When Kurt Lambeck criticized Ian Plimer on Ockhams Razor, he gaves specific examples of Plimer's errros of omission and commission. I gazed into my crystal ball and wrote:
I predict that Plimer will respond to this by denying that his science has been criticised, claiming that Lambeck's criticism was merely an ad hominem attack, and by making personal attacks on Lambeck.
Yesterday on Ockham's Razor we had Professor Ian Plimer replies to his critics:
Polemical criticism of my book Heaven and Earth has been savage because there are a large number of career climate comrades who frighten us witless about climate change and who would be unemployable outside taxpayer-funded climate institutes. ...
From my experience of challenging creationism, I argue that the global warming movement is an ascientific urban religious fundamentalist movement detached from the environment. ...
They anonymously criticise my book Heaven and Earth, but have not read it. ...
The most dangerous aspect of this new fundamentalist religion is that it ignores history and has hints of totalitarianism.
Take that, Professor Comrade High Priest Anonymous Lambeck!
Plimer finishes with seven questions that he reckons the anonymous commie priests can't answer. I know Plimer isn't big on answering questions, but I thought I'd have a go at answering his.
What is the right temperature for the Earth?
Unless you are a dinosaur or something, it's the temperature we had when we built our current civilization.
What is the right carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere?
Unless you are a dinosaur or something, it's the concentration we had when we built our current civilization.
How should enormous economic pain be imposed?
I think we should avoid the enormous economic pain that significant global warming will cause by mitigating emissions.
Why is carbon dioxide increasing, yet temperature is decreasing?
Temperature isn't decreasing.
Why have climate models not been run backwards to replicate all we know?
They have.
Why have major Earth processes been omitted from models?
They haven't been.
Why is scientific dissent demonised?
It isn't.
That wasn't hard at all!
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Maybe Plimer hasn't read it either.
I mean, he could have a ghost writer, couldn't he?
That would explain why he thinks people who QUOTE HIS BOOK at him and ask him about it are considered not to have read his book: since the quoted stuff is obvious bollocks and he didn't ask the ghost writer to *write* obvious bollocks, that quote cannot have come from the book and therefore the person asking can't have read it either.
Tim,
Just what was the temperature when we "built our current civilisation"? Indeed, how do you define "our current civilisation"?
Let's face it, for example, the world today is completely different to what it was during the LIA. Should we wish that the temperature now was the same as it was then?
Your comments are so broad as to be meaningless.
(BTW, Janet - gosh I might have got another early post and if it hadn't been for you I wouldn't have noticed!)
DAve Andrews once again demonstrates why we don't take him seriously.
I think you might be giving Plimer a bit too much credit on the "climate models run backwards" question Tim. I have the feeling that he expects you can turn the crank anti-clockwise and get attribution data from temperature trend input, and doesn't mean the sensible thing: "do a model run on paleoclimate and compare to data as a verification".
> Let's face it, for example, the world today is completely different to what it was during the LIA
Ducky, you nearly were human for a second there.
Never mind.
How about "not where the oceans are flooding the land where all our big cities are living is the best temperature"?
Once you were not alive.
Would you rush toward that fate just because it's happened before?
Dave, here's clue for you:
100 degrees is the wrong temperature
-50 degrees is the wrong temperature.
etc...
For additional clues, why not read up on the effects climate change had on the Mayan civilisation?
As for the "LIA": if the temperature now was the same as then, *I* wouldn't notice any change where *I* am seeing as the LIA was a localised - and very minor - variation to temperature which has been completely eclipsed by the last 40 years of anomalous warming.
I think you mean psychotic
Another brainless vacuous remark from lunk-head.
Have anything of substance to say? If not, troll elsewhere.
SEDIMENT cores from a small Arctic lake in Canada stretching back 200,000 years show unprecedented gains in global warming since 1950, indicating human activity is the likely cause.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26234683-401,00.html
mrcreosote... yeh right "However, lake sediment cores dating from 1950 show that expected climate cooling was overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions." ...I guess that this is your proof of AGW!
Here's an interesting study for brainless Jeff Harvey to consider...
Recent research has shown how growth rings of spruce trees changed over the past half a century. The variation in cosmic rays affected the tree growth more than changes in temperature, CO2 or precipitation. The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122597017/abstract?CRETRY=1&…).
The trees were planted in 1953 and felled in 2006. The researchers froze the trunk slices, to prevent the wood shrinking, then scanned them into a computer and used software to count the number and width of the growth rings. As the trees aged, they showed a general decline in growth but during some years, the treesâ growth conspicuously slowed. These years correlated with periods of relatively low levels of cosmic rays reaching Earth. When the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earthâs surface was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster.
Does Tim also 'gaze' into his 'crystal ball' to come up with his proof of AGW?
Why not have a blog topic on this Tim? ..... http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/17/iq-test-which-of-these-is-not-ups…
There is no doubt whatever that Mann used the Tiljander proxies upside down. Do your Deltoid alarmists support this science? Shouldn't this correction be made? The silence is deafening.
We've had Briffa's "One tree" proof of global warming, now we have a "One lake" proof of global warming!
Re #10. Very weak correlation Lank. If that's your proof that AGW is bollocks, you'll have to do a lot better than that.
Nothing like a blatant lie to convert people to your cause ...
Vince Whirlwind
Check your facts on Google Scholar and you will find the LIA was not a localized event.
dhogaza#14...'Nothing like a blatant lie to convert people to your cause ...' I presume you mean the infamous bogus hockey stick farce - what joke science! Is that a blatant lie or what?
Lank @10
exactly how do you think this study, and the related commentary (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122652654/HTMLSTART) debunks AGW? How does that study put aside the weight of observations from a wide range of disciplines?
what would be your explanation for *all* the observations noted in the article I posted?
And for more utterly predictable nonsense, see the latest from this fine fellow, (who I suspect some of you might already know about):
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10638
mrcreosote#17... Same way that a small number of trees in Siberia created the bogus hockey stick. This bunch of sediment cores in the middle of Canada have been cherry-picked to show that the MWP didn't exist, the Roman Warm Period didn't exist, the Holocene climate optimum didn't exist and it's all our fault.
Try that again.
Lank:
You're a blatant liar Lank.
Lank,
the papers that led up to the latest one from that lake on Baffin Island actually very clearly show the Holocene Climate optimum.
Just Google scholar "Axford Baffin Island" there's about 20 hits or so, there's one paper form 2006 and one from 2009 that you can read for free. They're quite interesting.
Lank
I was surprised to discover that tree ring growth has more to do with cosmic rays than temperature or precipitation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/19/cosmic-rays-and-tree-growth-patte…
Just love the science, it makes the heart sing.
Dave, I would sign on the dotted line for LIA temperatures for the rest of this century.
Dave Andrew's comparison the LIA is invalid, we are already have a greater anomaly (compared to the 2000 year reconstructed mean) then the LIA.
And we are out of radiative balance meaning we have around 70% of eventual warming to be realised. And we are continuing to add CO2e to we are going further still.
Add to these facts that the world's resource are shrinking rapidly, and being consumed at an accelerating rate. And that we have carved up the landscape reducing the ability of natural ecosystem adaptation. The exosphere did not have to support 6.7 billion during the LIA.
To put it mildly, the LIA was mild in comparison to our current anomaly, let alone our near future.
Sorry Dave, this is another "Ducky knee jerk".
But at least you don't look so bad when Lank post here.
Just read the Ockham's Razor piece. As an atheist I get a bit tired of the comparison Plimer keeps making between AGW and religion. I own his book and I have read through it. It is not particularly enlightening on what science is discussed because the political subtext running throughout drives the choice of evidence presented to the reader. Plimer's presentation of what is purported to be the same data is patchy and inconsistent from page to page, to the point where it's just too dangerous to accept a statement as accurate. Some of this is just lousy editing, but as Tim and many others have documented, a lot of it smacks of the desired conclusion driving the representation.
When it comes to geological history and our scientific knowledge of past climatic conditions, Plimer acts as though climate scientists are ignorant of geology. Climate science is by its nature an interdisciplinary field of research, to the extent now that significant cross-fertilisation of scientific methods, instrument and measurement technologies, and theoretic methods are adapted and shaped to suit the needs of contributing fields. Far from being ignorant of other fields, the evidence is that climate scientists are using every relevant research discipline to great advantage.
For those who are extremely skeptical about AGW, consider this: the climate scientists that Plimer regularly disparages not only have a great appreciation of past climate changes, they use the very evidence that Plimer claims they don't know of, and those scientists *still* consider the most recent global temperature trends to be best explained by AGW theory. Why would they do that? And in particular, why would the geologists and paleontologists, and geophysicists, etc, who have contributed significantly to climate science, accept AGW as the most convincing theory for contributing to current climate changes?
There are certainly cases where publicising a scientific result has proven premature, in the sense that conjecture has leaped too far ahead of the evidence available. Or the opposite where a "nice" theory has held ground in spite of what - in retrospect - is an overwhelming build up of contrary evidence. No field is immune to that. Geology and its great fight over plate tectonics is a case in point. The principal problem with Plimer is that he assumes his "all natural" theory of climate change is the "true theory" relevant to the current regime, in spite of the massive build up of contrary evidence from a diverse set of scientific disciplines.
The natural climate changes that have happened in both the far distant past and during the more recent Holocene period are fascinating. But Plimer's effort isn't fascinating at all. I've enjoyed Imbrie & Imbrie "Ice Ages: solving the mystery", Burroughs "Climate Change In Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos", Ward's "Under a Green Sky", Oreskes "The Rejection of Continental Drift", Mithen's "After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000 -- 5000 BC", Broecker & Kunzig "Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat -- And How To Counter It".
> As an atheist I get a bit tired of the comparison Plimer keeps making between AGW and religion.
I also get tired that he doesn't make the comparison between denial of AGW and denial of evolution by the religious.
Well he certainly nailed his colours to the wall with that response!
> [...] there are a large number of career climate comrades [...]
> [...] I argue that the global warming movement is an a scientific urban religious fundamentalist movement [...]
> The most dangerous aspect of this new fundamentalist religion is that it ignores history and has hints of totalitarianism.
No doubt Plimer never actually said that global warming is a form of totalitarianism, and I'm sure if called on to it he'll rush to clarify that he's being misunderstood, except of course it's only right that's he's misunderstood.
Because even though he's not saying that global warming is actually a form of totalitarianism, and in fact he does not think that global warming is a form of totalitarianism, yet I'm sure he'll say that he can't discard the possibility that he's getting the feeling that global warming is, you know, a form of totalitarianism.
Poor, poor misunderstood Plimer. Coming soon.
El Gordo #23:
In that study they find that their tree rings correlate well with cosmic rays, but not with temperature or rainfall. It follows that cosmic rays do not correlate well with with temperature or rainfall.
So warming over the past century must be due to something else. I wonder what that might be?
They came up with some odd data and it will be interesting to see their method applied to other tree ring sequences. But it isn't evidence against the increased CO2 as a cause of an enhanced greenhouse effect.
> So warming over the past century must be due to something else. I wonder what that might be?
Well, OBVIOUSLY, past warming is not due to temperatures increasing, then. It's only due to cosmic rays.
The cherries they picked looked kinda cosmic, so there is no climate change.
In American terms, Plimer's gone from being the Rush Limbaugh of science denial to the Glen Beck.
That's "GlenN Beck." BTW are there Australian equivalents of those 2?
This is almost a fair question, and in fact I think the sentiment behind it may reflect some of the appeal of climate change denialism.
There is a popular myth, reflected for example in the movie The Matrix, that humans are the only animal which does not live in harmony with its environment. This is actually completely untrue. To point to just one example, a herd of elephants is absolutely devastating to the local ecosystem. We just don't think about it very often because the maximum impact of a handful of elephants is still very small in absolute terms. If there were as many elephants on this planet as there are humans, the level of environmental devastation would most certainly be non-trivial, though.
I see this as sort of an extension of the Noble Savage idea, but extending back before our species... the idea that somehow, all other animals are ecological saints. Well, they ain't, just like primitive societies are not exemplars of peace by any means. It's just that the absolute impact of modern society is tremendous in comparison. No matter how violent a tribal society gets, it can't rival the decimation wrought by World War II. Similarly, no matter how out of balance with its environment some animals may become, they can't rival what we have wrought on the planet in the past centuries (and in terms of extinctions, many past millenia... the "Noble Savages" were no more environmentalists than they were pacifists!)
I think some of the climate change denialists are offended by this myth, call it the "Noble Animal". They say, why should we get all the blame? They say to themselves, the only reason these panic-mongers are making such a fuss is because they are tree huggers and animal lovers that think every other type of animal is somehow better than humanity. (And that characterization might even be accurate for the odd environmentalist here and there, I suppose) Thus they adopt a reactionary stance, which evolves into a denialist stance.
In other words, climate change denialism is the most direct way (albeit a fallacious one) of contradicting the myth of the "Noble Animal". For someone who is offended by the propagation of that myth, but is also not very smart....
> They say, why should we get all the blame?
Well we blame the cat when it shits on our new rug, don't we?
Heck, some vegetarians have what is called a "blame hound" for when the lentils have their inevitable effect.
I would say to them: you get the blame because you're bloody doing it!
Now if they turn round and say "I didn't know" then that is fine as long as now they DO know they stop it.
Just like smokers: older smokers started and got addicted before anyone knew they were toxic. Before second-hand smoke.
Now they're hooked. They are "being blamed" because they want to be the victim, because the "hero" isn't an option and "villain" is what is left.
But they *are not* being blamed. They are being told what they're doing means.
After second hand smoke was well known, those who TOOK UP smoking get blamed. But those who smoked without knowing what it meant were not wrong, just uninformed. That's not blame.
Same here.
But some just don't WANT to be told they can't shit on the floor and get angry when told it's unhygenic and unhealthy.
Well now they know, stop. Or you DO deserve the blame.
The analogy to secondhand smoke is rather apt, I think. In both cases, you have a minority of people (or at least a perception that this minority exists) on the "Good Guys" side who want to make it overly moralistic(*), as if smoking or carbon emissions were decreed by Jeebus to be inherently sinful. And in both cases, you have a reactionary bunch on the other side who imagines that everybody who is concerned about secondhand smoke or global warming feels that way because of some puritanical obsession, and so stubbornly continue in their destructive behavior without regards to the facts. ("The facts must be made up to further the other side's puritanical agenda!")
I want to make clear I'm not trying to say that the denialists exist only as a reactionary response to those who over-moralize the issues in question... even if not a single person over-moralized the issue, the denialists would still imagine that everyone did :)
(*) I don't want to imply that willfully proceeding on a path of environmental destruction is not a moral issue; I am just saying that, for example, unrestricted carbon emissions are wrong because of their consequences, not because using carbon-based compounds for a fuel source is inherently wrong on some absolutist moral level.
Heh, and to extend your cat shitting on the floor analogy:
James, it's much simpler: those who are told they're doing something wrong become villains.
So they want to twist that round. Either the accuser becomes the villain or the accused takes the victim role.
It's automatic.
The measure of the person isn't that they don't do this, but that they realise when they're doing it.
But some fence-sitters are told what they want to hear (An Convenient Lie) and don't want to know the truth (An Inconvenient Truth).
There are probably a number of eco's who LOVE the idea of man being at fault. There aren't many, but *man* are they annoying. "Linda McCartney's" I call them.
But the annoying Linda vegetarians are just getting on my wick with their self-righteousness.
The denialists are damaging the world.
It's rather different.
Another difference is that the AGW science isn't being said for those who WANT to hear, it's being told because it looks and smells like the truth.
Plimer et al are making their "science" for those who *want* to hear it, and that's why they don't have to prove _their_ assertions, whereas any pro-AGW statement is attacked with "where's the PROOF!!!".
My dad didn't know second hand smoke was bad. When he did, he didn't want to hear it. When scientist said that it was worse than first hand smoke he (with quite some justification) said it was rubbish and that it couldn't be true.
I pointed out that children can't buy smokes, so they are more likely in a smoking society to be having second hand smoke. That children were still growing, so any problems will grow with them. That they had less capacity so the same damage is relatively worse (and grows with them, see above).
The media "sexed up" the story to sell papers.
And rather than consider how it *could* be right, or even finding out, he discarded it and became more entrenched.
He gave up recently because of grandchildren.
I told him I don't blame him because he didn't know when I was a kid that it was bad for kids. And giving up for the grandkids is a bit annoying for the kid (me) because I'm left thinking "how about earlier???", but I can understand that it takes a change to kick you out of a rut and knowing that the newborn child would be harmed WAS that kick. If he'd known when I was born, he may well have stopped for me.
But rather than, like my dad, go "that MUST be rubbish" when a *headline* says something stupid, think how it could be right.
And then you're not the villain, you're the victim because you didn't know better. You're the hero for finding out.
And it doesn't require you drag someone else down lower than you to feel better about it.
Vince whirlwind #6,
So the LIA was a minor localised event and wouldn't have affected you where you now sit?
Let's assume that you may be Australian. Good on you mate. But Australia has been going through a drought period for some years now, and this is attributed to AGW.
Yet, here in Wales, UK, we have had loads of rain over the last several years. So obviously your drought is only a 'minor localised event' and has nothing to do with global temperatures.
James Sweet,
What a load of claptrap!
Mark #5
Just when are the oceans going to be flooding all our big cities?
Do you think we humans might have some time to do something to adapt to the rising sea level, if it occurs, or will we just passively wait for it to happen?
Do you spend much time, Dave, where people maybe show some friendly interest in your opinions? Why not spend more time there?
Janet A,
Repeat after me, CO2 does not cause global warming.
You appear to take the view that even a hint of environmental danger is sufficient basis for regulation, unless the sceptics and deniers can prove otherwise.
In environmental sciences this is no easy task and, with the western media overwhelmingly pro-AGW, it's a particularly pernicious asymmetry.
el gordo writes:
>*Repeat after me, CO2 does not cause global warming.*
Repeat your ideological mantra's as much as you like, it is no substitute for evidence.
And you can't even get your asymmetries correct. The difference in perception between public and science is due to plutocratic self interest. You'll have to read The Australian The Daily Telegraph, Herold Sun, or watch some of Murdoch's and Berlusconi's networks. The watch "The Corporation" for a case study in how Murdoch's media suppress stories that are contrary to the interest of their larger advertisers.
Tiresome dill, are you sick of pulling your sister's hair so quickly, go annoy you mum instead.
El gordo,
You are still full of it. I reiterate: what are your academic qualifications to be able to dismiss the research of thousands of scientists around the world? I often hear the same refrain from utter laymen like you who think they are armchair experts in environmental science when all they have done is read a few articles in National Geographic. Grow up.
You also write crap when you say: "In environmental sciences this is no easy task and, with the western media overwhelmingly pro-AGW"
Pro-AGW my ass. The MSM may talk about AGW but they rarely, if ever attack its root causes and what we should do about them. They also are reticent to criticize over-consumption of natural capital and the role of corporations and their lackeys in the think tanks and astroturf groups who play a major role in promoting both unsustainable behavior and the undermining of regulations. That is because the MSM depends either on corporate advertising or else media chains are big profit making businesses in their own right. So although they might suggest that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, they are loathe to offend those who are responsible for it; their refrain is that we can have out cake and eat it. Don't change anything! Thus the argument that the MSM is "pro-AGW" is a load of bollocks.
Jeff Harvey
Would you at least concede the ABC is pro AGW?
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2718158.htm
ABC is pro Science el gordo, unlike youself.
And of course there is the British Brainwashing Corporation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199006/PETER-SISSONS-I-drove-T…
The ABC is pro-science.
el gordo,
Its not a question of being "pro-AGW"; to me it is goes well beyond that. The media do tend to report the broad consensus amongst climate scientists that AGW is real, but that is pretty much where they stop. When it comes to dealing with AGW, and especially describing the anti-environmental backlash and who funds it, they are curiously silent. The fact that you can read an article on climate change juxtaposed with advertisements extolling cheap flights, SUVs, luxury goods etc., reveals how utterly psychopathic the MSM is. In talks I give at universities I highlight this very point; the sheer hypocrisy of the media when it comes to environmental issues and how it is divorced from political and economic reality.
Of course this is no surprise, at least if you put this within the context of the propaganda model described by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their groundbreaking analysis of the media, "Manufacturing Consent". The model states that the "aim of the mainstream (corporate-state) media is to inculcate and defend the social, political and economic agenda of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society and the state". There is abundant evidence for this; I need not go over it here. But this subservience to elite interests pervades every aspect of msm output. Thus their coverage of GW is not "pro" in the sense that we are told what we should be doing to deal with it. The lines are left blank, whilst much of the rest of the same media extol us to keep consuming until kingdom come.
Similarly, the msm is obsessed about the need to maintain "economic growth" without exactly specifying what this means and its consequences for the environment. The fact that 16% of the planet's population consumes natural capital like there is no tomorrow is rarely discussed in the msm. Furthermore, one can often find articles in the msm suggesting that the declining populations in a number of European nations is a major concern, without alluding to the fact that these countries already foster huge ecological deficits which can only be offset by reaching beyond their own borders to obtain, often through exploitative economic policies or downright coercion, resources from less developed nations.
The msm is also doing its part now to build up the Iranian threat, based pretty much entirely on "official sources" - the same kinds of sources that lied their way into a disastrous and illegal war in Iraq.
So I do not take the "msm is pro-AGW" argument at all seriously. Its bunk.
Personally, I'm very anti-AGW.
I want us to stop it from happening.
It's the deniers who are pro-AGW in that their do-nothing approach will give us AGW.
> Repeat after me, CO2 does not cause global warming.
Why should we repeat a lie?
Lies repeated can make people believe them, but the earth isn't listening.
Your unshakable belief that CO2 cannot cause global warming is why you are not looking at the science.
It is why your point of view is worthless.
> Just when are the oceans going to be flooding all our big cities?
When the sea level rises above the city.
Duh.
Wherever you get coal seams, that used to be underwater. In the past, all that land was under water. Do you want all that land that now has coal on it underwater? And anything lower or equal to that level will be underwater too.
I suppose you just want those damn yankees in New York drowned and the NYSE reduced and ruined.
Pravda (The Truth) thinks those yankees will be reduced to ruin.
http://newsfromrussia.com/opinion/columnists/19-10-2009/109977-self_imm…
Mark
CO2 lags temperatures.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
That's why CO2 will continue to rise for some considerable time and there is nothing we can do about that.
>*That's why CO2 will continue to rise for some considerable time and there is nothing we can do about that.*
The new mantra from the the coal companies. Glad your on board el gordo.
It must be nice to know so much el gordo. Would be a shame if you lived long enough to find what a fool you are. Got kids?
> CO2 lags temperatures.
It also preceeds temperatures:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum]
Also, how does that prove CO2 doesn't cause temperature rises?
That was a rhetorical question, fatty. I know you can't and won't answer it.
So the LIA was a minor localised event and wouldn't have affected you where you now sit? Let's assume that you may be Australian. Good on you mate. But Australia has been going through a drought period for some years now, and this is attributed to AGW. Yet, here in Wales, UK, we have had loads of rain over the last several years. So obviously your drought is only a 'minor localised event' and has nothing to do with global temperatures.
the drought indeed is a minor local event. but the global warming is real. it is measured at countless places and with different methods, to an accuracy that is far beyond what any proxy study will ever achieve.
there is a link between the temperature rise and the drought. (there even is a link between the temperature rise and rain most likely.)
so your errors are these:
you compare a warm period that is shown by good data, with a warm period that has much worse data.
you compare regional spikes defined as the MWP with local events during the current real global warm period.
you make the logically false conclusion, that regional droughts and rain can t happen during a real global warm period.
Just when are the oceans going to be flooding all our big cities? Do you think we humans might have some time to do something to adapt to the rising sea level, if it occurs, or will we just passively wait for it to happen?
let us look at a recent event: New Orleans. (and notice: this is completely independent of any connection between the flood and AGW)
could we have done something to prevent this? sure.
did we do something? no.
now the problem with this example is, that New Orleans is part of the wealthiest country on earth.
the question you have to ask yourself is this: is it likely, that the rich countries build high dams to protect Bangladesh from floods, or will we just passively wait for it to happen?
try to be honest when answering this.
a major advantage of CO2 reduction over "adaptive" actions like building dams is, that people get the feeling that they personally benefit from it.
people don t tend to build high dams to protect other countries.
And the likeliest adaption to the change is "move somewhere else".
For the poorest this isn't much fun, but they don't leave much behind when they do, so it's at least only a first-order catastrophe.
But what if NYSE has to move? London? Any port in the US?
These involve the abandonment of infrastructure already geared to supplying what's needed to that area. But not only that, you need to supply that same infrastructure in the new place. AND lose productivity while you're moving.
It's adapting in the same way as an adaption to having your legs amputated is to become unemployable and wheelchair bound.
Would it be better NOT having the legs amputated, and avoid the scenario where that is necessary?
el gordo:
As I said before, looks like another idiot who thinks the CO2 rise of the last 150 years was caused by global warming. Anyone who wants to see the evidence that the CO2 rise is human-caused can refer to Ferdinand Englebeen's page on the matter, in particular, section 5 "Evidence of human influence on the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere". Ferdinand ain't no "alarmist". I notice that Greenpeace took Ferdinand's organization (Chlorophiles) to court over statements Chlorophiles made about Greenpeace's campaign against Chlorine. As a result of that courtcase, Greenpeace "are now sure of very many facts that they did not previously know, and if following this revealing court case they now repeat the mere untruths they have learned, they can be held accountable for lying." Interesting.
Fat Boy,
We've gone over the difference between CO2 as a natural feedback process and CO2 as a human generated forcing before, but here you are recycling the same moronic talking point as if that conversation never happened.
Why is that?
Repeat after me, "I, Fat Boy, am a congenital idiot."
Mark,
"and the NYSE reduced and ruined."
Now there's a thought.....
Sod,
As I understand it flooding in Bangladesh has been occurring over quite a long time, we just never really got to hear of it that much before the era of global media.
It would surely make much more sense to attempt to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh so that the people in those vulnerable areas could afford to move themselves and their families to areas that would not regularly flood and suffer from storm surges
Mark,
"When the sea level rises above the city. Duh."
Doesn't the Bible talk about some catastrophic flooding, Noah, animals and all that? Now this must have been based upon some sort of collective memory handed down over a long time, but I doubt AGW was involved.
BTW, you didn't answer the question of WHEN you expect this overwhelming flooding to occur.
As I understand it flooding in Bangladesh has been occurring over quite a long time, we just never really got to hear of it that much before the era of global media. It would surely make much more sense to attempt to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh so that the people in those vulnerable areas could afford to move themselves and their families to areas that would not regularly flood and suffer from storm surges
Bangladesh of course was just an example, and even one that i am not all that familiar with. but for a start: rising sea levels will move floods to regions, that were NOT hit by floods before. these would be exactly the places, where your "plan" would move people to!
wikipedia says, that about 50% of the country is threatened by flooding, if sea level rise by just 1 metre. moving people across borders would cause massive trouble. the same is true for abandoning the most fertile low lands.
your approach (Bangladesh will profit from global economic success, aka "do nothing") has not protected them from floods in the past. even the USA could not protect New Orleans.
in short, i am not convinced, that you invested much thought in your "solution".
Chris,
Interesting stuff, particularly as my son is a long time member of Greenpeace. We debate AGW on a regular basis and I will bring this to his attention.
Mark
According to that Wiki link ...'around 1,500 to 2000 gigatons of carbon were released into the ocean/atmosphere system over the course of 1000 years. This rate of carbon addition almost equals the rate at which carbon is being released into the atmosphere today through anthropogenic activity.'
As they point out the Drake Passage was shut and the Panama Isthmus did not yet connect, these factors 'combined with CO2 levels, meant that there were no significant ice sheets - the globe was essentially ice free.'
Looking for the cause of this massive release of carbon appears to be a mystery. What do you think?
The other point about all this is 'adaptation'. When the Isthmus joined about 3 million years ago it caused a terrible drought in Africa, which forced our ancestors to climb out of the trees and walk on the Savannah. Good thing too.
El Gordo
You are taking the traditional responsibility of a father to embarrass his children way, way, too far.
Wearing unfashionable clothing or telling lame jokes should be enough. Adopting a truly idiotic view of the world is not necessary.
To give Ian Plimer one little point, unlike the freaks Levitt and Dubner, at least he only went after Monbiot, his Romm-analog.
As far as I can see, they or their surrogates have tried to make life rough for people merely collecting criticisms of them, the way I did for Plimer (and fairly publicly). Just saying.
There's always a worse bastard out there if you look long enough.
Dave Andrews:
CONSTRUCTING A STRAWMAN 101, combining NON-SEQUITUR 101
"But Australia has been going through a drought period for some years now, and this is attributed to AGW."
"So obviously your drought is only a 'minor localised event' and has nothing to do with global temperatures."
'Nuff said. You're a complete idiot, Dave.
GAZ: You're on safe grounds, all my friends and family think I'm and idiot on this subject.
It is most disconcerting because I've been asked not to talk about it when we go out.
That's why I come here, at least I get a chance to say a few words. From my perspective, you're all deluded.
>*all my friends and family think I'm and idiot on this subject. It is most disconcerting because I've been asked not to talk about it when we go out.*
el gordo's friends and family give good advice, given how misinformed he is on the topic.
Lets hope humanity is collectively up to the task of taking global mitigation action in the face of such 'fact filters' as el gordo.
Psychiatric definition of delusional:
A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes inconvertible and obvious proof of evidence to the contrary.
The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture.
'Fact filters' is good, I will use it against my ignorant enemies.
Shorter fatso:
This recalls Perp's [post on BraveNewClimate](http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/#comm…), where she quotes John Heyward's recording of the Old English saying:
Tell us fatso, who is the more "deafe or ... blinde" - the trained and experienced professionals in the sciences of complex systems, and who inherently look at and test opposing hypotheses in the execution of their day-to-day work, or the monkeys who chatter from the trees and who cannot tell a t-test from a tea chest?
el gordo:
So ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about Englebeen's pointing out of the evidence that the CO2 rise of the past 150 years is anthropogenic, contradicting what you think. With that sort of arrogance and ignoring of the evidence it's no wonder so many think you're an idiot.
BJ, I also read Rabett Run, Open Mind, James Empty Blog and More Grumbine Science. If ignorance be bliss and folly to be wise, I am indeed a fool. You should get out more.
CON, I looked at it and he makes a good argument. The amount of CO2 could be higher than we think, but he also believes only a part of the temperature increase can be laid at the feet of AGW.
Hmmm...convince me that CO2 causes global warming and I'm yours.
el gordo:
What is that supposed to mean?
Thanks for telling me something I already told you.
> A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality ...
And that's your belief on CO2 warming.
You incorrectly infer that just because ice ages were increased in amplitude by CO2 and the CO2 trigger was milankovich warming that burning CO2 directly cannot be a trigger for increasing CO2 and thereby increasing temperature.
You cling to that half-arsed idea and it is incorrect.
Check up on the PETM.
Check what comes out of the back of a car burning petrol.
> Doesn't the Bible talk about some catastrophic flooding,
Ducky what the hell is all this streamofconcsouisness babbling proving? That you read the bible and see it wherever you look?
When sea levels rise high enough to flood the cities the cities will be flooded.
Ask the Netherlands about this problem.
Or New Orleans.
You arse.
> "and the NYSE reduced and ruined."
> Now there's a thought.....
> Posted by: Dave Andrews
I now know where duck's arse is coming from. He's a fundie.
He WANTS the world destroyed because then the rapture will take him up and give him everlasting life.
Or that's what the voices in his head are telling him.
Add that "interesting" to the automatic recognition of the bible in the next post he gives is pretty darn conclusive.
He's not looking for adaption or afraid of economic downfall, they're just excuses to let the damage continue.
Commentators like Chomsky were talking about media distortion of the science of global warming in the early 90s, its not a surprise then to see the intrasnigence of 'el gordo' and Dave. Twenty years (almost) is a long time for indoctrination and goes a long way to explaining why their position is more clearly defined as religion, defience or belief in the face of staggering evidence. Alas we also see in the critiscism of Lambeck, reference to one the oldest of enemies, communism. Its all quite predicable really, but nonetheless saddening for it.
Is it an American thing that Christians are less likely to think that AGW theory is correct? It's not something I've noticed in the Christian community in the UK (which I'm broadly part of, at least a small part of it!).
If that stereotype is true, it makes it quite deliciously ironic that Plimer, having battled dunder-headed creationism, turns his hand to refuting climate science and ballsing it up in such a comedic and anti-scientific fashion that you'd think it had come from the Kansas board of education ;-)
It's a fundy evangelical thing. They're just superabundant in the US, particularly in the south and midwest.
> It's not something I've noticed in the Christian community in the UK (which I'm broadly part of, at least a small part of it!).
I do know quite a lot of people who see the possibility of humans fooking up the climate as an attack on their religion in the UK.
Some because according to the bible we were given this earth so we're allowed to.
Some because God is far more powerful than man and He would stop it.
Some because God is far more powerful than man and our efforts cannot undo His work.
Some because if it happened, it would be to them proof that man is stronger than God.
There are probably more, but those seem to be the biggest ones with at least SOME semblance to rationality (if rationality based on an untenable belief that He would interfere in our fooking it all up).
The Christian God has a history of leaving us in our own mess throughout the Bible - why should ransacking the environment be any different? He does tell us to look after it. Geez, the refutation to the arguments you mention is so simple Mark - it's certainly on terms a Christian should understand.
I've tried that one, Stu.
But they're already upset you've attacked their religion and either moping and not listening or ranting and not listening.
It's a shame Mark, I'm a believer through and through but I do tend to stay away from popular Christian blogs because (like WUWT or CA, for example), the standard of some of the comments is cringe-worthy even if I agree wholeheartedly with the blogger. Hmm, that sounds wrong. I'd like to clarify that it's a rare occurrence that I agree with a post by Steve Mac or Mr. Watts.
Well I feel sorry.
It's not good when your faith is that weak yet refuse to have the strength to admit it.
There's nothing wrong with faith. There's something wrong in demanding (which is what most proselytizing religions do) that you agree with *someone else's* religion.
And worse, some people can't even admit their truths to themselves when *someone else's* religion doesn't answer their questions and doesn't fit the world they see but, instead of realising that their religion may be wrong (faith is a different matter) they refuse the reality.
It's the wrong way round.
If faith in a god is true, it is in accord with reality, not against it, so if reality has a different view, the religious dogma is false, not the reality; and not (if there IS a god) the faith.
Mark,
"I now know where duck's arse is coming from. He's a fundie."
You have a remarkable knack of getting things totally wrong. Your above remark is about as far from the truth as it is possible to be. Ask dhogaza about my discussions with him on Open Mind for example.
I might call you a ****** but wouldn;t want to sink to your level!
Mark,
'Doesn't the Bible talk about some catastrophic flooding'
Didn't you realise that was irony? Or are you so lacking in general knowledge that you can't understand people might go outside the bounds of your narrow perceptions?
Dicksonator,
This would be the Chomsky who didn't believe that the murderous Pol Pot regime was committing genocide in Cambodia which resulted in over 2 million deaths as he sought to impose his brutal maoist regime?
No, Ducky,
It's the Chomsky who cautioned that initial reports of genocide in Cambodia required further investigation, because the sole reporter of which had proven to be less than reliable in the past.
> Didn't you realise that was irony?
> Posted by: Dave Andrews
No, it just seemed exactly like all the other incredibly insane posts you post, Ducky.
Were they all ironic too?
> I might call you a ** but wouldn;t want to sink to your level!
> Posted by: Dave Andrews
You'd have to rise quite a long way to sink to my level Ducky-poos.
Though I suppose since your hear IS up your arse, everything would look upside down to you.
> Mark According to that Wiki link ...'around 1,500 to 2000 gigatons of carbon were released into the ocean/atmosphere system over the course of 1000 years. This rate of carbon addition almost equals the rate at which carbon is being released into the atmosphere today through anthropogenic activity.'
Chubby,
We released that in 50 years. That happened over 20 times longer a period.
And what happened during the PETM?
Massive death and destruction.
You only read as far as you want to, then stop in case you learn anything, don't you wobblebutt?
It is, however, the same [Pol Pot](http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Support_PolPot_RS.html) who was later supported by the CIA against the Vietnamese occupation that ended the genocide.
[Ducky.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck%27s_Ass)
I apologize for the fact that this post is (mostly) off-topic, but...
Once upon a time I really wanted to help people learn about what happened in Cambodia. Now I just cringe when this subject comes up. I hate seeing one of the worst human rights disasters of the twentieth century presented as an empty talking point.
As far as I can tell, Dave is a troll, so I've adopted the "Cheech and Chong" policy toward his comments. ("Dave's not here, man!")
Luminous Beauty, however... you ARE here, so I feel compelled to reply to your comments above.
I have no idea where you got the idea that there was a "sole reporter" of the genocide in Cambodia. In my view, one of the most damaging aspects of Chomsky's writing on the subject is that he has (largely) succeeded in creating a myth that what was happening inside Cambodia was somehow unclear. Permit me to make an analogy: Thirty years from now, you can expect to see right-wing pundits citing the work of Plimer, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick as evidence that it was unclear whether or not the planet was warming.
I'm somewhat ambivalent on Chomsky in general, [but his work on Cambodia was horribly misleading](http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm), and he (and his fanboys) tend to respond to his critics in a manner not unlike Plimer. He [accused me of lying](http://www.radicalreaction.com/blog/chomsky/2007/01/2006-december-cambo…), even while admitting that he had not read what I wrote. [He failed to cited any errors in what I wrote, and made demonstrably false claims about what I did write](http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/reply_to_chomsky.htm).
Maybe Plimer, Monckton, etc., are correct when they claim global warming is a vast left-wing conspiracy, existing for the sole purpose of imposing a Communist agenda. Maybe Chomsky is correct when he claims that the people who have criticized him are engaged in "a depraved form of retrospective justification for the US wars in Indochina." Or maybe not. If you want to know [why Cambodia is important to me](http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/broken.htm), it isn't hard to find out.
Regarding the article you linked above, by John Pilger: Pilger's version of events in Cambodia is largely another misleading mess, but I hate to further derail the thread. However, anyone is welcome to email me, and I'll be happy to provide some details.
Regards,
Bruce
Bruce Sharp,
I can assure you I am not a troll and the point I made about Chomsky was sincere. To me it seemed that he was always more concerned that the focus remain on how awful the US was than about the fate of the Cambodian people.
This, of course, was his raison d'etre - the US was the source of all wrongdoing in the world and he could just not accept that others might be as bad or even worse.
One could also, of course, say that he put his personal POV ahead of any real humanitarian feelings for what was actually happening on the ground.
Having read the opus by Chomsky on Indochina, it was not his claim that Pol Pot's regime was not brutal or to challenge the claim that very large numbers of people died there during the period 1975-79 but that all of the 2 million dead were the result of a campaign by the Khmer Rouge to murder the civilian population.
I should say that I find Chomsky's advocacy here regrettable. While there can be no doubt that the carpet bombing of large swathes of rural Cambodia was a necessary condition for what followed, and that much of what followed in the western press was a cynical apologia for the western assault on Indochina, the thrust of his advocacy radically understates the culpability of the Khmer Rouge in the playing out of the catastrophe. There can be no doubt at all that the KR-leadership sought to remake Cambodia based on a return to the usages of 900 years previous, and that whatever they imagined the consequence of that would be, the inevitable consequence would be democide. The KR actively sought the destruction of everyone and everything that referred to places outside Democratic Kampuchea with the important exception of the french-educated but now utterly unhinged Stalinist Pol Pot.
It need not have been so, as Vietnam right next door showed.
That said, Luminous Beauty is quite right as the west backed Pol Pot after 1979 in order to bleed the Vietnamese whose intervention brought the nightmare to a close -- a point not lost on Chomsky.
Fran, your characterisation of the "Western assault on Indochina" is political and wrong.
Indochina had the misfortune of being a battleground in the war between the West and Communism, during a period of decolonisation.
The atrocities committed by Communists easily matched those committed by the West, just as the atrocities committed by the Communists in Eastern Europe far exceeded those committed by the Nazis even.
There is a tendency among educators in this country to hold a revisionist understanding of communism - please add "Darkness at Noon" to your reading list ASAP so you can remember the tremendous evil, stupidity and hypocrisy of the communists.
Vince Whirlwind said:
It's every bit as unacceptable to make unsubstantiated claims about history as it is to make them about the science of climate change.
The systematic and ubiquitous brutality of the Western assualt on Indochina utterly dwarfed anything the Vietminh/NVA were capable of managing, so between 1954 and 1975 in Indochina, your claim is palpably absurd. In Cambodia 1975-79 you would be on strong ground, as I implied above.
Bruce,
>If you want to know why Cambodia is important to me, it isn't hard to find out.
And as to Easter Europe post 1945, again, the comparison is absurd.
Yes the Warsaw Pact states weren't known for greater solicitude towards individual human rights than the pre-war regimes they replaced, but their malign influence was on nothing like the scale of the Nazis.
Re: 103
Like all good things, empathy, when taken to extremes, becomes pathologically perverted. It seems to me, Bruce, your considerable intellect is worthy of much more important things than (wrongly, IMHO) painting Chomsky as an incorrigible black and white apologist for the Khmer Rouge, or communism in general, when his view is, prima facie, more subtly nuanced that that.
Luminous Beauty, if you think I'm painting Chomsky as "an incorrigible black and white apologist for the Khmer Rouge," then either you did not read what I wrote, or I'm a profoundly bad writer.
Admittedly, I linked to several different articles, and some of them are long, so I understand if you'd rather not read them. If you didn't read them, however, you shouldn't assume that you know my opinions.
Regards,
Bruce
Bruce,
Then what are you trying to say, that Chomsky isn't plainly an 'advocate', in your words, 'apologist' in mine, for the Pol Pot regime? What instead?
Rather than being long-winded and vague, you might work on being clear and precise.
> The systematic and ubiquitous brutality of the Western assualt on Indochina utterly
Mind you you also have the atrocities of Japan against China before WW2.
It's just all you humans are inhumane...
Luminous Beauty, I'll confess to being long-winded. But vague? I don't think so.
You remarked previously that Chomsky's view is "subtly nuanced." Now, you're attempting to reduce my view to one word.
Advocate? Apologist? I'll pass. If you want a one-word summary, you'll have to provide your own.
My opinions were expressed as briefly as possible in #98: his writing on Cambodia was horribly misleading, and he responds to his critics by impugning their motives.
At [Crooked Timber, Daniel Davies has a nice post on contrarianism](http://crookedtimber.org/2009/10/22/rules-for-contrarians-1-dont-whine-…), inspired by Levitt and Dubner's Superfreakonomics nonsense. Davies writes:
Whatever your reaction to Levitt and Dubner's writing on climate, I would suggest that the same reaction is appropriate with respect to Chomsky's writing on Cambodia.
Bruce,
I think you're doing much the same thing with Chomsky and Herman as L & D are doing with climate. Much of your thesis against Chomsky is that Chomsky is guilty of propaganda. But one is guilty of propaganda the moment one commits one's ideas to print. For you, for me, for anybody.
Chomsky and Herman's central thesis is that the US press celebrated the brutality of the Khmer Rouge in order to obfuscate and obscure the brutality of the US role in manufacturing and exacerbating that situation. This was true then and has continued to be the false narrative promulgated in the press that we're the Good Guys, fighting for Democracy, Motherhood and Apple Pie, in Southeast Asia, in Central America, in Yugoslavia, in Iraq and now in Afghanistan against whatever convenient villians can be demonized, when it is really a cynical and brutal drive to establish and maintain economic and military hegemony by corporate elites over the natural desire of ordinary people to have some autonomous and democratic decision-making power within the living fabric of their existence, both inside and outside of the US.
Your strained insistence that Chomsky mis-represented the Cambodian tragedy, which, if he did, and I don't really believe that is the case, is but a peripheral distraction from that more important question. A red herring. As such, you serve our corporate masters well.
Luminous Beauty,
I did not write a "thesis against Chomsky." I wrote about his comments on the subject of Cambodia.
The validity of Chomsky's propaganda theory may be the "more important question" to you, but it isn't to me. I'm not searching for a "one size fits all" explanation for history. I simply believe that it's important to be accurate in the portrayal of historical events.
The idea that "one is guilty of propaganda the moment one commits one's ideas to print" is a dodge. It's a variation of the "Clinton did it, too!" argument. It's an attempt to define "propaganda" so broadly as to make the term meaningless.
If you think that Chomsky's work -- in particular, After the Cataclysm -- accurately reflects what happened in Cambodia, then we will continue to disagree. If you want to attribute that disagreement to my desire to "serve our corporate masters," then I can't imagine that anything I would say would change your mind on either point.
Regards,
Bruce
Once again,
"After The Cataclysm" does not question the reality of what happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, neither sugar coating the numerous atrocities nor exaggerating their small accomplishments in feeding their population in the face of both self-inflicted and externally enforced isolation, but emphasizes distortions and omissions in the popular US press.
>We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.
Distortions of the Fourth Hand, Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman
The ambiguous truths of the Khmer Rouge regime may be better known now but these and equivalent distortions in the US media persist. Just look at the media going to bat for the grotesque journalistic absurdity that is Fox News Corporation.
You are arguing against a strawman.
I don't say you are desirous of serving corporate interests, only that your misplaced rage serves their purpose. Propaganda is merely the propagation of ideas. Whether those ideas are accurate or not is what is meaningful. Your assessment of what C & H are saying is a distortion, as is your putative compassion for road-kill a useful mask of your relentless hatred of Pol Pot, and by extension Noam Chomsky.
>He beat me, he robbed me, he subdued me. In those who harbor such thoughts, hatred is not stilled.
>He beat me he robbed me, he subdued me. In those who do not harbour such thought, hatred is stilled.
>Hatred has never in the history of the world brought an end to hatred. Only non-hatred can bring an end to hatred. This is the eternal law.
>The contenders do not realize that one day we all must die, but those who realize this resolve their quarrels.
_Dhammapada_ [III - VI]
Cambodia has moved on. Why can't you?
Luminous Beauty, since this has nothing to do with Ian Plimer or global warming, I've posted my reply to [Open Thread 34](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/open_thread_34.php#comment-2028…).
Regards,
Bruce