Climate Change

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed it yet, but it seems to me that the weather has been getting colder for the last month or so. I think we may be in for another ice age, no doubt caused by CO2 emissions or something. We have to put together a world-wide treaty protocol that will destroy the world’s economy in order to prevent this coming climate catastrophe.

I have also noticed that the days seem to be shorter lately. I wonder if maybe the sun is going out.

17 thoughts on “Climate Change”

  1. Checkout what’s been going on with Climategate 2. People will be going to jail over this.

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  3. Less than the media hype suggests. They were far from complete and only dealt with temperatures over land. I do not believe that they established that any change in global temperature is due to humanity.
    The global warming people might well have a serious case. If so, they have badly undermined their position with the ridiculous alarmism that they have been promoting and now evidently with fraud.
    For my part,I only note that the earth’s temperature has varied widely over the eons, even before any people were around, and that none of the environmental scare stories that were around when I was a child have come to pass.

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  4. Climategate 2 has shown that NASA GISS and East Anglia CRU have systematically released findings that they knew were false, have conspired to have the PhDs of skeptics revoked, gotten editors fired for publishing skeptic science in scientific journals, and much more. The entire thing was bogus from the beginning, and I really, REALLY want a good old fashioned hanging.

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      1. Just follow Anthony Watts and others on Watts Up With That. There’s a LOT of information, and it is VERY hard to follow, so you have to be really, REALLY dedicated to know what is going on. Generally, I just ask my father what’s happening, as he is a major contributor to the comments section and is now a guest poster.

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      4. Ben, while the evolutionary theory is incomplete (as can be expected when working with something that mostly happened before humans even existed), there is plenty of modern evidence to show it is happening, such as the existence of Polar Bears, which are descended from Grizzlies, and snakes that give live births in Australia.

        When my father was in university, his evolutionary biology professor was a creationist. He argued that he believed the world was created only 5 thousand years ago, but that G-d had created everything to be older at that time, so that science showed that evolution had occurred prior to creation. While I disagree with this viewpoint, it shows you how strong the evidence is in favour of evolution, having a creationist as a professor of evolutionary biology.

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  5. Yes, the anti evolution movement is clearly one of reckless denial rather than healthy skepticism. Yet the arguments are so incredibly convincing to a major fraction of the American public simply because there is little understanding of the evidence plus a great deal of vested cultural (specifically religious) interest in evolution NOT being true. Likewise, given the complexities of something like climate, it seems pretty unlikely that an average American could really understand the process or know the facts. Example: references to non-research articles in most public debates–people just cannot argue the data or theory directly. Perhaps better comparisons are the historical arguments that cigarette smoking causes cancer, or that lead paint is dangerous for residential use. In each case, there was a ton of money spent by corporations with vested interest to discredit the science directly or to obscurate it by publishing a ton of “noise” that would be easily consumed by the public. I would argue that these tactics were quite successful and delayed necessary action for decades. Now this is not evidence supporting one side or another in the climate debate, but when you look at the climate debate, the deniers carry the weight of the vested interest, money, and PR power. Thus my teaching experience (vehement resistance to old earth/evolution where my personal-friend colleagues are accused of conspiring to lie to the public or of just being too stupid to understand their own data–love that one) and my understanding of the history of environmental efforts (e.g. cigarettes and lead paint) makes me skeptical of the climate “Skeptics”.

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    1. Actually, a lot of the money and vested interests are on the side of global warming alarmists. Consider Al Gore who stood to make millions off his carbon trading schemes. I am more than a little skeptical about scientists who try to manipulate data and smear those who disagree with them. I am especially skeptical of activists who want to spend trillions of dollars fighting a crisis that may or may not exist.

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    2. You, sir, are full of crap. Name one part of the ‘evidence’ that supports global warming that is true? The ‘Hockeystick Graph’? Found to be fraudulent. Michael Mann’s Nature graph? Also Fraudulent. The entire theory is based around 12 trees in Siberia, with 50% of the data weighted to a single tree. None of the reconstructions account for the Roman and Medieval warm periods, the reconstructions don’t come anywhere NEAR the climate seen in the ice cores or real history, and as the ice caps are melting in Greenland, Viking villages, pastures and FARMLAND and being pulled out of the ice!

      Global warming is a myth, invented to make money, and even a cursory look through the Climategate 2 emails tells you that! And as David said, if you follow the money, it is all in the alarmist camp.

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      1. “And as David said, if you follow the money, it is all in the alarmist camp.”

        Oil companies? Coal companies? Automobile companies? None of these are involved in contributing campaign money? In putting together think tanks? In astroturfing? These are the economic interests that stand to lose. Are you telling me that they have spent no money to get global warming out of their way?

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      2. If we are going to discuss the money, than how about the CEO of Duke energy who is a firm global warming proponent largely because he hopes to make billions in carbon trading schemes? How about the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by environmental groups to promote the ideology of global warming? How about the six figure salaries of the directors of environmental groups? How about the money spent on conferences in places like Rio and Copenhagen? It seems to me that being a global warming advocate is quite a lucrative position.
        And if you are a politician, you can use global warming as an excuse to tell other people how to live their lives, while exempting yourself and your friends from all of the sacrifices needed to save the Earth.
        Do you believe that all of these people have no interest in scare mongering?

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      3. Ignoring the antics of non-scientists activists like Gore and cetera (irrelevant to the scientific question though amusing to watch), and ignoring the question of what to do, because it is a non-scientific issue of whether any changes would be good or bad, and based on my possibly false observation here that we all concede the fact of changing climate, it seems the really relevant question is whether changes are caused by people. That leads to the question of whether current climate extremes can be fit into past climate patterns. Do you (Justin and David) refer to the more recent past climates of the Pleistocene whose system is continuous with modern day earth, and climate fluctuations are generally attributed to variations incoming solar radiation, or to the very ancient past climates spanning the entirety of the Phanerozoic or even just venturing into the older Cenozoic, where huge climate “regime” changes are attributed to rearrangement of continent/ocean system?

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      4. The climate is changing all of the time, even within the very short period in recorded history. Do human beings play a role in changing climate? Possibly. But the burden of proof has to be on those who wish us to make major changes to our lifestyles and prevent many of the world’s poorest people from any hope of improvement.

        Is global warming bad? History seems to show that it is not. Warm periods seem to be associated with periods of general prosperity while cooler periods are not. I am sure that there is much research that needs to be done. I am certain, however that another ice age would not be a good thing.

        I think that this discussion has gone as far as it can go. We should get back together in about thirty year and see if the Earth is any warmer or cooler.
        Thank you for your comments and please feel free to comment on any other post.

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