Sunday, March 8, 2009

Global Warming - I was wrong

Sometimes I get it all wrong. And on Global Warming, I've been wrong.

Half the the U.S. just had its mildest winter in years, with no sign of snow in many Northern states.
Most of the Great Lakes were ice-free this year.
Not a single Canadian province had a white Christmas.
There is a new study discussing a mysterious surge in global temperatures - a warming trend more intense than computer models have predicted.
Some scientists recently admitted that, because of a bug in satellite sensors, they have overestimated the extent of Arctic sea ice.

Oh....wait....never mind. The exact opposite of that has been happening.
It's been colder than a well-digger's ass.
I take it all back.

Most of this info came from Jeff Jacoby's article on "Where's Global Warming". Great stuff. Here's my favorite paragraph:

If all that (warming instead of cooling) were happening on the climate-change front, do you think you'd be hearing about it on the news? Seeing it on Page 1 of your daily paper? Would politicians be exclaiming that global warming was even more of a crisis than they'd thought? Would environmentalists be skewering global-warming "deniers" for clinging to their skepticism despite the growing case against it?

Dang right, you'd be hearing about it on the news. But the news and my daily paper aren't about reality, or climate, or anything that can be measured with a thermometer.
This is a power grab.
Please get that into your heads.
Global Warming/Cooling/Climate Change has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with control.

Moving on, if you can read this without laughing, you probably have stock in Kleiner Perkins.

A Global Warming protest was almost cancelled because of snow. Here is the official protest website. You've got to go there. You must go there for the pictures of people freezing while protesting the heat. Haven't they heard of irony? Shouldn't they be just a tad embarrassed?

Nahhh. They have God and Gore on their side.

They chanted slogans like "Who is hot in here / There's too much carbon in the air" while huddling against the windchill.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love you, but you're a dumbass.

Global warming refers to the Earth's average temperature increasing about 1/10th of a degree every 100 years.

When you look to one season or one day, you do yourself a disservice.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Dear Anonymous,
I love you too, and I value the moments that we've shared together. I'll always remember that weekend in Vegas and the hot tub in Yazoo City.

However, its only when one starts looking at the big picture and the huge temperature swings and cycles we've had over the last 100,000 years that the idea of us suddenly causing the latest warming, or cooling, or (Let's Cover Our Bases) Climate Change becomes laughable.

The other issue is that the Warming/Cooling/Climate Changers have waaaaay overplayed their hand. 1/10th of 1 degree over 100 years? They're coming up with much, much scarier numbers than that. They'll never get their hands on the money any other way.

But once again, I love you too, and I hope this small area of disagreement doesn't come between us. That thing you do with the Saran Wrap and Wesson Oil is great !

Dr Ralph said...

WS -- I promise I wasn't Anonymous.

You're many things - opinionated, outspoken, wrong -- but certainly not a dumbass.

That "I love you," though -- boy, that has me intrigued.

Anonymous said...

"I love you"? Check out the movie Idiocracy - that's what the fat dude says to everyone going into Costco. "Welcome to Costco, I love you". And this guy's comment is about as silly - first of all, there is no precise definition of "global warming". However, the general definition of climate is 30 years of weather.

For all practical purposes, we do seem to be going into a cool phase in the planet's climate which may last decades. But don't expect the radicals to shut up about global warming - expect them to just look sillier and sillier. Then maybe they'll get on another "global cooling" bandwagon when it gets trendy.

Anonymous said...

WS a "dumbass?" Nope, that doesn't get my vote either. Anon - why such sensitivity to the issue?

Jay@Soob said...

Agree with Climatobotomized. There's a reason the doctrine has shifted away from Global Warming and into Global Climate Change. It allows wiggle room and cures uncertainty among the flock. It says "yes it's cooled for the last decade but just you wait..."

Mark said...

I'm really surprised at your extreme (at least I think its extreme) position on this. What I read is you believe nothing is happening, its all a political power-pull.

That local variations in a trend exist is not a surprise. I admit that I am not an expert in the field. I also admit that what I read is that the actual climate variations are following the models pretty well. The article you pointed to has lots of sensationalism but little facts and most are related to "weather" rather than "climate".

I think that it is good for scientists to have conflicting views, as the interplay and vigorous validation of the other sides findings will eventually result in a better understanding. I think you do a disservice to reject a viewpoint out of hand that has a considerable number of respected scientists demonstrating its viability.

Mark said...

followup (sorry) - when I speak of "sensationalism" I mean the issues are clouded (deliberately or unintentionally) to make the case sound stronger.

examples: "The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in," says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist." - note the title, he is a physicist, not a climate scientist. I was unable to find any record of peer-reviewed climate publications by Dr. Freeman, which places him in the "interested non-expert" category rather than the "use a quote as proof" category.

"Yes, global cooling: 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade" - and the link points to a local oregon report of cool weather (caused by the well-documented El Nino) and shows a graph with a record of individual yearly variations but a strong overall temperature increase (the exact opposite of the text).

I don't have an answer. But I really feel there is more here than simple politics and control.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Mark,
My primary point is that nobody has a clue, not a clue, what the weather is going to do.
We would change the weather if we could. We flatter ourselves when we think that we can possibly change the weather. I'd love to be able to change the weather. I'd be drunk with power.

For the last five or six years, every time Hobbes, New Mexico, had a dry spell, we had to read and hear about global warming. There are comic websites devoted to all the ridiculous things caused by global warming. There are now hundreds of things on there.

And now, it really does look like we're going into a time of cooling. This is a disaster. Billions of weather changing funding will possibly never see the light of day. Billions.