Socialists in a Panic

[EagleSmack]

Subzero Temperatures Batter Europe - WSJ.com

...and the band plays on...

 

[AnnaG]

WOW! It sure is hot in Oz and Ethiopia today.

 

[Extrafire]

Nope. Evidence that they survived much warmer periods than this for as long as this.

Like I said, they're here, aren't they? Unless they're a brand new species that showed up since the end of the Medieval Climate Optimum (300 or 400 years) they survived it just fine.

So you don't think species have been killed off or that we don't know all the species?

Not what I said. Saying that we're killing off dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of unknown species is just plain silly.

We only know of about 2 millions species and we are still discovering more. The latest ones I heard of are deep water ocean species. As for species being killed off:

List of extinct birds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of extinct mammals - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of extinct butterflies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tasmanian tiger; extinct since about 1935
Caspian Tiger; extinct since about 1970
St. Helena Mountain Bush; sometime in the 19th century due to human encroachment
St. Helena Olive same reason for extinction and hasn't been seen since 1994
Macoun’s Shining Moss hasn't been seen in Ontario since the last half of the 19th century

• [SIZE=+1]Passenger Pigeon[/SIZE], last known individual, "Martha", died in September 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo, Ohio. [click here]
• [SIZE=+1]Carolina Parakeet[/SIZE], last known individual died in September 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo, Ohio. [click here]
• [SIZE=+1]Great Auk[/SIZE], last known pair in the world seen & shot at Eldey Rock off Iceland June 3 1844
• [SIZE=+1]Labrador Duck[/SIZE], last specimen taken in 1875
• [SIZE=+1]Heath Hen[/SIZE], extinct 1932
• [SIZE=+1]Bachman's Warbler[/SIZE], though not known for certain this species is probable to be extinct
• [SIZE=+1]Eskimo Curlew[/SIZE], last known early 1960s
• [SIZE=+1]Dusky Seaside Sparrow[/SIZE], last known 1980 Yeah, it's all nonsense. :roll:

• Pretty small list isn't it? Peanuts compared to a mini mass extinction like the last ice age, or a major mass extinction like the one that killed the dinos.

It isn't the data, it's people's interpretation of the data that I find iffy; on both sides if the issue.

I think you reject data out of hand that doesn't agree with your point of view.

Nope. I just find your interpretations to be nuts.

I'm not interpreting, just presenting. See above.

 

[Extrafire]

From post #357:

yet post #358:
And you say I am confused? roflmao

Very much so, apparently.

 

[Extrafire]

Why climate change is hot hot hot

Blame a combination of corrupted science, ersatz religion and Third World opportunism



According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice.

Oh, wait. That was the last “scientific consensus” on “climate change,” early seventies version, as reflected in a CIA report from August 1974, which the enterprising author Maurizio Morabito stumbled upon in the British Library the other day. If only the impending ice age had struck as scheduled and Scandinavia was now under a solid block of ice. Instead, the streets of Copenhagen are filled with “activists” protesting global warming, some of whom torch automobiles in the traditional manner of concerned idealists. As long as it’s not my car, I can just about live with these chaps, preferring on balance thuggish street politics to the spaced-out cultish stupor in which many of their confreres wander glassy-eyed from event to event. On the Internet, there is a telling clip of Christopher Monckton interacting with a young Norwegian from Greenpeace who has come along to protest the former’s “denialism.” Monckton is a viscount—i.e., a lord, like his fellow denialist, the former British chancellor Lord Lawson. Now that’s what I call peer review! (House of Lords joke.) Lord Monckton has the faintly parodic mien of many aristocrats, whereas the Greenpeace gal was a Nordic blond. If there were empty stools adjoining both parties at the Climate Conference bar, you’d head for hers before some carbon-credit travelling salesman swiped it. Big mistake. Monckton was the soul of affability, gently suggesting places where she could check out the data. She, by contrast, seemed barely sentient, clinging to rote emotionalism and impervious to reason, data, facts, inquiry.


As I always say, if you’re 30 there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school after a lifetime of eco-brainwashing, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. None. After the leaked data from East Anglia revealed that Dr. Phil Jones (privately) conceded this point, Tim Flannery, one of the A-list warm-mongers in Copenhagen, owned up to it on Aussie TV, too. Yet, when I reprised the line in this space a couple of weeks back, thinking it was now safe for polite society, I was besieged by the usual “YOU LIE!!!!!!!” emails angrily denouncing me for failing to explain that the cooling trend of the oughts is in fact merely a blip in the long-term warming trend of the nineties.

Well, maybe. Then again, perhaps the warming trend of the nineties is merely a blip in the long-term ice age trend of the early seventies. I doubt many of my caps-lock emailers are aware of the formerly imminent ice age. It was in Newsweek and the New York Times, and it produced the occasional bestseller. But, unlike today’s carbon panic, it wasn’t everywhere; it wasn’t, in every sense, the air that we breathe. Unlike Al Gore’s wretched movie, it wasn’t taught in schools. TV networks did not broadcast during children’s time apocalyptic public service announcements that in any other circumstance would constitute child abuse. Unlike today, where incoming mayors announce that as their first act in office they’re banning bottled water from council meetings, ostentatious displays of piety were not ubiquitous. It was not a universal pretext for recoiling from progress: back in the seventies, upscale municipalities that now obsess about emissions standards of hot-air dryers were busy banning garden clotheslines on aesthetic grounds. There were no fortunes to be made from government grants for bogus “renewable energy” projects. Unlike Al Gore, carbon billionaire, nobody got rich peddling ice offsets.

The man with the sandwich board announcing the end of the world on Jan. 7 is usually unfazed when he wakes up on the morning of Jan. 8. He realigns the runes, repaints the sign, and reschedules Armageddon for May 23. The rest of us, on the other hand, scoff.

But not with this crowd. First it was the new ice age. Then it became global warming. Now it’s “climate change.” If it’s hot, that’s climate change. If it’s cold, that’s climate change. If it’s 12° C and partly sunny with a 30 per cent chance of mild precipitation in the afternoon, you should probably pack emergency supplies and head for higher ground because global milding is rampaging out of control, and lack of climate change is, as every scientist knows, the defining proof of climate change.

Indeed, our response to climate change can itself cause climate change that manifests itself in lack of climate change. A couple of days back, the Guardian ran the following story:

“The hole in the earth’s ozone layer has shielded Antarctica from the worst effects of global warming until now.”

Remember the ozone layer? It was all the rage back in the old days. It was caused by spray-on deodorants, apparently. So we packed ’em in, and switched over to roll-on deodorants. And, because we forswore the sinful spraying of armpits, the hole began to heal. Which is tough on the Antarctic ice cap. Because the only reason it isn’t melting is because the ozone hole isn’t fully closed up. Once it is, more hot air will remain trapped and melt the ice. It may be time to start spraying your armpit hair again.

Why did “climate change” remain the boutique scare-story of a few specialists last time round, and gain global traction this time round? In the Spectator, Maurizio Morabito puts it this way:

“Is the problem with the general public, who cannot talk about climate except in doom-laden terms, and for whom the sky is the last animist god?”

That last part explains a lot. Forty years ago conventional religious belief was certainly in decline in what we once knew as Christendom, but the hole was not yet ozone-layer sized. Once the sea of faith had receded far from shore, the post-Christian West looked at what remained and found “Gaia.” Not long ago, in Burlington, Vt., I got into a somewhat heated discussion about global warming with a lady who accused me of ignoring “science.” She then drove away in a car with the bumper sticker “THE EARTH IS YOUR MOTHER.” In Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas in 2001, I sought a breather from the heady scent of Sûreté du Québec tear gas and idled away half an hour among a display of brassieres promoting “sustainable development.” One (a 54D, as I recall) read “THE EARTH IS MA MÈRE.” In flagrant breach of Quebec’s Bill 101, the francophone right cup was not twice the size of the anglophone left cup. If the earth is our mother, who are we to dictate to the goddess? As Lord Monckton pointed out to that Norwegian CO2-head, we’ve had climate change for four billion years. But now apparently there is an ideal state that Ma Mère has to be maintained in. A belief in a garden of Eden which man through sin has despoiled sounds familiar. But this time we get to pick. Not the Medieval Warm Period that causes the “scientific consensus” such problems, and not presumably the bucolic state the planet was in when Canada was 150 feet under, but some pristine condition somewhere in between.

When man was made in the image of God, he was fallen but redeemable. Gaia’s psychologically unhealthy progeny are merely irredeemable. Anti-humanism is everywhere, not least in the barely concealed admiration for China’s (demographically disastrous) “One Child” policy advanced by everyone from the National Post’s Diane Francis to Sir David Attenborough, the world’s leading telly naturalist but also a BBC exec who once long ago commissioned the great series The Ascent of Man. If Sir David’s any guide, the great thing about man’s ascent is it gives him a higher cliff to nosedive off.

Very few sciences could survive being embraced as a religion. Imagine the kind of engineering or math you’d get if it also had to function as a “faith tradition.” What’s also changed since the seventies is the nature of the UN and the transnational bureaucracies. Once it became obvious that “climate change” represents an almost boundless shakedown of functioning jurisdictions by dysfunctional basket cases, the die was cast. “Aid” is a discredited word these days and comes with too many strings attached. But eco-credits sluiced through an oil-for-food program on steroids offers splendid new opportunities for bulking up an ambitious dictator’s Swiss bank accounts.

And, because of this malign combination—corrupted science, ersatz religion, Third World opportunism—global warming took off in a way the old ice age never did. It would perhaps be too much to expect a generation of brainwashed schoolkids to shake off their brain-dead conformism. And so, between the anti-human left and an alliance of rapacious dictatorships, it now falls to a handful of economically expansive emerging nations—India, China, Brazil, a couple of others—to save the developed world from itself.

Why climate change is hot hot hot - Mark Steyn - Macleans.ca

 

[AnnaG]

Like I said, they're here, aren't they? Unless they're a brand new species that showed up since the end of the Medieval Climate Optimum (300 or 400 years) they survived it just fine.

Spin. lol You totally missed what I asked about.

Not what I said. Saying that we're killing off dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of unknown species is just plain silly.

Hey, you can apply your spin to what I say, I claim the same right.
Speaking of spin, where did I say we have killed off any amount of unknown species? I said there are lots of unknown species and that we have killed off a lot that we know of. You mixed up the two points into one. If you continue, I see no point in taking anything you say seriously.

Pretty small list isn't it?

Nope. Considering we hadn't screwed up the planet much till 6 decades or so ago. Give us time, we'll do lots more.

Peanuts compared to a mini mass extinction like the last ice age, or a major mass extinction like the one that killed the dinos.
[/list]

Like I said, give us time. We'll no doubt screw up lots more.

I think you reject data out of hand that doesn't agree with your point of view.

So do you. Big deal.

I'm not interpreting, just presenting. See above.

Not interpreting, just spinning.

 

[AnnaG]

Very much so, apparently.

Sorry, but you are the one that can't seem to be able to read the graph properly.

 

[AnnaG]

Why climate change is hot hot hot - Mark Steyn - Macleans.ca

It's an opinion. Big deal. The world is full of opinions just as valid as Steyn's.

 

[Ron in Regina]

Why climate change is hot hot hot - Mark Steyn - Macleans.ca

"Global Milding".....That's rich! :lol::lol::lol:

 

[Extrafire]

Spin. lol You totally missed what I asked about.

Well then why don't you spell it out for me?

I said there are lots of unknown species and that we have killed off a lot that we know of. You mixed up the two points into one.

(If they're unknown, how do you know that they exist?) I may have misunderstood you. Many environmentalists hugely inflate the numbers of species exterminated by humans by claiming that we've wiped out thousands of species that we never knew existed. I was under the impression that you were doing the same.

Nope. Considering we hadn't screwed up the planet much till 6 decades or so ago. Give us time, we'll do lots more. Like I said, give us time. We'll no doubt screw up lots more.

Well I disagree. It's a teensy list compared to natural mass extinction events. Will we do lots more? Most likely, but still nowhere near the amount of natures record.

Not interpreting, just spinning.

I never claimed to be interpreting, it was you who said I was. Now you've changed your mind?

I submit pastes so that you can check them out for yourself without any spin (or interpretation) from me.

 

[Extrafire]

Sorry, but you are the one that can't seem to be able to read the graph properly.

Here's one of the graphs in question once again:

The left vertical axis is described as "Temperature variation" (aka anomalies). Let's look at the two dates of 2007 (just because they're easy). The first shows a variation (anomaly) of 0.6 degrees over the baseline. The second shows an anomaly (variation) of 0.24 degrees over the baselline. That indicates a drop in temperature of 0.36 degrees from the first point to the second.

 

[Tonington]

And from 2008 to the end of 2009, there has been a rise of about 0.7° (MSU-UAH), see:

Two years, ten years, still not significant trends.

I wonder what the talking points will be next year when all data sets of surface temperature, and lower troposphere temperature show new records for warmest year.

 

[Extrafire]

Two years, ten years, still not significant trends.

Well DUH! No kidding!

As I've mentioned several times before (please pay attention this time) a ten year cooling is much too short to estabish a trend. Likewise, a 30 year warming (like the one that was used to set off the AGW scare) is also much too short to establish a trend. Even the 150 year warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is too short. They are statistically insignificant because warmings and coolings of such magnitude are common within the basic trends. To get a good handle on trends, you need at least a millenium, preferably you should use the whole current interglacial. You got that now? Remember, you heard it from me. Again.

What's significant about the current 10 year cooling is that it completely contradicts AGW hypothesis. The last similar cooling (from the early '40's to the early '70's) they tried to blame on human coal fired sulphite emissions which were cleaned up and supposedly allowed the warming to resume. They don't know what to blame the current decline on so basically they're ignoring it as much as possible.

As far as my post that you were responding to, all I was doing was trying to show Anna how to read the graph.

 

[Extrafire]

Copenhagen climate summit: 'most important paper in the world' is a glorified UN press release

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics.

But boy! Was this crass, or what? The apocalyptic document revealing that even if the Western leaders hand over all the climate Danegeld demanded of them, appropriately at the venue of Copenhagen, the earth will still fry on a 3C temperature rise is the latest transparent scare tactic to extort more cash from taxpayers. The danger of this ploy, of course, is that people might say “If we are going to be chargrilled anyway, what is the point of handing over billions – better to get some serious conspicuous consumption in before the ski slopes turn into saunas.”

This “single most important piece of paper in the world” comes, presumably, from an authoritative and totally neutral source? Yes, of course. It’s from the – er – UN Framework Committee on Climate Change that is – er – running the Danegeld Summit. Some people might be small-minded enough to suggest this paper has as much authority as a “leaked” document from Number 10 revealing that life would be hell under the Tories.

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

If there were not $45trillion of Western citizens’ money at stake, this would be the funniest moment in world history. What a bunch of buffoons. Not since Neville Chamberlain tugged a Claridge’s luncheon bill from his pocket and flourished it on the steps of the aircraft that brought him back from Munich has a worthless scrap of paper been so audaciously hyped. There was one good moment at Copenhagen, though: some seriously professional truncheon work by Danish Plod on the smellies. Otherwise, this event is strictly for Hans Christian Andersen

Copenhagen climate summit: 'most important paper in the world' is a glorified UN press release – Telegraph Blogs

 

[Tonington]

Well DUH! No kidding!

As I've mentioned several times before (please pay attention this time) a ten year cooling is much too short to estabish a trend. Likewise, a 30 year warming (like the one that was used to set off the AGW scare) is also much too short to establish a trend. Even the 150 year warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is too short. They are statistically insignificant because warmings and coolings of such magnitude are common within the basic trends. To get a good handle on trends, you need at least a millenium, preferably you should use the whole current interglacial. You got that now? Remember, you heard it from me. Again.

I am paying attention. You just seem to be woefully ignorant about what significant means. At about 15 years, the signal is evident. The noise is no longer dwarfing the signal. That is when you can statistically derive a trend which is significant. You don't need a millennium to establish a trend, that is ridiculous. The existence of a human induced signal (which has been found) does not require that the signal exceeds that of previous interglacial or glaciations. That's nonsense. Though, the current signal does exceed some previous changes. It's approximately thirty times stronger than the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

What's significant about the current 10 year cooling is that it completely contradicts AGW hypothesis.

No it doesn't. Show me where the IPCC or any other published scientific investigations says that variability disappears. More nonsense.

 

[AnnaG]

Well then why don't you spell it out for me?

I tried. You seem to refuse any explanations I give.

(If they're unknown, how do you know that they exist?)

That's a silly question. Because we discover ones we haven't seen before and that would make them previously unknown, and I hardly think we've discovered every species on Earth.

I may have misunderstood you.

You think?

Many environmentalists hugely inflate the numbers of species exterminated by humans by claiming that we've wiped out thousands of species that we never knew existed. I was under the impression that you were doing the same.

Nope, you were ASSuming stuff about me. I don't like inaccuracy and making definitive statements about unknowns.
Besides, I see nothing wrong with being an environmentalist. It is people's twisted views that have twisted the term. An environmentalist to me is someone who cares for all the environments on the planet and acts to prevent harm to them.

Well I disagree. It's a teensy list compared to natural mass extinction events. Will we do lots more? Most likely, but still nowhere near the amount of natures record.

Well, I don't care. IMO, ANY species we've caused to disappear is too much. It seems to be a habit of people to do stuff without thinking of the consequences; kind of like the goose sticking its head out. One day it gets chopped off.

I never claimed to be interpreting, it was you who said I was. Now you've changed your mind?

Nope.

I submit pastes so that you can check them out for yourself without any spin (or interpretation) from me.

Hoorah.

 

[AnnaG]

Here's one of the graphs in question once again:

The left vertical axis is described as "Temperature variation" (aka anomalies). Let's look at the two dates of 2007 (just because they're easy). The first shows a variation (anomaly) of 0.6 degrees over the baseline. The second shows an anomaly (variation) of 0.24 degrees over the baselline. That indicates a drop in temperature of 0.36 degrees from the first point to the second.

That wasn't the graph I posted. But, even that one shows a general increase in temperature because almost all the points are positive anomalies. That means they are an increase in temp above the baseline. Just because the anomaly drops a half a point doesn't mean the temperature dropped. It means the increase in temperature wasn't as much. In fact, there are only 8 points on there with negative anomalies and all the other points are positive (above the baseline). If you have a value of a point and then add another value to the graph later, and if the latter value is above the first one then the difference between them is the anomaly. If the anomaly is positive, then the increase was positive and whatever you were measuring increased.
Because the anomaly dropped from 0.6 to 0.24 , it was still an increase over the baseline, which means an overall increase in temperature.

 

[AnnaG]

Well DUH! No kidding!

As I've mentioned several times before (please pay attention this time) a ten year cooling is much too short to estabish a trend. Likewise, a 30 year warming (like the one that was used to set off the AGW scare) is also much too short to establish a trend. Even the 150 year warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is too short. They are statistically insignificant because warmings and coolings of such magnitude are common within the basic trends. To get a good handle on trends, you need at least a millenium, preferably you should use the whole current interglacial. You got that now? Remember, you heard it from me. Again.

What's significant about the current 10 year cooling is that it completely contradicts AGW hypothesis. The last similar cooling (from the early '40's to the early '70's) they tried to blame on human coal fired sulphite emissions which were cleaned up and supposedly allowed the warming to resume. They don't know what to blame the current decline on so basically they're ignoring it as much as possible.

As far as my post that you were responding to, all I was doing was trying to show Anna how to read the graph.

And that's the funny part.
You are saying that if a car starts at 30 MPH and then accelerates from 30 to 60 at a rate of 6 MP/S squared, then after a while it's acceleration drops to 2 M/S squared from 6 M/S squared then the car has slowed. You're wrong. The car is still accelerating only not as much as before.

 

[Tonington]

Well, I don't care. IMO, ANY species we've caused to disappear is too much. It seems to be a habit of people to do stuff without thinking of the consequences; kind of like the goose sticking its head out. One day it gets chopped off.

It's a common tactic of his. Nature has done worse than us before, so the claims of harm due to our actions must be trumped up, incorrect, etc.

 

[AnnaG]

It's a common tactic of his. Nature has done worse than us before, so the claims of harm due to our actions must be trumped up, incorrect, etc.

That notion occurred to me earlier. It's kind of like saying well, Soddam Insane was a decent sort because Stalin and Hitler were such a$$ cavities.