I think the strategy on global warming should be coupled with an effort to reduce our reliance on Middle East oil. Even people who are in denial on global warming have to be concerned about funding terrorist organizations, right? In that way, we cut down on fossil fuel consumption for reasons other than global warming, but the environmental effect is still salutary, and we also reap geopolitical benefits.
 

It is interesting that the article fails to mention exactly which bureaucracy in the US offered idea or the fact that this suggestion is hardly new.

This manmade global warming nonsense gets loonier with every new story.

I am currently reading a very interesting book entitled "Unstoppable Global Warming" written by Dr. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery which shreds most of the "science' behind the greenhouse theory, notes that temperature measurements this century outside of the urban heat sinks increased by less than a degree, and details a 1500 year solar cycle of warming and cooling into which our current warming cycle fits very well.

This new cycle of warming started in the mid 1800s long before human emissions of CO2 amounted to anything and most of the recorded temperature rise was over by 1940. This current cycle is very similar to the Medieval Warming the world went through between 900 and 1300. During this earlier warming period, the ice retreated and Greenland turned green as it is doing now. The Vikings farmed and grazed the island. In between the Medieval Warming and the current warming cycle, the world experienced a cooling known as the Little Ice Age, which caused severe weather, killed off crops and caused famines.

It is the height of human arrogance (or a need to get grant money) to assume that our piddly presence on this planet is fundamentally shifting the climate. The climate is driven by the sun and the seas. Mankind barely has anything to say about the matter.
 

It is the height of human arrogance (or a need to get grant money) to assume that our piddly presence on this planet is fundamentally shifting the climate.

The irony...

The height of arrogance is to ignore the weight of scientific research.

Your post reminds me of that know nothing, Rush Limbaugh, who recently said on his show (I heard a commercial. I would never waste my time actually listening):

For those who say that global warming is caused by man, how can they explain that if man caused the problem, he should be able to fix it, and he can't.

I suppose Rush and his fatuous listeners are either unable or unwilling to understand that perhaps man doesn't have have the technology to "fix it."

If I pour 10 gallons of oil into a swimming pool, and I don't have the filtering devices to remove it, it obviously doesn't mean
that I didn't cause it.

"There are none so blind as those who refuse to see."
 

Rich:

The height of arrogance is to ignore the weight of scientific research.

What scientific proof?

The proponents of this theory only offer computer models into which they have programmed their own assumptions. Thus, this science is entirely composed of scientific hypotheses.

Under the scientific method, hypotheses need to be proven. You can prove the methodology of a predictive computer climate model in one of two ways - show that it accounts for past warming or that it successfully predicts the actual temperatures in the future. I am unaware of any model which has been proven by accomplishing either of these things.

Instead, I read an article last year where these climate scientists claimed that their models were proven because the models themselves arrived at similar outcomes, not because any of the models had been proven against the actual weather.

This is the epitome of junk science like the claims that coffee, artificial sweeteners, cell phones and alar caused disease in humans.

There is nothing special about scientists. They respond to the same financial and follow the herd pressures to fudge and lie as everyone else. In any civil case using experts, you will generally find two or more very credentialed scientific experts arriving at completely different conclusions based on the same data. I lost any innocence I had about "experts" a long time ago when I started cross examining them for a living.

When "scientists" start telling me that the end of the world is nigh unless I surrender my property and freedom to them, I am more than a little skeptical of their claims and demand substantial and proven evidence.

If you can get past the guilt my association snarks comparing me to Rush Limbaugh, I would be more than willing to consider any scientific proof you might offer. Scientific proof does not include government or UN opinions. Give me a study, its evidence, its findings and a link or cite so I can review if for myself.

Specifically, I would love to see a study which can show me a significant correlation between the steady increase in CO2 emissions starting in the Industrial Revolution and rise and fall of temperatures during that period. Specifically, a study which will explain how this current warming cycle began in 1850 before man started emitting CO2 and started falling again between 1940 and the around 1976 when manmade CO2 levels took off as the world industrialized and cars filled the highways.

Good luck.
 

The Bush administration is considering blotting out the sun? I thought this a joke at first. How could anyone propose such an absurd idea? But we're talking about the Bush administration. So any idiotic idea isn't out of the question for this bunch.

Is anyone in the administration aware that the earth is already experiencing global dimming, perhaps caused by the tons of particulate pollutants we're pumping into the atmosphere? We're currently experiencing global dimming and warming simultaneously. Global dimming may be masking the effects of global warming—meaning global warming may be worse than we think it is. But dimming the amount of sunlight reaching the earth isn't the answer to global warming. Because dimming can also adversely change weather patterns by disrupting rainfall, which may lead to famines.

Global Dimming/Warming articles: BBC and PBS just for starters.

Leslie
 

rich said:

I think the strategy on global warming should be coupled with an effort to reduce our reliance on Middle East oil.

Rich has a point. The two problmes are inter-related and solutions to one may work for the other as well (you know, like conservation???). But what's the prfit in that....

Cheers,
 

Sorry, mispelled "prophet".... ;-)

Cheers,
 

Grate blog :)
It's my blog:
Buy Fioricet
 

"Bart" DePalma, Esq., Ph.D, and criminal prosecutor to boot, says:

This manmade global warming nonsense gets loonier with every new story.

No. It gets more and more established, to the point that the only "professional" people denying it are the shills for energy companies, and the rest of the nay-sayers are maladministration sycophants and Kool-Aid drinkers.

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

I am currently reading a very interesting book entitled "Unstoppable Global Warming" written by Dr. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery which shreds most of the "science' behind the greenhouse theory, notes that temperature measurements this century outside of the urban heat sinks increased by less than a degree, and details a 1500 year solar cycle of warming and cooling into which our current warming cycle fits very well.

"I'm not a scientist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and read a book...."

Here's some pictures for "Bart"; I suspect he's pretty much innumerate if not illiterate and needs the visual aids.

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

... and Greenland turned green as it is doing now....

"There's a sucker born every minute." Some are stoopid even a thousand years later. "Greenland" was one of the best sales jobs ever. Never was "green".

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

What scientific proof?

The proponents of this theory only offer computer models into which they have programmed their own assumptions. Thus, this science is entirely composed of scientific hypotheses.

This is just utter bullsh*te. Really. "Bart" here is claiming there is no evidence for global warming, and that is just outright false. "Bart" suggests that the only thing that the proponents of a global warming have is unsupported "computer models". Outright nonsense. Yes, there are computer models which explain pretty well how global warming is being affected by rising CO2 levels, but to claim there are "assumptions" there is absurd, unless you want to claim that infrared absorption by CO2 is an "assumption" and not an established physical fact. But the fact of global warming is pretty much undeniable, and the anthropogenic factors leading to a good portion of it are accepted by pretty much every scientist inthe field outside of those (like "Bart"'s Fred Singer) whose pockets are lined by TexacoExxonAmocoBPPhillipMorriseven. Talk about people whose job depends on what they say....

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

Instead, I read an article last year where these climate scientists claimed that their models were proven because the models themselves arrived at similar outcomes, not because any of the models had been proven against the actual weather.

Cite, please. Not that I don't believe you, but you're a stinkin' liar, "Bart", so a little caution is in order....

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

This is the epitome of junk science like the claims that coffee, artificial sweeteners, cell phones and alar caused disease in humans....

Just out of curiosity, what does the scientific validity of any of these things have to do with the scientific validity of climate models?

Cheers,
 

arne:

You do not need to waste folks time scrolling through another one of your five posts to my one spamming sessions.

It only takes a single post to admit that you too do not have any actual scientific proof to offer.
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

There is nothing special about scientists....

One could say the same about DUI lawyers. There's good ones and bad ones. But at the very least, a scientist generally has an idea what science is, and that ain't you, "Bart"....

... They respond to the same financial and follow the herd pressures to fudge and lie as everyone else.

Which is why, in part, we have tenure. And gummint funding, with scientists involved with the granting process. Until the Dubya maladministration started putting party hacks and toadies or the sons of big contributors into gummint science positions (even hacks with faked or bogus degrees), gummint used to be pretty clean about letting scientists do their job.

Unlike, say, the folks sucking off Big Energy's teat, where they can kiss their sinecure goodbye if they publish something Big Energy doesn't like. Sound familiar?
 

"Bart" DePalma is pretty obtuse:

In any civil case using experts, you will generally find two or more very credentialed scientific experts arriving at completely different conclusions based on the same data. I lost any innocence I had about "experts" a long time ago when I started cross examining them for a living.

Ummm, that's because the adversaries get to pick the frickin' witnesses and not the judge, doofus. Of course they're going to go for the folks that support their case. It's an adversary process. But FWIW, assuming one side or the other is right, then at least some of the experts got it right too, no?

"Bart" is getting held up by little bald-headed men with pocket protectors at night:

When "scientists" start telling me that the end of the world is nigh unless I surrender my property and freedom to them, I am more than a little skeptical of their claims and demand substantial and proven evidence.

Just a clue for the clueless here, "Bart": They're telling you (and your kids, were they unfortunate enough for you to have them) that you're in danger of losing "property" and "freedom" if you don't take better care of it.

The ones robbing you at gunpoint are, however, a figment of your imagination.

Scientific proof does not include government or UN opinions. Give me a study, its evidence, its findings and a link or cite so I can review if for myself.

You can start here, "Bart".

Yeah, I know, it's a gummint. But it does have blue clickies, and perhaps even you can manage the inticacies of such, "Bart". Here's more.

Pretending it doesn't exist is just stoopid.

Specifically, I would love to see a study which can show me a significant correlation between the steady increase in CO2 emissions starting in the Industrial Revolution and rise and fall of temperatures during that period. Specifically, a study which will explain how this current warming cycle began in 1850 before man started emitting CO2 and started falling again between 1940 and the around 1976 when manmade CO2 levels took off as the world industrialized and cars filled the highways.

Great chart on temperature and CO2 on that first link I gave you above, "Bart". Who you gonna believe, "Bart" or your lying eyes?

Cheers,
 

I think the strategy on global warming should be coupled with an effort to reduce our reliance on Middle East oil.

There's a third benefit as well: reducing our foreign trade deficit. We actually get three birds with one stone.

For those not familiar with the site, RealClimate provides a very reliable source for information on climate destabilization.
 

"Bart" DePalma:

arne:

You do not need to waste folks time scrolling through another one of your five posts to my one spamming sessions.

It only takes a single post to admit that you too do not have any actual scientific proof to offer.

As I said, "Bart": If you'll limit yourself to one piece of bullsh*te and/or nonsense per post, I'll limit myself to one reply thereto. Do we have a deal? BTW, lots of cites above if you'll just click through the clickies.

And a question: How do you justify citing Fred Singer when you seem to be of the opinion that a person who's been bought (see "jt davis"'s clicky) ain't worth listening to? I want an answer....

Cheers,
 

What scientific proof?

The proponents of this theory only offer computer models into which they have programmed their own assumptions. Thus, this science is entirely composed of scientific hypotheses.


Here's a piece from the methodological issues section of a recent article on quantifying anthropogenic influence on near-surface temperature changes. It addresses some of your concerns, I think:

"With all these figures, the question naturally arises as to which is the “best” estimate of anthropogenic and natural influence on climate over the 20th century. Two conflicting demands mean that there can be no definitive answer to this question. On the one hand, we wish to estimate as much as possible from the observed climate record and to rely on model-simulated signal amplitudes as little as possible. On the other hand, we have only a finite amount of data available and model-based estimates of internal climate variability are only reliable, if at all, on the largest spatio-temporal scales. The more quantities we attempt to estimate, the larger the model-data discrepancy that is required for a parameter-set to be rejected and the larger the confidence intervals become. Greater uncertainty is not inherently undesirable, of course, although it makes it more difficult to draw useful conclusions from the results. A more dangerous problem is that, as we increase the number of signals with the same input data, it becomes more likely that a chance feature of a particular signal combination will account for a significant fraction of the variance in the observed data, giving an apparently good fit for entirely spurious reasons.

The HCM2 three-way and four-way detection results with the solar signal based on the Lean et al. (1995), reconstruction provide an excellent illustration of this point. The observed record cannot be accounted for by the Lean et al. (1995), signal alone (Fig. 11), nor in combination only with volcanic forcing. If this solar signal is combined with the simulated volcanic signal, results from a three-way regression with anthropogenic forcings remain physically reasonable, with ?G and ?S both greater than zero and consistent with unity and ?LV relatively small. In the four-way case (Fig. 19) the estimated amplitude of the solar signal is of an unphysical sign: the problem breaks down because we are trying to estimate 4 pieces of information from only 10–15 independent pieces of data (the coefficients on the E-EOFs).

There are two solutions to this problem, either introducing prior constraints based on physically reasonable ranges for these estimated quantities or introducing more information in the data used to constrain them. It is inevitable that, for a given amount of data, the estimation problem will eventually break down as we try to estimate the amplitudes of more and more candidate signals. Hasselmann (1997), remarked on this point, but concluded it would not be too serious a problem since the number of candidate explanations for recent climate change is relatively small. Unfortunately, the imagination of the scientific community is such that the number of candidate explanations for recent climate change may be unbounded, so we cannot simply estimate all candidate signal amplitudes mechanically from the available data. As in every other problem, progress can only be made by combining prior knowledge with the additional information provided by a particular dataset.

Given that the combined forcing due to solar and volcanic activity over the latter part of the 20th century is relatively small compared to anthropogenic forcing, and the response appears, on the basis of Figs. 17–20, to be indistingishable from zero in this diagnostic, it is not necessarily true that inclusion of these natural signals in the estimation procedure will “improve” (move towards the truth) the estimated amplitude of the anthropogenic signals. In any case, in almost all cases considered, it makes relatively little difference, with greenhouse warming in the range 0.3 to around 1.2 K/century, with the upper bound particularly uncertain, and sulphate cooling up to ?0.7 K/century."

To sum up for those less-inclined to read the methods section above:

Our results indicate that the combination of greenhouse and sulphate forcing, as simulated by these climate models, is generally adequate to account for large-scale decadal temperature changes over the period 1946–1996, expressed as anomalies about the 1906–1996 climatology: that is, with one exception, remaining model-data discrepancies can be explained as internal variability as simulated by these models. Under this account, anthropogenic influence is responsible for a 0.3–0.5 K/century warming (5–95% range) over the 1906–1996 period. This is consistent with the range of warming rates simulated by these climate models but, crucially, was estimated from the observed climate record without making any assumption about the correctness or otherwise of the amplitude of the model-simulated responses.


Citation:
Allen MR, Gillett NP, Kettleborough JA, et al.
Quantifying anthropogenic influence on recent near-surface temperature change
SURVEYS IN GEOPHYSICS 27 (5): 491-544 SEP 2006
 

The comments pretty much take things a bit more seriously than the post itself, which is good and all, but this 'keeping out the sun' stuff does remind me of a Josie and the Pussycasts episode.

The aliens there were clued in to using sunglasses. Seriously, though I doubt the option supplied is the answer, it might very well be one means to deal with the problem. The more the merrier.
 

"With all due respect, cliché dissenting Republican, the economy is not going to matter... the day after tomorrow!"

South Park, 908

Oh and don't let that a troll hijack this thread. He can go and read for himself.
 

Geeze, from all the hysterical reactions, you'd never guess that this is a perfectly sensible proposal, or that the amount of artifical dimming neccessary to compensate for human CO2 emissions would be too small for human senses to perceive, being on roughly the same scale as natural variations in solar intensity.

But it's proposed by THIS administration, and so has to be made into a joke.
 

JT

Objection: Despite what the computer models tell us, there is actually no evidence of significant global warming.

What does this cut and paste have to do with what I posted? If you had read my post for content, most skeptics, including myself, acknowledge that the world is warming, but that warming is exaggerated by urban heat sinks and is otherwise of largely natural origins.

What I challenged was that this warming could be shown to be substantially correlated with the rising levels of CO2. The challenge I presented was this:

I would love to see a study which can show me a significant correlation between the steady increase in CO2 emissions starting in the Industrial Revolution and rise and fall of temperatures during that period. Specifically, a study which will explain how this current warming cycle began in 1850 before man started emitting CO2 and started falling again between 1940 and the around 1976 when manmade CO2 levels took off as the world industrialized and cars filled the highways.

i am still waiting.

This critique of Singer and Avery by Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre, is worth reading.

I notice that this critique acknowledges the credentials and the science presented by Messers. Singer and Avery, but avoids once challenging any specific science offered or specific critique of the greenhouse theory.
 

pms:

THANK YOU so much for offering actual evidence. Do you happen to have a link to this paper? If not, from where did you get this citation and quote? I do not have a university library handy in my mountain town of 8000 some souls.

However, without having the benefit of reading the entire paper, I would make the following observations concerning the blurb you kindly provided:

Our results indicate that the combination of greenhouse and sulphate forcing, as simulated by these climate models, is generally adequate to account for large-scale decadal temperature changes over the period 1946–1996, expressed as anomalies about the 1906–1996 climatology...

As before, I would note that CO2 emissions rose fairly steadily during the 1906 to 1996 period, but the temperatures started to rise prior to this period until 1939, fell from 1940 to 1975 and then rose again. How does this study correlate the two events, if at all?

Under this account, anthropogenic influence is responsible for a 0.3–0.5 K/century warming (5–95% range) over the 1906–1996 period.

If the "5-95% range" being referenced in this passage refers to the range and levels of correlation between "anthropogenic influence" (i.e. CO2 emissions) and "0.3–0.5 K/century warming," then I cannot see how the models used show a statistically significant correlation. My heavens, a 5% correlation is hardly significant. Can you confirm for me to what the "5-95% range" refers?

I would also note that the temperature rise attributed to "anthropogenic influence" is a faction of the full degree most greenhouse warming proponents attribute to ""anthropogenic influence" over the past century. The criticism of this "science" appears to be forcing proponents to become much more conservative in their claims.
 

Bart writes:This is the epitome of junk science like the claims that coffee, artificial sweeteners, cell phones and alar caused disease in humans.

Guilt by association - did that come from law school? It didn't come from a science class.

To continue:There is nothing special about scientists. They respond to the same financial and follow the herd pressures to fudge and lie as everyone else. In any civil case using experts, you will generally find two or more very credentialed scientific experts arriving at completely different conclusions based on the same data. I lost any innocence I had about "experts" a long time ago when I started cross examining them for a living.

The error here seems to be in the understanding of science. The nature of science is such that approaching it as one would a court case simply doesn't work, although at the face of it, it might seem so. Science isn't about truth or consensus. Science is about science. And true, 'global warming' is not proven in the sense that an exact mechanism has been clearly established - only that its happening, and there is evidence that human activity has an effect.

The extent of that effect, however, is not exactly certain. Global climate presents a challenge for scientists, since while they know that increasing CO2 will exacerbate the warming climate trend, making exacting predictions is very difficult. This is no reason, scientifically, to cast ill light on current scientific study for that reason.

Bart's arguments against global warming seem interestingly parallel to arguments against evolution. Attempting to discredit it via various ad hominems against researchers, citing the existence of differing theories about a phenomenon as proof that it isn't happening, citing a lack of perfectly conclusive evidence (like in a court case) as proof that a theory about an observed phenomenon is invalid - they all seem to be strategies that creationists use to discredit evolution.
 

JT:

The guilt by association logical fallacy cuts both ways in this matter. How many hundreds of millions of dollars are being provided to greenhouse theory proponents to perform their research by governments and organizations already invested in this theory as a means to justify taxing my gasoline, stopping production of or raising the cost of vehicles like the jeep I rely upon to get around in the mountains and the myriad of other regulations which will increase my energy costs and slow or reverse the economic growth which I rely upon as a small business to put money in the pockets of my clients?

(Holy run on sentences Batman!)
 

jt:

And if one could change the concentration of a single greenhouse gas while holding the rest of the system (except its temperature) fixed, it would be simple to calculate the corresponding change in surface temperature. For example, doubling the concentration of CO2 would raise the average surface temperature by about 1.4°F, enough to detect but probably not enough to cause serious problems. Almost all the controversy arises from the fact that in reality, changing any single greenhouse gas will indirectly cause other components of the system to change as well, thus yielding additional changes. These knock-on effects are known as feedbacks, and the most important and uncertain of these involves water.

Thank you for what is essentially an admission that they cannot identify a correlation between CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) and the actual and fluctuating temperature readings.

The article itself glosses over the global cooling which occurred between 1940 and 1975 in its argument that the increase in atmospheric CO2 caused the net increase in temperature since the Industrial Revolution.
 

jt davis:

I'm not as concerned about the number of posts you make, Arne, as I am about your blood pressure. As your physician, I prescribe deep breathing, counting to ten and a few beers. See you in the morning.

As you correctly noted, "Bart" really irks me when he pretends to be a scientist. In theory, he does have a law license (although that doesn't say much for the process, does it?), and while I catch him frequently in outright mistakes or misstatements of the law, at least he has some nominal "expertise" there (and is amenable to challenge ... and [very rare] correction).

When he pretends to know about scientific method and such, though, such as he does here, in his comments on "science" informing us on "human life", and statistical sampling methodology and epidemiolgy, he's just out of his league, and needs to STFU and start reading.

BTW, he's reminiscent of Steve Milloy (a/k/a "The Junkman"), who is as I'm sure you're aware, a shill for industry and tobacco, who used to run a "junk science" website. There Milloy, nominally trained in statistics, was deriding the use of meta-analysis. The fact is; when five studies all point the same way, it does mean something even if the individual studies don't all reach the talismanic P=.05 "gold standard" of significance.

People like Singer and Milloy are paid to put out cruddy "science". "Bart" is just a Kool-Aid drinker, and thus a piss-poor scientifical amateur, who adopts the very unscientific method of touting just the "studies" that he wants to hear. I can hear the "Lah-la-la-la-LAH!" from three states over.....

Cheers,
 

brett:

Geeze, from all the hysterical reactions, you'd never guess that this is a perfectly sensible proposal, ...

Geeze, you'd think Brett would realise that someone proposing this "solution" to global warming recognises that there is indeed a problem. Most of the "hysterical reactions" here have to do with the fact that "Bart" denies there's even a problem....

As for whether the "solution" is practical or effective, much less "sensible", that's not in the least obvious.

FWIW, ThinkProgress.org has a neat tidbit on what global warming is doing for energy companies here....

Cheers,
 

If this were a "normal" scientific discussion, the issues would be whether the hypotheses could be falsified and whether the results could be replicated independently.

In the case at hand, however, the issue is whether human activity has begun a process that will cause global warming, which will probably wipe out up to 90 percent of the species on Earth, not incidentally humanity. It may not be that bad, of course. It may be that it will just cause the deaths of a billion people, or, if technology makes a few breakthroughs, it may just kill a few thousand species and a few million people.

The sun shield idea would attempt to correct an imperfectly-understood phenomenon in a massively chaotic system using a method which may or may even be technologically feasible, and which, even if it is feasible may have collateral effects which are not understood. Half-wits may opine that the human eye will not notice the difference, but it's not the effect on the human eye they're trying to correct.

It would be commendable if the skeptics were also skeptical about "supply-side economics", "faith-based science" or other pseudo-science in general. But they're not.

Selective science -- isn't science. Singer and Avery (and people like Bart) cherry-pick their facts so that they can appear scientific while actually supporting theories that, privately, they support because it's politically or economically beneficial.

When the downside risk of the experiment is so great, their skepticism, while allowable, is extremely dangerous in giving those, like Bart, who will only read this book or others agreeing with it, the idea that global warming is hogwash. We should certainly agree that there's a chance that the current scientific consensus could be wrong in some fundamental way. It is idiotic to roll the dice with so much at stake.
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

What I challenged was that this warming could be shown to be substantially correlated with the rising levels of CO2.

I guess he just ignores even his own lying eyes (in particular, the third figure)..... How dishonest.

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

THANK YOU so much for offering actual evidence. Do you happen to have a link to this paper? If not, from where did you get this citation and quote? I do not have a university library handy in my mountain town of 8000 some souls.

However, without having the benefit of reading the entire paper, I would make the following observations concerning the blurb you kindly provided:

[from the paper]: Our results indicate that the combination of greenhouse and sulphate forcing, as simulated by these climate models, is generally adequate to account for large-scale decadal temperature changes over the period 1946–1996, expressed as anomalies about the 1906–1996 climatology...

As before, I would note that CO2 emissions rose fairly steadily during the 1906 to 1996 period, but the temperatures started to rise prior to this period until 1939, fell from 1940 to 1975 and then rose again. How does this study correlate the two events, if at all?

Ummmm, hate to have to ask, "Bart", but where are your figures from?!?!?

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma shows he's just ignerrent about basic statistics:

[from the paper]: Under this account, anthropogenic influence is responsible for a 0.3–0.5 K/century warming (5–95% range) over the 1906–1996 period.

If the "5-95% range" being referenced in this passage refers to the range and levels of correlation between "anthropogenic influence" (i.e. CO2 emissions) and "0.3–0.5 K/century warming," then I cannot see how the models used show a statistically significant correlation. My heavens, a 5% correlation is hardly significant. Can you confirm for me to what the "5-95% range" refers?

The "(5–95% range)" is the confidence interval for the metric (the actual warming). It is not a "correlation" (much less a "5% correlation").

FWIW, correlation coefficients (like any other measured metric) can have confidence intervals on them. When the confidence interval includes 0 at a certain level of probability, we don't reject the null hypothesis of no correlation at all (although this is not proof of no correlation either).

But, that being said, I have no idea what a "5% correlation" is (not, do I suspect, does "Bart"); correlation coefficients (for instance, the Pearson correlatin coefficient ?(X,Y)) are commonly reported as real numbers inthe range of -1 to 1, while the "percentages" used in confidence intervals are in the range of 0-1 (or 0% to 100%).

It's clear that "Bart" doesn't understand even basic statistics methodology here, and thus will be better addressed if we just give him pretty pictures (as I did above).

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

I would also note that the temperature rise attributed to "anthropogenic influence" is a faction of the full degree most greenhouse warming proponents attribute to ""anthropogenic influence" over the past century.

While he doesn't cite any actual sources for his figures, I suspect he's mistaking apples and oranges here: The anthopogenic component is roughly a half of the warming seen, I think, and the 1 degree figure I think is referring to the total warming.

But if "Bart" would actually quote people, maybe we'd know. As it is, we just have hs word on it, and that, as we've seen repeatedly, just ain't worth a damn and should probably just be ignored.

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

The guilt by association logical fallacy cuts both ways in this matter. How many hundreds of millions of dollars are being provided to greenhouse theory proponents to perform their research by governments and organizations already invested in this theory as a means to justify taxing my gasoline, stopping production of or raising the cost of vehicles like the jeep I rely upon to get around in the mountains and the myriad of other regulations which will increase my energy costs and slow or reverse the economic growth which I rely upon as a small business to put money in the pockets of my clients?

Then there's guilt by insinuation, eh? Good question, "Bart", and the answer is?!?!? Do you have any evidence that the 95% of climate scientists that agree on global wrming are all being paid by the TLC/OWG/ZOG conspiracy (operating <*HORRORS!*> even under the aegis of the U.S. gummint) to put out false science so they can steal your car?

You know, like all these folks being funded by lobbying groups for some partisan or pecuniary cause?

Case if you don't, you're a slimebucket and it's slopping over the top, it's so full....

Cheers,
 

Do you happen to have a link to this paper? If not, from where did you get this citation and quote?

I'm afraid I'm not aware of any direct link to the paper. I have access to a ton of electronic journals via the University of Chicago, but access requires institutional affiliation. I could, however, send you a copy of the pdf for your review if you like.

Can you confirm for me to what the "5-95% range" refers?

That's a confidence interval, not a correlation. That means that statistically, there is a 90% chance that the actual rise in temperature was somewhere between 0.3 and 0.5K (0.5 and 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit). There is, of course, a 5% chance that the actual change was less than half of a degree Fahrenheit, and 5% chance it was more.

I would also note that the temperature rise attributed to "anthropogenic influence" is a fraction of the full degree most greenhouse warming proponents attribute to ""anthropogenic influence" over the past century.

Sure, but remember that this is anthropogenic influence on temperature (greenhouse + sulfates), not just greenhouse gas production. If you looked just at the input of greenhouse gases, the range expands to 0.3 to 1.7K over the century (0.54 to 3.06 degrees F). The authors of this particular study do caution against a model that obtains a result higher than 1.2K, as it probably overestimates anthropogenic influence.

As before, I would note that CO2 emissions rose fairly steadily during the 1906 to 1996 period, but the temperatures started to rise prior to this period until 1939, fell from 1940 to 1975 and then rose again. How does this study correlate the two events, if at all?

Obviously, this study has other axes to grind, and may be less than clear on specific questions we might ask. However, in almost every study that addresses this problem directly, the seeming reversal of trend in mid-century temperatures is partly attributable to volcanic activity, which causes sulfate aerosol levels to temporarily rise (and subsequently cool things down via albedo), and to an increased production of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols that behave similarly.

The problem of course is that aerosols do not accumulate in the atmosphere, therefore do not contribute to long-term cooling trends, while greenhouse gases do accumulate and continue to have an effect on temperature.
 

OK, so we get Oakley to design this REEEEEEEEEEEALLY huge pair of M Frames, see, and then we can be the coolest looking planet in the Solar System!

Take THAT, Saturn! In your face!
 

From way back in thread, but I do have to agree with Bart over Arne on one point.

The Vikings did colonize Greenland (despite Erikson's advertising slide) during a period of warming. When the little ice age hit, their methods of subsistence were unable to cope with the climate change, causing them to leave (and die out, with the assistance of the Inuit).

Anyone looking for a good cover of this (and other human effects on their environment), I would like to point you to Collapse, by Jared Diamond.
 

"...remaining model-data discrepancies can be explained as internal variability as simulated by these models."

Hard science, soft heads.

Les Bartman is making the point that the geologic record is full, packed, jammed, chock-a-block overflowing with humdreds of millions of years of climate change. Just becuase we weren't there to record it doesn't mean it didn't happen and just because we're here to record the present climate change DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. Humans used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, too. Feh.
 

"Bart" is hard of understanding:

And if one could change the concentration of a single greenhouse gas while holding the rest of the system (except its temperature) fixed, it would be simple to calculate the corresponding change in surface temperature. For example, doubling the concentration of CO2 would raise the average surface temperature by about 1.4°F, enough to detect but probably not enough to cause serious problems. Almost all the controversy arises from the fact that in reality, changing any single greenhouse gas will indirectly cause other components of the system to change as well, thus yielding additional changes. These knock-on effects are known as feedbacks, and the most important and uncertain of these involves water.

Thank you for what is essentially an admission that they cannot identify a correlation between CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) and the actual and fluctuating temperature readings.

No. Simply put: No. The correlation is right there in the pictures (well, graphs, and that requires a modicum of sentience to be able to understand, and perhaps that's "Bart"'s problem).

Cheers,
 

i, for one, am going to take Mr. De
Palma's side in this debate. (With a name like DePalma, he just sounds right.) If Greenland wasn't supposed to be green, then why did God give it that name? The prefix "ice" in Iceland is actually derived from the ancient Nordic word "iceed", which, if course, roughly translated, means "science is dangerous." So, please, enough with the naysaying popinjays of the far left who would have us blindly follow the researched conclusions of "scientists." Furthermore, with regard to the CO2 debate, I offer only a simple question in response: how can CO2 be bad if God created it? And another question: can CO2 really be bad if God created it? I have yet to see a satisfactory scientific answer to these questions. In summation, I would just like to ask another question: has a scientist ever offered us family-oriented entertainment like Michael Crichton has? If not, ask yourselves why: could it be because they don't udnerstand global warming?
Boo-yah, bitches.
 

"fraud guy":

From way back in thread, but I do have to agree with Bart over Arne on one point.

The Vikings did colonize Greenland (despite Erikson's advertising slide) during a period of warming. When the little ice age hit, their methods of subsistence were unable to cope with the climate change, causing them to leave (and die out, with the assistance of the Inuit).

It is true that there was a period of warming back then, and that some subsistence farming could be done on Greenland (on the edges; even now there's ice-free areas with vegetation, etc.), but to pretend that Greenland was "green" ("Bart"'s actual word) is just arrant nonsense. Greenland was, at best even then, a fairly inhospitable place.

Here's more pretty pictures for "Bart".

Cheers,
 

have skunk said:

Just becuase we weren't there to record it doesn't mean it didn't happen and just because we're here to record the present climate change DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT.

Nice big "straw man". You burn that, and we'll have global warming on a catastrophic scale. No one ever made the claim you object to here.

Cheers,
 

Arne, Bart:

Arne correct, Greenland never had much green.

Bart correct, Greenland was more habitable.

Seemed like you guys were talking through each other this time.
 

eColin said...

In a way, we should be grateful that people like Bart have decided to close their minds to the scientific findings regarding global climate change.

You too are welcome to offer some actual "scientific findings" showing the correlation between actual CO2 emissions and actual world temperatures.

Given the reams of scientific proof of the greenhouse theory which you folks claim exists out there, it is a little surprising that only pms has even attempted to offer one of these studies.

Instead of proof, your responses remind me more of the dialogue from the movie the Life of Brian:

ARTHUR: This is the Messiah, the Chosen One!

SIMON: No, he's not.

BRIAN: Aaaagh!

ARTHUR: An unbeliever!

FOLLOWERS: An unbeliever!

ARTHUR: Persecute! Kill the heretic!

30 years ago, your messiahs were claiming that a new Ice Age was imminent when it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale.

I will leave you with another apropos bit of dialogue from the Life of Brian. See if you can figure it out for yourselves.

BRIAN: Good morning.

FOLLOWERS: A blessing! A blessing! A blessing!...

BRIAN: No. No, please! Please! Please listen. I've got one or two things to say.

FOLLOWERS: Tell us. Tell us both of them.

BRIAN: Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we're all individuals!

BRIAN: You're all different!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!

DENNIS: I'm not.

ARTHUR: Shhhh.

FOLLOWERS: Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.

BRIAN: You've all got to work it out for yourselves!

FOLLOWERS: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!

BRIAN: Exactly!

FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!

BRIAN: No! That's the point! Don't let anyone tell you what to do!
 

Fraud Guy:

Arne correct, Greenland never had much green.

Bart correct, Greenland was more habitable.

"Bart" didn't say it was "more habitable". He said it was "green". Here's the full quote:

["Bart"]: "During this earlier warming period, the ice retreated and Greenland turned green as it is doing now. The Vikings farmed and grazed the island."

It didn't "turn[] green". It was covered over 90% with a mile or so of ice. Any farming was at best subsistence farming if even that (and this for hardy Vikings pretty much inured to that kind of stuff), and even there, it failed (needless to say, the Vikings might have looked to what the Inuit were doing; they had been living there for a long time ... and have been still ... but not by farming).

Hate to say it, but this crapola about Greenland being "green" is just the same ol' turds that energy lobby and their paid-for "scientific" hacks spew out on a regular basis to try and confuse the issues. We should call them on these reindeer droppings of theirs, and not put up with the deliberate obfuscations, prevarications, dissembling, and outright lies they fling around with abandon.

Here's a bit on the Greenland ice cover. Then there's the breakup of the ice shelfs off Ellsmere Island (and in the Antarctic). FWIW, the overall warming has been more dramatic in the arctic regions, and that in itself is serious business. This is not a matter of "he said, she said" and can't we just agree to disagree (until all of Florida is tourable in glass-bottom boats)....

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma repeats for the third time, despite my giving him a link twice now:

You too are welcome to offer some actual "scientific findings" showing the correlation between actual CO2 emissions and actual world temperatures.

You can lead a horse's a.... -- well -- to water, but you won't be able to help him swim if he refuses to learn how.

This is typical "Bart": Claim something doesn't exist, ignore it when people refute his assertion, and then just go say it again ... and again....

This is not "discussion". This is not "argument". This is trollery, pure and simple, and has been "Bart"'s MO since day one. Heap ridicule and scorn on him; he won't listen to you if you simply prove him wrong. Matter of fact, he won't listen to you, period, so don't even worry about hurting his feelings....

Cheers,
 

"Bart" states an outright lie:

30 years ago, your messiahs were claiming that a new Ice Age was imminent when it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale.

This is untrue.

Cheers,
 

arne:

If you wanted to get a rise out of me, you succeeded. You are a true piece of work. A lying SOB who calls others liars.

I was a HS student waiting for a ride to school in Ft. Lauderdale when it snowed and actually stuck for awhile.

Because of the series of severe winters in the 70s during which it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale, some of these same climatologists who are predicting imminent doom by warming were then predicting imminent doom through a new ice age.

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=
4093719&postID=117002726623498630

arne, I have an extremely hard time believing that a juvenile flame artist such as yourself is an attorney. Then again, maybe I am making a mistake of granting the benefit of the doubt to those who represent themselves as attorneys that they have a modicum of ethics. You have none.

That is my final word on the subject of your latest lie about my posts. You may now proceed with your usual spamming in reply to one of my posts.
 

"Bart":

If you wanted to get a rise out of me, you succeeded. You are a true piece of work. A lying SOB who calls others liars.

Name one lie of mine. Here's yours:

"30 years ago, your messiahs were claiming that a new Ice Age was imminent when it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale." -- "Bart" DePalma

Look, "Bartycakes", I don't need no steenkin' "messiahs". I leave that crap up to you. Don't tell me who my "messiahs" are or what any such supposed "messiahs" said (particularly when you offer no quotes or cites for such).

I was a HS student waiting for a ride to school in Ft. Lauderdale when it snowed and actually stuck for awhile.

Because of the series of severe winters in the 70s during which it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale, some of these same climatologists who are predicting imminent doom by warming were then predicting imminent doom through a new ice age.

OK, name names. And then show that they are our "messiahs".

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4093719&postID=117002726623498630.

Ummm, your link points back to this column. Did you have a point?

arne, I have an extremely hard time believing that a juvenile flame artist such as yourself is an attorney....

I'm not. Nor have I ever said I was. OTOH, I have a hard time believing you are an attorney (being so piss-poor on even the rudiments of civil practise and all), yet here you are, Harold Arlan "Bart" DePalma, Esq. Kind of cheapens the title, dontcha think, folks?

... Then again, maybe I am making a mistake of granting the benefit of the doubt to those who represent themselves as attorneys that they have a modicum of ethics. You have none.

Never said I was an attorney (and I defy you to produce a single quote anywhere in the web where I ever said such a thing. Your accusation is mistaken (some might say a lie, seeing as if you'd bothered to read what I wrote, you'd have twiggged to the fact that I've said more than once: "IANAL"! There's just one more in a long litany of mistakes of facts you've made, and sadly, it doesn't seem to cease, even after it's been pointed out that you're wrong (say, care to explain where in Brown II they "held" that busing to achieve desegregation was constitutional? Actual quotes from the decision are mandatory).

As for ethics, while I try to be as truthful and accurate as I can, it is you that ought to pay heed to MRPC Rule 8.4(c). You profession makes honesty mandatory.

That is my final word on the subject of your latest lie about my posts. You may now proceed with your usual spamming in reply to one of my posts.

NP. You give me plenty of material to wirk with. I'll just keep pointing out your mistakes and inanities as they come. Don't mind me. ;-)

Cheers,
 

"But, sir, every plant in town will die. Owls will deafen us with incessant hooting. The town sun dial will be useless!"

Oh, if only we could rely on innocent babies inexplicably armed with handguns to put an end to this Burnesque administration... ;)
 

jt davis said to "Bart":

If you disagree, perhaps "Judge Balkin" will intercede on your behalf and fine Arne. If you play the part of the victim well enough, his honor may even incarcerate your "unethical bully" for contempt.

Yeah. Like Greenwald did. Hell, "Bart" ought to thank his lucky stars he didn't get Rule 11 sanctions slapped on him as well when his 'case' was 'summarily dismissed' over there.

Cheers,
 

And then today we have this:

"WASHINGTON: Two private advocacy groups told a congressional hearing Tuesday that climate scientists at seven government agencies say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at playing down the threat of global warming.

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to 'global warming' or 'climate change' from a report."

Guess we know who the "messiahs" are. And who the "Romans" are.

Cheers,
 

JT said...

De Palma's repetition of this lie totally refuted here: The Global Cooling Myth

This blogger makes this rather significant distinction:

I should clarify that I'm talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we're only responsible for the scientific press.

This evasion is more than lame. The undeniable fact is that some of today's global warming proponents predicted a coming cooling to the point of a new ice age in the 70s. The venue of these claims is irrelevant.
 

The venue of these claims is irrelevant.

Careful...by the same logic, critics of the administration should be able to use the content of politicians' public appearances and speeches as indicators of public policy--something you've objected to in the past. Venue and context is very important!

I mean these as general remarks, not attempting to say that climatologists didn't hold different opinions. They may have or they may not have, but what they thought 30 years ago, frankly, doesn't concern me. If a scientist doesn't reconsider her opinion in the face of more plentiful and more accurate data, she may not actually be a scientist. :)
 

PMS_Chicago said...

The venue of these claims is irrelevant.

Careful...by the same logic, critics of the administration should be able to use the content of politicians' public appearances and speeches as indicators of public policy--something you've objected to in the past. Venue and context is very important!

I would distinguish venue and context.

To take a recent example which we have debated, I have no problem holding Mr. Gonzales to account for the statements he makes in the venue of the Senate Judiciary Committee about policy matters.

Still, I would look at the context of his statements to determine if he misspoke in that venue. Mr. Gonzales submitted a written statement concerning the scope of habeas corpus. I would consider such a statement to be his considered and reasoned opinion. However, during a heated exchange with Senator Specter, Mr. Gonzales replied with a very questionable opinion on the scope of habeas corpus. In the context of a heated exchange, a reasonable person would have to consider that Mr. Gonzales may have simply misspoken.

In the case of the opinions concerning a new ice age expressed in Newsweek and National Geographic, the interviews were most likely non adversarial and none of these ice age proponents claimed that they were misquoted or did not in fact hold these opinions.

Consequently, while you have a point that the context under which a statement is given is important, I still do not see how the venue is relevant.
 

OBTW, "Bart"? Yoo-hoo, "Bart"?:

["Bart"]: arne, I have an extremely hard time believing that a juvenile flame artist such as yourself is an attorney. Then again, maybe I am making a mistake of granting the benefit of the doubt to those who represent themselves as attorneys that they have a modicum of ethics. You have none.

Speaking of misrepresentations, now that we've disposed of your false charges against me, perhaps we can address this:

"Before establishing the DePalma Law Firm, LLC in 2005, Mr. DePalma served both as a criminal prosecutor and as a civil trial attorney."

and this:

"During law school, Mr. DePalma interned for Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Wells and with the Office of the State Attorney as a criminal prosecutor."

Simple yes-or-no question: Does your total experience as a "criminal prosecutor" consist of an student internship with the Florida OSA as a student?

What was your title while interning with the Florida OSA?

Assuming the answer to the first question above is "yes", what does the Colorado bar think about .... -- ummm, "representing" -- a student internship as having "served [] as a criminal prosecutor"? Doesn't "served as a criminal prosecutor" mean to those of us who use plain English someone who was appointed or hired to fulfill all the responsibilities of that job?

Or maybe Monica can put "POTUS" on her resume.....

Glass houses.... stones....

Cheers,
 

"Bart" DePalma said:

[jt davis]: De Palma's repetition of this lie totally refuted here: The Global Cooling Myth

This blogger makes this rather significant distinction:

"I should clarify that I'm talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we're only responsible for the scientific press."

This evasion is more than lame. The undeniable fact is that some of today's global warming proponents predicted a coming cooling to the point of a new ice age in the 70s. The venue of these claims is irrelevant.

I note that "Bart", as is standard MO for him, hasn't named a single name here, much less given a quote and a cite.

What "Bart" reads in Snoozeweek or such is his problem; if he relies on such for his "scientific" facts, he gets what he deserves. I've been reading Science since the mid '70s, and prefer my information in more detailed (and peer-reviewed) and less histrionic form; if "Bart" can't distinguish fluff and hype from real news, and can't distinguish sober scientists from headline grabbers, that's his failing, not ours. Yet he accuses us of listening to whatever schlock he was traipsing through, all without any evidence to back up his accusations. All of this assuming there is even any truth to "Bart"'s hysterical reports of "Ice Age" doomsayers back then, which he has yet to produce any evidence of. Until he does that and at least comes up with some names and quotes to discuss, I think it safe to say he's just full of .... well, "hot air".

Cheers,
 

arne:

Getting more ambitious? You have now proceeded from misrepresenting my posts to misrepresenting my firm website.

I presume you know the difference between Professional Legal Experience and Education. If so, it is easy to tell the difference between my criminal law practice and my law school internships.

While I know I am going to regret feeding whatever stalking pathology which drives you by answering this misrepresentation, I can not allow your lies about my professional history to go unanswered on a legal blog.

While in law school, I interned at the Florida Supreme Court and for the State Attorney's office (this is Florida's term for the DA) in Tallahassee. Afterward, I went to work as an Assistant SA in the same Tallahassee office where I interned and then transfered to the Jacksonville office.

I won't hold my breath waiting for your apology.
 

"Bart" DePalma:

Getting more ambitious? You have now proceeded from misrepresenting my posts to misrepresenting my firm website.

Where's the "misrepresent[ation]"? (This applies to both posts and website). I quoted accurately from your website. And I just asked a question (one I've asked repeatedly in the past, but which, for some reason, you never answered).

I presume you know the difference between Professional Legal Experience and Education....

Yes. I was curious as to whether the distinction escaped you....

... If so, it is easy to tell the difference between my criminal law practice and my law school internships.

Is it? See below.

While I know I am going to regret feeding whatever stalking pathology which drives you by answering this misrepresentation, I can not allow your lies about my professional history to go unanswered on a legal blog.

While in law school, I interned at the Florida Supreme Court and for the State Attorney's office (this is Florida's term for the DA) in Tallahassee....

Which I quoted accurately from your web site.

... Afterward, I went to work as an Assistant SA in the same Tallahassee office where I interned and then transfered to the Jacksonville office.

IC. This is not apparent from your website. You'd think that if you wanted to make this clear, you'd make this clear (and I'd asked you this before and you never answered). Your website does not.

But there is this curious sentence:

"During law school, Mr. DePalma interned for Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Wells and with the Office of the State Attorney as a criminal prosecutor."

Tell me, "Bart": Did you "intern[]" as "a criminal prosecutor"? Was that your title? Did you in fact function as a "criminal prosecutor" there (as the phrase is commonly understood)?

What were your dates of tenure as "assistant SA" ["assistant state attorney", I presume]? Any particular reason you left (outside of the obvious)?

And while you're at it, did you come up with any place where I've claimed to be an attorney? If not, perhaps you ought to apologise.

And you still haven't answered the Brown II question: Did you find the place in the Brown II opinion where the court "held that courts may legislate forced bussing of students to achieve desegregation"? To repeat, quotes from the decision to support your assertion are mandatory.

Cheers,
 

Arne:

:::sigh:::

Florida law permits law students to try cases in court so long as they are under the supervision of a licensed attorney.

When I interned at the State Attorneys office, they were so short handed that I was given a departing attorney's case load and I tried 6 misdemeanor cases that summer under the supervision of the misdemeanor division chief.

So, yes, I interned as a real live criminal prosecutor. Most fun I had during law school.

Perhaps, next you would like me to post my resume?

arne, get a life which does not involve living vicariously through me.
 

I have to agree that digging into the personal backgrounds of one another doesn't seem appropriate to this venue. On the few occasions where I have myself brought such information forward, it was only to make a comment relevant to the case at hand. Save a redundant proclamation of continuing disdain, I don't really see the point of this most recent interchange about Mr. DePalma's credentials. Or as someone famous might say: what does serving or not serving as a criminal prosecutor (as an intern or not) have to do with the price of tea in China? :)
 

"Bart" DePalma says:

Florida law permits law students to try cases in court so long as they are under the supervision of a licensed attorney.

Perhaps. That's still not the same as being a "criminal prosecutor". Even a "medical intern" has more credentials than a student intern in the OSA, but no one would call them a "licensed doctor". I've prepared court papers and had them sent off, but I couldn't do so without an attorney's signature. That hardly makes me a practising lawyer; I was a student, nor an attorney. Hate to say it, "Bart", but if there's anyone around here doing a bit of fluffery, it's you and not me.

Going to apologise for saying?:

"arne, I have an extremely hard time believing that a juvenile flame artist such as yourself is an attorney. Then again, maybe I am making a mistake of granting the benefit of the doubt to those who represent themselves as attorneys that they have a modicum of ethics. You have none."

Doubt it. But then, you seemingly have no ethics.

It was you that brought up credentials on this thread. I was just following up.

And yes, while we're at it, perhaps you could elicidate more on your resume. From assistant state attorney to DUI lawyer. Interesting career path (particularly since you seem to have a fondness for 'locking em all up'). One wonders, given your miscites and mistakes of law here, how you got from one place to the other (see, e.g., your Brown II cite, strangely enough, posted after my post decribing the major desegregation cases, including Swann and Brown II). You're great on the assertions in these threads, but short on evidence. You'll pardon us if we'd like more supporting information before we take your word for it on anything.

Cheers,
 

pms_chicago:

I have to agree that digging into the personal backgrounds of one another doesn't seem appropriate to this venue.

Tell it to "Bart". He started it on this thread.

Get him to apologise, and I'll back off.

Cheers,
 

If we can get back to the subject at hand...

In my first post on this thread, I recommended a book I am reading entitled "Unstoppable Global Warming" written by Dr. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery which offers evidence of a repeating 1500 cycle of alternating warming and cooling driven by solar cycles. However, the Singer / Avery book simply offers the science indicating that solar and temperature cycles are related without exploring the physics which would cause such a correlation.

In two months, a complementary book entitled "The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change" by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder is due out.

These books are being marketed together by a press release which further describes "The Chilling Stars:"

"The Chilling Stars" relates how Svensmark's team mimicked the chemistry of earth's atmosphere, by putting realistic mixtures of atmospheric gases into a large reaction chamber, with ultraviolet light as a stand-in for the sun. When they turned on the UV, microscopic droplets-cloud seeds-started floating through the chamber.

"We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons [generated by cosmic rays] do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei," says Svensmark.

"The Chilling Stars" documents how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun's irradiance fourfold, creating 1-2 degree C cycles in earth's temperatures: Cosmic rays continually slam into the earth's atmosphere from outer space, creating ion clusters that become seeds for small droplets of water and sulfuric acid. The droplets then form the low, wet clouds that reflect solar energy back into space. When the sun is more active, it shields the earth from some of the rays, clouds wane and the planet warms.

"Unstoppable Global Warming" documents the reality of a moderate, natural, 1500-year climate cycle on the earth. "The Chilling Stars" explains the why and how.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/
news_press_release,52394.shtml

Try not to "Persecute! Kill the heretics!" before you read the books.
 

Ah, yes, the subject at hand. Which surely includes the absurd nature of describing intercepting on the order of 1% of the sunlight striking the Earth as "blotting out the Sun".

What we have here is a practical proposal for how global warming might be combatted, and it's treated with utter ridicule, either because of the source, or because it doesn't involve lifestyle modifications which are desired independently of any concerns about global warming. Perhaps for both reasons.

Frankly, if we're going to intervene in a massive, chaotic, and ill understood system, we ought to do so by means which are as direct and well understood as possible, (And solar radiance is surely one of the less complex inputs into this system!) and which can be modulated on a short time scale if things go bad.

I think that this proposal is sufficiently meritorious to be treated with respect, and given the massive economic impact of some other proposals that are being treated seriously, a fair amount of research to establish how cost effective it might be.

Certainly, back of the envelope calculations will tell anyone that the proposal isn't insane. Data on solar sails is relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail

The circular area of the Earth is about 1.3 E14 square meters. So we're talking about a mass of solar mirror on the order of 100 million to a billion kilograms. At current launch costs, perhaps 1 to 10 trillion dollars.

Not outrageous given the scale of the problem, and it seems certain that lauching that much stuff into space would drive massive economies of scale, providing all sorts of economic benefits.

Furthermore, the system might be engineered with enough spacial resolution to be used for weather control.

No, I think this proposal deserves to be treated MUCH more seriously than the ridicule it's been subject to here.
 

If we can get back to the subject at hand...

"Bart": Have you figured out the difference between a correlation (or a correlation coefficient) and a confidence interval yet? If not, perhaps we ought not be looking to your analysis of the value of books written on subjects where the subejct involves a fair amount of statistical analysis of data (yes, data, there's plenty of data to work from despite your dismissing the work as just "computer models").

Cheers,
 

I agree that the Bush administration is erring on the side of the oil companies, but as a scientist and a liberal, I think that you guys are being entirely too dismissive of alternate methods of reducing global warming.

We may well have already passed the threshold of no return in global warming in which the positive feedback created by the decrease in global ice cover, corresponding increase in global water cover, and increased deforestation through climate change. If we have passed the threshold, no reduction in greenhouse gasses will halt or reverse the global temperature increase. In addition, we have no cheap, clean energy source to replace oil right now, and we will probably never eliminate greenhouse emissions.

In this case, we have to strongly consider alternative methods to decrease global warming, most of which are actually backed by legitimate science.

If we get to the stage where it's clear we've passed the point of no return, then I might agree. What makes this proposal seem so frivolous is that it appears to be offered as the first solution rather than the last one. The Administration looks as if it has gone from denial to emergency action without stopping at any point in between. Or, if one were cynical, it seems to be proposing a ridiculous alternative in order to avoid the more plausible ones.
 

Is somebody actually going to produce a reason this proposal is "absurd" and "crackpot", rather than just flinging epithets at it?
 

FWIW, I note that "Bart"'s little "Snoozeweek was screaming 'Ice Age! Ice Age!'" thirty tears ago seems to be the meme floating around the RW echo chambers (see Abramson letter). So typical. Hey, "Bart", what RW "talking points" memo didya pick that one up from, eh? Or was it LimbaughHannityOliellyEtAl?

Still waiting for a cite. And names. To justify this lie:

["Bart"]: "30 years ago, your messiahs were claiming that a new Ice Age was imminent when it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale."

Nice touch, that proof by personal anecdote:

["Bart"]: "I was a HS student waiting for a ride to school in Ft. Lauderdale when it snowed and actually stuck for awhile.

"Because of the series of severe winters in the 70s during which it snowed in Ft. Lauderdale, some of these same climatologists who are predicting imminent doom by warming were then predicting imminent doom through a new ice age."

This "evidence from personal experience" of course does nothing to establish the truthfulness of the matter asserted (i.e. "messiahs" predicting global doom from ice). It's irrelevant.

And as usual, "Bart" will slink off, having echoed his RW "talking point", refusing to back up his bald assertions, and hoping someone will fall for his crapola.....

Cheers,
 

Is somebody actually going to produce a reason this proposal is "absurd" and "crackpot", rather than just flinging epithets at it?

In general, interfering with complex systems which we don't fully understand is a bad idea. It's worse when changes to the system can generate non-linear, unpredictable outcomes. That's the risk we're running now with CO2 and methane discharges. We probably can slow and even reverse those discharges without too much risk and with some confidence about the effects. Adding an additional variable to a complex system would be very unwise except as a last resort.
 

brett:

Is somebody actually going to produce a reason this proposal is "absurd" and "crackpot", rather than just flinging epithets at it?

At best, it's a Band-Aid™. Mask a symptom, but don't try and address the underlying causes. Maybe that's the best we have, but if a doctor prescribed a Band-Aid™ the moment he saw me (after trying months for an appointment), I'd go looking elsewhere.

As stated previously, efforts to increase enery efficiency and renewable resources also address the upcoming issues of petrochemical energy depletion.

Cheers,
 

Frankly, if I'm going to be trying to control a complex, chaotic, ill understood system, I don't want to be nudging it with a variable that takes years to alter appreciably, works indirectly, and has to be applied system-wide.

No, I want a variable that can be modulated on a shorter timeframe than the system's characteristic time, works very directly, and which can be modulated spacially as well as across time.

Sorry, but from a systems control standpoint, the solar mirror proposal makes more sense than trying to control atmospheric composition. Precisely because it gives you more control.
 

Frankly, if I'm going to be trying to control a complex, chaotic, ill understood system, I don't want to be nudging it with a variable that takes years to alter appreciably, works indirectly, and has to be applied system-wide.

No, I want a variable that can be modulated on a shorter timeframe than the system's characteristic time, works very directly, and which can be modulated spacially as well as across time.

I think you have it exactly backwards. Think about how NASA approaches a landing on the moon or an asteroid. It does not simply zoom straight there. Instead, it approaches indirectly, first bringing the spacecraft into close orbit through a series of maneuvers. It then uses multiple small thrusts to correct the dynamics as it slowly lowers the craft to the surface.

The advantage to this approach stems from the basic problem with chaotic systems: they can swing wildly from one equilibrium to another. Predicting such swings is hard, often impossible. A series of small corrections substantially reduces the chance that any one of them will result in a uncontrolled fluctuation.

There's another factor to consider with respect to the climate. We have a good (though hardly perfect) understanding about the effect of greenhouse gases on climate change. We can guess pretty well what a particular reduction might entail. We have no experience at all with the proposed sunlight reduction. It's a one-shot experiment. If it's wrong in some way we don't understand, it's nearly impossible to change.

As I said in my first post, if the situation is dire, we should of course consider even the more extreme options. Until then, slow and steady seems the best way. I guess that makes me a conservative.
 

I think your analogy fails: The thrusters NASA uses are just precisely capable of being rapidly modulated up and down, and pointed this way and that, a good match to the solar mirror system. If you want a space travel analogy to controling CO2 emissions, it would probably be something like magsails: No directional control of the thrust, and only able to be ramped up and down very slowly.

You would NOT try to land on an asteroid using a magsail.

Anyway, at least we're talking merits now, instead of just dimissing the idea as "absurd on it's face". The simple fact is that it isn't the least bit absurd.
 

Anyway, at least we're talking merits now, instead of just dimissing the idea as "absurd on it's face". The simple fact is that it isn't the least bit absurd.

Well, my opinion on that hasn't changed. I still think it's a very bad idea except under emergency conditions.
 

There's another reason blocking the sunlight makes no sense.

The Earth radiates energy into space. The only reason it's habitable is that it receives new energy in the form of sunlight. It makes no sense at all to block some of that new energy while continuing to use terrestrial energy sources. That's like spending your principal while reducing your income. In other words, crazy.
 

My goal here wasn't to prove in the comment thread of a blog post that solar mirrors were *the* definatively best way to cope with global warming. It was to prove that the idea wasn't facially absurd, and a simple back of the envelope calculation sufficed for that.

Global warming is supposed to be this uber disaster in the making, which threatens to drown coasts, turn fertile land to desert, and so on, and so forth.

Start acting like you really believe that. Because nobody who really believed that would be so casual in dismissing possible solutions. Everything would be on the table for somebody who believed that.
 

Mark,

I am not sure if you example holds, because I am trying to think of other policies from this administration where it is spending more that it is taking in....

Oh, right.
 

Global warming is supposed to be this uber disaster in the making, which threatens to drown coasts, turn fertile land to desert, and so on, and so forth.

Start acting like you really believe that. Because nobody who really believed that would be so casual in dismissing possible solutions. Everything would be on the table for somebody who believed that.

Sorry, but I'm not a fan of and don't believe in the One Percent Doctrine.
 

I don't think the one percent doctrine even applies in this case; Most commenters, and certainly Jack, were treating the proposal with such casual contempt that they never got to the point of actually examining it's feasiblity. And that's what I found objectionable.

BTW, am I the only one finding this switchover from blogger to google IDs a real pain?
 

"or try to blot out the sun on the other."

How fortunate, then, that nobody is proposing to blot out the sun.
 

Yup, been one since the 80's. Helped found a college chapter of the L-5 society, too.
 

Helped found a college chapter of the L-5 society, too.

I was one of the very early members.
 

Why are all my formerly signed comments becoming "anonymous" on a blog that "does not allow anonymous comments"?
 

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