Global Warming: "Pseudoscientific Fraud"

[wuapinmon]

If volcanic ash can have a cooling effect, could you not disperse some kind of ersatz ash into the atmosphere to mimic what an eruption does? Would it be cost prohibitive compared to all the relocation, erosion control, and other estimated costs of 'dealing' with climate change?

[old_gregg]

The biggest jerk in this circle jerk, RFK, Jr. says that deniers should be jailed.

This is not the first time this has been espoused. So when faced with either crushing the deniers with what is irrefutable evidence or threatening the forcible taking of liberty and property by the government for having the wrong opinion, for some reason they choose the latter.

going to need a ruling on whether this is a circle jerk off or just a circle jerk before i consider the implications. thank you in advance.

[SCcoug]

If volcanic ash can have a cooling effect, could you not disperse some kind of ersatz ash into the atmosphere to mimic what an eruption does? Would it be cost prohibitive compared to all the relocation, erosion control, and other estimated costs of 'dealing' with climate change?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/10/19/geoengineering-schemes-from-cloud-brightening-space-mirrors/Dw9xmqdbtdV8cGv4K93cJN/story.html

[Dwight Schr-ute]

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/09/24/climatologist-october-1st-will-mark-18-years-of-no-global-warming

[Pelado]

Climate orthodoxy calls for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, worldwide, by the year 2050, which would take the United States back to a level of hydrocarbon energy use last seen more than 100 years ago. For the developing world, it means remaining poor for several more decades.

There has been very little recognition and less candor about the sheer fantasy of the emissions target. Energy transitions, as the energy scholar Vaclav Smil has explained in great detail, are long-term affairs, even if a new superior technology exists to displace a current technology. But affordable large-scale, low- or non-carbon energy capable of replacing our current energy infrastructure simply doesn’t exist at present, and there isn’t much on the horizon. The developing world needs to triple its energy supply over the next generation if it is going to raise hundreds of millions out of abject poverty, and that means using abundant hydrocarbon energy, not expensive boutique energy popular with ever-preening rich Americans and Europeans. Just last week India’s new environmental minister, Prakash Javadekar, reiterated that India is not willing to discuss limitations on its rapidly growing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. “India’s first task is eradication of poverty,” Javadekar told the New York Times; “Twenty percent of our population doesn’t have access to electricity, and that’s our top priority. We will grow faster, and our emissions will rise.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenha...ped-the-shark/

[Pelado]

Mr. Kennedy might also not notice that the "settled science" rug is being pulled right out from under him -- and by no less than a former Team Obama member.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science at the Energy Department during Obama's first term, said, yes, the climate is changing. And yes, humans are impacting the climate system, though only 1 to 2 percent of it.

But he stated that most climate-change models not only missed the temperature flattening of the past 16 years, they do not capture a huge factor, like oceans or water vapor, cloud formation and rainfall.

Koonin asked, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" He admitted: Unsettled science. We just don't know.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...on_124157.html

[Jeff Lebowski]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...on_124157.html

Ah yes. The Koonin essay. Oxcoug and his amigos were yucking it up over this essay last week. It wasn't nearly as extreme as described in the RCP article you link, but it was pretty bad. While conceding that the climate is changing and humans indeed impact the climate, he proceeded to downplay and distort the current state of the art in climate science. Here is his original essay:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/clima...led-1411143565

Since then, many have debunked the claims in his essay. This is a good example:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/10/the_wall_street_journal_and_steve_koonin_the_new_face_of_climate_change.html

[SeattleUte]

JL is a handy resource for the latest in trendy liberal dogma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/study-links-changing-winds-to-warming-in-pacific/2014/09/22/3b0200a0-428b-11e4-8042-aaff1640082e_story.html

[All-American]

JL is a handy resource for the latest in trendy liberal dogma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...82e_story.html

Whatever. JL thinks carbon can't beat anybody.

[YOhio]

JL is a handy resource for the latest in trendy liberal dogma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...82e_story.html

Nice! Love it when JL gets put in his place.

[Pelado]

JL is a handy resource for the latest in trendy liberal dogma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...82e_story.html

Long time, no see. How have you been?

[Jeff Lebowski]

JL is a handy resource for the latest in trendy liberal dogma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...82e_story.html

lol. As is often the case, SU didn't even read the article he linked.

The study released by the online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences does not question global warming, but argues there is evidence that in at least one place, local winds are a more important factor explaining ocean warming than greenhouse gases.

It was greeted with skepticism by several mainstream climate scientists, who questioned how the authors could claim changes in wind direction and velocity were natural and unrelated to climate change.


They pointed out that the study sees a correlation but did not do the rigorous statistical and computer analysis to show that the cause of the wind changes were natural — the kind of analysis done when scientists attribute weather extremes to global warming.


“This may say more about the state of climate modeling than it says about causes of warming in the Pacific Northwest,” Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology, said in an email. “The authors ... have not established the causes of these atmospheric pressure variations. Thus, claims that the observed temperature increases are due primarily to ‘natural’ processes are suspect and premature, at best.”

Good to see you, old buddy.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Here's an old article from 13 years ago in Salon:

http://www.salon.com/2001/10/23/weather/

Extreme weather means more terrifying hurricanes and tornadoes and fires than we usually see. But what can we expect such conditions to do to our daily life?
advertisement

While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”

This is from an interview with an author who wrote a book on climate change. The author is recounting his experience with James Hansen who is a Columbia professor and one of the leaders in this field.

In the case you didn't read this above, Hansen was saying in 1988 that the West Side freeway in Manhattan was going to be underwater and closed down. That was 26 years ago. I'm happy to say the West Side Freeway is open for off duty police officers from Long Island to ride in motorcycle packs and harass and maul other motorists.

Here is the thing that pisses off people that don't buy the global warming hysteria -- Hansen can throw out these wild-assed predictions, be hilariously wrong and people like JL will still accuse people who note that these predictions were way off as being anti-science. Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes? When did it become anti-science to hold these guys to some standard of being right at least a small part of the time? Are we given a choice here of being either anti-science or anti-logic? Is it too much to expect these guys to drop the hysteria and the constant goal-post shifting?

They predict that the margins of Manhattan will be underwater, didn't happen.

They predict that the earth is going to warm by x amount of degrees, 97% of their predictions are wrong.

The French Foreign Minister predicted back in April or May that we had 60 days to avoid the climate apocalypse. Shockingly that didn't happen either.

The more intellectually honest of the bunch (some of whom have been noted on here) have decided to reevaluate things now that the temperature has hardly budged in the last 15-16 years. Good for them.

For others, they view the inconvenient data as something that needs a good PR battle to obfuscate. They're so damn sure of their righteous cause, they're unwilling to countenance countervailing points of significance. So they go back to that well of making more and more hysterical threats and meanwhile increasingly more people are ignoring them.

But one thing is for sure, they'll always have JL in their corner. He believes steadfastly in those ice core samples and that the Hudson and East River will converge on Times Square some time in the next ten years.

[Jeff Lebowski]

lol.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

lol.

Lol indeed. According to you we have a binary choice, either side with guys like Hansen or be anti-science.

Just to clue you in on some of Hansen's accomplishments, they include the origination of the meme that people that don't believe his ample bullshit should be prosecuted. He's also been arrested during a protest of the Keystone Pipeline. He does, however, have credentials which means he can be a political activist yet still avoid confirmation bias which you have stated does not exist in this field. I'm sure all the economists at Moscow University in 1980 were as convinced of the rightness of Marxism as guys like Hansen are of climate change, and I expect both are equally as inflexible in their beliefs, results be damned. The disparate conditions of East and West Germany meant nothing.

So let me restate that binary choice you have presented to us -- either believe a man like James Hansen because he has credentials, yet is more political activist than scientist at this point and who has a record of being spectacularly wrong, or be anti-science.