October 1, 2008Die Obamajungen ArbeitetSure they're cute when they're singing. But wait untill they are empowered in a green cause: "This just in from the you-couldn't-make-this-stuff-up-if-you-tried department. A new website designed by npower, a British electric company, is recruiting children using games, badges and cartoons to enlist as "Climate Cops"; their duties are to actively keep records on their parents and neighbors for violations of "energy crimes" against the planet. Children then use the results of their spying to build a "Climate Crime Case File" on the perps, which they then "report back to your family to make sure they don't commit those crimes again (or else)!" The site also warns children that they "may need to keep a watchful eye" to prevent future violations. Did I mention I'm not making this up? It gets worse."
Posted by jk at 4:01 PM
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But Boulder Refugee thinks:
Arbeit macht frei. Posted by: Boulder Refugee at October 1, 2008 5:16 PMJuly 3, 2008jk, this one is for youWith all the talk about Pigouvian taxation, I thought I would highlight Bryan Caplan's recent thoughts:
Happy commenting!
Posted by Harrison Bergeron at 10:45 PM
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But jk thinks:
Thanks, hb, that's a superb piece. I only wish you had excepted more. He makes my argument (sigh) a lot better than I do, Posted by: jk at July 4, 2008 10:51 AM
But jk thinks:
I visited Mike's Economics Blog and he has linked to Caplan's piece as well. Posted by: jk at July 4, 2008 11:12 AMMay 27, 2008Wi-Fi AllergyStop 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.
Posted by JohnGalt at 3:33 PM
February 18, 2008It's The Secondhand Drowning...This Telegraph blog post has to be read in full, so I have "nicked it:" Bottled Water is Immoral Y'know breathing outputs quite a bit of CO2. These are the people Karl Popper warned us about. They want to send us back to the caves. Hat-tip: Samizdata. Perry DeHavilland says "Very telling, no? People deciding to spend their own money on something 'borders on being morally unacceptable'. Let me what you what is morally unacceptable: that force addicted control freak tax parasites like Phil Woolas have the gall to tell people how to spend their own damn money. 'Immoral'? You do not know the meaning of the word, Woolas."
Posted by jk at 4:05 PM
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But mdmhvonpa thinks:
You know, traditional tap water burns up a lot of energy resulting in C02 ... we should just take big slurps from the Thames, eh? Yeah, they all the populace of London-Town would be visited by a new plague and remove the human blight from the landscape. Veiled intent? Posted by: mdmhvonpa at February 18, 2008 10:13 PM
But jk thinks:
Well, I imagine that enlghtened BBC workers and Guardian writers would get an exemption -- this is in The Telegraph fer cryin' out loud! Posted by: jk at February 19, 2008 3:30 PMDecember 17, 2007Quote of the DaySamizdat Perry DeHavilland points out the popularity of multi-bird roasts, then shares a comment he left on the site to which he links: This year for Christmas we are having one of these wonderful multi-birds and I am very much looking forward to it. However after reading some of the comments here, next year we are going to eat a PETA activist stuffed inside a Greenpeace activist stuffed inside a Animal 'Rights' activist stuffed inside Gordon Brown's voluminous carcass (with a non-'Fair Trade' apple stuffed into his mouth). Merry Christmas, Perry!
Posted by jk at 7:30 PM
November 30, 2007CBS is hiring!Are you looking for a job as an environmental reporter? Great news. CBS is hiring. Here is the job description:
I think that speaks for itself.
Posted by Harrison Bergeron at 7:19 PM
October 9, 2007Inconvient Truths
Posted by AlexC at 10:17 AM
August 15, 2007Rooting For Global WarmingCanadians. Really. A "drain hole" in the St. Clair River caused by dredging and other commercial projects is costing Lakes Huron and Michigan a combined 2.5 billion gallons of water each day, according to a Canadian study released Tuesday. Lake St Clair is two feet shallower than it should be. Time for some glacier melt, man.
Posted by AlexC at 12:31 AM
June 28, 2007Growing GlaciersIn case you were wondering, the glacier on Mount St Helens is enbiggening. ... and that with lava beneath it. I blame global warming and man's pernicious influences.
Posted by AlexC at 11:30 AM
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But jk thinks:
Anthropogenic Global Lava Cooling is Real! Posted by: jk at June 28, 2007 12:07 PMMay 22, 20072007 Hurricane SeasonGovernment forecasters warned of a busier-than-normal hurricane season Tuesday. Does anyone remember the forecasts of 2006's first post-Katrina season? I've been reading a number of stories this morning about the upcoming season, and none mention it. Here's one from forecasting guru William Gray. The 2006 forecast calls for: Another busier-than-normal season. Wikipedia shows what really happened. Total storms: 10 Um, kinda below average. But let's base major policy decisions from here on out on weather modeling.
Posted by AlexC at 3:27 PM
April 22, 2007Earth DayToday is Earth Day. It's also Lenin's birthday. Just so you know. ... I imagine it's coincidental.
Posted by AlexC at 8:26 PM
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But johngalt thinks:
It's also the date, in 1915, when Germany introduced poison gas in WWI. These sound to me like three good reasons not to read the news on this date - no tellin' what other gems are in store for future April 22nds. My favorite line from the Earth Day wiki entry was this: "The idea that the date was chosen to celebrate Lenin's centenary still persists in some quarters,[13][14] although Lenin was never noted as an environmentalist." Hmmm. Wonder why so many people still see a connection then. What could it be? (I'd spell it out but really, if you can't figure it out, you probably won't read Threesources.com again anyway.) April 17, 2007I AM Going to Sell Carbon OffsetsI have occasional sport with our homegrown Boulder County granola Marxists, but I realize how sheltered I am from these people.. The link takes you to a NYTimes story about a woman in a gated community South of LA. She is experimenting with a linear, entropy-powered clothes dehydration system: I decide to rig a clothesline as an experiment. My mother died many years ago and the idea of hanging laundry with my own daughter, Isabel, who is 13 and always busy at the computer, is oddly appealing. I’m also hoping to use less energy and to reduce our monthly electric bills which hit the absurdly high level of $1,120 last summer. Tim Blair links to the story as a defense of his own clothesline usage, but the gem is Lileks's comment: Imagine you’re an editor at the New York Times. It’s the apogee of the profession. You’re in a brand-new skyscraper, built at great expense. You’re editing a piece about clotheslines, which are good because they’re nicer to the earth, and you’re all about being good to the earth. (You don’t get on the elevator to go up to your 45th floor office unless there are at least eight others in the car.) I run my A/C foolishly long in the summer (MS patients tend to be very sensitive to heat) and a $200 utility bill is an eyebrow raiser. Who are these people of four-digit monthly power consumption? I don't care but why do they write NYTimes articles begging for us to praise their conservation? A few fluorescents, and she'll get that baby down to $523.50.
Posted by jk at 7:42 PM
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But AlexC thinks:
We've never had a four digital utility bill but mid-three aren't unheard of. We do combine natural gas and electricity though. Posted by: AlexC at April 17, 2007 8:36 PM
But jk thinks:
Well, you have that sprawling Edwardsesqe mansion. We're just simple folk out here. I got to laughing after this post. For a DAWG skeptic, I have a small "carbon footprint." I telecommute, drive a small car and am so dull I basically go to bed when it's dark. I bought fluorescent bulbs early on because I hate to change bulbs (Q: How many software developers...A:It's a hardware problem!). Other than my rapacious A/C use (for which I have a medical deferment) I am mister freakin' green! December 25, 2006Merry Christmas... in Philadelphia it's 42 and raining. I blame global warming.
So it was curtains for the Canadians? Uh, not quite. In 1953, The New York Times announced that "nearly all the great ice sheets are in retreat." Yet no sooner did our neighbors to the north breathe a sigh of relief than it turned out they weren't off the hook after all: "The rapid advance of some glaciers," wrote Lowell Ponte in "The Cooling," his 1976 bestseller, "has threatened human settlements in Alaska, Iceland, Canada, China, and the Soviet Union." And now? "Arctic Ice Is Melting at Record Level, Scientists Say," the Times reported in 2002. Over the years, the alarmists have veered from an obsession with lethal global cooling around the turn of the 20th century to lethal global warming a generation later, back to cooling in the 1970s and now to warming once again. You don't have to be a scientist to realize that all these competing narratives of doom can't be true. Or to wonder whether any of them are.
Posted by AlexC at 9:00 PM
December 13, 2006Academic Freedom"Here's more evidence that 'academic freedom' doesn't apply to anyone actually on or near a campus" opens an OpinionJournal Political Diary item by Holman Jenkins, Jr. The chancellor of British Columbia's Thompson Rivers University has become a public enemy after uttering judicious words on global warming on a Canadian Broadcasting breakfast show last week. Chancellor Nancy Greene Raine, previously an Olympic skiing champion and national heroine as Canada's official "female athlete of the century," told listeners: "In science, there's almost never black and white. We don't know what next week's weather is going to be. To say in 50 or 100 years, the temperature is going to do this, is a bit of a stretch for me." The email version curiously features a picture of Vice President Gore. That may be a stretch, but it is not a stretch to point out that soi disant free academic thinkers will tolerate no questioning of their conclusions.
Posted by jk at 2:05 PM
December 8, 2006Light A MatchNot on a plane. Not to cover smell. Do it to save the planet. Russell Seitz writes in OpininJournal Political Diary: The Pollution Solution Or we could just stop the growth of the entire world economy.
Posted by jk at 6:54 PM
December 4, 2006DAWG Bites DAWGMAWikipedia tells us that Claude Allegre is a "French geochemist and politician" and "member of the French Socialist Party." Google news search tells us... nothing. (Well, nearly nothing. There's a letter to the editor of the BYU paper mentioning what I'm about to mention.) The French (tabloid? newsmagazine?) L'Express.fr printed an editorial by Msr. Allegre stating, in part, "So, the question that arises is whether there is climate warming or not? [...] Greenhouse effect plays no significant role in these processes." (English translation here.) Fox News Channel told me, and the Majority members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works corroborates, that Allegre's skepticism is "newfound" and that "one of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic." The Senators write: Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to “Holocaust deniers.” See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers." Allegre concludes: Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious. But the exposure of man’s responsibility as regards global warming allows us to sit idly by (the effect of the measures advocated will be felt only in half a century!). On the other hand, the crusade against extreme theories can be led with tangible results! However, as this is not fashionable, we choose to remain passive. In the meanwhile, the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people! Which is more incredulous: That a long-time DAWG might actually recant, and, become active for a "not fashionable" cause, or that the only source for this news in America is a bunch of Republicans on a senate subcommittee? Wait - don't answer that.
Posted by JohnGalt at 3:17 PM
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But jk thinks:
Dammit, jg! If you keep supporting this "Obfuscation agenda," the US Senate is going to shut ThreeSources down. "Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena." Writing your own Taranto headline is left as an exercise to the reader. Posted by: jk at December 4, 2006 3:58 PMDAWGMATwo United States Senators have declared not only that the science is settled but also that dissent will not be tolerated. Sens. Olympia Snowe (RINO-ME) and Jay Rockefeller (!RCB-WV) have sent a letter to Exxon Mobil telling them -- as the WSJ ED Page paraphrases, "Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else." The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn't return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other then non-carbon energy. But perhaps it's easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund. At issue is Exxon-Mobil’s funding of research which contradicts the beliefs of two members of the world's most deliberative body. The Impudence! When the media, or NCAR, or the Sierra Club try to shut down their opposition, it's one thing. But the Senate, as the editorial points out, wields great coercive power over the firm and its shareholders.
Posted by jk at 3:00 PM
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But johngalt thinks:
It seems that these two senators are threatening to challenge the judiciary for chutzpah. Posted by: johngalt at December 4, 2006 3:53 PMNovember 6, 2006Politics? No. ClimateHoly mackeral.
In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch). The UN set up a transnational bureaucracy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UK taxpayer unwittingly meets the entire cost of its scientific team, which, in 2001, produced the Third Assessment Report, a Bible-length document presenting apocalyptic conclusions well beyond previous reports. This week, I'll show how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect. Next week, I'll demonstrate the atrocious economic, political and environmental cost of the high-tax, zero-freedom, bureaucratic centralism implicit in Stern's report; I'll compare the global-warming scare with previous sci-fi alarums; and I'll show how the environmentalists' "precautionary principle" (get the state to interfere now, just in case) is killing people. Read it all.
Posted by AlexC at 7:40 PM
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But sushil_yadav thinks:
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature. Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment. Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion. Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps. People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps. Emotion ends. Man becomes machine. A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety. A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety. A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety. FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT. SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS. A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY. A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.
http://www.earthnewswire.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=89&page=viewtopic&t=11
But jk thinks:
I cannot improve on what sushil says, I don't think I'll even try. Posted by: jk at November 7, 2006 11:24 AM
But johngalt thinks:
The people you attract by posting cartoons of chocolate bunnies! I followed the vociferous incongruous one's link to earthnewswire and found that he also claims, "Intelligence is a curse" and "Life can never be good." If intelligence is a curse, sushil is clearly blessed. As for that "life sucks" thing, a Heinlein quote comes to mind: "The man who says something cannot be done should not interfere with the man who is doing it."
But jk thinks:
Actually got me with "Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet." Glad to see sushil doing his/her part. Posted by: jk at November 7, 2006 4:25 PMOctober 30, 2006Global WarmingArnold Kling provides a brurtal fisking of Her Majesty’s Treasury's Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. The post is funny, but Josh@ The Everyday Economist (inline hat-tip) and I like the close. Responding to the assertion that ignoring the problem will take 5-20% off GDP, and fixing it would only cost 1%, Kling states: One percent of global GDP is a lot--close to one trillion dollars. My guess is that if you think outside the box, you can eliminate global warming for a lot less money. Suppose you told scientists and engineers to come up with a way to monkey around with chemicals and stuff to reduce global average temperature. My guess is that the total cost of that approach, including research and implementation, would be only a few billion bucks, give or take. Did you order Mine Your Own Business Yet?
Posted by jk at 7:32 PM
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But johngalt thinks:
This "Stern Review" thing smacks of the RoHS scam that I wrote about: http://www.threesources.com/archives/003306.html "If it's big enough, and official enough, it must be true." Posted by: johngalt at October 31, 2006 3:11 PMMama Must Be So ProudBelgium has named a tax after VP Al Gore! The WSJ Ed Page has the details Earlier this month, Mr. Gore spent a day in Brussels to promote his film on global warming. "Our planet has a fever, and the fever has been getting steadily higher," he said in a speech. "It is in fact a full-scale planetary emergency." Within days, Belgian politicians were rewriting their tax laws to do something about this looming calamity. This is what's fundamentally wrong with government. You say that's Belgium, but I live in Boulder County, which I might start calling "Little Belgium." Such a tax would pass here in an instant. While in the Senate, Sen. Al Gore, Jr. decided that government should design toilets. Now he is encouraging the EU (which needs little encouragement to meddle) that the government should make packaging decisions. The Hayekian idea of innovation from multiple sources being sorted out in the market as abandoned. Let Trent Lott design milk cartons? Ted Kennedy might bring some innovation to Scotch bottles, but I’d still rather trust the market.
Posted by jk at 12:04 PM
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But mdmhvonpa thinks:
The Gore tax ... heh, are not they all? Posted by: mdmhvonpa at October 30, 2006 1:19 PMOctober 8, 2006The SunThe Sun, giver of light and of warmth.
Posted by AlexC at 12:23 PM
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But mdmhvonpa thinks:
Soo .... global warming is increasing because we have too little clouds and too much magnitism? I KNEW we should have kept on burning coal! Dammit, Somebody get Ohio on the line and tell them to crank up them steel mills. Posted by: mdmhvonpa at October 9, 2006 12:32 PM
But TrekMedic251 thinks:
The Sun, giver of light and of warmth. Huh,..and here I thought he was the picth man for Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages! October 6, 2006The Anti-Moore Coming soon to Review Corner: MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS I remember a time, not so long ago, when the man with the sandwich board warning the world that the end is nigh was a comic figure. He appeared in cartoons and comedy sketch shows as the clownish, nerdish figure that others made jokes about. That is from a director's statement by Phelim McAleer, who has created a documentary about unemployed Romanian coal miner Gheorge Lucian OpinionJournal Political Diary's John Fund describes the film as an anti-Michael Moore look at leftist idealism: In it, Mr. Lucian, the Romanian miner, is seen hop-scotching around the globe confronting environmentalists in the style of Mr. Moore with the real-world consequences of their ideology. You can order the film off the website for $12.95 with PayPal.
Posted by jk at 1:44 PM
September 27, 2006AGWUrsula K. Leguin's Earthsea Trilogy posited that to get power over something, you had to know its true name. Joss Whedon and Tim Minear use that in the climax of Season Four of Angel ("Peace Out"), destroying Jasmine (Gina Torres of Firefly fame) by speaking her true name. Professor Glenn Reynolds gives man made global warming its true name in a TCS column: "anthropogenic global warming." "Do you believe in Global warming?" Why yes, but I'm skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. The MS-Word spellchecker recognizes it. If it's good enough for Bill Gates and Glenn Reynolds, it's okay by me.
Posted by jk at 7:49 PM
September 26, 2006Rams vs. BuffaloesAn intrastate rivalry is deepening. AlexC sends a link to a DenverPost.com story about a CSU professor (well covered on these pages) and an NCAR scientist in Boulder. The words "global warming" provoke a sharp retort from Colorado State University meteorology professor emeritus William Gray: "It's a big scam." The article is pretty balanced, enumerating what is and is not disputed. The author leans on consensus and majority as favoring the existence of man made global warming. I repeat that science is not democratic, look more to Karl Popper's epistemology and less toward focus groups. Yet the story is a pretty balanced look at the controversy and worth a read. I just hope Dr. Gray doesn't call Dr. Trenberth "macaca."
Posted by jk at 12:56 PM
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But johngalt thinks:
Hey, careful there. My beloved Buffaloes have nothing to do with NCAR. As for taking sides in this fight I think you know where I'll be. For 16 years I lived just down the hill from NCAR's envied perch at the base of Boulder's Flatirons. Whenever someone mentions "ivory tower" the NCAR building is my mental image. (See thumbnail photo at: http://www.ucar.edu/org/about-us.shtml) Comparing the two men, Bill Gray's degrees are in geography, meteorology, and geophysical sciences. Trenberths are in mathematics and meteorology. One of the biggest criticisms of global warming theorists is that their theories are based upon the "predictions" of their mathematical "climate models." Trenberth appears to fit that mold perfectly. Gray, on the other hand, predicted weather in the air force to begin his career and is a research professor at a land grant (read: agricultral) college at the present. Which would you expect to have a firmer grip on reality? Posted by: johngalt at September 26, 2006 3:34 PM
But jk thinks:
Yes, you're right; my characterization is inaccurate. I should have lumped it into a Boulder-Ft. Collins rivalry. However -- comma -- to get a serious, heartfelt apology from me, I'll need a link to a CU professor's taking a stance against anthropogenic global warming. Posted by: jk at September 27, 2006 7:49 PM
But johngalt thinks:
HA! Fat chance there. But I did actually go to the CU website and searched for "anthropogenic." There was a single hit. From 2004: http://www.cu.edu/sg/messages/3652.html "Some wonder if a long-term increase in carbon dioxide and methane -- greenhouse gases of anthropogenic and natural origin -- are making the clouds more prevalent." So the scientists at CU proposed to build two instruments to study the wandering polar clouds. If a CU faculty member opposed "anthropogenic global warming" it would certainly have a chilling effect upon taxpayer financed research grants. Posted by: johngalt at September 28, 2006 1:18 AMSeptember 21, 2006Easy to be HardI think I can be a climate scientist. It's easy to be always right.
The temperature drop, a small fraction of the total warming seen in the last 48 years, suggests that global warming trends can sometimes take little dips. In the last century, Earth's temperature has risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degrees Celsius). Most scientists agree that much of the warming in the past 50 years has been fueled by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. "This research suggests global warming isn't always steady, but happens with occasional 'speed bumps,'" said study co-author Josh Willis, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This cooling is probably natural climate variability. The oceans today are still warmer than they were during the 1980s, and most scientists expect the oceans will eventually continue to warm in response to human-induced climate change." Is global-warming, pardom climate change the only branch of science that has never been wrong? Sheesh. A little introspective, please.
Posted by AlexC at 11:39 PM
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But jk thinks:
Perhaps there was a brief heat bump in the global cooling trend. Worrisome. Posted by: jk at September 22, 2006 2:18 PMSeptember 20, 2006Tax Carbon, Not JobsJosh at Everyday Economist has a great riff on global warming. He links to CSU professor Bill Gray's claims that global warming is real but not man-made. Then he links to Don Luskin discussing a speech by VP Gore that suggested "taxing carbon dioxide emissions instead of employees’ pay." We've had varied discussions on these pages, but I want to point out the unseriousness of the opposition. Kyoto is obviously not gong to do anything but further impede the economies of its EU signatories. If anybody wants to take the former VP's idea and imbue it with any seriousness, I'll play along but think we'd all agree that it's a bit problematic at best. An opposing view to Professor Gray makes a curious case: There are uncertainties. It’s not like you change your light bulbs today, you’re going to have better weather tomorrow,” he said. “It’s even better if those actions you’re taking make sense for other reasons, like getting off Middle Eastern oil or saving money.-- Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Y'know, sir, if it saved money you wouldn't have to coerce anybody to do it. That 's the thing about proposals which make economic sense. You are asking us to spend more and to forego pleasures to prevent an unproven phenomena. The warmies want to enact the solution first, then prove the problems. That is unserious.
Posted by jk at 7:19 PM
September 14, 2006"Lead-Free" - The International Environmental BoondoggleIn honor of today being the unofficial "L day" I'm posting this item that came to my attention last Monday. In case you wonder what might have happened if the Kyoto Protocol had been adopted and implemented world wide, consider what happened when the EU unilaterally determined that the lead in solder used to produce electronic devices is a "hazardous substance" and mandated its elimination from all products marketed in Europe by the July 1, 2006. On Monday a colleague emailed several of us a list of issues related to lead-free electronics manufacturing that was provided to him by our assembly vendor. Before reading the attachment I had no idea just how disruptive this lead-free process business is. Why would we voluntarily evolve into a process that is less reliable, more expensive, fraught with extra hoops to jump through and, by the way, is WORSE for the environment? This all stems from an EU directive called the "Reduction of Hazardous Substances" directive, or "RoHS" adopted January 27, 2003. Here's what I found when I investigated. From “The ultimate in fatuity” on EU Referendum blog (based in UK): According to the authors, "The study presents extensive data that show that heavy metal concentrations in leachate and landfill gas are generally far below the limits that have been established to protect human health and the environment." And then there are the long-term reliability concerns. Also from the EU Referendum blog: On the basis of this charade, proprietors of firms not obeying this cretinous law can face unlimited fines and imprisonment yet, worryingly, there are still many serious doubts about the reliability and suitability of lead solder substitutes, so much so that military equipment has been exempted. And this isn’t just some mad right-wing anti-environment rant. In the comments on the blog is a reference to this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoting a Canadian environmental scientist who doesn’t support lead-free: But not all lead is the same. Lead in paint and gasoline is easily absorbed into human cells. Lead in metallic forms such as solder is not. As for “state mandated deadlines for compliance” are we sure there are, or will be, any? Consider this, also from the news article: No U.S. firm is legally bound to use lead-free solder. Only California has any restrictions on lead, and no federal laws are pending. But not conforming to European standards means giving up a lucrative market, and potentially that of China and Japan. China is expected to announce a restriction policy soon. But since our market is exclusively the U.S. and not even Canada, much less Europe or East Asia, it appears that we should do everything possible to avoid lead-free like the plague. The problem with this strategy is that component manufacturers, forced to comply with RoHS by customers who market products in Europe and eager to avoid the added cost of parallel leaded and lead-free product lines, are gradually discontinuing the leaded components. And so we have a world-wide economic and environmental travesty all because one man, the EU minister of state for energy, Malcolm Wicks, signed the final RoHS document declaring, "I have read the regulatory impact assessment and am satisfied the benefits justify the costs." And angry-left nutjobs worry that we are sliding into a monarchy! Take the disruptions, cost increases and environmental unintended consequences of this and multiply them by ten, or even a hundred, and you'll have an idea of what Kyoto could have wrought. (Click "Continue Reading" to see the list of issues related to lead-free soldering processes.) Company x’s Lead – Free Process Issues
Posted by JohnGalt at 6:46 PM
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But mdmhvonpa thinks:
I'm fighting with the whole R22 vs R410A refrigerant issue right now with regards to getting a new AC unit. A lot of the seasoned HVAC guys want to eat their eyes over this knowing damn well that the replacement is so much less effective that it takes a lot more energy to gain the same benefits. This creates more damage than it avoids. DDT v2.0 Posted by: mdmhvonpa at September 14, 2006 11:19 PM
But jk thinks:
...and I got one of those 1.75 gallon Al Gore Toilets. My contractor begged me not to replace the old contraband 3 gal unit but I wanted colored fixtures. They should put the (then) Senator's picture on a plunger -- it's his fault you have to use it so often. (Andrew Sullivan blazed the trail in bathroom plumbing blogging, I'm just a copycat.) Posted by: jk at September 15, 2006 11:30 AM
But AlexC thinks:
JK, you might want to add a little fiber to your diet. ;) August 30, 2006Saturday Was Climate ChangeYet nobody told Samizdata. Or maybe it's the time difference. In The Church of Global Warming Robert Clayton Dean offers some fun for the skeptics: How can you tell who someone's god is? You look to see whose name they invoke as the cause of all things, good or bad. By that standard, the god of the devout Left is Global Warming; here is the Psalm of Al, from which the faithful constantly quote (King James Version): In the comments, one Perry E. Metzger, offers a thoughtful libertarian view of global warming that brother Silence might enjoy: I'm about as radical a libertarian as one can find, but I'm also educated in the sciences, and so far as I can tell, global warming is not a myth. I'm a bit more skeptical than Metzger, but his words are consistent with the new jk manifesto: believe or don’t, but don't use it to stop modernity. UPDATE: The comments, as usual in the Samizdata post are superb. They run heavily skeptical, but they are bright and informed. UPDATE II: Except for mine, I tried to bring Dr. Popper inito it, as his "Open Society and its Enemies" appears in their logo. But I muffed the html. Harrumph.
Posted by jk at 3:43 PM
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But rick tennesen thinks:
global warming liberals who smoke...how much do you think the net smoking of people in the world contributes to this phenomenon? they will quickly pass on this as it can only the the fault of big business. Posted by: rick tennesen at August 30, 2006 9:39 PM
But silence dogood thinks:
Good post on Samizdata for sure, good to see the debate reaching a higher level. You mentioned the yellow sphere in the sky and how can we humans have more influence that the sun? Space may be the answer, we're 93 million odd miles closer. Posted by: silence dogood at August 30, 2006 11:24 PM
But jk thinks:
I must quote the famed astrophysicist Eric Idle here: "Orbiting at 19 miles per second, so it's reckoned, the Sun which is the source of all our power." As the Sun is recognized to be the sole source of heat, the proximity argument fails to move me. I once saw a comparison of solar activity to temperature which correlated quite closely. Thanks for the comment, Rick, and welcome to the blogroll. The Keystone Staters continue to dominate... Posted by: jk at August 31, 2006 10:02 AMAugust 26, 2006Warmer... Cooler.... etc.Saturday has apparently degenerated into
"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said. "The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth's global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol." Can we settle on a direction here?
Posted by AlexC at 2:50 PM
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But johngalt thinks:
But it's clear there is "no debate amongst serious scientists" that global warming is real and poses a threat to Earth. Posted by: johngalt at August 27, 2006 12:10 PM
But silence dogood thinks:
So with published articles running thousands to one supporting versus refuting global warming you figure it's about a draw? I know I am alone around here, but to review the facts, there are multiple independent sources of data showing warming of the earth and lower atmosphere, lab tests that show the IR absorbing capability of CO2, and fairly simple chemical equations showing CO2 as a byproduct of combustion. Can we completely and irrefutably connect the dots? No. Will we ever? Perhaps not, when your "system" is basically the entire world we live in with all of the variables that suggests. Valid discussion still exists on the topic, but the amount of BS hoisted out there by the "refuters" borders on the ridiculous. To be clear, recent and current models do predict actual measurements we are seeing, the global cooling JK often refers to from the '70's was a very short lived prediction at the very beginning of the study of climate change, and water vapor is part of all of these studies, in fact there are wavelengths of IR that pass through water vapor but are absorbed by CO2 so while the concentration of these gases relate to each other, their affects can still be additive. So while I agree with JK that more research is needed I disagree with the notion that no policy decision should be made at this time. I don't see it as a leap of faith to accept the theory that we have the capability to upset the balance of nature, small scale evidence of that is all around. The points of discussion should be more about what the opportunities are for greener energy, for economic as well as environmental reasons. Even taking the most cynical attitude that this global warming is a liberal myth and nothing more than environmental marketing, good marketing is a proven money maker and investing some of our energy dollars away from oil and gas exploration and toward "greener" sources seems like a very good bet. Posted by: silence dogood at August 28, 2006 2:51 PM
But jk thinks:
You just wanted to comment 'cause we have your favorite password today. The reasons that you describe support Global Warming as a theory. I just think it ignores two small things: the amount of plant life on this planet and that hot, round thingy in the sky. These variables make computer modeling difficult at best. I've seen zero studies where predictions matched future data but many results where they shoehorned exigencies to fit theory. That is one step above "making stuff up." In the post below, I point to serous flaws in the theory vs. data sphere, by two people who believe in man-made global warming. To defer to Dr. Popper again, science is not a democracy. You probably had 1000-to-one scientists believing Aristotelian dynamics. But they didn't settle it by election, Signori Galileo apocryphally dropped some stones off a tower. No, it would not hurt to invest some money in other technologies; private firms likely should. But that is NOT what the climate change lobby is calling for. A large contingent are anti-moderns who want to impede progress and punish prosperity. When they will come out and admit the Kyoto treaty is one of the stupidest ideas of all time and seek -- like the folks in my post below -- some realistic solutions based on science and not politics, I might just surprise you and climb aboard.
But silence dogood thinks:
Guess I better get another one in before my favorite password expires! Point taken concerning Mr. Galileo, but if I had quoted a UP article from the Russian Academy of Sciences would you have rushed to support me? My point was that you can find hundreds of papers that make the opposite case and yet this is the one you cling to. So, you know greenhouse gases exist, it is this effect of our atmosphere that keeps us from looking like Mars. You know that the primary two are water vapor and CO2 and it is easy to measure the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Further it is proven that CO2 absorbs IR and we see evidence of warming from melting ice and shrinking glaciers. From here however you are not willing to even entertain the concept that we could be changing our environment as a whole? Maybe the dots aren't all connected, but there sure are a lot of dots. I can't speak for this climate change lobby but I do know that there is lots of discussion of alternative energy. This is not no energy, but alternate sources and systems. I think you demonize too much the whole topic based upon the shoutings of a few fringe elements. Posted by: silence dogood at August 29, 2006 12:29 AM
But jk thinks:
Go Blue Devils! Back to Popper. A thousand articles supporting a theory are not as important as one refuting it. Thousands supported Aristotelian, then Newtonian mechanics, the final word was Mr. Einstein's Special Relativity in 1905. I'm not saying the Russian paper is somehow dispositive of Global Warming. To be fair, this is Alex's post and JohnGalt's comment. I will say that it reinforces my opinion in the post below that we do not know enough to affect policy. I might demonize the environmental movement -- they give me a lot of material. I'm cool with alternative energy sources and continued research. overturn Raich v Gonzales and let the hemp people power our cities. But the Sierra Club and other K Street environmental groups want us to all live in Manhattan densities and return everything else to the wild. There is a huge anti-modernity base in that movement. Were it expunged, I would probably sign up.
But johngalt thinks:
My intent was to transparently bait Silence on this post. He's been absent far too long 'round here. But my comment is valid: Silence has said before that there is "no debate amongst serious scientists" that man-made global warming is real, and he apparently continues to do so. JK and Karl Popper's excellent points about science and democracy address the veracity of the theory. My point regarded the claim that the debate was settled at all, without regard for whether that "consensus" is (or was) wrong. I'll certainly give a little credit to the scientific wherewithall of the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory. After all, it's not the "astrological" observatory. Posted by: johngalt at August 29, 2006 2:59 PMGlobal CoolingBlog brother AlexC sends me a link to a Q and O blog post on global warming. Written by Dale Franks (neither a Q nor and O), the post captures my position very well. Silence and I have talked past each other on these pages about whether global warming exists. While I remain skeptical, I am going to change my pattern. The point is not to argue against its existence, the point is to argue that we don't know enough to make policy decisions. Franks nails this: The Argo data on ocean cooling over the past few years merely highlights that problem. Over the past few years, about 20% of the warming of the past 50 years has simply disappeared. Apparently, it just radiated away back into space, since we can't seem to find any of that heat down here. Franks, as it happens, does indeed believe in global warming and he believes that it is to some extent man-made. I'm skeptical of both those assertions but agree with Franks that until we can codify and quantify what is happening and what causes it, we cannot "fix" it. If we are causing global warming by using so much battery power, those damn hybrid drivers will have to answer up. I'm a big fan (I know I've bored you before) on the epistemology of Dr. Karl Popper. I don't know how much he created and how much he documented, but he defines the procedures where scientific theory progresses to acceptance or is discarded. The first step is predictive power. Einstein’s Special Relativity made several predictions that were not testable at the time of its creation. Over time, experiments have been done, and they all support the predictions of Special Relativity. Ergo, it is commonly accepted (though Popper points out theories can only be disproven, never really proven). The original global warming theorists made predictions based on computer modeling. It would start at the poles, reduce the length of the cold season in the cold climes, and proceed at a steady rate. Facts have not supported this prediction at all. warming has started at higher elevations, warmer climes, and has not been steady: CSU climate scientists point out two years of ocean cooling. This is a very important observational study of changes in climate system heat content. While the models predict a general montonic increase in ocean heat content (e.g. see (Figure 1) ), the new observations in Lyman et al 2006 show an important decrease. The explanation of this temporal change in the radiative imbalance of the Earth’s climate system is a challenge to the climate science community. It does indicate that we know less about natural- and human-climate forcings and feedbacks than concluded in the IPCC Reports. More research. We are all in agreement.
Posted by jk at 11:05 AM
August 4, 2006One for The Other SideI've posted before about MIT Professors, Bjorn Lamborg, and other scientists who are concerned that outrageous Global Warming claims are unfounded. It's only right that I offer a "fair and balanced" link to a Reuters Story about a new convert. "We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air." This from 700 Club Atmospheric Physicist Pat Robertson. Okay, I'm convinced. Hat-tip: Taranto
Posted by jk at 4:37 PM
July 28, 2006Stop Discussing, You're Confusing PeopleIf you include frequent commenters, we have a pretty broad spectrum of views on climate change, though we certainly lean skeptic. I'm all for continued research, just don't let the 535 Atmospheric Physicists in the District of Columbia decide. Here's TCS with a report on two Congressional hearings. Only Wegman [Edward J. of George Mason University] and his colleagues found -- as did a National Academy of Science's panel previously -- that Mann's statistics were fundamentally flawed. They were prone -- as two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, found in an ad hoc statistical investigation -- to create hockey stick shaped graphs. Shhhh! Stop discussing the issues, you're confusing people...
Posted by jk at 11:36 AM
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But jk thinks:
Mort Kondracke, on "The Beltway Boys" (Et tu, FOXNews?), said "This is the warmest first six months in the US since they've kept records, beating 2005." Fred Barnes: "So?" Every time any weather record is broken, global warming is proven.
But johngalt thinks:
Global Warming is expected to end on Wednesday, with forecast high temperature in the upper 70's... in JULY! Prepare for the coming ice age. Hey... I'm theer-ee-ul! Posted by: johngalt at July 31, 2006 1:12 PM
But jk thinks:
When we conflate weather and climate, we're being willful and ignorant. But it's okay when they do it. I haven't quite figured that out. I have been waiting and watching for ManBearPig for months. That is sooo funny. "Kids, I don't want you hanging around with that ex-Vice-President any more." Wednesday, however, will be August. Posted by: jk at July 31, 2006 3:17 PMJuly 22, 2006Carbonized CashRedstate points to a ludicrous idea from "do-gooders."
All I can imagine is an economy where the government gives people these credits. Controlling "capital" as it were. Sounds like a recipe for a disaster.
Posted by AlexC at 2:32 PM
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But johngalt thinks:
And to think that Silence chastised us for suggesting that exhaling might be made illegal. Under this proposed plan (only in Britain for now, thank NED) a little girl could only blow on dandelions if she had enough government coupons. Posted by: johngalt at July 23, 2006 12:52 AM
But jk thinks:
My inner economist likes the idea of cap-and-trade to control pollutants. Its a good way to control something if you've decided it warrants government control. I had posted about Martin Feldstein’s similar plan for gas credits (http://www.threesources.com/archives/002899.html). We will be forced to decide whether we want to use state coercion to control CO2. Forces of anti-modernity will use global warming to try and return us to penis-sheaths and Gilligan's Island technology. I'll add a local report. It's hot around here. In July. Freaky...
But Silence Dogood thinks:
I was really chastising the commercial for appearing to claim that without fossil fuels we would all become starving people grinding corn with a stick. Alternative energy can and does provide us with the same creature comforts we have now, that is precisely the point. I am not sure where the vast 'anti-modernity" crowd is, JK can you point me in their direction? Are they the anti-matter of the vast right wing conspiracy? By the way, I missed chastising JK also for his comment a bit ago that he could use short term stats to show global warming, say from December to June. Best of luck with that - think southern hemisphere. Posted by: Silence Dogood at July 24, 2006 12:51 AM
But jk thinks:
Silence, if I can pick the time period I can certainly pick the hemisphere. I like your idea, though. I'll do a two part study, the North, then the South. I concede that there is much to debate on the global warming question. In a way that's my point, that it is unsettled. I will not for a second, however, accept that there is not a large, well funded, and vocal alliance that is dedicated to opposing modernity. I'd accuse mainstream groups like The Sierra Club or Wildlife Refuge. Even if you disagree with that, can you say the "new economics foundation" does not fit my description? http://www.threesources.com/archives/003133.html or scroll down to July 20. July 14, 2006Climate ConClimate consensus? A report commissioned by the House Energy Committee, due to be released today, refutes the "hockey stick" as being a small slice of available data. The WSJ Ed Page calls it WSJ.com - Hockey Stick Hokum (Paid link, sorry!) It is routine these days to read in newspapers or hear -- almost anywhere the subject of climate change comes up -- that the 1990s were the "warmest decade in a millennium" and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000. The charge is that they airbrushed away hotter periods in the Middle Ages and focus on just part of the curve. I could show temperatures from December to July and show good warming trend as well.
Inconvenient.
Posted by jk at 10:35 AM
July 8, 2006Fires: Bush's Fault!"I see this as one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States," said study coauthor Thomas Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it's not 50 to 100 years away—it's happening now in forest ecosystems through fire."I guess the science is settled. The Director of Tree Ring Research and all says so in the Journal Science, picked up by Yahoo! News I suggest the increased population in forested areas and the devotion of academics and greens to wilderness preservation spiked in the late 1980s as well. I further suggest that the list of articles on this week's online version of the journal Science is telling:
Posted by jk at 1:43 PM
July 5, 2006Bush's Fault!Insty links to some interesting weather news: No Tornadoes Confirmed In Nebraska-Kansas Area This Year LINCOLN, Neb. -- Meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Hastings are feeling lucky this year. This might be a good trend, Sugarchuck tells me moving to McCook, NE is a good idea. Weather is one thing that gave me pause. Don't tell everybody, but the Front Range of Colorado has a perfect climate. A few hot weeks in the summer, a few cold weeks in the winter, all four seasons, and 300+ days of sun. I'm never in a rush to give that up. Damn President, didn't sign Kyoto.
Posted by jk at 12:12 PM
June 26, 2006Global Warming ConsensusGlobal Warming advocates like to claim that "the science is settled" and that "there is a consensus in the scientific community" which believes in man-made climate change. To disagree engenders quizzical looks and assumptions that you must be a creationist and a flat-earther as well. The TCS scientists and columnists are faulted for the substantive funding they receive from petroleum companies. Perhaps that's legitimate, but I do not understand why the converse isn't true: government scientists have an equal or greater stake in perpetuating research. So, my new buddy is the Alfred P. Sloane Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I don't think anybody ever accused MIT of hiring professors who don't know their science because they're right-wingers. I have quoted Richard Lindzen before, but today he writes in the WSJ Ed page about this consensus which is not a consensus. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim -- in his defense -- that scientists "don't know… They just don't know."
Posted by jk at 10:39 AM
June 6, 2006Climate ChangeTCS has a good article about climate change. (Not something Gore would want to read; he wants reality to follow his bidding...that comes from his education...influenced by John Dewey...influenced by Immanuel Kant, who said 'reality is a social construct.') Snowfall here in the Northeast and across much of the Hemisphere relate to decadal scale cycles in the Atlantic and Arctic. Two atmospheric oscillations which generally operate in tandem -- the North Atlantic and Arctic Oscillations -- have significant control over the weather pattern including storm tracks and temperatures in both Europe and the eastern United States. As George Taylor summarized on this site in his story "Arctic Sea Ice -- Is It Disappearing?""A number of researchers have suggested that inflows of Atlantic water into the Arctic profoundly affect temperatures and sea ice trends in the latter ocean. Polyakov, et al (2004) are among these. The first sentence of their paper states 'Exchanges between the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean have a profound influence on the circulation and thermodynamics of each basin.' The authors attributed most of the variability to multidecadal variations on time scales of 50-80 years, with warm periods in the 1930s-40s and in recent decades, and cool periods in the 1960s-70s and early in the twentieth century. These are associated with changes in ice extent and thickness (as well as air and sea temperature and ocean salinity). The most likely causative factor involves changes in atmospheric circulation, including but not limited to the Arctic Oscillation" The whole article is worth reading. It has some good graphics to help grasp the NAO/AO phenomenon.
Posted by Cyrano at 10:53 AM
June 5, 2006Who's Stupid?Jonathan Chait at TNR thinks he has discovered a new intellectual low: the Competitive Enterprise Institute and its anti-global warming ads. Chait's column, titled On carbon dioxide, conservatives take Americans for fools first establishes his street cred as a lip-curled cynic: I had always thought that nobody had a lower opinion than I as to the analytical capacities of the American public. Then I discovered the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Over here! Jonathan! The bald guy in the blue shorts! Yes, I believe it! I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of the Global Warming debate has been the difference between pollution and products of combustion. Perfect hydrocarbon combustion produces CO2 and water. If carbon dioxide had a nice, non-threatening name, like "water" there would be less capacity to whip up furor about it. Imperfect combustion releases carbon monoxide (CO) and particulates, and Nitrous oxide and nitrous dioxide. Newer, cleaner engines have reduced these impressively and the smog statistics show the effects. The pernicious thing about reducing CO2 is that you cannot have combustion. And, Mr. Chait, it is a natural compound, and plants do indeed "breathe" it. The difference between curbing CO and CO2 emissions is a world apart and when somebody comes along to educate people on this, they are called names by TNR and have their motives questioned. ON THE OTHER HAND, the former Vice President of the US, and a man who was nearly President, has released a whopper of a movie that is packed with the most outlandish over-predictions, bolstered predominantly by untruths. Chait does not mention "An Inconvenient Truth." But he finds time to write a column about a think tank that is using petro-chemical dollars to present their side of the story, which happens to be factual. The concept is so unpersuasive, even on its own terms, I can't believe that Americans are stupid enough to fall for it. People may be dumb, but if they were that dumb, the world would be a different place. There would be thousands of technicians on call to help us operate our flush toilets. Emergency rooms would be filled with people who attempted to clean out their earwax with steak knives Well, Mr. Chait, I guess we agree that somebody is stupid. UPDATE: Watch the ads here
Posted by jk at 1:30 PM
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But jk thinks:
I read the section you mentioned twice when I read the article, the prison terms for little girls convicted of dandecide are Chait's words, not the commercial's. Michael Moore in "Bowling for Columbine" took the accepted-as-over-the-top Willie Horton ad, and added graphics to make it worse. Chait does the same here. I added links so that you can see the ad. I challenge you to find one thing in it that is factually incorrect or even overblown. You're tired of overblown rhetoric and welcome rational debate, put 'er there buddy! It is the "warmies" that over-hype and use doomsday scenarios that are unfounded. The rhetoric is 100 times more overblown on the other side. No, that's overblown. It is only 83.4 times more overblown. I really shouldn't exaggerate. Posted by: jk at June 5, 2006 5:38 PM
But jk thinks:
And I didn't mean to dodge direct questions. I would not counter the existence of man-made smog. CO and NOx are clearly poison in all but small quantities, without a trained dentist's supervision. Although they occur naturally, adding more to the atmosphere seems an easier sell as a no-no. Back 'round to my point. I like this commercial for pointing out the difference. And it gets bonus points for pointing out the lifestyle advantages of using energy for wealth creation. Posted by: jk at June 5, 2006 6:19 PM
But jk thinks:
And the word I was looking for is "dandeleocide." My mistake. Posted by: jk at June 5, 2006 7:39 PM
But silence dogood thinks:
No problem JK, the whole premise of the ad is not factual. There is a current attempt to label CO2 as a greenhouse gas, which factually it is. There is no attempt to label it a pollutant, the ad does not point out the difference, it mixes the two completely. So what is factual in the ad? We do exhale CO2 (no mention of the all important quantities) plants do absorb CO2 (breathing it would require a respiratory system, but I'll give them that one), and the burning of fossil fuels for energy has developed civilization to how we know it today. Overblown rhetoric? How about the image of the gaunt woman grinding grain with a stick? Kinda ignores a few centuries of civilization don't you think? Even completely removing the use of fossil fuels would still leave us a long way from that, but images of a farmer plowing a field with a horse or a water wheel grinding grain doesn't pack quite the punch of a malnourished woman with a stick. The words are not stated, but the implication is clear that controlling CO2 emissions is going to cause you to take time away from writing code to grind your corn meal with a stick to make your dinner. Ditto for the implication that something as natural as CO2 could not possibly be bad for you. It is not so much what you say, as how you say it, or for complicated scientific topics like this how you mix pieces of real science with a bunch of so called common sense mumbo jumbo. How dare we allow the mixing of toxic, explosively unstable metals with poisonous chemicals (table salt). Dandelions are lawn terrorists and combatants and should be locked away indefinitely, and we should contemplate building walls around our lawns to control their movement. Posted by: silence dogood at June 6, 2006 10:21 AM
But jk thinks:
I strongly disagree that people are not moving to label an regulate CO2 as a pollutant. If not directly, they throw it in a basket with its unfriendly cousins. The point of the ad is to pull it out and look objectively at what it is. Are you proposing the rock as the technological advance to the stick? Because most of the ones which come to my mind use energy. Yes it's a long way from here to there, but the Institute makes an important point that using less energy is going to cost us. (Don't knock the stick -- my wife's preparations for Y2K were to buy an old fashioned coffee grinder and some bottled water. We have a wood stove and figured we could live without everything else. The grinder has a place of honor now as the bullet we dodged.) In the end it baffles me that we see this so differently. They don't say we're going back to the stick, they show the benefits of innovation. VP Gore, conversely, says that the trade center memorial will be underwater. I think we're comparing poetic license to polemic. Posted by: jk at June 6, 2006 1:34 PM
But silence dogood thinks:
No, I think we will have to disagree on this one. On the cataclysmic scale it is tough to beat total global destruction, or at least massive flooding, but to imply that with limited CO2 emissions we are headed for African subsistence is a bit of a whopper as well. I also extremely dislike the slippery slope argument that CO2 will soon be a full fledged pollutant. If we take the slippery slope concept to its conclusion, we should never decide anything for fear that our politicians will misuse the information. Everything uses energy JK, at least anything that does work over time. I was simply thinking that stock footage of Amish folk in this country would be a much closer approximation than an image obviously from an impoverished African nation. Coffee grinder and bottled water, I love it. Conservative you may be, but that is very bohemian. Posted by: silence dogood at June 7, 2006 2:39 PMJune 1, 2006Hype for Me, Not for TheeJosh at The Everyday Economist nails our former VP without even bringing up the ManBearPig. VP Gore says: “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” Ummmm, okay, but TEE points out: Now I want you to insert “Iraq” into the parentheses and re-read his statement. Now isn't that what Gore and many Democrats have accused President Bush of doing? So why then does Gore think its okay in this case? ManBearPig. It's real!
Posted by jk at 12:39 PM
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But Cyrano thinks:
Amen. It's another example which goes to show that Gore's thinking and ideas are based on feeling and what he wants to be true -- not on fact. His ideas are NOT objective, based on what reality and reason say. Accordingly, Gore "takes" himself outside of reality, and therefore outside of moral, practical consideration. (But he obviously grants some recognition to reality, else he could not survive...and he would be certifiably insane, which he is not -- he is simply irrational and immoral.) Posted by: Cyrano at June 1, 2006 7:02 PMMay 27, 2006The Coming Global Catastrophe
That is the message of a new documentary about the 2000 Democratic Party standard-bearer that has been produced and narrated by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and is being released in selected cities today. The documentary, entitled “An Incoherent Truth,” collects moments from some of Mr. Gore’s most mind-numbing speeches to make a persuasive case that a Gore presidency would set off a doomsday scenario of global tedium.
Posted by AlexC at 3:09 PM
Ozone Hole
The puzzle: In the lower stratosphere (between 10 and 18 km) ozone has recovered even better than changes in CFCs alone would predict. Something else must be affecting the trend at these lower altitudes. The "something else" could be atmospheric wind patterns. "Winds carry ozone from the equator where it is made to higher latitudes where it is destroyed. Changing wi |