MaxedOutMama
Thursday, December 23, 2004
What goes down
...must come up. In this case, I'm referring to the global average temperature. Please go and look carefully at these two graphs. The top is the history of the earth's temperature over a million years. Note that the end of the curve goes up quite sharply. The bottom is the history of the earth's temperature over the last 10,000 years (the last part of the million year graph flattened out). Note the fluctuations. Note also that these graphs are found on a page at nasa.gov - not a right wingnut organization. This is real data.
Note also that the earth's temperature is currently coming off a recent low, known as the "Little Ice Age", and that we are still way below the average line for the last 10,000 years - that as recently as 1000 years ago, the earth's average temperature was substantially higher than the earth's average temperature today. In other words, we are still in a somewhat cold period of human history.
If you scroll down the page a bit from the two graphs, you will see a graph covering temperature changes over a 1000 years. Notice how bumpy the curve now looks, due to the higher level of detail. Notice that the low temperature point of The Little Ice Age occurred from the later 1500's through the 1600's - less than five hundred years ago. Crops were failing all over Europe, as the temperatures fell. Remember, Greenland was named because it was green when it was first settled. Now it would be more appropriately called Whiteland.
Now we look at a sample article of the way journalists report global warming stories. Most of you have probably seen the article claiming that the polar bears are terribly endangered, but do you know about the terrifying threat that global warming poses to the pika? Probably not:
"Local populations of pikas have gone extinct at more than one-third of 25 sites surveyed since the mid-1990s in the Great Basin region between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, according to the study conducted by a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey and funded by the World Wildlife Fund.
""Population by population, we're witnessing some of the first contemporary examples of global warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire eco-region," said Erik Beever, a USGS ecologist."
Please think about the awesome stupidity of what is being said here, while keeping in mind the temperature graphs you looked at above. Eight hundred years ago the average temperature was considerably warmer than it is today. Did the pika species evolve in less than 800 years? No, it did not. Neither did polar bears, for that matter. So if 800 years ago it was substantially warmer than it is today, why should we fear a temperature increase of a few degrees will push these species to extinction now?
I personally am not betting on it, and note the reference to "local populations" above. Natural temperature shifts mean that the habitats of species will shift over time without man's intervention. These breathless prophecies of disaster mean nothing scientifically. No matter what we do to nullify human effect on the climate, we will never be able to block the natural temperature oscillations of our planet's climate. It's that simple. These stories are only politically correct propaganda designed to develop a sense of superstitious urgency in the human species.
Tom Carter, a retired military officer, has an excellent post on global warming hysteria containing quotes by journalists saying that they are deliberately reporting the global warming story in a biased way. Please go read it. The uniformly excellent Coyote Blog, which is written by a business owner, has been covering the issue of climate change in considerable detail - here is one recent post you might want to read in which an environmentalist discusses the right balance between effectiveness and honesty. Many journalists and environmentalists know they are lying and distorting the truth. There are many individuals of various backgrounds who have done a cursory amount of research and have concluded that Goebbels would be proud of the efforts of our constitutionally protected press on global warming. Why does the press believe we will bow before this nonsense? Will you?
I will not. I will stick with science, and scientific method rather than propaganda. Erik Beever's statements have nothing to do with science, but a great deal to do with environmental politics. Why must the US taxpayers pay for such arrant idiocy? Why do reporters regurgitate such mindless drivel? I'm riled. They must either be totally uneducated or incredibly stupid, or believe that we are totally uneducated or incredibly stupid. Are you? I'm not. If given the data I have linked to in this post, an average sixth grader can pick out the logical fallacy here. I plan to write my Congressman and Senator in January complaining about this waste of taxpayer dollars.
I want to pay for hard science. As the first graph should have shown you, global climate shifts do pose a massive threat to the human race. We must learn what drives these shifts if we want our current culture to survive for another ten thousand years. But the danger is not imminent, and cold is more of a threat than warmth, and we have time to study the problem instead of spending money to crank out droolingly stupid unscientific propaganda. Much more of this and we can anticipate a global reduction in our average effective IQ level. That's a much more frightening prospect than pikas moving their range two hundred miles north.
Note also that the earth's temperature is currently coming off a recent low, known as the "Little Ice Age", and that we are still way below the average line for the last 10,000 years - that as recently as 1000 years ago, the earth's average temperature was substantially higher than the earth's average temperature today. In other words, we are still in a somewhat cold period of human history.
If you scroll down the page a bit from the two graphs, you will see a graph covering temperature changes over a 1000 years. Notice how bumpy the curve now looks, due to the higher level of detail. Notice that the low temperature point of The Little Ice Age occurred from the later 1500's through the 1600's - less than five hundred years ago. Crops were failing all over Europe, as the temperatures fell. Remember, Greenland was named because it was green when it was first settled. Now it would be more appropriately called Whiteland.
Now we look at a sample article of the way journalists report global warming stories. Most of you have probably seen the article claiming that the polar bears are terribly endangered, but do you know about the terrifying threat that global warming poses to the pika? Probably not:
"Local populations of pikas have gone extinct at more than one-third of 25 sites surveyed since the mid-1990s in the Great Basin region between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, according to the study conducted by a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey and funded by the World Wildlife Fund.
""Population by population, we're witnessing some of the first contemporary examples of global warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire eco-region," said Erik Beever, a USGS ecologist."
Please think about the awesome stupidity of what is being said here, while keeping in mind the temperature graphs you looked at above. Eight hundred years ago the average temperature was considerably warmer than it is today. Did the pika species evolve in less than 800 years? No, it did not. Neither did polar bears, for that matter. So if 800 years ago it was substantially warmer than it is today, why should we fear a temperature increase of a few degrees will push these species to extinction now?
I personally am not betting on it, and note the reference to "local populations" above. Natural temperature shifts mean that the habitats of species will shift over time without man's intervention. These breathless prophecies of disaster mean nothing scientifically. No matter what we do to nullify human effect on the climate, we will never be able to block the natural temperature oscillations of our planet's climate. It's that simple. These stories are only politically correct propaganda designed to develop a sense of superstitious urgency in the human species.
Tom Carter, a retired military officer, has an excellent post on global warming hysteria containing quotes by journalists saying that they are deliberately reporting the global warming story in a biased way. Please go read it. The uniformly excellent Coyote Blog, which is written by a business owner, has been covering the issue of climate change in considerable detail - here is one recent post you might want to read in which an environmentalist discusses the right balance between effectiveness and honesty. Many journalists and environmentalists know they are lying and distorting the truth. There are many individuals of various backgrounds who have done a cursory amount of research and have concluded that Goebbels would be proud of the efforts of our constitutionally protected press on global warming. Why does the press believe we will bow before this nonsense? Will you?
I will not. I will stick with science, and scientific method rather than propaganda. Erik Beever's statements have nothing to do with science, but a great deal to do with environmental politics. Why must the US taxpayers pay for such arrant idiocy? Why do reporters regurgitate such mindless drivel? I'm riled. They must either be totally uneducated or incredibly stupid, or believe that we are totally uneducated or incredibly stupid. Are you? I'm not. If given the data I have linked to in this post, an average sixth grader can pick out the logical fallacy here. I plan to write my Congressman and Senator in January complaining about this waste of taxpayer dollars.
I want to pay for hard science. As the first graph should have shown you, global climate shifts do pose a massive threat to the human race. We must learn what drives these shifts if we want our current culture to survive for another ten thousand years. But the danger is not imminent, and cold is more of a threat than warmth, and we have time to study the problem instead of spending money to crank out droolingly stupid unscientific propaganda. Much more of this and we can anticipate a global reduction in our average effective IQ level. That's a much more frightening prospect than pikas moving their range two hundred miles north.
Comments:
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"Greenland was named because it was green when it was first settled." Didn't the Vikings name it Greenland to encourage people to go there rather than to Iceland, which was actually green, while Greenland was ice?
I believe that is correct about the vikings. Global warming is a huge lie, and anyone believing it is a fool and if they know it is a lie and still spout it they are a lying fool no?
I think the pikas moved to higher ground to avoid having their lives disrupted by a nosy wannabe scientist. How about that theory?
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I think the pikas moved to higher ground to avoid having their lives disrupted by a nosy wannabe scientist. How about that theory?
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