Investors Business Daily yesterday provided a brief but fairly recent catalog of considerations which illustrate the mushy ground upon which the contention of anthropogenic global warming rests.
Against the backdrop of the hysteria from the "mainstream" media last week in response to the prediction from the National Snow and Ice Data Center that the North Pole will be free of ice this summer, the piece points out that a similar prediction was made in 2000...yet the end of the world did not arrive as predicted.
The IBD piece also references the story I mentioned last week about the underwater volcanoes beneath the Arctic pouring lava and belching out greenhouse gasses.
Is it possible that it these eruptions, part of an "ongoing process," have played a part in whatever melting there has been of the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets?
Scientists at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory have put together a chart showing Arctic ice relatively stable until a precipitous decline began in 1999 — the very year the Arctic eruptions started.
Imagine that: a natural cause behind warming and ice melting! Say it isn't so!
The IBD article also highlights the hysteria about melting ice and endangered polar bears. It says the data was
based on last September's data, showing Arctic ice has shrunk from 13 million square kilometers to just 3 million.
What the WWF didn't mention was that by March of this year the Arctic ice had recovered to 14 million square kilometers and that ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska was at its highest level ever recorded. Ice freezes. Ice melts. That's what ice does.
According to the article, Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute spoke at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change and said Arctic temperatures were warmer during the 1930s, and that most of Antarctica is actually cooling now.
Anthropogenic global warming apostles would have us believe the planet has never changed in all it's history, and suddenly man and his evil, capitalistic, oil-company fed industry has plunged the planet into an unprecedented warming event.
That simply isn't the case. The planet hasn't been sitting in a glass case all these years (or in a museum, as the IDB article put it). Greenland wasn't so named as a joke; it used to be warm enough for the Vikings to plant vineyards.
But if you're already biased against capitalism and the West, why let an inconvenient truth get in your way of a useful tool for bashing both?
18 comments:
The study referred to in the IBD article is based on a computer model. You categorically reject computer modeling when the results don't show what you want. Why do you accept this one?
And given that you do accept this one, go to the original study, where you can read that, "Though there are uncertainties associated with both the 21st century projections of greenhouse gas and sulfate aerosol levels and the coupled general circulation models themselves, these GFDL model results suggest that the Arctic is a region where one can look for potentially dramatic climate change signals in the 21st century."
In any case, it's a positive sign that even the business and fundamentalist christian communities are realizing that this discussion needs to be based on science. Because, with science, reality matters, and it's not just because you say so.
~ robin
Vineyards in Greenland? Really?
Robin, did you miss that part about volcanoes and refreezing ice? I thought so.
I, too, am glad to see more emphasis on science. Because the more science we have and as the ideology and conjecture diminish, we'll see that this fantasy of anthropogenic global warming is going to get SMOKED by science (excuse the pun).
Remember the "population bomb" that proved to be a dud? Get ready for the "global warming" sequel.
no, bob, i didn't miss the part about the volcanoes. did you miss the point of my comment? the study that you referred to said that the arctic ice is likely to be dramatically affected by anthropogenic climate change during the 21st century. feel free to post a substantial response based on facts and reasoning any time you like.
yes, i remember thirty years ago, the articles that predicted serious problems with energy, species conservation, environment, and food availabilty. even the most casual perusal of the news will show that these things are happening.
some recent estimates suggest that the current extinction rate may be on the order of 1% per year.
if that rate continues, that would mean that about one-half of the species on earth will go extinct in the next seventy years or so. imagine that you had a list of all the species on earth. now, take your red pen and cross out half of those species.
those are the ones that your grandchildren's children (or perhaps your grandchildren's grandchilden, depending on your age) will never get to see.
it strikes me as very arrogant and selfish to decide on their behalf that they don't need those species in their world.
I didn't say I bought everything about any of these studies.
The point is, there is NO consensus, and there is a mountain of evidence which indicates any warming is naturally caused. Meanwhile, the only thing in favor of anthropogenic global warming is some flawed data and a lot of conjecture being passed off as "science."
Wow, still believing in the Malthusian population explosion, even now.
You probably still believe Marxism will work "if the right people" try it or we throw enough money at it, I suppose.
it is true that there are non-anthropogenic factors that play a significant role in climate change. these include, probably, solar variation, the wobble in the earth's axis, inputs of gases and particulates into the atmosphere from volcanoes and dust storms, and other factors.
but that does not mean that anthropogenic factors are not having important effects -- they are, and there is a consensus on that. getting red in the face, stomping your feet, and chanting "conjecture! conjecture!" will not change that.
and you might consider not frothing about me being a marxist because i point out that global change is an economic opportunity. you're embarrassing yourself bob, or should be, anyway.
~ robin
Hey Bob, why not go to the library and check out a copy of Science or Nature and find out what the scientists are actually saying, instead of re-running quotes from talk show hosts and oil company funded propagandists? It's pretty easy to find the background information, so you don't actually have to just make stuff up...
The person who wrote this article thinks he/ or she knows more than the vast majority of scientist who actually study the DATA. Nuf said.
When Crackatoa exploded in the thearly 1800's it made the Earth so cold, it snowed in New England in mid July.
Now every major University from Oxford to Harvard to Yale to Stanford to USC, Notre Dame, etc..
all have studies that prove global warming is directly related to man.
Now this journalists who wrote this tripe should go back to school.
Get your mind right man
Oxford and Harvard ain't that stupid buddy!
Actually it's you who should be embarrassed, for believing in such transparent nonsense...or should be.
Last I checked, Krakatoa wasn't underneath the Arctic.
To say there is no consensus on Anthropogenically caused Global Warming is to deny this:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
And before Bob Ellis writes that there are, variously, 20,000 or 31,000 or some other made up number of scientists who don't agree he needs to understand that there is no validity to this claim because the organization putting out the survey is bogus, as in non verified, and based on false information, a fake paper that looks like a peer reviewed paper but is not. NAS exposed this some time ago as a quick search of the web will confirm. I will be willing to bet anonymous, however, that Bob does not have the ability to discern where the truth lies in this matter but will continue to obstruct useful dialogue.
As for the rest of us, I am mostly solar powered and living a low impact life. Our power bill last month was $14 and water use was low as well. My wife and I share a high mileage car and are constantly looking to reduce paper use, plastic use, and not over-eat. The result is more money in our pockets and less in the corporations. QED
I think you're right, Mark. Bob is blind to what's true and what's false in this matter.
I admire your efforts to have a low-impact life! I'm sure Bob would call you a Marx-loving, anti-America liberal, but I think we need more people like you!
Hey, everybody. Many of these comments are outdated. Read "The Deniers" by Lawrence Solomon. Solomon interviews top scientists, not shills for either side, who have presented data that call AGW into question. Most of them are a part of the large consensus that believes in AGW but are brave enough to point out a weakness in the current model that occurs in their area of expertise. Solomon is a Canadian environmentalist and was shocked to find so much dissent. There is, indeed, a consensus, but it is not quite 100% of all scientists. FYI.
Mark, those thousands of signatures on the Oregon petition HAVE been verified; go look it up. Saying differently is either ignorance or a lie--not that either has ever been a problem for the apostles of global warming.
No wonder so many people are starting to call the philosophy of anthropogenic global warming a religion. It looks like one: takes few facts and a lot of faith, and it's adherents are vociferously intolerant of blasphemy.
You go ahead and live in your solar house and recycle your paper. Me, I'll keep living as I always have...and the earth will be just fine. God was smart enough to create enough natural materials to last, and an intelligently designed planet that can easily sustain itself with a little common sense stewardship.
The NSIDC didn't predict an ice-free polar region this year. They warned that it's vulnerable - the wrong weather conditions could tip it. The volcanoes aren't active - they're not the perp. The point about the cold winter was that the recovery was brushed aside, and June sea-ice extent fell right back to last year's record low. You can watch the change and place your bets. Here's two active webcams about 350miles south of the pole:- http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/index.html
Bob, you said that an intelligently designed planet can easily sustain itself with a little common-sense stewardship. What does this stewardship constitute, and why do you think that recycling more and relying less on gas-guzzling cars is not a logical way of adapting our lifestyles to a changing environment? Because that, to me, is stewardship.
"Living as you always have" and saying "everything will be alright" is not stewardship; it is not a way of responding to environmental change.
That stewardship involves taking care not to create more of a mess than is necessary to live comfortably, and cleaning up any big messes we inadvertently make...which we do.
Why not bother with recycling and drive around in tin cans? There are a number of reasons, but perhaps the biggest one is: we don't need to.
Recycling makes us feel good, but really doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Even in a best-case scenario, we'd never be able to feasibly recycle enough to seriously reduce landfill use--and the earth is a pretty big place. As it is, the only way recycling makes fiscal sense is when landfills raise their fees so high that the high cost of recycling then moves to the plus side of the balance sheet. And that's not even considering the consumer cost part of the equation: time and effort spent sorting bottles, etc.; time spent running stuff to the recycling center (which burns more fossil fuels) and so on.
In other words, it makes us feel good but accomplishes little or nothing.
And as for the "changing environment," it ISN'T changing...at least not any more than it always has, and there's nothing we can do to affect that.
So just pick up your trash, don't litter, don't cause any toxic chemical spills, and things will be alright.
No need to worship the planet. God was smart enough to make the planet functional enough to support our 6 billion and billions more.
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