Okay, so I can’t help it …
Vladimir Putin “Blinkinblogs is my favorite read with glass of Vodka.”
Barack OBAMA “Blinkinblogs? Never heard of them.”
Hopenhagen
Vladimir Putin “Blinkinblogs is my favorite read with glass of Vodka.”
Barack OBAMA “Blinkinblogs? Never heard of them.”
Okay, so I can’t help it …
Climate Change. Lol.
And now for a completely different take offered from a self-identified egghead:
Climategate = A handful of emails does not… nay, cannot discredit the broad scientific facts supporting Global Warming.
To quote Tyler Cowen (Professor of Economics @ George Mason University), “I see science, including climate science, as very much a decentralized process, based on the collective efforts of thousands of researchers. The evidence for our current understanding of climate change also comes from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, geography, tree ring studies, ice sheet studies, and a good body of theory, which has held up well. These results all point in broadly similar directions. Call me naive but, with apologies to Robert Sugden, I don’t think many scientific results depend on what comes out of East Anglia, even if you include its emailing affiliates from Penn State and the like. Even very, very simple climate models generate many of the basic results.”
A large part of the argument being leveraged by “climategaters” involves, what in the scientific community, is called a selection bias. This is a true (possibly unintentional) misuse of statistics. The world continues its ever-increasing accumulation of man-made global warming gases. Carbon is being forced into a state change in massive amounts due to the burning of hydrocarbon-based fuels. A great model for the effects of significant state change in the carbon cycle can be seen on any night there is a clear sky. Even with the naked eye, check out Mars and its delightful array of greenery.
Whether we quibble over the use of the words “warming” or “change”, we are still experiencing a period of ever-increasing flux. What I haven’t heard from the climategaters is anything attributed to “effect” after they state that this is just a natural condition of the planet. OK, so things are getting colder (which they are not as an aggregate function of “average temp” just as the polar ice caps do not melt increasingly frigid climate conditions). None-the-less, we live in a very tenuous band of climate that enables us to produce food seasonally. If that average temperature range is crossed, we’re toast. Now what? Are we to then believe the Gov’t endeavored upon a conspiracy to make the Eskimo the predominant race on the planet? Alex Jones will be the first to break the story.
Of a more personal note, Mr. Alex Jones really, really chaps my arrogant ass. He honestly needs someone to bitch-slap him forcefully (audibly) every time he misuses the Queen’s English on the air. I want to see his eye’s well-up as he calls out for his mommy. That Rat-Bastard.
My issue is related more, I believe, to how anyone involved seems to be arguing the case for or against climate change to begin with – they choose the “facts” that they like to tout as real, and dismiss all others.
Is there climate change? To Caravaggio’s point of course there is. However, there always has been. “The evidence for our current understanding of climate change also comes from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, geography, tree ring studies, ice sheet studies, and a good body of theory, which has held up well.” Agreed, again, however, this is a more blanket statement as that applies to the ENTIRE history of the Earth as humans have been able to map it. Example?
12 thousand years ago there was an ice age. Was man spewing forth anything into the air at the time? Nope. So what caused it? Nobody seems to bother bringing that up as it seems as it doesn’t seem to lend anything to either “side” of the argument.
I look at it this way: should we be concerned with climate change – definitely. However to properly solve a problem a person must first properly identify it, and nobody has done that. Only when you can identify the real problem can you solve it.
In the meantime it doesn’t hurt to find clean energy sources, but then, I don’t think the general populace is the problem in doing that.
No argument here… anytime I endeavor to “thunk” about this issue, I always seem to immediately think about a great quote from a great movie, The Matrix (the first film in the triology)…
Agent Smith: I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.
Check out Peter Ward’s EXCELLENT body of work definitively outlining the history of the changes for which you speak…
A) The Medea Hypothesis:
http://www.amazon.com/Medea-Hypothesis-Ultimately-Self-Destructive-Essentials/dp/0691130752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260619888&sr=8-1
B) The Life and Death of Planet Earth:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Planet-Earth-Astrobiology/dp/0805075127/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260620106&sr=1-1