July 28, 2008
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Warming
Professor Reynolds links to a Popsci.com story Global Warming: Not So Bad. The piece questions the D in DAWG, showing that many people and species are helped by warmer temperatures.
A 47-year study of one population of great tits—garden birds about the size of sparrows—is providing hope that some animals can adjust quickly to environmental change. University of Oxford zoologists have found that the birds are laying their eggs earlier in the spring to time the hatching of their chicks to the earlier emergence of caterpillars.
Talk about burying the lede! I'd've headlined the article:
"Great Tits Love Global Warming!"
UPDATE: An emailer is moderately offended and I'm moderately pleased that somebody expected better of me. Sincere apologies all 'round.
Wanna talk about moderately offensive?
And there's not even any double entendre there!
Posted by: johngalt at July 28, 2008 3:29 PMGood thing I didn't click that at work. Not that offensive, really, but some people are way too uptight.
That's definitely a link for one of my fans, Lord Boner, who hasn't left a comment on my blog in some time. He kept asking me to stop posting about economics and politics, and talk about tatas...jugs...melons...
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 29, 2008 11:33 PMJuly 22, 2008
Yet Another DAWG "Denier"
As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" If your name is Albert Gore Junior, you ignore those facts.
Dr. David Evans, self-described "rocket scientist" and "important and useful" government funded scientist "working to save the planet" chooses not to ignore facts. (Well, whuddaya know... a scientist who actually practices... science!) Dr. Evans now writes, "When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it."
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Read it all. Particularly the other three "most basic salient facts" of which the above is number four.
Finally, this:
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
Duh!
Hat tip: johngalt's dad, who also emailed it to Bill O'Reilly today. We'll see if he picks it up.
Of course, for even printing this you are going to hell as because you are worse than a Nazi pedophile and all. Problem is that with the recent spate of global cooling, the lower planes of damnation are much like a balmy day on the Outer Banks in SC. I hear that the damned souls of insects are a bit of a pain though.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at July 22, 2008 3:10 PMWow. That's a good, short, and serious whack at the "the science is settled" crowd. I don't know how you kept from excerpting the whole thing. I liked:
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
Yup, where real data fail to back up computer modeling, let's enhance the data with a little computer modeling.
Let me know if Mister O'Reilly can fit it in tonight between Mexican terrorists pouring across the border, speculators driving up oil prices and follow ups on some pretty white woman who is missing somewhere.
Frankly I blame Matt Drudge for global warming. Before he started calling every swirling cloud a major monumental run for you lives disaster storms were just storms and changes in average temperature just meant averages change.
Posted by: Terri at July 22, 2008 4:58 PMJuly 11, 2008
Cinema News!
It's just like E! Network around here (I'm typing this in some very short shorts).
Seriously, I hawked Phelim McAleer's documentary "Mine Your Own Business" several times. You should buy the DVD. Today, I get news that he has a new film in the works and it sounds like it's right up the street of your average ThreeSourcer: "Not Evil Just Wrong - The true cost of Global Warming hysteria." Browse around the website a little to see a trailer, a creepy picture of a former VPOTUS, and how you can help bring the film to a cinema near you.
Thanks for tuning in -- after the commercial we're talking Counter Insurgency (COIN) tactics with General David Petraeus and Jewell. Jewell's new CD will hit the stores next Thursday...
June 23, 2008
Smokestack Al
Brian Carney takes a well deserved whack at Vice President Gore in today's Political Diary:
Smokestack Al
Environmentalists are constantly telling us that major reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions can be made fairly painlessly, so the case of one former Vice President is instructive.Al Gore made headlines last year when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research disclosed just how much energy the "Inconvenient Truth" auteur consumes in his giant new palace in the Nashville suburbs. Mr. Gore responded at the time by assuring the public that he was purchasing "offsets" to make up for his energy-guzzling ways.
Well, this week the Tennessee Center's Drew Johnson checked in on Mr. Gore again. And despite an alleged program of greenification – including geothermal systems, solar panels and lots and lots of nifty compact fluorescent bulbs – Mr. Gore's electricity use from the grid was up 10% in 2007 compared to the year before. At this rate, he'll never hit his Kyoto targets. His Tennessee home currently eats up 17,768 kilowatt-hours of electricity every month – about 50% more electricity than the average household consumes in an entire year. That's one inconvenient carbon footprint.
June 10, 2008
The Science is Settled.
June 5, 2008
Question the W!
I coined the tendentious acronym DAWG because I used to concede that the (G)lobe was indeed (W)arming, and I was staking my ability to generate doubt on whether it was (A)nthropogenic and/or (D)eleterious.
Since that time, I have to renege on the W. It seems that the G hasn't really W'd in the last ten years. It's a pretty chilly June 'round these parts, and the University of Alabama at Huntsville said that Global Temperatures Dives in May.
Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting in many parts of the northern hemisphere, the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008.
The global ∆T from April to May 2008 was -.195°C
I'm still pretty convinced of G, though. The round-Earth thing has been proven to Popperian standards.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
But since the "science" is already "settled" the climate change true-believers will tell you we have to have over a hundred years of cooling to indicate a believable trend. That's if they even feel a need to make any argument at all. Carefully reasoned facts weren't required to get them where they are in the first place - why change tactics now?
P.S. I'm sitting at my desk with an electric heater warming my feet - on June 5th.
Posted by: johngalt at June 5, 2008 3:08 PMThe Earth is warming, it is flat, frogs are spontaneously generated out of mud, and the five elements are earth, water, air, fire (or ash) and life.
Posted by: AtTheWaterCooler at June 6, 2008 9:43 PMMay 27, 2008
Wi-Fi Allergy
Stop the earth - I want off.
Seriously, didn't most people have that same reaction to the 1970's nutjobs who wanted to outlaw drilling for oil in this country because it was "dirty?" Leave the idiots alone and look what it gets you - politicians who say things like "gasoline prices are not based on supply and demand, they're being driven up by reckless speculators and obscene oil company profits" and "we can't drill our way out of this problem" when, in fact, that is the ONLY way to bring gasoline prices down. And it makes us "less dependent on foreign oil" at the same time.
April 27, 2008
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
JK recently wrote "There is no serious opposition to global warming left in the free world." This is sad and defeatist, but true.
Now the intelligent, thoughtful and once-principled Speaker of the "Contract with America" House has teamed up with the current 3rd-in-line for the presidency to film a "We can solve it.org" propaganda ad.
The ad paints them in complete agreement, though this liberal blog laments that Gingrich's heart isn't really in it for the good:
Despite sitting side-by-side on the couch, Pelosi and Gingrich don't share identical views on climate change. Pelosi is backing a mandatory cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions, while Gingrich would rather use tax credits and other incentives to get industry to switch to low-carbon technologies.
But Newt has surrendered the point of the DAWG spear nonetheless. As JK said, no serious opposition left anywhere in the free world.
Et tu, Newto?
Posted by: jk at April 27, 2008 5:12 PMApril 23, 2008
Bring It On
I refer, of course, to CATT: Cooling Abiotic Terrestrial Temperatures.
Phil Chapman loses the trademark Australian calmness under pressure.
THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.
[...]
This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.
He is actually scared. And he is probably right. Cold kills.
As a freedom lover, I have to say "bring it on!" There is no serious opposition to global warming left in the free world. The EU nations have completely bought in, and all three current Presidential contenders are DAWG disciples. Nobody is predicting less than Democratic pickups in the house and Senate. PM Rudd in Australia is in (maybe Berlusconi in Italy is not? I don't know).
I think HUGE disruptions to freedom and economic growth are a fait accompli -- if not a Fiat X-9. A dramatic continuation of cooling trends might be the only way to shut some of the worst ideas down. And with growth and innovation, we will be best able to deal with cold. Or heat of course, but try to tell "them" that.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
April 18, 2008
Doubting The W in DAWG
A guest Editorial in the WSJ today questions the accuracy of temperature data showing global warming. It's a pretty comprehensive look at the means of collecting data and revisions that have been made to the dataset. Reading it makes a thinking person question the accuracy of historical temperature data. All the shifts in temperature seem like they may be within the margin of error.
I enjoyed this look at "Warming Island" in Greenland. Like Love Canal, it turns out Vice President Gore may not have discovered it:
The fear of a sudden loss of ice from Greenland also makes a lot of news. A year ago, radio and television were ablaze with the discovery of "Warming Island," a piece of land thought to be part of Greenland. But when the ice receded in the last few years, it turned out that there was open water. Hence Warming Island, which some said hadn't been uncovered for thousands of years. CNN, ABC and the BBC made field trips to the island.But every climatologist must know that Greenland's last decade was no warmer than several decades in the early and mid-20th century. In fact, the period from 1970-1995 was the coldest one since the late 19th century, meaning that Greenland's ice anomalously expanded right about the time climate change scientists decided to look at it.
Warming Island has a very distinctive shape, and it lies off of Carlsbad Fjord, in eastern Greenland. My colleague Chip Knappenberger found an inconvenient book, "Arctic Riviera," published in 1957 (near the end of the previous warm period) by aerial photographer Ernst Hofer. Hofer did reconnaissance for expeditions and was surprised by how pleasant the summers had become. There's a map in his book: It shows Warming Island.
The mechanism for the Greenland disaster is that summer warming creates rivers, called moulins, that descend into the ice cap, lubricating a rapid collapse and raising sea levels by 20 feet in the next 90 years. In Al Gore's book, "An Inconvenient Truth," there's a wonderful picture of a moulin on page 193, with the text stating "These photographs from Greenland illustrate some of the dramatic changes now happening on the ice there."
Really? There's a photograph in the journal "Arctic," published in 1953 by R.H. Katz, captioned "River disappearing in 40-foot deep gorge," on Greenland's Adolf Hoels Glacier. It's all there in the open literature, but apparently that's too inconvenient to bring up. Greenland didn't shed its ice then. There was no acceleration of the rise in sea level.
April 8, 2008
Broken Windiow Fallacy
Fred Krupp, "president of Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of 'Earth: The Sequel – The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming' (W.W. Norton, 2008)" has a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal today. Goody-goody, lawd almighty, we all gonna get rich solving global warming!
Global warming skeptics notwithstanding, fixing global warming won't be a drain on the economy. On the contrary, it will unleash one of the greatest floods of new wealth in history. When Congress finally acts, America's entrepreneurs and inventors will find the capital they need to solve global warming – and a lot of people will make a killing.
Senator Obama preaches a similar message: "millions of green-collar jobs."
And I agree, up to a point. I think innovation is headed toward us in energy and that some investors will get very rich and many will find good employment. Where I differ with Krupp and Obama, is that I want to reward innovators and they want to reward rent-seekers. Krupp's article (and I pulled the worst quote out) says that the market is just waiting for government to "set the rules." When cap-and-trade is introduced, everything will take off.
I'd suggest the rules have been set already. Petroleum products provide a certain number of KCalories per Mole, and the cost to extract, refine, and transport it is pretty well known. I think Einstein laid down "the rules" for mass and energy -- no need to wait to implement Broussard fusion. Develop away!
Sadly, the rules people are waiting for will come from Senator Grassley "how many dollars of subsidies do I get for developing?" and these rules will stifle real innovation and real wealth creation.
UPDATE: Even Paul Krugman has come out against Ethanol, but Michael Goldfarb catches him misrepresenting Senator McCain, who has it right:
Yes, I oppose subsidies. Not just ethanol subsidies. Subsidies. And not just in Iowa either. I oppose them in my own state of Arizona. ... [I]t also means no rifle-shot tax breaks for big oil. It means no line items for hydrogen, no mandates for other renewable fuels, and no big-government debacles like the Dakotas Synfuels plant. It means ethanol entrepreneurs get a level playing field to make their case -- and earn their profits.
An advanced copy of this book has been sitting on my desk for months, but I just cannot seem to find the drive to delve in. After reading the op-ed, I am glad that the book is collecting dust.
Posted by: Everyday Economist at April 9, 2008 11:21 PMMcCain is a better man than I. I could not have resisted including "... or not" at the end of that final sentence.
If "alternative" energy economies made sense economically there'd be no reason to "wait for government." This, by the way, reminds me of the old quip, "If you're waiting for me you're backing up!"
Posted by: johngalt at April 12, 2008 12:32 PMApril 4, 2008
Brrrr
Gateway Pundit has a wrapup of weather/climate news. If you go to this post, all the following are links
Brrrr... Antarctica Records Record High Ice Cap Growth
Brrrr... South America Has Coldest Winter in a 90 Years
Brrrr... Iraqis See First Snow in 100 Years As Sign of Peace
Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in a Decade in China Cause Rioting
Brrrr... Jerusalem Grinds to a Halt As Rare Snowstorm Blasts City
Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in 50 Years Continue to Cripple China
Brrrr... China Suffers Coldest Winter in 100 Years
Brrrr... Pakistan Suffers Lowest Temps in 70 Years-- 260 Dead
Brrrr... Record Cold Hits Central Asia-- 654 Dead in Afghanistan
Brrrr... Severe Weather Kills Dozens in Kashmir
Brrrr... Tajikistan Crisis!! Coldest Winter in 25 Years!
Brrrr... Record Cold Wave Blasts Mumbai, India
Brrrr... Snow and Ice in San Diego?
Brrrr... Wisconsin Snowfall Record Shattered
Brrrr... The Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Back And It's Thick
Brrrr... Turkey's snowiest winter continues.
Brrrr... Record Cold & Snow Blankets Acropolis in Greece (Video)
Brrrr... Longest Ever Cold Spell Kills Cattle & Rice in Vietnam
Brrrr... Most Snow Cover Over North America Since 1966
Brrrr... Australia Suffers Through Coldest Summer in 50 Years
Brrrr... Record Snowfall Slams Ohio River Valley
Brrrr... New Data Gives Global Warming the Cold Shoulder
The post discusses "snow rage:"
A record snowfall in eastern Canada this winter has inspired some, crushed others, led to a rash of snow-blower thefts and incited at least two armed clashes, authorities said Wednesday.
[and]
An elderly Quebec City man pulled a 12-gauge shotgun on a female snowplow operator on Sunday for blowing snow onto his property, after warning her.
Cranky, cold, Quebecois -- it's not a pretty sight.
We could prevent this 'Global Cooling' disaster if we put AlGore on a no-fly list.
Posted by: mdmhvonpa at April 7, 2008 11:03 AMApril 3, 2008
That's One Unscientific American
Don Luskin links to a Scientific American story that, well, let me steal Luskin's summation:
"Economics as a whole is invalid because, as I define economics, it doesn't yield the politically correct alarmist interpretation of global warming."
As Dave Berry might say, he is not making this up.
Unfortunately, it is clear that neoclassical economics has also become outdated. The theory is based on unscientific assumptions that are hindering the implementation of viable economic solutions for global warming and other menacing environmental problems.
I'm starting to understand how Galileo felt. Our scientific community has been replaced by a ruling class of religious wackos who care more about Orthodoxy than truth.
Eppur si muove, Dr, Nadeau, Eppur si muove.
1. Doesn't he have to be an economist to make such statements? Such seems to be the policy with respect to critiques of the 'science' of global warming.
2. The Austrian school of economics rejects neoclassical theory on similar grounds and yet most, if not all, Austrians view intervention with respect to global warming as unwarranted as well. In fact, many Austrian justify opposition to intervention through the failure of the neoclassical theory of intervention.
Posted by: HB at April 4, 2008 9:31 PMA mention of Crichton's 'State of Fear' is appropriate here.
I'm just starting to read it so I can't cite any analogies.
But let me get this straight: The man (Robert Nadeau) who says there is a worldwide "environmental crisis" - a view principally supported by extensive mathematical modeling - claims that neoclassical economic theory is "outdated" because its mathematical theories are predicated on certain "unscientific assumptions." Can this guy pull rabbits from hats or what!
Posted by: johngalt at April 6, 2008 3:40 PMMarch 30, 2008
Back to the Caves!
Samizdat Thaddeus Tremayne posts the "Earth Lights" pic that we use for the ThreeSources banner and says:
I never get tired of looking at this photograph. It never fails to fill me with wonder and awe at the ingenuity of my species who, against all the odds, have carved these glorious man-made islands of light out of the primordial blackness. Whenever I am heavy of heart, I open up this photograph and stare at it to remind me that, somewhere, there is light and life.
Then he tells the sad tale of "Earth Hour" where cities are turning off the light for an hour to fight global warming. Tremayne continues:
With each passing day I become more convinced that the 'green' movement is actually a millenarian psychosis; a mental and spiritual sickness borne, perhaps, from some degree of civilisational exhaustion. Not just a belief that the end of the world is nigh, but an active desire to bring it about. And soon. Ours is not the first age to witness such pandemics of madness but, in the Middle Ages at least, there was the excuse of a near-universal poverty. In such a state of interminable plight, despair may not be the wisest response but it is at least an understandable one.
Heat and light are unalloyed goods to me. Both in moderation of course, but that people are turning off the lights to prevent warming seems a potent presentation of those who would, in Karl Popper's words, "send us back to the caves."
John Rockefeller brought heat and light to poor people; he is considered a robber baron. One thinks of the old bumper sticker: "Ban Mining. Let the bastards freeze in the dark." That's what these people want.
March 23, 2008
"that's what sceptics have been saying"
"Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide."There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
That is just one of many stunning admissions in a transcript of a radio interview between Australian Journalist Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, "a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs." Christopher Pearson publishes it in The Australian and suggests "Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril."
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
It gets worse from there for the warmies. No doubt Ms. Marohasy will be outed as a corporate shill for the petro industry.
Pearson closes with some overly optimistic suggestions that the fall of global warming hysteria will usher in a new era of reason and freedom:
With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.
I'm not so sanguine. I think recycling has been substantially discredited, yet my city council last year voted to force it onto all municipal residents.
This won't go away, but with a little luck maybe we could get a Republican Presidential candidate to disavow it.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
March 19, 2008
Headline Of The Day Year
The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
The right-wing, corporate shills at NPR wonder why the oceans aren't heating.
I read that article. It was so amusing that the "scientist" never considered that global warming was wrong, he only refered to it as a "period of less rapid warming".
Posted by: pquist at March 19, 2008 10:30 PMI love that they admit that there are many parameters and processes they do not understand -- yet this never leads to them to question their basic premise.
Posted by: jk at March 19, 2008 10:39 PM"yet this never leads to them to question their basic premise."
What they are doing should not be called science, science requires one to be a skeptic. What they appear to be trying to do is prove what they believe (their faith) is true; They are not seeking truth, they are seeking evidence to argue that the use of energy is bad.
They being those who are engaged and hired to find evidence of environmental damage cause by the use of energy; who use quasi science and buzz words and try to pass it off as science.
Their clients are environmentalist, socialist (who want the US economy to match the economy of other countries), and those who realize they could profit selling an alternative -- to name a few.
Posted by: AtTheWaterCooler at March 20, 2008 9:22 PMMarch 10, 2008
Back to the Caves!
What's the appropriate output for CO2, considering the delicate balance of economic growth, human comfort, and environmental concerns? Zero! WaPo:
Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
I was concerned at first that it might be environmental alarmism. But no, this is science. They have proved this through computer modeling. Just because none of the models predicted the coldest winter in 100 years or record snowfall across North America does not mean that computer modeling is not legitimate science.
Why has no one created computer models to predict the accuracy of computer modeling? That could "settle" the "science" once and for all!
Just askin'.
Posted by: johngalt at March 11, 2008 11:40 AMFebruary 27, 2008
Brrrrrrrr!
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Obviously, we're all going to die. I love the two assertions that it is "anecdotal," obviously it is. I'm just struck that a tornado, hurricane, or the meteorological phenomenon known as "a really hot day" are never caveated as anecdotal.
Hat-tip: Instapundit. And I must point out it is beautiful on the Colorado front range today.
February 14, 2008
I'm A Chevy Man Now!
ThreeSourcers have tended toward being Mopar-heads. AlexC has his Hemi, JohnGalt his 'Cuda, and I have fond memories or ripping out the "tiny" 318-cubic inch V8 in my 1968 Sport Satellite in favor of a 440. You could pretty much pin global warming on me.
But now, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz tells a few journalists that Global Warming is a "Total Crock of S**t"
I am stupefied! Next thing you know, BP will stop apologizing for selling us fuel. It could happen.
Anyhow, this doesn’t mean that GM isn’t serious about building the Volt, of course—just that global warming isn’t the reason. And that’s fine. GM doesn’t have to have noble intentions as long as it delivers the fuel-efficient cars it’s been promising. According to D, Lutz says he’s excited about the Volt because “it’s the last thing anybody expected from GM.” But you have to wonder how statements like this affect public perception of the Volt project. Because right now, if you ask a car geek about the Chevy Volt you’ll get one of two responses. The most predictable: “Total vaporware, it’ll never happen.” A cautiously optimistic few, however, will admit that General Motors really does seem serious about building the Volt. After all, they’ve staked the reputation of the company (which lost $38.7 billion dollars last year) on their ability to start producing this extended-range electric car by the end of 2010.
Amen, Bob. Build a car because people might want to buy it. Let Hollywood save the world.
Hat-tip: Insty
In defense of the Pentastar, Chrysler Corp. HAS moved back to private ownership now and appears poised for fisticuffs with the unions. And the good Mr. Lutz didn't actually step up to a podium with his bold pronouncement, like John Coleman did. It's still refreshingly candid, however.
Oh, and did you read the comments to the linked article? There's the real meat of this story. For example, "everyone no's that global warming is real. co2 levels have dramatically increased since the industrial revolution. we know that co2 increases temperature: just look at venus. how can you say that global warming isn't real?"
Venus - you mean, the SECOND rock from the sun?
How much different would our nation be if the public schools taught spelling, grammar, history, math and physics instead of self-esteem and urban legends? Nobody no's.
Posted by: johngalt at February 14, 2008 3:23 PMTrue. But I give Lutz points for language.
Posted by: jk at February 14, 2008 3:30 PMFebruary 8, 2008
Global Warming Authoritarianism
According to one academic, the problem with the response to global warming lies at the feet of those of us who believe in democracy and freedom:
We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.
"...chosen liberty rather than life"? This is the evil that we as advocates of a free and prosperous society face. Environmentalist whackos are starting to reveal themselves for what they truly are: authoritarians who believe that their knowledge and opinions trump all. Of course, they are advocating this for your own good. Just read this excerpt from the description of his new book:
Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.
Of course those who are authoritarians are by definition those who seek power.
I am reminded of a great quote by Frank Knight (via The Road to Serfdom, p. 152):
Posted by: HB at February 10, 2008 10:15 AM
The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.
No, HB does NOT worry too much. While collectivism is discredited in countless places around the world it is being pressed forward in this country, liberty's shining city on a hill, for its adherents know if they can conquer the American Spirit in America the rest of the world will be defenseless.
While American attention is focused on Islamic terrorism there is evidence that totalitarian elements in other countries, notably Putin's Russia, work actively within our borders to subvert individualism in society and in government. For example, on January 28 of this year NPR interviewed former Soviet agent Sergei Tretyakov, whose story of defection to the US as an act of Russian nationalist pride is documented in the book 'Comrade J - The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War.' Sergei tells us:
"Russia is doing everything it can today to undermine and embarrass the U.S. The SVR rezidenturas in the U.S. are not less, but in some aspects even more active today than during the Cold War. What should that tell you?"
I highly recommend listening to the 8 minute interview (click Listen Now at the top of the linked page.)
And on the 'Global Warming' side, we have this from the mouths of unwitting child accomplices:
"Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Massive heat waves,
Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Severe droughts,
Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Devastaing hurricanes,
Tick, tick, tick, tick,
Our future - is up - to you.
Go to fight global warming dot com,
While there's still time."
Well if the Ad Council says it it MUST be true, right? That's what they call "consensus science."
Posted by: johngalt at February 10, 2008 1:26 PMAnd aren't those "tick,tick" kids the same ones who play ring-around-the-rosey while the AMA tells us we have to support Socialized medicine?
Posted by: jk at February 11, 2008 10:55 AMThe 16 latest pieces of evidence of global warming are the 16 degrees currently outside my door.
It's damn cold enough here, and it's still 50 degrees warmer than International Falls!
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at February 11, 2008 11:59 PMWith all respect to my friends in New York and Minnesota: haha.
I have driven my covertible top-down at least once every calandar month since I bought it (Oct 2004). And I got my February in today!
Posted by: jk at February 12, 2008 6:44 PMJanuary 31, 2008
President Clinton Tells Truth!
Hold the presses! Don Luskin says honesty in politics is rare So savor this morsel of truth from an unlikely source, Bill Clinton:
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
Karl Popper talks about those who would have us go back to the caves. Instapundit links to the threat of a new ice age.
Bill's stumping was working for Hillary, until he started putting on the "mad" face too. It just didn't resonate with voters when Obama would speak with charm and optimism. Now Bill really put his foot in his wife's mouth.
A "Law & Order: CI" rerun last night was about an intelligent, ambitious woman whose political campaigns always seemed to be sabotaged by her husband. Not that I'm in any way saying or implying Hillary will have Bill done in -- the ep was loosely (and unfairly) based on my former county DA, Jeannine Pirro, not Hillary. But I couldn't help but think, wow, Hillary will soon enough be praying that Bubba has a heart attack so he'll shut up.
Just sayin'.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 31, 2008 2:23 PMI still think he's a net gain in the primaries -- I think she might be encouraging him to have that third cheeseburger when she's in the general.
Posted by: jk at January 31, 2008 3:13 PMAwesome.
Three points.
How arrogant do you have to be to think you can regulate our economy to some "slower" number by saying so.
... and what is that number?
If the "economy stupid" is the new resurgent issue, and Bushco's GOP economic policies are too blame for the pending depression (Obama save us), why is a slow economy a bad thing?
Posted by: AlexC at January 31, 2008 3:24 PM
AC, I think the trouble is that Bush is slowing down the wrong parts of the economy. President Hillary Clinton would slow down the right parts. Government knows best!
Posted by: jk at January 31, 2008 5:59 PMJanuary 28, 2008
Would We Complain about Too Much O2?
One thing I've never heard addressed by the DAWG crowd: Isn't the added CO2 good for plants?
Terri at I Think ^(Link)... links to an item on treehugger.com that says the additional carbon dioxide provides a longer and more productive season for trees.
Scientists have been at a loss to account for why the traditional autumnal spectacle of disheveled trees and changing colors has gotten gradually pushed back over the last few years. Some have attributed the delayed autumnal senescence to increasing global temperatures; others have attributed it to the length of day.David F. Karnosky, a professor at Michigan Technological University, believes rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide may be to blame — and, perhaps surprisingly, to thank. Karnosky explains that delaying senescence may in fact be good news for forestry industries since it prolongs the trees' growing season. The extra carbon dioxide taken up in the autumn, in addition to that taken up during the growing season, would also boost their productivity.
December 27, 2007
Dave Lindorff is Crazy
Dave Lindorff can not only predict the future, but he also has the ability to relish the potential plight of others:
So the future political map of America is likely to look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.There is a poetic justice to this of course. It is conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact.
The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.
He has even reduced the century time-frame that most global warming prognosticators rely upon, saying that,
The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
This piece is nothing but hyperbole. He wants to punish those who do not believe that he and others like him can predict the future. What kind of man gets pleasure from the plight of others who merely disagree with him?
I would be willing to bet a substantial sum that these areas will not be inundated in the lifetime of his cats -- and I would even give them nine lives!
Ahh, yes, from the people who care...
I'm thinking his political geography is worse than his meteorology. The coastal areas are deep azure blue, are they not? You're going to submerge Alabama but New York and San Francisco will be okay?
Okay, so Florida loses some electoral votes, but I used to cross Texas in my musician days -- trust me, it's pretty big. Sheila Jackson Lee's district is in trouble, but there will be many dry Republican seats left. Some well placed tides in California might even make California Republican -- surf Bakersfield!
Lindorff is not crazy, he is retarded. His idea of science is to take an average of science related news stories and draw conclusions based upon the "preponderance of opinion." And he calls himself a Progressive? Only in the sense of making progress *back* in time.
The major instrument that makes people like him possible in large numbers is America's public education system and its growing abandonment of objective knowledge in every subject of study. If *that* trend is not reversed then the red states will be overflown by blue hoardes who believe government can make things so (cars getting more energy from the same gallon of gas is a timely example) simply by enacting a law.
Lindorff's closing appeal for the right to say, "Shut up - we told you this would happen," is equally applicable to my prediction as to his.
And as for this Libtard's predictions, HB, I don't just bet against them - I *guarantee* them to be complete nonsense.
The most alarming observation about Dave "The Case for Impeachment" Lindorff's fantasy prognostication is his willingness to completely abandon democracy in order to "gerrymander" the fairy tale ending he so craves. "They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but *we* need to keep a *firm grip* on *our* political systems..." If that's not tacit admission that the blue, mostly urban, areas of *our* country are soviet-style socialist *utopias* I don't know what is.
Posted by: johngalt at December 27, 2007 2:59 PMDon Luskin links as well, attracting this comment:
The twisted fantasy of Dave Lindorff is a great example of the real silver lining within the global warming scam. Lefty moonbats are revealed for what they really are: hate-filled, anti-progress, anti-business, anti-human lunatics. They might not come to an understanding of the Laffer curve in several cat lifetimes but we’ll all know soon enough that this whole movement is just a big alarmist myth. I had great fun making handshake bets at holiday parties that by next Christmas the press, (yes even the mainstream media will capitulate), will be telling a different tale as more scientists come to the forefront and proclaim their disagreement and even disgust with the whole deal. Certainly in my dog’s lifetime this scam will be revealed for what it is and those who truly do care about the environment will realize that the greater cause suffered a setback in credibility from Gore and his ilk.Posted by: jk at December 27, 2007 5:08 PM
The goddamn idiot thinks that the liberal cities can keep the Atlantic at bay by dike systems?
Let me personally assure you all, when one is driving along Manhattan's West Side Highway for the first time when it rains hard, one can get frightened with the waves looking ready to come onto the pavement. There's no way in hell that a system of "Dutch-style dikes" will protect New York any more than New Orleans was protected.
Oh, and with the Midwest dried up and all its staunch conservatives dead, agricultural exports will drop. Because the U.S. is the *world's* breadbasket, he rest of the world won't be able to feed itself, so there will be famine across the world. Their economies will shrink, and they in turn won't be buying other American exports either. But a loss of jobs will be the least of the surviving liberals' worries. I hope they like cannibalism, because there sure as hell won't be enough food to go around for Americans alone.
Hmm, that new world sounds like "Resident Evil." Since liberalism IS evil, it fits.
"It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, 'Shut up. We told you this would happen.'"
I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, in a different way. That's what the rest of us will say to liberals when we take back our rights by *force*.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at December 28, 2007 10:36 AMHeh. Bill Quick suggests the response to "Shut Up" might be Bang! in Be Careful What You Wish For, Unarmed Pussies
Posted by: jk at December 28, 2007 12:17 PMDecember 25, 2007
Global Schwarming!
For the second Christmas in a row, I am snowed in and cannot attend the family functions. Last year, I missed my family's, my wife's family's, and a rescheduled event.
To be honest, there is not a lot of snow up here. But I heard that there was 6-8" at my destination and it is still coming down. It does not help that I have the world's worst snow car, with bald tires.
I'm not complaining, mind you -- we have food, wine, and broadband. It will be a while before we have to eat some of the weaker ones...
Merry Christmas!
Being an odd numbered year we're Christmasing in Sunny Seattle (several of us have corroborating stories of a five to ten minute period of unmitigated direct sunlight this morning) but we're even seeing some snowfall here. Nothing that will have to be shoveled, mind you. Clearly the Globe is Warming Deleteriously and the cause is obviously Anthropogenic.
If it makes you feel better JK, our Lafayette based horse sitter called us to say the roads are too icy for her to safely trek to Atlantis Farm and nourish our equines. We had to call on an intrepid and irreplaceable neighbor to pinch hit for this evening.
And that d@mn3d Weather Link software I have to run on my PC to upload observation data to the internet isn't working. (There's something about going to Seattle that causes all of my automated processes to cr@p the bed within 24 hours.) Apologies for the "No Data" Atlantis Farm weather applet. This may be the last straw in my debate over buying the brand new direct IP connect version. Maybe it will restart itself automatically.
Posted by: johngalt at December 25, 2007 4:40 PMMerry Christmas to the Machos from us!
I wondered if your transmitter had iced over like a satellite dish. Good old Colorado, it's sunny this morning and all will be fine before noon.
Thank NED for neighbors. My across-the-street, reciprocal-dog-sit neighbor has shoveled my walk for the past two years. I hire out the yard work but I would not have been able to stay here without him. I have offered to purchase a new snowblower but he has so far taken this task on unremunerated (I guess I am a dirty hippie after all).
December 11, 2007
They Put The 'D' In DAWG
A complete list of things caused by global warming
Hat-tip: John Ives
December 3, 2007
Two Views on CO2
I'm going to link -- in one post -- to both The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I hope that the space-time continuum can handle the stress.
The WSJ folks point out An Inconvenient Reduction. It seems that the US is emitting less CO2 than it used to:
The Bush Administration announced last week that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide fell by 1.8% from 2005 to 2006. Output of all greenhouse gases was down 1.5% last year. All this while the American economy grew by 2.9%. It's the first time since 1990, when the U.N. began counting these things, that the U.S. has reduced emissions without also suffering a recession.Critics immediately pointed to the Energy Department's acknowledgment that the reductions were in part due to higher energy prices and favorable weather. But greater use of lower-carbon energy sources, including natural gas, also played a big role. The U.S. reduction also suggests that letting markets work through higher prices will reduce carbon emissions more than the cap and trade mandates favored by environmental lobbies and most Democrats.
Meanwhile, our intellectual betters in Europe have stumbled to meet their goals. Obviously, they are having too much fun -- but The Guardian is set to step in and fix it: Eat, drink and be miserable: the true cost of our addiction to shopping Subtitled: "Today it seems politically unpalatable, but soon the state will have to turn to rationing to halt hyper-frantic consumerism "
Is it enough to have halved family meat consumption, have foregone flights for several sun-starved years and arranged a life in which habits of cycling to work and walking to school are routine? No, it's just scratching at the surface. If the developed world is to implement the 80% cuts in carbon emissions the UN demands as part of the talks beginning in Bali today, the lives of our children will have to be dramatically different from everything we are currently bringing them up to expect.
First of all, it seems pretty irresponsible that you brought those CO2 exhaling offspring into being in the first place, never mind your difficulties telling them to "turn back to the caves" as Karl Popper would say.
You really really must read the whole Guardian piece, and as Samizdat Jonathan Pearce (inline hat-tip) says, actually read as much of the comment thread as your stomach will allow. Ms. Bunting gets quite a few "atta-girls," but also some concern from other lefty, Guardian readers. I meant to post there that President George Bush's plans seemed to be working really well, but I wasn't registered to post...
UPDATE: Lileks covers the Guardian article. He checks a questionnaire that he is "not very concerned" about global warming:
It’s like you’re one of those people they sang about in “Hair”! People who don’t care about war, or social injustice! Somehow “not very concerned” means you’re a global warming denialist, and you would, if you had time and money, drive to the Arctic in a Hummer and push polar bears into the drink. With the windows down. And the heat on.
November 12, 2007
Climate Reason
AWG advocate Bjorn Lomborg has a nice piece in the Telegraph: Ignore Al Gore, but not his Nobel friends
While Gore was creating alarm with his belief that a 20-foot-high wall of water would inundate low-lying cities, the IPCC showed us we should realistically prepare for a rise of one foot or so by the end of the century. Beyond the dramatic difference, it is also worth putting that one foot in perspective. Over the last 150 years, sea levels rose about one foot - yet, did we notice?Most tellingly, while Gore was raising fears about the Gulf Stream halting and a new Ice Age starting, the scientists discounted the prospect entirely.
Reasonable discussion -- sans hyperbole -- would serve the scientific community and the environment a lot better than the exaggerated claims of the doomsayers.
Wait a minute. Are you saying, "Objective reporting," of "objective science," WITHOUT a bunch of self-serving fear mongering? Pshaw! How's the medical marijuana stash holding out over there in Boulder County?
Posted by: johngalt at November 13, 2007 2:24 AMJoin me in a quick chorus of Kumbaya?
Posted by: jk at November 13, 2007 12:28 PMMaybe it's a coincidence, jg, but the New York Times highlights new books with centrist views of global warming.
Posted by: jk at November 13, 2007 4:11 PMNovember 10, 2007
DAWG Classes in Colorado Schools
While JK's comment posits that the forces of DAWG are losing momentum in the scientific community, the movement is clearly in ascendency in the realm of popular culture and consequently, politics. To wit: Colorado's newly minted Governor announced his bold new "Climate Action Plan."
"Climate change is our generation's greatest environmental challenge," Gov. Ritter said. "It threatens our economy, our Western way of life and our future. It will change every facet of our existence, and unless we address it and adapt to it, the results will be catastrophic for generations to come."
This "catastrophic" threat to "every facet of our existence" sounds serious - almost as frightening as the gratuitous worldwide use of the hazardous compound dihydrogen monoxide.
A critical component of the governor's plan is to ensure that "the youngest generation" drinks the Kool-Aid. From page 25:
I. CLIMATE EDUCATION AND THE NEW ENERGY ECONOMY“If we fail to educate the youngest generation in the ways of sustainability, then we will truly fail as a whole.” U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson
Education about the choices we can make as citizens and as consumers is a primary ingredient in our individual and collective ability to successfully limit human contribution to climate change. People want to do the right thing — but they must be provided the
right information and means for doing so. Education will also be key to training Colorado’s workforce to meet the challenges and expectations of the New Energy Economy.Climate curricula. The state will work through the Governor’s P-20 Education Council and others to make sustainability curricula become standard fare in K-12 classrooms throughout the state. Today’s students will be living in a warmer climate resulting from the activities of previous generations. They need to understand the science of climate change, what its impacts will be on their lives, and how to critically evaluate the steps needed to reach our 2020 and 2050 emission reduction goals. Students will also need academic and technical skills to be ready for jobs in the New Energy Economy.
Best practices already in use, such as in the Poudre Valley School District in northern Colorado, will be featured through state web-based communications. A “Best in Education” category will be highlighted in the Governor’s Annual Excellence in Sustainability Awards program.
(Underlining for emphasis is mine.)
First, what does "sustainability" have to do with climate change? Which elements of this broad environmentalist mantra will be championed to "successfully limit human contribution to climate change?"
Secondly, why is it a good idea to teach students to "critically evaluate the steps needed to reach our (...) emission reduction goals" but not to teach them to critically evaulate the science of climate change?
I plan to write the esteemed governor and ask him how he justifies instruction in selectively applied reason in our publicly funded schools.
You're always there to dash the faintest glimmers of my optimism, jg -- thanks.
This time I have to agree. This will be just like recycling. It will live on by being inculcated in our youth. Sad but true. We live in a bona fide blue state now, with all privileges thereunto appertaining and all that.
Posted by: jk at November 10, 2007 12:58 PMNovember 9, 2007
Bringing Reason to DAWG
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. - Robert A. Heinlein
What civilization needs is to wrest climate science from the fuzzy side of campus where Albert Gore Junior and his minions have kidnapped it.
I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it. - John Coleman, Founder: The Weather Channel
(Mr. Coleman's remarks were originally published on Icecap.us, a scientifically oriented website dedicated to climate science that is directed by Joseph D'Aleo, founding Director of Meterology at TWC.)
Nice post and link. I'm pretty pessimistic on politics these days, but am feeling that the DAWG advocates have overplayed their hand with "the science is settled" and that we have passed a turning point for acceptance of skepticism.
Posted by: jk at November 9, 2007 6:12 PMOctober 29, 2007
Give Me a D!
The D in DAWG stands, of course, for deleterious. Even if global warming is real and caused my man, are we certain it is so bad?
The Pollyannaish folks at the NYTimes Europe bureau have a piece on Greenland:
But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests.“If it gets warmer, a large part of southern Greenland could be like this,” Mr. Hoeg said, walking through Qanasiassat, a boat ride from Narsarsuaq, a tiny southern community notable mostly for having an international airport. Two and a half acres near here of imported pines, spruces, larches and firs are plunked in the midst of the scrubby, rocky hillside next to the fjord, as startling as a mirage. “If it gets a little warmer, you could talk about a productive forest with enough wood for logs,” Mr. Hoeg said.
It seems four trees planted by the Dutch botanist Rosenvinge in 1893 are coming out of dormancy and springing green buds. I was not aware that we had global warming in 1893. I should get out more.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
Whoops, hit Enter when putting in the password. Anyway, why shouldn't Greenland be like how it was before? A few years ago, there was a report on "global warming" that the MSM ignored, about tree rings dating back to AD 1200 showing a warmer Earth back then.
The Earth's cooler temperatures during Medieval times was no small reason why European populations suffered. It destroyed harvests of certain grains, which was well-known to Jefferson and some other intellectuals of his day. By the end of the 18th century, they were worried about new global cooling and a repeat of the near-famine conditions.
I just remembered Isaac Asimov writing in his "Book of Facts" in 1979 that it wouldn't take much to cause a new Ice Age, only a slightly cooler summer followed by a slightly cooler winter. That was the climate change hysteria back then.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at October 30, 2007 11:22 AMYou mean Greenland might actually be GREEN again? Say it ain't so!
Posted by: johngalt at October 30, 2007 2:44 PMOctober 28, 2007
Global Warming Doomsday Called Off
An uncommon referral (my brother's been researching the latest objective criticism of Al Gore's Nobel Prize winning eco-thriller since the science teacher at his children's elite (expensive) private Boulder County school screened it in her classes) and an uncommon source (CBC is the state-sponsored television outlet in socialist Canada) "explodes the doom and gloom of global warming."
As the Nobel Peace Prize begins collecting dust on Al and Tipper's mantelpiece it is fair to reprise these "deniers" contradictions, originally aired in November 2005, of the IPCC orthodoxy upon which this granting of the once illustrious award was largely based.
Humans stand accused of having set off a global climate catastrophe by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.The prophecy of doom is clear and media pass on the message uncritically.
Now serious criticism has arisen from a number of heavyweight independent scientists. They argue that most of the climatic change we have seen is due to natural variations.
They also state that if CO 2 is to play a role at all -it will be minuscule and not catastrophic!
This story presents a series of unbiased scientists as our witnesses.
We will hear their eloquent criticism of the IPCC conclusions illustrated by coverage of their research work.
The documentary is posted on YouTube here. It's 43 minutes long but I suggest the following excerpts:
5:30 to 8:30 - Ice core samples in Greenland show average temperature 1 degree higher now than 100 years ago, but 1 degree lower than 1000 years ago and 2 degrees below previous millenia. Corroborated by measurements elsewhere in North America, China and North Africa. "In 1875 we have the lowest temperatures in the last 8000 years and that matches exactly the time when meteorological observations started."
8:30 to 11:00 - Computer models, using probability theory, replace the "old" Little Ice-Age Theory with the infamous "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures over the last 10,000 years. Hockey stick theory developed by Dr. Michael Mann of U of Virginia, adopted by IPCC, of which Mann is a committee member. Hmmm. "It makes you believe, that in particular, the [IPCC] climate view is held by many. In fact it's really held by few."
I haven't watched the rest yet. Feel free to post your own highlights below.
Very cool. I'm intrigued with the 20th Century graph around 17:47. It shows a little dip through the 1960s, meaning that all the boomers remember it being a lot colder in my childhood. Boomers, of course, extrapolate their personal anecdotes into a worldview. Show -- or refute -- real data all you want, but a baby boomer will easily believe in DAWG from personal experience.
Also note John Christy, highlighted in a previous post.
Posted by: jk at October 28, 2007 5:14 PMOctober 25, 2007
An Annoyed Nobel Laureate
WSJ's Notable and Quotable shares a snippet of an interview between John Christy of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and CNN anchor Miles O'Brien:
O'BRIEN: I assume you're not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?CHRISTY: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that -- I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here -- that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities.
And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that's because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don't see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.
O'BRIEN: So, what about the movie ["An Inconvenient Truth"]; do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?
CHRISTY: Well, there's any number of things.
I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is -- well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.
O'BRIEN: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?
CHRISTY: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing. And when we build -- and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets -- we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place.
For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.
October 12, 2007
Somebody's Happy
To be fair, a lot of people are happy that VP Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize (though I have enjoyed much blog commentary today from those who do not).
But I was surprised to see Professor Gregory Mankiw celebrate. As VP Gore is a member of his beloved Pigou Club, however, Mankiw is pleased.
That is the problem with the Pigou Club. Mankiw is right that that is probably the best way to cut emissions but he glosses over the necessity (or lack thereof) for cutting emissions. He says (I paraphrase) that it is a public good to cut emissions, so irrespective of DAWG, why not do it?
French fries are bad too. Trans fats. Too much sugar. Let's raise revenue with taxes, trying to do the least damage possible to innovation and investment -- let's not use the tax code to achieve dubious "social good." That argument is far more worthy of Gore than Mankiw.
Mankiw's Pigou Club is nonsense. Why should we raise the tax on gasoline? Even if we admit that we should reduce pollution through taxation, we should tax the emissions of pollutants and not the consumption of gasoline.
Posted by: Everyday Economist at October 12, 2007 7:47 PMIt's official:
The Nobel Peace Prize is officially a joke. Al Gore, U.N. Climate Panel
Win 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Gore will have a platform to raise the profile of the issue later today, when he gives a press conference. In his own statement after the prize was announced, he said: "We face a true planetary emergency…The climate crisis is not a political issue ...''
If it is not a political issue then why was he granted a political prize for his "advocacy of the future of the earth?"
Even Yasser Arafat must consider his own prize tarnished by this.
Those Burmese monks were certainly undeserving. Glad to see it went to real peace advocates: VP Gore and the U.N.
Posted by: jk at October 12, 2007 11:07 AMI'm with Czech president Vaclav Klaus:
"The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."
You don't have to be a DAWG denier to agree.
Posted by: AlexC at October 12, 2007 11:17 AMSame Algore who looked the other way (along with Blow-Job Bill) while Islamofascists took shots at us, until they found a weakness in our defenses.
Yeah, sounds like a man of peace to me!
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at October 13, 2007 11:59 AMSeptember 28, 2007
Brave (VP) Sir Rodney
It's Vaclav Day at ThreeSources! TCS looks at the skeptics with whom VP Gore refuses to debate, and who comes up first, right after I suggested him for UN SecGen?
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who addressed the General Assembly on climate change September 24, is but the latest global warming skeptic to receive the cold shoulder from Gore. In ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times, Klaus has called on Gore to face him in a one-on-one debate on the proposition: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Earlier in the year, similar challenges to Gore were issued by Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. All calls on the former vice president to face his critics have fallen on deaf ears.
[...]
"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."
UPDATE: Changed the headline to be clear whom I am calling a coward (Hint: It's Vice President Gore).
FEE honored him and Walter Williams last year with the Adam Smith Award for Excellence in Free-Market Education. That right there says volumes about the man, and his friendship with freedom.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at September 28, 2007 12:39 PMSeptember 24, 2007
"The Time for Doubt Has Passed"
If the Secretary General of the UN says so. (Paid link) WSJ:
UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an unprecedented summit on climate change Monday that "the time for doubt has passed" and a breakthrough is needed in global talks to sharply reduce emissions of global-warming gases."The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action," Mr. Ban told assembled presidents and premiers, an apparent caution against what some see as a U.S. effort to open a separate negotiating track.
Looking at the transparency and efficacy of the United Nations on its other projects, this means a lot. Former-Friedmanite Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger chimed in on cue:
While the Bush administration has resisted emissions caps, California's Republican governor and Democrat-led legislature have approved a law requiring the state's industries to reduce greenhouse gases by an estimated 25% by 2020. Other U.S. states, in various ways, are moving to follow California's lead."California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action," Mr. Schwarzenegger said. "What we are doing is changing the dynamic."
What they are doing is choosing to replace science with politics.
September 12, 2007
The Antarctic
Yeah, well I have it on good authority that you have accepted funds from Big Oil, so who's gonna listen to you?
Posted by: jk at September 12, 2007 7:44 PMSeptember 5, 2007
The Forces of Darkness and Anti-modernity
A good week for transparency. Senator John Edwards demonstrated, if I may borrow Don Luskin's words, "You don't have to scratch liberalism very deeply to find socialism underneath, nor socialism to find authoritarianism underneath."
Today, James Taranto links to an article about a company that provides "carbon offsets" by paying people to stay in poverty. Is this for real?
Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: ‘Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.’ (2) To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from ‘local materials at minimal cost’. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: ‘One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.’ (3)Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…
It has verisimilitude. This seems exactly what the warmies want, but I can't believe they have that much of a tin ear.
UPDATE: Sorry, bloggers, I'm a little comfier with this story's veracity seeing it in the London Times. Taranto also had this link.
August 31, 2007
'bout that consensus
A good friend of this blog sends a link to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Specifically, Senator Inhofe’s EPW Press Blog. Looking at recent peer-reviewed research, Senator Inhofe’s staff doesn't quite see the consensus that a certain former Vice President claims.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
August 19, 2007
NASA Scientist Lashes Out
Dave Price at Dean's World compares NASA Scientist James Hansen to Ann Coulter. He's dead on, although I bet she has better hair.
When you're working to advance science, the appropriate response when someone finds an error in your data or calculations is contrition (best expressed by an openness to further scrutiny and re-evaluation), and perhaps gratitude that truth has been served. James Hansen, on the other hand... well, read for yourself:
Do read it for yourself. Errors are discovered in his data set, so he calls those who found them "jesters" and impugns their motives. Our tax dollars at work. It is as polemical as Ms. Coulter but I never heard her sound quite so childish.
On the good side, I give Hansen points for using the word 'usufruct,' although he seems a couple of degrees off there as well.
August 15, 2007
Oldies but Goodies
Extreme Mortman remembers Newsweek's Global Cooling.
Good News from the Battlefield
Pretty good news out of Iraq these days, but I am talking about Roy Spencer's piece on TCSDaily: "A Report from the Global Warming Battlefield." He is right that it has become a war.
In case you hadn't noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise.
I'll admit that I find myself hoping for a slow hurricane season, just to confound the alarmists. Of course, that is childish, unscientific, and irrelevant. At least I am not rooting for hurricanes like the other side.
Spencer lines up the Y2K bug, faulty thermometer placement, then adds a paper that he has published.
Next, my own unit and I published satellite measurements that clearly show a natural cooling mechanism in the tropics which all of the leading computerized climate models have been insisting is a warming mechanism (Spencer et al., August 9, 2007 Geophysical Research Letters).We found that when the tropical atmosphere heats up from extra rain system activity, the amount of infrared heat-trapping cirrus clouds those rain systems produce actually goes down. This unexpected result supports the "Infrared Iris" theory of climate stabilization that MIT's Richard Lindzen advanced some years ago.
No one in the alarmist camp can figure out how we succeeded with this sneak attack. After all, there isn't supposed to be any peer-reviewed, published research that denies a global warming Armageddon, right?
All this against a Newsweek cover story that was refuted by a Newsweek columnist. A good week.
August 10, 2007
Thw W is now in question
Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe (DAWG).
When I tell people about, I say that as we move right to left down this tendentious acronym, things get a bit harder to prove.
G - I like to concede that the Earth is round; this gives me a lot of cred around lefties.
W - I usually concede that most data show warming. But that some question the methods and accuracy.
A - I claim this is the stinker. Mars seems to be warming, pari passu, with Earth -- with no SUVs.
D - Here I quote Bjorn Lomborg who believes 100% in A, W, and G. Yet he thinks there are far more pressing needs and that a longer growing season might be beneficial to humankind.
This is to avoid the dreaded "denier" label that Newsweek has now picked up (raise your hand if you're surprised). I'm a skeptic, says I. Then I bring up the epistemology of Karl Popper and their eyes glaze over and they ask "do you have any more beer?"
Of late, there have been two stunning hits at the W. The first is the superb original blog reporting from surfacestations.org who had visited the collection sites in California and found egregious contraventions of standards: some comical like an asphalt parking lot under the sensor or a barbecue pit 10 ft away. (DoS attack on link at present. No comment.)
Yesterday, I read about the Y2K bug (I think off Insty) and I looked forward (lazy blogger, no link, no biscuit!) to somebody else fleshing it out. Not to be overly literal, but how did the Y2K bug affect the 1998 readings?
Bill Hobbes does not answer that penetrating question. But he does catalog some of the issues, challenge the media to report on them, and call for new demands for accuracy.
The private sector ought to demand the government revamp the temperature sensor network, with input from private-sector scientists and academia, to ensure that the data being collected is accurate from each sensor, and broadly accurate as well. The problem is that even if such a network of sensors was installed today, its data would still be compared to historical data from the current problematic network. Still, is it too much to ask that global warming policy be based on facts that we can trust?
If you see some good links on flat earth, let me know. We can kill this Global Warming thing where it lives.
UPDATE: Don Luskin is on it,.
UPDATE II: I have always hoped this acronym would be picked up by a bigger blog. Last night I thought a catchy jingle might help. To the tune of Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E:"
D, is Dallas under rising seas,
A, And it's caused by S-U-Vs,
W is Well determined
G, Grossly endothermic.
It's here. It's bad, It's caused by we.
July 26, 2007
Tryin' to Reason with Hurricane Season
I was a Jimmy Buffet fan before I discovered jazz. That is one of his many funny song titles.
Germaine today. WSI Corp., a private forecasting entity, was reported to be backing off its predictions for 2007. I meant to post but saw that Terri had beat me to it.
Today, DAWG-deniers' patron saint Dr. William Gray is a little less sanguine. He still looks for an active season with an above average number of major storms. Yet Gray is trying to get out front of the news coverage and dissever links to global warming.
Some scientists, journalists and activists see a direct link between the post-1995 upswing in Atlantic hurricanes and global warming brought on by human-induced greenhouse gas increases. This belief, however, is unsupported by long-term Atlantic and global observations.Consider, for example, the intensity of U.S. land-falling hurricanes over time -- keeping in mind that the periods must be long enough to reveal long-term trends. During the most recent 50-year period, 1957 to 2006, 83 hurricanes hit the United States, 34 of them major. In contrast, during the 50-year period from 1900 to 1949, 101 hurricanes (22% more) made U.S. landfall, including 39 (or 15% more) major hurricanes.
The hypothesis that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the number of hurricanes fails by an even wider margin when we compare two other multi-decade periods: 1925-1965 and 1966-2006. In the 41 years from 1925-1965, there were 39 U.S. land-falling major hurricanes. In the 1966-2006 period there were 22 such storms -- only 56% as many. Even though global mean temperatures have risen by an estimated 0.4 Celsius and CO2 by 20%, the number of major hurricanes hitting the U.S. declined.
He offers another hypothesis:
My Colorado State University colleagues and I attribute the increase in hurricane activity to the speed-up of water circulating in the Atlantic Ocean. This circulation began to strengthen in 1995 -- at exactly the same time that Atlantic hurricane activity showed a large upswing.Here's how it works. Though most people don't realize it, the Atlantic Ocean is land-locked except on its far southern boundary. Due to significantly higher amounts of surface evaporation than precipitation, the Atlantic has the highest salinity of any of the global oceans. Saline water has a higher density than does fresh water. The Atlantic's higher salinity causes it to have a continuous northward flow of upper-ocean water that moves into the Atlantic's polar regions, where it cools and sinks due to its high density. After sinking to deep levels, the water then moves southward, and returns to the Atlantic's southern fringes, where it mixes again. This south-to-north upper-level water motion, and compensating north-to-south deep-level water motion, is called the thermohaline circulation (THC).
The strength of the Atlantic's THC shows distinct variations over time, due to naturally occurring salinity variations. When the THC is strong, the upper-ocean water becomes warmer than normal; atmospheric circulation changes occur; and more hurricanes form. The opposite occurs when the THC is weaker than average.
Since 1995, the Atlantic's THC has been significantly stronger than average. It was also stronger than average during the 1940s to early 1960s -- another period with a spike in major hurricane activity. It was distinctly weaker than average in the two quarter-century periods of 1970-1994 and 1900-1925, when there was less hurricane activity.
Dr. Popper would suggest that both theories are exposed to rigorous academic discussion and experimentation. But Dr. Gray points out that it might not work that way.
The warming theorists -- most of whom, no doubt, earnestly believe that human activity has triggered nature's wrath -- have the ears of the news media. But there is another plausible explanation, supported by decades of physical observation. The spate of recent destructive hurricanes may have little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases and climate change, and everything to do with the Atlantic Ocean's currents.
But that would reinstate Copernicus and the heliocentric universe. And many men cannot accept that the 'verse does not revolve around us.
All the hot air coming out of DC (and everywhere that staged a Live Earth concert)is pushing the storms out to sea before they make landfall.
And anyway, don't you know by now,...if Nostra-Gore-mus didn't predict it, it won't come true?
Posted by: TrekMedic251 at July 26, 2007 10:18 PMJuly 19, 2007
Beef: It's Bad for the Environment
Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed yesterday.Japanese scientists used a range of data to calculate the environmental impact of a single purchase of beef.
Taking into account all the processes involved, they said, four average sized steaks generated greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 80.25lb of carbon dioxide.
This also consumed 169 megajoules of energy.
That means that 2.2lb of beef is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions which have the same effect as the carbon dioxide released by an ordinary car travelling at 50 miles per hour for 155 miles, a journey lasting three hours. The amount of energy consumed would light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days.
On the menu on my next road trip?
A big frigging burger.
Mmmm. Beef.
A 2.2-pound piece of beef, cut into four steaks? Pathetic. That's barely enough for two! Well, more like dinner and then a midnight snack.
Since I'm still in training, my meat consumption is almost exclusively fish and chicken. I do allot myself red meat twice a month, and I think these Japs have inspired me to increase that frequency. There's this bar & grill in Throgs Neck that offers 22-ounce USDA Prime boneless ribeyes for $23. Not the best seasoned, but they serve it sizzling hot, and there's plenty of room at the bar if you and the guys want to stop somewhere.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 20, 2007 10:58 AMThat's the metric system for you, Perry.
Posted by: jk at July 20, 2007 11:30 AMJuly 11, 2007
It stirs up the CO2
The forces of darkness and anti-modernity frequently tip their hand. A Doron Levin story in Bloomberg suggests Europe will try to outlaw cars that go 100 Miles Per Hour -- in the name of global warming, of course. Instapundit links and reminds that the Prius can do that with Al Gore III at the wheel.
Levin nails it. These people want to remake society in a fairer, poorer way to sate their peculiar aesthetics.
Who are these people anyway who decide on behalf of everyone what car is proper to drive? In the U.S. they're members of Congress, which is considering fuel-efficiency standards that will affect vehicle size. In Europe, it's the ministers and parliamentarians of the European Union, which wants to limit how much CO2 cars can emit as a proxy for a fuel- consumption standard.Chris Davies, a British member of the European Parliament, is proposing one of the most-extreme measures -- a prohibition on any car that goes faster than 162 kilometers (101 miles) an hour, a speed that everything from the humble Honda Civic on up can exceed. He ridiculed fast cars as ``boys' toys.''
Don't know if the little MR2 can do 160 K/hr or not. Only 140 ponies, I'd need a tailwind to get banned.
I'm sure it could do 100. My three first-gen Neons had the 132-hp SOHC engine, and they were capable of at least 130 mph. On more than one occasion, I personally, uh, "tested" the computer-based 120 mph speed limiter, which was not hard to hit on a flat road. One guy found a workaround for the speed limiter and was caught doing 132. Luckily it was Texas, because most anywhere else, he'd have been arrested on the spot instead of merely being given a ticket.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at July 11, 2007 10:43 PMProb'ly right. I had a 440 when I was a lad and think of displacement as the cure for everything.
Wanna Bet?
Taylor Buley, writing in the Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal Political Diary, wants a certain former Vice President to put up or shut.
Al Gore thinks the climate crisis is so dire that he's written a book, produced a movie and organized a world-wide music event to raise awareness. These have helped to make him a rich man, but is he willing to put his money where his mouth is? Don't bet on it.J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and expert on long range forecasting, has offered to bet Al Gore $10,000 that he can do a better job of predicting the future of climate change than the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts of rising temperatures are cited in virtually every media account. Mr. Armstrong and a colleague, Kesten Green of New Zealand's Monash University, examined the IPCC's work for last month's 27th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting and found it essentially valueless according to established principles of forecasting. "Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder," concluded the two.
So what's Prof. Armstrong's own climate prediction? No change at all. "The methodology was so poor that I thought a bet based on complete ignorance of the climate could do better," says Mr. Armstrong. "We call it 'the naove model.' Things won't change."
Professor Armstrong is the author of Long-Range Forecasting -- the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods -- and Principles of Forecasting, which was voted a "favorite book" by researchers and practitioners associated with the International Institute of Forecasters. If Mr. Gore accepts his challenge, Prof. Armstrong has proposed that each man put $10,000 into a charitable trust at a reputable brokerage house. The winner would then choose a charity to receive the total amount.
So far, Mr. Gore -- usually quite the opportunist -- has balked at the opportunity to establish credibility with global warming skeptics. "Please understand that Mr. Gore is not taking on any new projects at this time," read a note to Mr. Armstrong from Mr. Gore's communications director.
I would call that the Calvin Coolidge Climate