Sharing the thoughts of another...Global Dumbing shall continue!
Where is that Radar? My blogging friend has been keeping this blog warm as I get closer to a surgery date. I am so very much in his debit!
William Lightner's thoughts in answering a typical Climate Fear-Monger were too good to keep to myself! Plus my injury-imposed sequester in my home is beginning to help me a bit so I may be up to blogging again soon. So with no further ado, sans editing, Mr. Lightner has the floor...
WILLIAM LIGHTNER: From Quora...
How do we talk about 'climate change' (the politically correct term of the week for the phenomenon)? We ask: "Do you *believe* in Climate Change" (emphasis acknowledged).
"Climate Change debate" has become the "Evolution debate" of the Left; most especially the Far Left, and the Democratic Party has jumped on the bandwagon in full measure because it has proven so fruitful in bringing left-leaning voters to the polls.
The actual science, however, is not at all clear. Yes, CO2 is going up...some. Yes, the world is getting warmer...some. This week (year, decade, etc.)
I waited for years for the evaluation of old-growth forest as a carbon sink to be proven, as predicted by Global Warming activists (and they are all *activists*, not *scientists*). The result: old-growth forest is a net CO2 source.
Oops.
So, it must be going in the oceans right? Another 5-year wait:
Nope.
"97% of all scientists believe in Climate Change". Look that phrase up on the Internet and you'll find an interesting (and apparently ignored) little write-up on where that number came from (assuming the document is correct and valid, the result was clearly fraudulent, or at least a fraudulent abuse of the very "iffy" survey that was not presented to those specifically-selected scientists in a manner intended to elicite a studied answer).
Every time the IOCC makes an announcement they are "more certain than ever"...that the results point to a lower-than-expected curve in temperature increases, that is a lower curve than the last time they made an announcement. But it is Still Going Up! That's what's important!
"Climate Change debate" has become the "Evolution debate" of the Left; most especially the Far Left, and the Democratic Party has jumped on the bandwagon in full measure because it has proven so fruitful in bringing left-leaning voters to the polls.
The actual science, however, is not at all clear. Yes, CO2 is going up...some. Yes, the world is getting warmer...some. This week (year, decade, etc.)
I waited for years for the evaluation of old-growth forest as a carbon sink to be proven, as predicted by Global Warming activists (and they are all *activists*, not *scientists*). The result: old-growth forest is a net CO2 source.
Oops.
So, it must be going in the oceans right? Another 5-year wait:
Nope.
"97% of all scientists believe in Climate Change". Look that phrase up on the Internet and you'll find an interesting (and apparently ignored) little write-up on where that number came from (assuming the document is correct and valid, the result was clearly fraudulent, or at least a fraudulent abuse of the very "iffy" survey that was not presented to those specifically-selected scientists in a manner intended to elicite a studied answer).
Every time the IOCC makes an announcement they are "more certain than ever"...that the results point to a lower-than-expected curve in temperature increases, that is a lower curve than the last time they made an announcement. But it is Still Going Up! That's what's important!
The data that all these climate-change scientists base their numbers on is suspect. Why? Because a great many of the recording stations that were originally "out in the wild" are now in the middle of parking lots (and such-like). Many climatologists have refused (or did for a long time) to make corrections to their data because the person(s) providing notification (the people who maintain the stations) are not 'climatologists'.
When data finally became available from the satellite intended to track ocean depth increase and temperature changes it was found not to match any existing model. The climatologist response? Near screaming deprecations on the engineer responsible for pulling & checking the data for not (near as I could tell) correcting their models. Which (a) wasn't his job, and (b) shows clearly how at least *some* Climate Change proponents view and understand (if you can call it that) science.
Compare the behavior of Climate Change proponents with that of Cosmologists over the last 20 years:
Change the entire underpinnings of what we understand? (The universe is not only expanding, it is accelerating! : Neat! We'll have to change the text books!) (Neutrinos move faster than light!: Really? Neat! We'll have to change the text books! Nope, that's wrong. Darn. Good thing we haven't published, yet. Next? God I Love This Job!)
Suggest that Climate Change might not be supported by the science? (That person is *not* a Scientist! I can fix that. Let me change my model! You're wrong! You're an idiot! We're all gonna die!)
When data finally became available from the satellite intended to track ocean depth increase and temperature changes it was found not to match any existing model. The climatologist response? Near screaming deprecations on the engineer responsible for pulling & checking the data for not (near as I could tell) correcting their models. Which (a) wasn't his job, and (b) shows clearly how at least *some* Climate Change proponents view and understand (if you can call it that) science.
Compare the behavior of Climate Change proponents with that of Cosmologists over the last 20 years:
Change the entire underpinnings of what we understand? (The universe is not only expanding, it is accelerating! : Neat! We'll have to change the text books!) (Neutrinos move faster than light!: Really? Neat! We'll have to change the text books! Nope, that's wrong. Darn. Good thing we haven't published, yet. Next? God I Love This Job!)
Suggest that Climate Change might not be supported by the science? (That person is *not* a Scientist! I can fix that. Let me change my model! You're wrong! You're an idiot! We're all gonna die!)
How about the interesting littel detail that the scientists campaigning for Climate Change have their own, closed little group that suffers (according to an outside audit) from a serious lack of real peer review by other (I tend to insert "real") scientists (You have to belong to the group to propose papers. Proposing a non-supporting paper gets you banned from the group). Or the fact that proving that a leading Climate Change proponent got his numbers wrong (the guy, I am led to understand, who also floated that '97% of scientists" "study") and has refused to either correct his work or change his rhetoric.
Which would you tend to (dare I say it?) believe?
Is the world getting warmer? Possibly. To quote Yoda: "Difficult to say". Will it continue to do so? I could quote Yoda again, about telling the future. I could also point out that these summers (and winters) lately are a lot more like the seasons of my youth. When we were worried about the next Ice Age (I know that's been debunked as "real science" at the time, but it was nonetheless present in the "popular" science of the time.
The world has been warmer (much) in the past than it is now, and has survived just fine. It does not appear about to collapse into a duplicate of Venus. Human impact on greenhouse gasses is a tremendous amount of CO2 (to pick a gas)...and a very small drop in the bucket on the scale that Mother Earth moves carbon around. Even CO2. One volcano eruption can produce more CO2 for the year than all of mankind. We really are a fairly insignicant scum on the face of the Earth. Of course, some other insignificant scum creates almost all the oxygen, so we can't totally discount scum. So let's do some Science and get some real numbers!
Which would you tend to (dare I say it?) believe?
Is the world getting warmer? Possibly. To quote Yoda: "Difficult to say". Will it continue to do so? I could quote Yoda again, about telling the future. I could also point out that these summers (and winters) lately are a lot more like the seasons of my youth. When we were worried about the next Ice Age (I know that's been debunked as "real science" at the time, but it was nonetheless present in the "popular" science of the time.
The world has been warmer (much) in the past than it is now, and has survived just fine. It does not appear about to collapse into a duplicate of Venus. Human impact on greenhouse gasses is a tremendous amount of CO2 (to pick a gas)...and a very small drop in the bucket on the scale that Mother Earth moves carbon around. Even CO2. One volcano eruption can produce more CO2 for the year than all of mankind. We really are a fairly insignicant scum on the face of the Earth. Of course, some other insignificant scum creates almost all the oxygen, so we can't totally discount scum. So let's do some Science and get some real numbers!
Are there things we should be worrying about/working toward improving? Yes. Pollution (especially in China) is a terrible problem all the way around. But it doesn't have the political chutspa of screaming "Climate Change (Do You Believe?!)" in a room full of Young (hopefully to-be) Liberals, and it doesn't have the effective litmus test phrase: "Do you believe in Climate Chanhge?". And, unfortunately for politicians, the science is a bit clearer and more readily applied. Or fortunately. Muddy science is exactly what some politicians want. All that political clout to be grabbed and used by the shyster smart and bold enough to grab it!
I heard a politician yesterday (Waxman or some such. He is retiring! Probably to go on tour with Gore, who's carbon footprint on Monday could cover mine for my lifetime ) say, on C-Span (another Believer channel, unfortunately) words to the effect: "If there was a 10% chance that Climate Change is real, could we afford to ignore it?" Only we don't have a number anywhere close to saying "gloable warming is 10% likely". What we have is an observation that the world is getting warmer (absolutely true) and the *supposition* (not yet determined by science) that this is somehow our fault, so we all need to panic about it. We also have this unreasoning panic about what it would mean to the world (New York, most likely) if Global Warming (excuse me: Climate Change) were real.
(Aside: Some people don't really believe that losing New York would be all that negative a thing.)
That supposition that it is all our fault leaves out several other possibilities, starting with the facts that the Sun has been acting strangely lately (compared with the available scientific record: Just like Climate Change) and the world's magnetic field has (I read recently) been declining at an ever increasing rate as it moves toward its anticipated and due reversal appointment. The Sun could burp and it would invalidate all our numbers. And us. Is this likely the cause of Climate Change? I dunno. But at least it is a question that can be investigated, not an assertion that requires I say the magic phrase (I Believe...) to be included in the conversation.
I heard a politician yesterday (Waxman or some such. He is retiring! Probably to go on tour with Gore, who's carbon footprint on Monday could cover mine for my lifetime ) say, on C-Span (another Believer channel, unfortunately) words to the effect: "If there was a 10% chance that Climate Change is real, could we afford to ignore it?" Only we don't have a number anywhere close to saying "gloable warming is 10% likely". What we have is an observation that the world is getting warmer (absolutely true) and the *supposition* (not yet determined by science) that this is somehow our fault, so we all need to panic about it. We also have this unreasoning panic about what it would mean to the world (New York, most likely) if Global Warming (excuse me: Climate Change) were real.
(Aside: Some people don't really believe that losing New York would be all that negative a thing.)
That supposition that it is all our fault leaves out several other possibilities, starting with the facts that the Sun has been acting strangely lately (compared with the available scientific record: Just like Climate Change) and the world's magnetic field has (I read recently) been declining at an ever increasing rate as it moves toward its anticipated and due reversal appointment. The Sun could burp and it would invalidate all our numbers. And us. Is this likely the cause of Climate Change? I dunno. But at least it is a question that can be investigated, not an assertion that requires I say the magic phrase (I Believe...) to be included in the conversation.
Climate Change activists have left the science far behind. They are not behaving like scientists. The people who follow them, unlike those who discuss Evolution, are no longer talking science. The answer, they say, Is In. There is No More Need For Discussion. We Must Do Something About It You Philistine!
Is there any wonder so many people aren't willing to fall into line with this way of thinking? The frightening thing is that so many people are.
Is there any wonder so many people aren't willing to fall into line with this way of thinking? The frightening thing is that so many people are.
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Remember that Al Gore warned of drowned cities and disastrous weather due to the "Carbon Footprint" of mankind? We have passed his deadlines with New York still in place and a few colder-than-usual winters. No one who is old enough to reason would deny that the climate changes - it changes every day. In the middle of the USA it has a habit of changing rather quickly and sometimes violently. It turns out that such weather has been the norm here since the early French and Spanish trappers met various Indian tribes. Oh, and we have historical documentation of the weather and movements of the stars and constellations for the last 3,000 plus years.
There was one huge catastrophic global event = Noahic Flood. It changed the very ecosphere and remade continents and terraformed the land with layers of very useful sedimentary rock and led organisms to devolve or go extinct in response to changing temperatures and seasons. Oh, and much of the majestic canyons and sculpted sedimentary rocks were formed by the initial Flood runoff and then the subsequent dike breaks and mass floods at the end of the Ice Age. Yes, people who built cities on the seashore before the massive glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere melted in reaction to a more normalized procession of seasons. The seawaters cooled and then the precipitation in the form of constant blizzards grew less, the cover of white across the North turned to liquid and then came the rising sea levels and various scenarios that would have yielded tales of Great Atlantis. Just in case you did not notice, the last several hundred years have been changing but not in one discernible or predictable way. If we have less Solar activity it will probably cool and if we have a huge volcano we certainly will cool for a season. If we have a very active Sun for a prolonged period of time it will get hotter down here.
Call me when you have learned to control the Sun or volcanoes...until then worrying about climate change is as silly as worrying about the orbit of the Moon around the Earth. It is going to happen and you cannot stop it so do something useful instead?