhagen talks are getting underway. First the US can't pass a cap and trade law. Then the Australians reject a similar program. Now the core scientists advocating man-made global warming have been caught perpetrating fraud.

The global warming "industry" -- researchers getting public grants and the politicians who support them (not to mention the businessmen *coughalgorecough* who are making a fortune in such bullcrap areas as 'carbon credits') -- may have started out in good faith but if so has totally been transformed over the years. Now it's all about money and power. Our money, their power.

Please note I'm not accusing everyone who's been alarmed about global warming, just the ones who've been cynically alarming them with skewed "science."

I've always said that it's foolish to destroy the global economy (the inevitable effect of cap'n'trade) (way to go, Aussies!) to try to mitigate some possible future harm. Now that we know how cooked the data have been, it's even less reasonable. We don't know what's going on, we don't understand all the processes and cycles and self-correcting mechanisms built into the ecosystem. Especially considering that those who study such things have been lying through their teeth about them.

Copenhagen will be a collossal joke.

Though it's not quite such delicious schadenfreude as having Mr. President travel there in order to see Chicago knocked out of Olympic contention in the first round. D'oh!

PJ

OT: Roger said, in a post from a year ago:

Ah, the good old days... how I miss them...

PJ

Terry said:

Your comments remind me of Pat Sajak's 10 Questions about Man-Made Global Warming.

I have yet to see an answer to even one of Sajak's excellent questions.

I just found out that John Stewart - who is not a professional journalist - was the first to break this story on the national stage.

Here\'s the link.

My favorite line? When he complained about dumping temperature data from the 80's by insisting he still had copies of Penthouse from the 70's.

This was also the guy who became visibly upset on camera when the Acorn videos became public. He was angry that even he'd gotten scooped by a couple of complete amateurs. Well, now he's done the scooping himself.

Vicki, thanks for the link -- I've shared it on Facebook That is a great set of questions (some of which we've been asking on this thread, sort of) and there's never been enough discussion about it.

PJ

My favorite line so far from the emails I've seen taken from the CRU is this one when talking about manipulating the data to create the desired result:

Which goes to show that even the global warming "scientists" knew their data was garbage and had to perpetrate fraud in order to push their ideology.

And as usual, the Democrats in Congress once again want to go after the person(s) who got the emails instead of investigating the fraud involved in the data.

Anyone remember the scandal where a Republican Congressional staffer pulled some emails off of an open server discussing how Judiciary Committee Democrats had to destroy Miguel Estrada to prevent him from influencing Hispanics away from the Democratic Party? They wanted him off the Appeals court bench because they were afraid he was a Hispanic, not because they thought he was unqualified for the appeals court. Yet with the help of the media, the scandal became the "theft" of emails from an open server rather than the contents of the emails themselves. I can easily see the vested news media trying to do the same here.

Remember Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth?" He's made a second career out of pushing a global warming/climate change alarmist viewpoint lately. And he's made some predictions which, inconveniently, either haven't come true or have been undercut from a scientific basis.

The former Vice President has had to backtrack big time on his prediction that the Arctic had a 75 percent chance of being ice-free during the summer within five years. Here\'s the link.

If the science for climate change is so strong, why lie about (or, if we wish to be charitable, "embellish") the facts and predictions? That's because the science isn't solid. If humans are affecting the world's climate, why isn't the science more definite? Why are there so many reputable scientists opposed to the conclusion that climate change is due to man's interference? And why do the climate change enthusiasts agree than man is the root cause but disagree on just what we're doing to mess up the climate?

I agree that we should all live in harmony with our planet. But I do not agree that we should drastically reduce our standard of living to accomplish that goal. I do not agree that we should shatter our economies in order to meet a goal which may or may not have any impact on climate change (and might very well have a negative impact). And I do not believe that I am a horrible person because I'm not jumping up and down, crying out that the sky is either falling or heating up and we have to do something right now and if you won't help you're the enemy never mind about the facts you planet-hater!

Had to get that off my chest. Thanks for hearing my rant.

Nice pics of Venus and Earth, Ann.

Oh, I do so want to read this topic, but I simply must go to bed. I've had a hard day and tomorrow will also be hard.

But I do have a question to add to the ponderings here. What do the global warming folks think about the summer that it snowed in New England, eastern Canada, and northern Europe? Yes, that did happen in the early 1800's, but still, I find it significant. That could point to "global cooling". Actually this happened because of a volcano eruption (Mount Tambora). Scary, huh? (And forgive me if this has already been mentioned. 1816: The year without a summer