On Saturday the Australian published an article by Jennifer Marohasy. It's the usual cherry-picked global-warming-ended-in-1998 nonsense, and Barry Brook has written a detailed refutation.
But I felt I should post this graph from Marohasy's piece where she tries to make global warming go away by changing the scale on the graph:
And the sad thing is, even with the scale adjusted, without even reading the post (the image was the first thing that caught my eye), I saw the significant upward trend immediately.
They think we're morons, don't they?
I haven't, yet, but maybe it would be a good idea to start a list of illustrations of points that Darrell Huff made in his classic How to Lie With Statistics. The change of axes to suppress (or magnify) trends in data was one.
Wow, what a coincidence. I thought of Huff as well, the moment I saw this. That's hilarious.
I would check which chapter it is, only I have a cat sat on me.
Amateur. She should have started the y-axis at absolute zero.
Wait, I don't see the graph in her article at all.
Look here for an example of an oscillating function whose periodic component is completely damped (to the eye, anyway) by a judicious choice of scale on the vertical axis. (Scroll down to the end of the post to see the graph.)
If you look at the latest on her blog you'll find that there is warming after all but it's caused by the moon. It's OK though because the moon has started to cool the climate again.
And over at Barry Brook's refutation, some "Drongo" says the UK HadCrut3v has got it wrong too. As far as I can make out, the 'deny and delay brigade' seem to be saying they (HadCrut, GISS, UAH, RSS, etc) have all got it wrong. Methinks they complain too much.
Sallie Baliunas pulled this sort of stunt during her etestimony at the 1995 Congressional hearings on Stratospheric Ozone Depletion. She took the TOMS satellite measurements which display an unambiguous 4% per decade decline in global ozone, and replotted them on a scale starting with 0 Dobson units.
Marohasy has used exactly this sleight-of-statistical-hand before in posts on her blog, only in a more extreme form so that the data line did actually look virtually flat. (IIRC, and I ain't going back to check, she not only took the y-axis to zero, but below that well into minus temps. Looks like she has learned to temper the more egregious graphical manipulations, at least when it comes to mainstream publication.)
As far as I can make out, the 'deny and delay brigade' seem to be saying they (HadCrut, GISS, UAH, RSS, etc) have all got it wrong. Methinks they complain too much.
OzDoc, the self-defeating wonder of that approach is that they cannot then also invoke those same data sets in support of their claims about a 'cooling trend since 1998', etc. So what data are they left with? Head out the window on a cold winters day?
I think that the only reason you can still see warming in the graph is because the plot is in red. As we all know and has been proven in quantum physics and obviated by the fact that red cars go faster and redheads are wilder, red is a "hot" colour.
If the plot had been in blue or green, or - even better - transparent, then the warming trend would be even more apparently bogus.
The choice of scale could use further work too - if you put zero up the top and had increasing temperatures going downwards, then the actual cooling trend (instead of the imagined warming trend) would be clear.
Stu.
You needed to put up a warning about your link, although this time not for aggressive insults but for looney-tunes pseudoscience!
You know, among other things, one reason some of us are 'against' global warming is that we're against what the government might do as a result. For example, this sort of crap freaks us out. For us, the government has an excellent track-record of abusing its authority at the expense of ordinary citizens. The left is always scared of boogy-man corporations, but their power is nothing compared to that of the government.
And you want to hand all sorts of power to the government to "regulate" global warming. Thanks, but no thanks. Until you can do something to reign in this sort of B.S. I'll look for another solution.
You got that right Wot!
> You know, among other things, one reason some of us are 'against' global warming is that we're against what the government might do as a result.
It's not about science, it's about FREEDUM!!!
Ah... I know! It's Socratic Irony!
And while we're at it, Brian D informed me of another piece of Socratic Irony.
Truly, Socratic Irony is in the air.
Ben,
If you wish to avoid bad government responses, then you should promote good responses that governments can take, ones which aren't dumb, and don't shave away our freedoms.
Low/no government contributions to controlling the climate are possible, but aren't arrived at by ignoring or deriding climate science.
One good idea is to simply stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industries.
"And you want to hand all sorts of power to the government to "regulate" global warming. Thanks, but no thanks. Until you can do something to reign in this sort of B.S. I'll look for another solution."
But are you actively looking for aq solution or just using this as an excuse to do nothing?
As has been explained ot you repeatedly emissions trading is favored because it involves the least government intervention and provides the maximum degree of soep for market forces of any realistic solution proposed to date.
Come up with a better idea and i'll gladly listen to it.
again, even if the science is bunk, creating a climate control infrastructure for the planet is a really awesome idea for improving the worlds economy.
The only way to keep the communistic side from creating and running that infrastructure, is for pro-capitalist side to stop whining and do a better job faster.
But Sam-Hec, if the science is bunk, then it's obvious that the pro-capitalist side will do their job by means of things that go ka-boom. Nuclear power! Bomb Iran!
That is why AGW is a scam unless the solution to it involves heaps of nuclear reactors.
bi, your response makes no sense to me...especially since (conventional) Nuclear can't survive in the free market without government handouts. Pro-Nuke is not necessarily Pro-capitalist.
#14
You know, among other things, one reason some of us are 'against' global warming is that we're against what the government might do as a result.
So that concern (legit or otherwise) somehow invalidates the reality of AGW and justifies ignoring it completely?
You're joking, right? It is either that, or it is one of the dumbest statements about global warming I have heard.
Governments are inevitably imperfect, as is big business, and individuals. But they all have their place. The trick is how to maximise their benefits, and minimise their costs, to society overall.
So that concern (legit or otherwise) somehow invalidates the reality of AGW and justifies ignoring it completely?
In fact it does, if the government response would make life worse than will AGW. In the end it doesn't matter what I think anyway, I have no power.
Sam-Hec:
> bi, your response makes no sense to me...
Well, not really my response, but you already know that. :)
The real capitalists, well, are actually pushing for climate regulation.
ben:
> In fact it does, if the government response would make life worse than will AGW.
Um yes, the worth of any government measure should be measured by how much it improves the lives of Angry White Males Who Happen Not To Live At Coastal Areas! Thanks for clarifying.
Ah... I remember... you suggested that you weren't racist, because you don't actively hate Inuits, you just want to belittle them.
> In the end it doesn't matter what I think anyway, I have no power.
If so, then why not shut the heck up and do something more useful?
I wonder if Ben opposes vaccination becauee of the possible risk of giving government mroe control over people's lives?
Maybe we'd be better off with polio and smallpox?
Ben, with usual comic alacrity, writes, "The left is always scared of boogy-man corporations, but their power is nothing compared to that of the government".
Listen, Ben, in the U.S. government and corporate agendas are ONE AND THE SAME. No longer do corporations have to worry so much about lobbying the government because they are part of it. Under Bush, the government has managed to ebcome a big corporate welfare payout source, conjuring up just about every boogeyman (war on terror, now Russia) to justify taxpayer money being diverted to support a range of arms manufacturers and the like. This is the 'disaster capitalism' that Naomi Klein writes quite elegantly about in her recent book.
To suggest that corporations and governments have divergent political agendas is therefore a joke. Even over here in Europe, the EU constitution was largely written by right wing/libertarian beaurocrats and ex-government ministers, many of whom are allied with anti-democratic bodies like the WTO, who were pushing for an agenda that drives regulations to the bottom.
Look out laws of physics. If you become politically inconvenient your days are numbered.
ben writes:
Ben, you're saying that if the political consequences would be bad, the natural phenomenon doesn't exist. Do you really want to say that? You seem to be saying that if something is unpleasant, it isn't real. That's insane. Period.
Ben, you're saying that if the political consequences would be bad, the natural phenomenon doesn't exist.
Nope, never did say that. I'm saying that if the political consequences make things worse than would have the natural phenomenon had it been left alone, then the political action should not be undertaken. (I was responding to the "justifies ignoring" it part, not the "reality" part, for the record).
...the U.S. government and corporate agendas are ONE AND THE SAME.
Did you even read the article to which I linked? Did anyone? Nobody is outraged? Nobody has even one comment such as "oh yeah, that was really bad, those government folks are idiots and should be strung up by their toes for abusing their power."? See, I'd be more trusting of government legislation if more folks like you had a healthy fear of out-of-control government power.
Heck, Harvey, you seem to both trust the government to regulate the piss out of us ordinary folks while simultaneously claim government acts at the whim of the evil corporations. Can't be both you know, so which is it? Government will save us from the evil corporations, or they are their bitches?
Another look at the case Ben is complaining about:
http://www.pridedepot.com/modules/wordpress/?p=737836
Ben,
I followed the link, and found a snippet about a man who'd apparently run afoul of planning laws; it's not at all clear what he was charged with or what it's claimed he did from the excerpt. I then tried to follow the link at the top of the article for more information, and got "Not Found" at "stiffrightjab.com".
So not really outraged yet. Perhaps you could give a linky that works?
Ben, if the case were really anything like the description you linked to, he would not have been convicted nor sentenced to prison.
So, for instance, the site you link claims that he met with the feds and they told him they had no jurisdiction, and he was only doing what the county required.
However, the Judge says:
Which makes it clear the feds didn't walk away and tell him "we have no jurisdiction".
Unless you want to claim that the judge is lying about the facts of the case, facts which could easily be verified by reading the trial transcript. Something tells me that it's more likely that the site you link to is lying, rather than the Judge. Just a hunch.
I've followed, and at times have been involved in, a variety of natural resources abuse cases such as the one above, and the "unlimited rights" people *always* misrepresent the factual and legal points of a situation when trying to whip up the fury of the ignorant (such as yourself, Ben) who swallow their misrepresentations hook, line, and sinker.
Here's another source regarding the "savior" of Driggs Idaho:
An eastern Idaho developer who ignored federal government warnings to stop bulldozing a streambed will serve an 18-month prison sentence after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by his lawyers. Charles Lynn Moses was found guilty by a U.S. District Court of violating the Federal Clean Water Act after he reshaped a section of Teton Creek that ran through his Aspens subdivision on the outskirts of Driggs. The EPA accused Moses of knowingly disrupting a spawning area for Yellowstone cutthroat trout and increasing flood danger by turning Teton Creek into a drainage ditch. It was the first time in Idaho that a person was convicted of criminal charges under the 1972 Clean Water Act.
So the account offered by ben and his sources was wrong; about 100% wrong, which is kinda close to being as wrong as you can get. I mean getting "Protecting Driggs, Idaho from flooding" from the reality of "increasing flood danger by turning Teton Creek into a drainage ditch" is pretty pathetic.
Oh my, Moses has been a very very bad boy from a variety of perspectives.
Ben, you really need to ignore the more trashy right-wing nutcase sites.
Because even Conservapedia proclaims that reality is known to have a liberal bias.
> Heck, Harvey, you seem to both trust the government to regulate the piss out of us ordinary folks
Yeah, yeah, the "us ordinary folks" canard, for the umpteenth time.
It's only those darn latte-sipping (or latte-slurping) librul elitists who want climate regulation! The voices of "us ordinary folks" -- whom in the US constitute less than 30% of the population -- are being ignored!
ben, maybe you'll be more convincing if you can draft a document on parchment starting with the big words "We the People" in Fraktur-esque script.
We, the People!
We, the People!
And another source. The upshot seems to be that he was trying to make more land to build 4 more homes and that he was violating the law for some 7 years before they finally said "enough": beginning in 1997, federal officials issued the first of several notices of violations against Moses for manipulating the stream channel without proper permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He failed to submit applications for permits to excavate the creek bed in 2002, 2003 and 2004 and violated a 2004 EPA cease-and-desist order by dumping dredged material into the creek, court records show.
For those who aren't aware, the western USA has long kept an eagle eye on their water; it's a valuable commodity and has been since ranching started up out west. This guy was messing that up and that's why a jury of his peers found him guilty.
One more apropos quote from the Casper Star-Tribune:
Werntz said EPA officials are meeting with Teton County, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and homeowners in the Driggs subdivision whose residences may be in danger of flooding because of the illegal stream alteration work done by Moses.
That's the guy who was "saving Driggs, Idaho from flooding"; what a selfless fellow.
But QrazyQat... ben says he's "We, the People", so whatever he says is obviously 100% true.
Caveat: I don't have any documentation in front of me and am only going off third party information. Rob, thanks for that link, it balances things. However, the poster does not seem to stand up well to the comments on his post, which are mostly in defense of Moses.
Here's the rub:
If that is true, then the Judge is a complete ass-crack. If it is false, then it is possible that Moses is the ass-crack.
...and the "unlimited rights" people always misrepresent the factual and legal points of a situation when trying to whip up the fury of the ignorant
The problem here is that someone gets the shaft eventually. Suppose I own a really choice piece of property worth a gazillion dollars because of its development value. I then sell off to another person who buys it as an investment. Then comes along the King County (for example) and tells the new owner that the site cannot be developed. The new owner is, in my opinion, unfairly shafted out of his or her investment.
I think that if the government is going to restrict development in this way, then the property owners ought to be compensated to some degree. The government, not surprisingly, doesn't see it that way.
ben:
> I think that if the government is going to restrict development in this way, then the property owners ought to be compensated to some degree.
I can see why that might be a problem for "We, the People".
So what do "We, the People" think?
Right, because every time he applied for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, they said it wasn't part of federal jurisdiction so that they couldn't issue permits.
SCOTUS decided a case the day Moses was sentenced that "waterways" such as he was convicted of "polluting" are not under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act, nor the Army Corps of Engineers. He did what he did under the lawful instruction of state and local governments, and was convicted in Federal court, improperly.
So, given that, what the fuck!?!
You boys have it all wrong.
Moses, a True Patriot, was using his land as he saw fit - he was exercisin' his prrrrrahvat prop'ty riiiiights, like a good patriot-Murrican (sound of spitting chewing tobacco). The negotiations with the neighbors went swimmingly (they wanted more houses, grrrreat!!!!). The Patriot used his prop'ty as only a PatriotMan could - he wuz makin muhney.
And it worked out just like the Libertarian Private Property Rightists wanted: Moses did what he wanted, and it was left up to the courts. This is just how the Private Property Rightists want it: destroy stuff now, and if you get caught then some lawyers get their kids' dental work done. Awww, shucks some fish have to go swim somewhere else and some houses may git all a-flooded (there's no proof - NO PROOOOOF!) that they will get all a-flooded, anyways.
And this gets back to the war on science: Private Property Rightists claim that prop'ty owners know what's best for their land and should be able to do as they choose with it. This case is an excellent case study why this Private Property Owners First! view is full of sh*t.
Best,
D
Sorry Dano, but you fail to make your case because you do nothing to show that the government was right and that Moses was wrong. You're simply taking sides without any justification.
Is this still about "We, the People"?
Or has the discussion just morphed to the rights of "We, the Rich People"?
Ah, Ben's sounding like a Royal Libertarian:
Long live the King who gave us our property grants and our right to collect rents, eh?
That very same SCOTUS also refused to hear his case on appeal.
This gives me cause to believe that you are once again being misled.
This could well be a takings case if the actual land value has decreased after the second owner bought it, and people win takings judgements all the time (compensation for the loss of value).
However, more *typically*, takings claims arise in situations where the supposed sky-high value is based on speculation, with government zoning and other development regulations being part of the normal risk of doing business. We see cases where people buy land in the belief that they'll successfully challenge zoning or other development regulations, get a waiver, etc, and then file a takings case when they fail.
I don't call that "getting screwed". I call that "gambling with your money and losing". Real estate speculation that fails shouldn't be bailed out at taxpayer expense.
Hank Roberts,
"Ah, Ben's sounding like a Royal Libertarian: Long live the King who gave us our property grants and our right to collect rents, eh?"
I don't now about Ben but I'm totally cool with the whole geo-libertarian idea. How 'bout you Hank?
Or are you just a Socialist hiding under a geo-libertarian fig leaf?
Lance and Ben have successfully hijacked the conversation. Other than these two idiots, is there anyone who can make a legitimate argument in favor of Jennifer Marohasy? When the full effects of Global Warming become apparent even to the cognitive dissonance crowd, what penalties should the dishonest hacks like Ms. Marohasy be subject to?
I don't call that "getting screwed". I call that "gambling with your money and losing". Real estate speculation that fails shouldn't be bailed out at taxpayer expense.
True. The buyer better be aware of what they are getting into and the risks.
That very same SCOTUS also refused to hear his case on appeal.This gives me cause to believe that you are once again being misled.
Possibly, I'm curious about why cert was denied in this case.
...is there anyone who can make a legitimate argument in favor of Jennifer Marohasy
That'd be 'no' which is why I changed the subject.
...what penalties should the dishonest hacks like Ms. Marohasy be subject to?
Ridicule from this blog. There's no law against lying about climate change when you are not under oath. Sorry, freedom of speech and all that.
Lance, I'm not entirely sure what the 'geo-libertarian idea' is, but it's probably better than what we have now.
Here are the two questions which were presented to the Supreme Court:
1. Whether the creek segment at issue in this case is part of "the waters of the United States" within the meaning of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, Pub. L. No. 92-500, 86 Stat. 886, as amended by Pub. L. No. 95-217, 91 Stat. 1566 (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.) (Clean Water Act or CWA); 33 U.S.C. 1362(7).
2. Whether petitioner's activities, which involved the use of heavy equipment to move and redeposit thou sands of cubic yards of dredged materials within the creek bed and to deposit log structures into the creek bed, constituted a "discharge of a pollutant" within the meaning of the CWA, 33 U.S.C. 1362(12)(A).
Ben, you decide whether you were being told the truth.
"The problem here is that someone gets the shaft eventually. Suppose I own a really choice piece of property worth a gazillion dollars because of its development value. I then sell off to another person who buys it as an investment. Then comes along the King County (for example) and tells the new owner that the site cannot be developed. The new owner is, in my opinion, unfairly shafted out of his or her investment."
Bulldozing a creek-bed (including one that's usually dry) to remove sandbars and other obstacles increases the velocity of water travelling down the creek durign flood events - which increases the flooding risk downstream and also increases the rate of erosion. One of the big problems in semi-arid areas is when you get a yeaer's worth of rain dumped in 24 hours (usually preceded by dry spell), the result is flash-flooding. (Guess who spent a LOT of time in the Queensland EPA arguing with miners over dam levels and the like?)
The ban on clearing the creek-bed was in place before he started the project and perobably before he bought the land.
So he was either incompetent in checking the restrcitions before startign the porejct or was out to make a few extra bucks by breakign the law.
Either way, screw him.
The blog Ben linked to rather gives the game away in their opening mission statement: To make white people MAD.
Not to inform, not to promote smaller government; not to produce better social and economic outcoems but to "MAKE WHITE PEOPLE MAD".
It appears in Ban and Lane's case, they succeeded.
Jennifer Marohasy is playing the exact same game only she's targetting slightly smarter white people and is more careful in her use of language.
Unfortunately for Jennifer, Australian voting laws make this tactic much less effective here.
Oh and Ben, a belief that a law in unconstitutional - even if that belief is upheld 20 years later - doesn't give you the right to break the law.
Unless, you know, you think everyone arrested under Washington DC's gun laws should now be pardoned and paid compensation.
What Moses should have done was comply with the law then sue the Federal government for compensation citing the nonconstitutionality of the law in question.
"It was the first time in Idaho that a person was convicted of criminal charges under the 1972 Clean Water Act."
Damn that big government... seems so proactive in violating people's liberties.
Oh, Jeebus. I hit [show comment] for one of Ben's comments. Gaaah, how stupid can I be?
But let us heed Shaffer's point and note that the two geniuses have hijacked the thread, and let us save Tim's bandwidth & return to the point: Marohasy is a shill.
Best,
D
Ben, I forgot to mention, that generally cert is denied if no "interesting", that is unsettled question of law, are presented. If cert was denied, I think you can figure out what the reason was...
What Moses should have done was comply with the law then sue the Federal government for compensation citing the nonconstitutionality of the law in question.
That's the problem (I'm not arguing constitutionality, btw), that it appears to me that he did a good job of complying with all sorts of laws, and local, regional, and federal governments. Then they stuck it to him anyway.
No, the rightwingnut site you're referencing CLAIMS that. The judgement - I quoted some interesting bits above - make it clear that he did NOT comply with the feds.
If he'd complied with federal law he wouldn't be imprisoned for having failed to comply with federal law. And if it had been ignorance rather than arrogance, the judge wouldn't've said such harsh things about him in his judgement.
ben wrote "Heck, Harvey, you seem to both trust the government to regulate the piss out of us ordinary folks while simultaneously claim government acts at the whim of the evil corporations. Can't be both you know, so which is it? Government will save us from the evil corporations, or they are their bitches?"
I assume that by 'Heck', you meant me. I don't trust the government to regulate society. But I do think we need -some- government regulation to cover externalities and other issues of the Commons. The less the government is anyones' 'bitch' (but for the Voters), the better it will be. Please do not persist in holding to the fantasy which equates all who are concerned with the Climate, with those who want big government. It's just plain wrong.
Why not? The Clinton administration, for all its faults, fought hard to protect endangered species. Against the whim of "evil corporations", except to the extent that he recognized the limit Presidents have when fighting a hostile Congress. W, on the other hand, has worked as well as he can to act at the whim of evil (or at least, profit-motivated) corporations, as best he can within his vision of the law.
Both views are supportable by history, and your ignorant simplistic views - such as the "fact" that some asshole in Idaho who destroyed a streambed has been unfairly convicted of breaking a law that - imagine! - he broke, are just ... pathetic.
"But officer, I do a good job of complying with all sorts of laws, and local, regional, and federal governments"
AND is it just me or is that whole chart tilted gently downwards? Was it like that in the original? If so, how gauche.
"I assume that by 'Heck'...",
nope, by "heck," I meant "oh hey" or something to that effect.
The less the government is anyones' 'bitch' (but for the Voters), the better it will be.
True! Except for when the voters start to demand and expect bread and circuses. Then we're all screwed, even those who demanded the bread.
Why not? The Clinton administration, for all its faults, fought hard to protect endangered species.
And endangered species matter because...? Species come and go you know, they always have, and they always will.
Anthony, no offense, but I have no idea what it is that is your point. And for the record, I strive to be gauche. I had to look that word up, but it suites.
These days a lot more of the latter than the former.
"And endangered species matter because...? Species come and go you know, they always have, and they always will."
The current rate of species extinction is hundreds of times (literally) the background rate.
Jeff Harvey will probably give you a lengthy explanation of ecosystem services and species diversity but here's the short version.
Ecosystem productivity - in terms of organic matter production, water filtration and carbon dioxide fixation to name just three services - is directly correlated with species density.
Ecosystems with lots of highly specialised species operate more efficiently than impoverished ecosystems with a small number of generalist species. (This is also why the spread of introduced species is undesirable, they tend to be generalists and ot crowd out more productive endemic species.)
Humans currently use something like 30% of the total global supply of solar energy fixed in biomass every year (mostly indirectly via food crops); we also depend on functioning natural ecosystems to soak up at least a substantial part of the additional carbon dioxide we pump out every year.
Ecosystem biologists have known this for 30 or 40 years (although admittedly AGW wasn't a big concern back then), none of it is controversial and it is about as well proven as anything in the biological sciences.
"Ecosystem productivity - in terms of organic matter production, water filtration and carbon dioxide fixation to name just three services -is directly correlated with species density."
Interesting, I did not know that. But then, what if the human race died out? Everybody dies. Does it really matter if some day there are no humans left on earth? There is no spoon anyway.
So we shouldn't take action to minimise the effect of AGW because the human race will probably be extinct in a few million years regardless?
Wow, really puts the 9-11 attacks into perspective too.
There is no spoon.
"There is no spoon."
It is really interesting to note how when you scratch the "AGW skeptic" surface you very quickly get a kind of nihilism which denies the existence of concrete categories of objects and knowledge in a quite post-modern way.
ben posts:
And serial killers murdering people matter because...? People come and go you know, they always have, and they always will.
We are presently in the middle of the sixth great mass extinction in Earth history. Endangered species matter because a less complex ecosystem is a more vulnerable ecosystem. With ecosystems, the more species, the better.
We also don't know why species are key species that a whole regional ecosystem might depend on. Kill off a species and you kill off the predators and parasites that eat it. You also let whatever it eats reproduce out of control. You can't just arbitrarily pluck out a species.
"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts."
That should have read "We don't know WHICH species are key species..." Preview is your friend.
Hi, More analysis, beginning with the first chart here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003363.html . I will get to your issue - how to graph temperature data - soon.
Ben...
You live in a country where the government has illegally wiretapped thousands of individuals. A country that has kept people in incarceration on a remote island for years without charge, let along trial. A country that reserves the right to execute children and the mentally handicapped. A country where Cat Stevens gets booted out of the country because his new funny name sounds like some other guy's funny name.
And the best evidence aganist the government you can come up with is some guy in Idaho breaking a law and going to gaol for it?
JM:
Please stop embarrassing yourself.
Fer us yanks:
Gaol==Irish for Jail
Very off-topic: Is it just me, or has right-wing logic just crossed the threshold of incomprehensibility?
> There is no spoon.
I guess that explains why "We, the People" keep looking so much like identical copies of a few select wingnuts. It's that darn Uri Geller trick again.
Wiki: "A 'wooden spoon' is a mock or real award, usually given to an individual or team which has come last in a competition, but sometimes also to runners-up."
I assume
Yo Schaffer,
"Lance and Ben have successfully hijacked the conversation."
I have made exactly one post in this thread and it was a direct response to a comment made by Hank Roberts.
As far as Marohasy's graph is concerned the scale is less important than the fact that the temperature has increased about one degree in 150 years.
Hardly a disastrous increase, especially considering that the time period before that is called the "little ice age".
Anyone claiming that it is a disastrous increase?
Well, Ben, since it doesn't matter, can we count on you to volunteer to hasten the process by ending your life today? Or are you going to try to preserve it as long as you can?
On the one hand, you argue vehemently in favor of a political philosophy that you feel favors the creation of a better world for humans, then turn around and shrug and say, "well, if we degrade the biosphere and humans disappear, who cares?".
Things are getting more and more interesting ...
The left is always scared of boogy-man corporations, but their power is nothing compared to that of the government.
A false dilemma if I ever saw one. Corporate and government power are not quite as distinct as you make them sound, I'm afraid.
Well, Ben, since it doesn't matter, can we count on you to volunteer to hasten the process by ending your life today?
How would that hasten the process?
"As far as Marohasy's graph is concerned the scale is less important than the fact that the temperature has increased about one degree in 150 years."
Right. The global warming scare mongers show the graph on as tight a set of axes as possible in order to enhance the perception of an effect. Tit for tat, I say.
So, at best, Ben claims that lying with graphs is OK as long as he believes the other side is doing it, too.
Nice way to encourage honest, objective, scientific discussion of the issue, Ben.
How about Marahosy's other numerous lies. You going to defend them on the same grounds?
> Tit for tat, I say.
A new kind of science suitable for "We, the People": Tit-For-Tat Science!
In other news, "We, the People" continue to become more and more incomprehensible. We elitist elites will need some sort of way to objectively measure incomprehensibility real soon now...
Right. The global warming scare mongers show the graph on as tight a set of axes as possible in order to enhance the perception of an effect. Tit for tat, I say.
i am pretty sure that all those AGW peer reviewed publications are using a "scare mongering" scale.
and not simply one, that actually allows us to SEE, how temperature developted over that time span...
and for people like ben and Lance, who don t understand the basics:
the problem is NOT the "average" place, that saw an increase by 1°C from 14°C.
the problem is with places with more extreme starting temperatures. and an world wide average increase by 1°C can translate into a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER local increase.
but i guess that this will go over your heads. again.
Remember, sod, ben is "We, the People". You're not supposed to talk down at "We, the People".
Also, ben knows about Uri Geller tricks.
I have to say the claimed 1C rise over 150 years went rather well. Food production is up. Population is up. Life expectancy is up. Apart from war related famine, mass starvation seems to have largely disppeared or at least is very much down.
Kind of gives you hope that the next 150 years will go rather well too. There may be winners and losers, but any effects are likely much less important than the occurrance or absence of war.
Can SOD give country which lost more lifes to the warming in the last 150 years than it did to war. I can not think of any.
So, at best, Ben claims that lying with graphs is OK as long as he believes the other side is doing it, too.
Er, where's the lie? The graph is accurate so far as I can tell. If you show it with tight axes, then it looks dramatic and is good for newsprint to get folks fired up about AGW. If you print it with wide axes then it doesn't look so dramatic and is less valuable for scaring people. Either way, it's the same data, and an educated person can read the graph on either scale.
Can SOD give country which lost more lifes to the warming in the last 150 years than it did to war. I can not think of any.
how do you think warming kills people? running out of sun oil? too much tanning?
climate change and WAR are, of course, connected!
it looks like the US military is pretty much worried by climate change.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/events/details.cfm?q=82
----------------
Either way, it's the same data, and an educated person can read the graph on either scale.
educated or not, the line (and at least it is red...) is about 0.2°C thick. good luck getting details from that graph.
educated or not, the line (and at least it is red...) is about 0.2°C thick. good luck getting details from that graph.
Dude, different plots for different reasons. That plot shows the trend since 1850 quite clearly, more so I'd say than a tight-axis plot. If you want to see the details, tighten up the axes. Sheesh!
Thats the point SOD. The graph says got 1C warmer. The key point to note is we barely noticed. No major losers identified. However, mankind deliberately killed large numbers of people on numerous occasions. Warming did not.
Conclusion, if you want to help future warming losers, pick an easier issue which will make a real difference. Warming should be a minor concern compared to the many issues which kill and injure large numbers of people. Take your pick from, access to health care, unfair trade, corruption used by the first world to access resources in poor countries, drugs, cars, vaccination, dangerous dogs, faulty gas applicanies ...
If you want to help humanity, I would start by stopping the cigarette trade.
Sean Egan @ 92:
Better reconsider your presumption of independance between warfare and warming. The key consideration of global warming is that it will lead to greater international strife.
Mike
re: #92 sean
Do you have any direct experience with farming?
Having grown up on a farm long post here, I'd say you might want to get some.
1) As seen in Chart at Climate Progress the entire history of human agriculture lies within a narrow temperature band.
2) We are about to depart that temperature band, very rapidly, going up, into a temperature range and set of conditions to which our agriculture is not currently adapted, and if you think the Canadian Shield will replace the US cornbelt, you will be disappointed. Also, you might want to study the Himalaya glaciers and monsoons on which most of South Asia depends. Liebig's Law of the Minimum wins.
As a "minor" other problem, what do you know about fertilizer? is N-P-K familiar?Do you know how they make nitrogen fertilizer, and whether or not any of the needed ingredients are likely to get much more expensive?
[Hint: natural gas = 90% of the cost of producing ammonia. Peak Gas. Haber-Bosch] Also, know anything about Phosphorus supplies and where they come from? [Hint: 50% of it is in Arab countries, good resource after Peak Oil].
3) In that long post above, I suggest reading RUD2005 and maybe your namesake, Brian Fagan's books, or one that wasn't on the list, but should have been, Jared Diamond's Collapse. In particular, it's nice to have water. In CA, 20% of our electricity is already used to pump it around, and higher temperatures already cause us problems with snowmelt distribution. If you live in OZ (or S CA, or AZ, or NM), life will get "interesting."
4) In addition, many people live in metropolitan areas [San Francisco Bay Area in my case], each of which has many $B's of sea-level infrastructure that built with the help of $30/bbl oil, i.e., a one-shot use of the best EROI-resource on the planet.
Likewise, we're heading out of the sea level band we've been in for thousands of years, long before we built our current civilization. We're heading out the high side there, and by the way, going high is far worse in most cases than going the other way. if you think not, then you haven't participated in urban planning for sea level rise exercises, which are very ugly. [Do you build dikes, or move uphill? *Where* do you build dikes? How about the sewage plants? Do you pay off the people now outside the dikes, or do you just condemn their property?]
5) I do agree with you on tobacco. There's a lot of prime farmland that will be needed for food, given the amount that will be ruined via salt-water incursion or drought.
6) Now, there are a lot of very smart people working very hard on the various issues, of which these are just a few. But sitting around saying "everything is fine" isn't what they're doing.
Scientist: If this continues, it will get bad in the future.
Denialist: No, it hasn't!
#95
He he he.
Ben, displaying a plot of data on as tight an axis as possible isn't being misleading. It is the common sense convention for graphing data, so you can most clearly see variations in the data. You then actually look at the numbers on the scale to work out how big the variations are.
That's why when you produce a plot in a spreadsheet program like, say, excel, it automatically adjusts the scale to make it as tight as possible, that way you aren't plotting empty space.
Its not misleading, its common sense. You don't design a graph to hide trends, you design it to show them. Everybody in every discipline does this, or should. Not just alleged alarmist climate scientists. Can't you see this? really?
Its not tit-for-tat - its plotting a graph in a sensible way (tight axes) versus plotting it in a silly way (Marohasy's plot).
On the other hand, Steve, I find that plotting on axes that are too tight often simply shows noise that I'm not interested in. Often I want to see the overall trend, and I think Marohasy's plot shows that well. I don't find it even remotely misleading except possibly to complete ignoramuses.
Unfortunately, it seems to be the ignoramuses who are fickle and can be swayed by fancy pictures. That, and there are so many of them who can vote.
Ben,
So what you are saying is that when Jennifer writes "But when global temperatures are presented just as a simple average with a vertical axis that spans the range of temperatures experienced in a place such as Ipswich (west of Brisbane) during a single year, the global rise in average temperatures is not that obvious because the mean temperature since 1850 has increased by less than 1C" she actually means that she is suppressing the noise in the data?
No, I never did read that. My point is that different views of the same graph can have different drawbacks or benefits.
Perhaps Marohasy has a further subtle point to convey in the graph Lambert reproduces? Why does the year scale show equally spaced hash marks labeled as decades from 1850 to 1910, then have the next three decades hashes labeled 1925, 1930, 1945, before resuming the conventional representation with 1950?
Qhitebeard well spotted - apparently the interval 1910-1925; 1925-1930 and 1930-1945 are of equal duration in Marohasy land.
I look forward to Ben explaining that he often uses graphs like this because its the more recent period he's most concerned with.
That is sorta strange, but I fail to see how that helps her make some sort of insidious point.
Yes we should expect a broader-axis plot to show the trend more clearly, e.g. the one referred to here from Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson.
e.g. the overall trend from 1998 to 2008. ben would never be interested in the noise from 1998 to 2008.
:P
"That plot shows the trend since 1850 quite clearly, more so I'd say than a tight-axis plot."
If you really think that the trend is more clear in Marohasy's plot with the scale from 10deg to 15deg, instead of the tight axis plot from -0.8C to +0.6C, then I really can't help you.
In the tight axis plot, you can see clearly that the temperature has risen by about 0.8degC over the 150 years, while in the broader axis plot you can see it as well, but you need to squint and use the grid lines to be sure.
ChrisC posts:
Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam was not kept out of the country (not "booted out") because of his name. He was kept out because of his public endorsement of the death fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie, which correctly labeled him as an extreme Islamist. We're trying to keep extreme Islamists out of the country. They've done a bit of damage here.
Lance posts:
We're talking about the mean global annual surface temperature. A 1 K change is enough to move agricultural growing belts and the edges of ice caps by hundreds of miles. In fact, an increase of 6 K would probably be enough to wipe out humanity, as at that point the oceans would begin emitting hydrogen sulfide.
BPL,
"A 1 K change is enough to move agricultural growing belts and the edges of ice caps by hundreds of miles."
Since there is evidence of such a temperature increase in the last 100 years where is the evidence that the agricultural zones of the world have moved "hundreds of miles" in the last century, I'd like to see it. The "ice caps" have certainly done no such thing.
Plant community types are shifting northward, Lance, and you know it.
I take your point on warming and water shortage being a potential cause for conflict. Seen the good piece in New Scientist claiming you can support a first world standard of living on 140 litres a day, providing you can import the heavy water consuming products. A water shortage is not mainly a rainfall issue, it is a use issue. The spectacular pictures of dried lakes is basically water being diverted.
In short international arbitration on shared resources like water is more likely to work than CO2 limites.
Food production could need to adapt, but that is not new.
Do a search on Green Revolution, or causes and treatment the 1930's dust bowl.
You mean the drought related to that record temp year in 1934 (and other warm years that decade) that denialists like to use when attempting to debunk commie-conspiracy climate pseudo-science?
You're suggesting that the pain of that drought argues against worries about even more substantial warming and increased risk of drought?
Do a search on Green Revolution, or causes and treatment the 1930's dust bowl.
The Green Revolution was a simple idea: apply lots of Nitrogen and subsidize electric pumps to utilize groundwater. Oh, and develop a few new varieties to avoid shattering.
That's it. I have seen a new idea that uses less water for rice, but otherwise GR ideas aren't going to work for too much longer in the future, as the by-products of the Green Revolution are dead zones and depleted fossil water. When the groundwater's gone, then what?
Best,
D
"Since there is evidence of such a temperature increase in the last 100 years where is the evidence that the agricultural zones of the world have moved "hundreds of miles" in the last century,"
From that notorious den of commies and anti-American islamo-fascism enablers, the USDA, via the well-known commie front the Arbor Day committee:
http://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
Meanwhile in Australia, wheat and sheep farming in South Australia and Western Australia have shifted signficantly south with cattle or coarse graisn repalcin them but hey if it doesn't happen in America and it doesn't involve actual human beings (AKA Americans)it doesn;t really matter.
I'd like to reiterate Dano's point about the 'Green Revolution'.
It was not rocket science: rather, it was a fairly logical application of the basic knowledge that most crops are nitrogen-limited, combined with the easy production of N-based fertiliser afforded by the expanded use of fossil fuels. The GR varieties developed to maximise the industrial fertilisers are the photosynthetic version of battery chickens, and essentially fall over if the high-energy fertiliser and pesticide inputs are removed.
And in the wake of GR industrial agriculture lies impoverished soil activity, or simply lost soil altogether, and depleted aquifers and over-allocated surface catchments. These are just several of the negative consequences of the industrial agriculture of the Green revolution, and the movement of temperature and hydrological envelopes will compound the damage.
Turning to GM as the new GR is likely to be an endeavour fraught with dashed hopes (if not fat profits for the GE companies) in most cases. My former biotech colleagues would blanch to hear me say it, but there ya go...
We are looking at a glass half full or half empty. The dust bowl started due to a change in land use (wheat) when rainfall was higher than usual. When rainfall dropped back, the soil dried out and blew away. FDRs response was more trees and changes in farming. Food production in the USA is higher now than in 1850.
GR, change in crop types leading to more food. The most famous big trick is shorter the crops can put resources into grain not storks. Result, less Indians hungry.
There were problems and mankind dealt with them best they could. Overall the temp went up 1C and mankind thrived.
Not only that but we barely noticed the warming. It certainly had less impact than the roll-out of electricity.
Conclusion, over then next 150 there are likely to be problems AND solutions.
Historical, the big issues are war famine and plage.
Lance writes:
Lance, assume a solar constant of 1,366 watts per square meter. Note that the Earth's mean radius is 6,371,010 meters. Allow for nonradiative heat transfer between latitudes. Now plot temperature versus latitude for an Earth at Ts = 287 K and one at Ts = 288 K.
Note, too, that the answer will actually be smaller than the real one by a bit because the polar radius is smaller than the equatorial radius.
Ian -- a very cool link! Thanks for posting! A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.
1. We aren't talking about another 1 degree though because emissions are continuing to rise and also because there's a lag between emissions and warming. (Roughly 90% of the additional energy is absorbed by the oceans and the oceans have HUGE thermal interia.
2. The only people arguing against finding solutions are denialists like Ben and Lance - see Ben's comments in this very thread.
Basically every time someone ays "Hee, maybe we need to fidn a solution" they start screaming about the New World Order International Socialist Conspiracy. Heck, we have oen semi-regular here who has suggested in all seriousness that Al Gore may be the Anti-Christ.
Ian,
Your link to arborday.org shows a map that morphs from the USDA 1990 hardiness zones to ones estimated by aborday.org. Last time I checked they are NOT the USDA nor are their calculations official or peer reviewed.
Also why don't you ease up on the anti-fascist, xenophobic rhetoric a bit. It just gives your posts an air of lunatic fringe paranoia. I spend a good deal of my vacation time visiting my in-laws in Africa and my mother only recently became a US citizen. All my relatives on her side live in Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Beijing. Get a clue.
Sean writes, "There were problems and mankind dealt with them best they could. Overall the temp went up 1C and mankind thrived".
Sean, could you please inform me as to what your qualifications are in the life sciences - say, population ecology, zoology or biology? Based on your posts, its clear to me what your answer will be. I haven't got time to counter all of your anthropocentric posts - I have done that many times before on Deltoid with other thinkers like you. Your arguments expunge the link between the natural economy and the state of human civilization. You write as if human are exempt from the laws of nature. Here's the rub: humans depend on a wide array of provisioning ecological services that emerge over variable spatial and temporal scales from natural systems. These services are based on a stupendous number of interactions amongst the constitutent biota of natural systems - one of the most puzzling areas of ecology is connecting processes occuring at rhe level of individual organisms and emergent processes such as the productivity and resilience of natural systems. Why is this important? Because these systems generate conditions that permit humans to exist and persist. We have few technological substitutes for these services - indeed, if some crucial ones were to to disappear, then we'd be staring extinction in the face.
Why is this relevant? Because humans are simplifying and stressing nature on a scale that is unprecendented in 65 million years. Our species is paving, ploughing, damming, dredging, mining, overharvesting, biologically homogenising, eutrophicating, and slashing and burning the biosphere at an alarming rate. We are altering the chemical composition of the air and the water, leading to such outcomes as rapid climate change. The real question that is challenging the scientific community - myself incluided - is how far we can simplify nature before natural systems are unable to sustain life in a manner that we know. Nature is quite resilient - it has had to be to withstand the human assault thus far - but there is no guarantee that our current course can continue indefinitely.
So the argument that "There were problems and mankind dealt with them best they could" is misplaced. Our species does not have the technology to replicate most of the vital services - pollination, breakdown of terrestrial wastes, climate control, maintenance of soil fertility, seed dispersal, stabilisation of coastlines, pest control, nutrient cycling etc. - I alluded to earlier. One can therefore consider that we are conducting a single, non-replicatable experiment on systems of immense complexity whose functioning we barely understand but which sustain us. As Barton said earlier, a 6 C rise in global mean temperature over the coming century would almost mean certain extinction for humanity. The additional factor that is rarely discussed in this thread is that natural systems would collapse piecemeal under this kind of immense stress. Natural systems have not evolved to respond to anything quite on that scale. The working parts of nature's machinery - genetically distinct populations and species that make up our planet's biodiversity - would be hammered. The resulting mass extinction would have enormous ecological consequences that would rebound on civilization (and already are).
You may not understand the science that underpins my arguments, but that is no reason to dispense with it.
Sorry Lance, your rants about how the last few surviving White Europeans would soon be seeking shelter in the US from the inevitable rise of the demographic imperialism of the Mulsim hordes and the Sharia law tyranny which would unfailingly follow set a level for "lunatic fringe paranoia" I could never hope to match.
When you stop expressing Neofascist views, I'll stop calling you a Neofascist.
However, where the rubber meets the pavement lies in the fact that gardeners - professionals and amateurs alike - began noticing that warmer-climate plants were starting to thrive in areas where they had not a decade earlier. There's so much data out there from so many sources that the effect of warming can't be denied.
Unless you think there's a huge conspiracy that encompasses the world of gardeners, ornithologists, foresters, glaciologists, etc etc, of course.
Including this one, looking more and more interesting every day.
1.
Further to dhog @ 124, my best title may be 'green infrastructure guy', across multiple disciplines, using applied research.
Let me tell you, we don't give a f*ck about small-minded ill-informed people wondering whether a map is peer-reviewed. Why? Because the map reflects the situation on the ground for gardeners. They are the audience. And gardeners know that green-up begins earlier and hardiness zones are moving north.
Gardeners are natural anti-denialists, because they see the situation on the ground, every day.
Pathetic denialists needing to maintain self-identities have nothing. Nothing. And because pathetic denialists are being left behind by society, their pathetic reflexive defensive replies are getting more and more comical.
2.
I appreciate the record Jeff Harvey is leaving behind. One day, perhaps, historians will look back at what happened at this time and find the impassioned pleas that fell on deaf ears and wonder why, piece together evidence, and tell the story of the societal failure of this time. I'm sure Harvey's words will appear somewhere in this sort of future work.
That said, and again being appreciative of the impassioned assertion, these sorts of willful ignorami and stubborn self-regarders are going to get left behind. It should be by stubborn obstinacy and refusal to remove head from *ss sand, and not by our stubborn refusal to welcome the occasional seer-of-light who wishes to catch up to society.
In the meantime, we are wearing out a lot of hammers continuing to whack-a-mole instead of using these hammers to build stuff to adapt and mitigate. They will never believe anything any of us says. Who cares, really, whether or not they come around? Let them get left behind. I personally don't care whether denialists get left behind. Serves 'em right. Cruel? They had their chance and didn't want to take it.
3.
Lastly, to Bernard J's excellent @ 116:
And in the wake of GR industrial agriculture lies impoverished soil activity, or simply lost soil altogether, and depleted aquifers and over-allocated surface catchments. These are just several of the negative consequences of the industrial agriculture of the Green revolution, and the movement of temperature and hydrological envelopes will compound the damage.
Several years ago industrial ag tried a campaign to state that organic ag had runoff, poop, lower yields, and all kinds of reeeeeally bad things associated with it. This was not long after the slow realization by some of the public that industrial ag ruins the soil and the deep American Midwest soil was going away. Yet another campaign of smear and fear by the vested interests.
Best,
D
Ian,
"#123Sorry Lance, your rants about how the last few surviving White Europeans would soon be seeking shelter in the US from the inevitable rise of the demographic imperialism of the Mulsim hordes and the Sharia law tyranny which would unfailingly follow set a level for "lunatic fringe paranoia" I could never hope to match.
"
Earth to Ian Gould! Please show where I have ever said anything even remotely close to this insanity.
It was on the same "Dispatches fron the cultyure wars" thread as your exposition on why Canda was inferuior ot the US beause it hadv a smaller military and you disswertation on how the dirty Euros thoguht they were so much btter than the US because they had no idea hwo diffcult it was to maintain even basic standards of vicilisation in a country like the US plagued by an excess of "minorities".
Anyone who has ever tried to use the search function on Scienceblogs will no how difficult it is to be more specific trhan that.
"Anyone who has ever tried to use the search function on Scienceblogs will no(sic) how difficult it is to be more specific trhan(sic) that."
Translation: You have absolutely no evidence to back up you slanderous, not to mention poorly written, attacks.
I have never seen the utility in "killfiling" anyone but you are tempting me.
Ian Gould,
Seriously, your posts are getting more and more deranged. Christ you can't even write a sentence that isn't full of typos and grammatical errors.
Do you have a substance abuse problem? If not you may be suffering from some sort of mental illness.
Get help.
depp=true
The thread started with a graph on the last 150 years. Either 1C was a big deal or it was not. If the Netherlands had slipped under the waves we would not be arguing about scales on graphs.
World life expectancies up from 31 years in 1900 to 65 years now - source WHO. World population rose from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000. And all this in the face of several major world-wide plagues, and a couple of large wars.
Jeff Harvey suspects f I have no life sciences qualifications. He is right, I do not. I work for a train company: - electric trains so no connection to big oil industry. I do have a question for you life science specialist - does anyone have any measure by which we as a species are not thriving compared to 150 years ago. Note, I am not asking about soils or other species or the environment. Just us humans. As a species, have we thrived in spite of the 1C rise in the graph? I will be googling answers to checking the same criteria has been applied to at least one other species.
Of course those of you who wonder if the 1C was real or within natural limits are probably less surprised it is so hard to find a dramatic negative impact on the species.
That's what the bacteria in the petri dish say as their population continues exponential growth. "Things are great compared to 150 generations ago, the next 150 will be even better!"
There's a kind of primitive error in logic in your thinking, friend.
It is generally beholden on someone castigating another on typos and grammatical incongruences to ensure that what they themselves write is free of such undesirable features.
Shortly before Lance castigated Ian Gould for failing to engage the speelchecker facility (feeble pun, I know), we have this inglorious piece from the aspiring grammarian eminence:
Lance also appears to be less than proficient in comma usage, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the casual reader.
Hey, I've had worse stuff written here about myself by our fine friends than what Lance wrote about Ian, and those posts were never disemvowled. I'm being unfairly discriminated against because of my race. I want reparations!
sean egan:
I think the point was that you are arguing from ignorance.
Sean Egan.
"I do have a question for you life science specialist [sic] - does anyone have any measure by which we as a species are not thriving compared to 150 years ago."
Further to dhogaza's insight about limited resources (both biological and non-biological), the ebullient growth of human society was borne on the back of tens (if not hundreds) of millions of years of collected and concentrated photosynthetic activity.
We're coming up to being about half-way through this non-renewable energy resource, and there is no way that the unprecedented growth of human numbers and lifestyle will continue for too many more decades as it has since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Climate change or not.
Oh, and about 80% of the world's human population might be scratching their heads about the way that they are 'thriving' compared with us...
The other thing that your noneducation in life sciences has left you bereft of, is the understanding that a 1.0-1.5ºC warming, whist seeming to be a minor issue for the super-adaptable Homo sapiens, has much more profound impact on the bioclimatic envelopes and phenological rhythms of the bulk of the biosphere. And boy, do we depend on the services of the biosphere. Jeff harvey has already explained the importance of these to you at #122:
If you cannot understand the profound implications of this incontrovertible truth, or if you do not have the wherewithall to take Jeff's information and learn to confirm it for yourself, you really shouldn't be leaping forward into the assumption that because yesterday was fine for Mr and Mrs Western Human, tomorrow will be too.
You're simply floundering around with blickers over your eyes - but then, that pretty much describes most of the commentary coming from the Denialosphere...
This is of course the point where you scream "Malthus! Club of Rome! Ehrlich and Ehrlich! Poodles! Spawn of Lucifer!"
The response is straightforward: the train might not pull into the station bang on time, but it's going to pull into the station nevertheless. Those of us with our ears to the tracks can hear it coming.
Exactly what its cargo will be is hard to accurately predict, but its certain to include more than a few nasty surprises.
To touch upon dhogaza's example again, I've grown thousands of bacterial and mammalian cell lines in petri dishes and culture-flasks over the years, and there's no way to avoid what happens if the resources required for continued growth run out.
If you have some remarkable insight about this that the rest of us are oblivious to, please do share.
Of course those of you who wonder if the 1C was real or within natural limits are probably less surprised it is so hard to find a dramatic negative impact on the species.
No.
The point is ALL spp. Not just one species - altho that one species appropriates ~ 1/4-2/5 of all the earth's Net Primary Productivity*. ALL species. And the other point is scale and momentum.**
Mankind - believe it or not - cannot exist without a multitude of other species doing work. If we wreck that work, we cannot exist. Period. End of story.
Best,
D
* if you don't know what this is or why it is important, you cannot speak to the issue (as was said above you argue from ignorance. Rarely compelling.).
** if you don't know why scale and momentum are important, you cannot speak to the issue (as was said above you argue from ignorance. Rarely compelling.).
Old blog readers will known the two standard ways to not answer the question are to say, you are not an expert and you have taken the devils gold.
I am not pro or anti fertiliser, but the green revolution does not resume as just more fertiliser. 5 minutes on the Internet can verify it. So I was more amused than stressed about the life science remark. The point I made was history /geography/ geopolitical not life science. If the world did get warmer, we as a species did not pay a heavy price.
Around 1850, the population of Ireland crashed. Maybe for cultural reasons we Anglo-Irish have taken a particular interest in the potato famine and after. But almost all us did history in school. Did you have to talk to old folks to collect aural history? Did the old folks give you the impression life in general is harder now or easier? Is the major part of temp rise in the graph in period covered by this aural history? Much of it even covered by TV reporting.
I note Jeff claims we are bad for the other species and that this will bite us in the a.. Clearly if we thrive, other species pay the price. Put simply, more people and cheap food means less wildlife. Intensive farming is bad for bio diversity. However, in the 150 year period in question we have largely got away with it. In fact in England there is barely an area left in its native state, and there has not been for hundreds of years. The forests are long gone. Of course if we cut meat consumption, we could take land out of production to put it back. Again a more targeted action than CO2 tax. Give the weight problem we have in the western world it would have other benefits. Of course eating Bio could help a little, but you need the income to pay for it. So manufacturing more cars to pay for expensive happy chickens may not be Eco friendly - remember bio fuel.
Bernard, you did see the point was comparing the world 1850 to the world 2008 using recognised data sources, not the third world to the first world. I agree Romanians have every reason to want air conditioning and PVC doors, and I hope they sell enough Logans to allow it.
Dano, I take your point that we wreck whole ecosystems. But most people's priority is us. We are not really fussed unless it is photogenic, intelligent or cuddly. We like our nature tamed, and preferably somewhere we can drive the kids too for a day out. Save the whales but forget the plankton.
Nor was it claimed that it was.
You can not separate the two. Not over the long term. That's what science tells us.
Now he's arguing for the government to pick winners.
*snort*
That's pretty funny--good catch. I may have to save that for instructional purposes--a great example of the media and how science is "reported."
Dano, I take your point that we wreck whole ecosystems. But most people's priority is us. We are not really fussed unless it is photogenic, intelligent or cuddly. We like our nature tamed, and preferably somewhere we can drive the kids too
Well then! That settles it! Ecosystems and us wi'll be OK, because we're not fussed about it.
Whew! What a relief.
the green revolution does not resume as just more fertiliser. 5 minutes on the Internet can verify it.
Did you hit the 'wisdom' button on The Google? No? No one above said the GR was more fert only. As I said above: the GR was: apply more fert., expand irrigation, develop some new crop varieties. In some places where people could afford it and the gummint subsidized it (where it could afford it), pesticides were used.
If it was something else major, do share so we can call the publishers of our textbooks we kept when we studied this in Uni.
Best,
D
Dano,
We seem to have moved to agreement now you have mentioned roll of government initiatives. Not primarily life science. Politics. In this case as in the context of the Cold War - geopolitics. I might have missed that if I was a life sciencist.