MaxedOutMama
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Iowahawk reigns supreme
Prepare to laugh until you feel ill - Iowahawk is covering the latest environmental consensus on tsunamis in his news briefs:
And then there's the "known fact" that "global warming contributes to extreme weather events", which Professor Cole helpfully joins to the extreme weather events in 2004. Any idiot can draw the obvious conclusion that extreme weather events caused by global warming are here, and inflicting unprecedented damage. Such an idiot would not raise himself out of the idiot category by this deduction.
That "fact" is derived from theoretical models that have not yet been verified by observation. In other words, that is not a fact and not even a theory by scientific standards. Actual data on severity of storms has not yet shown a correlation between the small rise in temperature and an increase in storm severity. The observed extent of human-caused global warming generated by a rise in greenhouse gases is a raging scientific controversy, because most models don't match the observations. Go look at this graph showing the last 1000 years of temperature variation, and note the flatness of the curve in the latter half of the 20th century. This doesn't look like a very strong correlation between CO2 content in the atmosphere and a rise in temperatures, does it?
Here is a graph of the increase of CO2. It looks ominous, but seems to have no correlation to the actual rise in temperatures you saw in the previous 1000 year graph. Here is another, more detailed, graph of recent temperatures in the US. Once again, no correlation. Perhaps there has not yet been time for the effects of CO2 increase to be felt, or perhaps other perturbations in climate drivers are overriding the effects of the CO2 increases in the atmosphere. Scientifically we don't know what's happening. Recent data of surface and trophospheric temperatures tends to show faint traces of chilling, not warming.
Studies of ice core samples in the last several years have shown that CO2 increases in the atmosphere following exits from Ice Ages instead of preceding the temperature increases. There are various theories about why and how, but no consensus as yet. Scientists have yet to figure out why our historically high CO2 levels in the atmosphere have not caused more global warming. That's the real scientific controversy. Our climate models don't yet correlate with the past or with the present. So far, the best correlations appear to derive from orbital forcing.
Here's another hypothesis, relating to deep core convection (causing ocean heating, thus increasing CO2, etc). {Kender, check this guy's other pages out, particularly the debunking creationism one.} Orbital changes could be causing core convection changes, so these models don't necessarily conflict. The second explains better the lag in CO2 rise and a few suggestive samples indicating deepwater heating not explained by solar or atmospheric effects. This page by the same skeptical biologist contains an excellent brief explanation of problems with the CO2 as main driver theory, which has been substantially scientifically disproven already.
Here's another such page, discussing the Law Dome ice core CO2 concentrations that showed a rise after 1750 (as we came out of the Little Ice Age) , but before significant fossil fuel contributions. There seems to be some sort of scientific consensus that humans only account for about 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere, so how can the huge rise in CO2 be attributed to fossil fuels? I have not been able to find any explanation of how we could have accounted for the bulk of it.
My personal belief, btw, is that man's activity is accounting for some of the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. I suspect that we are having some effect on the earth's climate. I support scientific research into past and present climate, but I also suspect from looking at the flat temperature curve of the 20th century that we are about to experience slow cooling over the next four decades due to other factors in the very complex climate equation. That doesn't mean that underlying atmospheric changes caused by man won't tend to increase temperatures long term, or that we should not be concerned about such effects.
Part of the problem with the junk science being promulgated about the environment is that the public is likely to observe cooling in the next few decades and dismiss the entire field of scientific investigation as nonsensical, when actually it is merely the media's discussion of it which is nonsensical. Remember, you can generate any type of graph you want showing either global cooling or global warming just by picking your starting and ending points carefully. The same is true for any naturally fluctuating system. For instance, I could do a beautiful graph showing an alarming descent into an ice age simply by graphing temperatures from August to December.
Washington, DC - Pointing to the devastating weekend Indian Ocean tsunami that left over 24,000 dead, an international blue ribbon committee of climatologists and ecoscientists today issued a stark warning that man-made pollutants have increasingly "make water spirits angry."Perhaps you feel this is unfair? Felis of Vox Felisi left me this link to a post on the tsunamis and the dire preview of the effects of global warming they represented. Professor Juan Cole's post is riddled with the type of artful confusion (in his case, possibly quite sincere) between reality and fantasy that so characterizes this wing of the environmentalist movement:
The blunt conclusion prefaced a 2300 page meta-analysis of hundreds of scientific studies and computer models detailing links between human industrial activity and wrathful eco-deities. Entitled "Fire Bad: Fire Very Bad," the report warns that the planet faces additional catastrophies unless drastic regulatory action is taken to appease Earthen-furies.
This particular tsunami was caused by an earthquake and was unrelated to climate change(emphasis added).Professor, there is a reason why we study science under scientists and not historians. Take, for instance, the implications of the words "this particular tsunami". That appears to imply that we will face others caused by global warming. Possibly when the arctic ice cap melts and giant glaciers topple into the sea? Can you explicate, Professor? Any time frame on that?
Since some readers have been confused by skimming, let me repeat this sentence: This particular tsunami was caused by an earthquake and was unrelated to climate change.
But everyone should realize that global warming contributes to extreme weather events, causing more hurricanes and typhoons and stronger ones.
Even in the year 2004 extreme weather events caused on the order of $100 billion in damage-- an unprecedentedly high figure and one due to rise.
And then there's the "known fact" that "global warming contributes to extreme weather events", which Professor Cole helpfully joins to the extreme weather events in 2004. Any idiot can draw the obvious conclusion that extreme weather events caused by global warming are here, and inflicting unprecedented damage. Such an idiot would not raise himself out of the idiot category by this deduction.
That "fact" is derived from theoretical models that have not yet been verified by observation. In other words, that is not a fact and not even a theory by scientific standards. Actual data on severity of storms has not yet shown a correlation between the small rise in temperature and an increase in storm severity. The observed extent of human-caused global warming generated by a rise in greenhouse gases is a raging scientific controversy, because most models don't match the observations. Go look at this graph showing the last 1000 years of temperature variation, and note the flatness of the curve in the latter half of the 20th century. This doesn't look like a very strong correlation between CO2 content in the atmosphere and a rise in temperatures, does it?
Here is a graph of the increase of CO2. It looks ominous, but seems to have no correlation to the actual rise in temperatures you saw in the previous 1000 year graph. Here is another, more detailed, graph of recent temperatures in the US. Once again, no correlation. Perhaps there has not yet been time for the effects of CO2 increase to be felt, or perhaps other perturbations in climate drivers are overriding the effects of the CO2 increases in the atmosphere. Scientifically we don't know what's happening. Recent data of surface and trophospheric temperatures tends to show faint traces of chilling, not warming.
Studies of ice core samples in the last several years have shown that CO2 increases in the atmosphere following exits from Ice Ages instead of preceding the temperature increases. There are various theories about why and how, but no consensus as yet. Scientists have yet to figure out why our historically high CO2 levels in the atmosphere have not caused more global warming. That's the real scientific controversy. Our climate models don't yet correlate with the past or with the present. So far, the best correlations appear to derive from orbital forcing.
Here's another hypothesis, relating to deep core convection (causing ocean heating, thus increasing CO2, etc). {Kender, check this guy's other pages out, particularly the debunking creationism one.} Orbital changes could be causing core convection changes, so these models don't necessarily conflict. The second explains better the lag in CO2 rise and a few suggestive samples indicating deepwater heating not explained by solar or atmospheric effects. This page by the same skeptical biologist contains an excellent brief explanation of problems with the CO2 as main driver theory, which has been substantially scientifically disproven already.
Here's another such page, discussing the Law Dome ice core CO2 concentrations that showed a rise after 1750 (as we came out of the Little Ice Age) , but before significant fossil fuel contributions. There seems to be some sort of scientific consensus that humans only account for about 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere, so how can the huge rise in CO2 be attributed to fossil fuels? I have not been able to find any explanation of how we could have accounted for the bulk of it.
My personal belief, btw, is that man's activity is accounting for some of the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. I suspect that we are having some effect on the earth's climate. I support scientific research into past and present climate, but I also suspect from looking at the flat temperature curve of the 20th century that we are about to experience slow cooling over the next four decades due to other factors in the very complex climate equation. That doesn't mean that underlying atmospheric changes caused by man won't tend to increase temperatures long term, or that we should not be concerned about such effects.
Part of the problem with the junk science being promulgated about the environment is that the public is likely to observe cooling in the next few decades and dismiss the entire field of scientific investigation as nonsensical, when actually it is merely the media's discussion of it which is nonsensical. Remember, you can generate any type of graph you want showing either global cooling or global warming just by picking your starting and ending points carefully. The same is true for any naturally fluctuating system. For instance, I could do a beautiful graph showing an alarming descent into an ice age simply by graphing temperatures from August to December.
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I will finish reading this post later. But I do have one thing to add about these tsunamis. The earthquake, caused by the testing of the secret space based weapon, the Low Orbital Seismic Event Regulating Low Earth Frequency Tectonic System, was only a part of the destruction that the Right-wing is perpetrating on the planet in pursuit of profits.
The other weapon that was used in the Tsunami Attack Test was an insidious chemical called DHMO.
Google that and you will see what I mean.
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The other weapon that was used in the Tsunami Attack Test was an insidious chemical called DHMO.
Google that and you will see what I mean.
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