Re: Strassel's Propaganda: The Climate Change Climate Change

Sorry, folks, but this crap just needed to be responded to and I no longer have the patience nor the respect for these people to even pretend at polite discussion. They lie, they lie and then they lie some more, so this was written quickly and is likely full of typos and poorly articulated. But, hey, they deserve no better than my worst.

The fruits of her poison pen can be found here, if you can stomach it.

Strassel,

Before we get into your bullshit, here's the REAL science, which you didn't mention because, well, you're a propagandist:

From the US gov't, much of it done while BuCheney were in office:
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/final-report/default.htm

Copenhagen Synthesis Report (Note to propagandist: REAL science inside. May make your head explode.):
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf

And just to make it real simple-like for you:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/14/global-warming-target-2c

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/apr/14/climate-change-experts-predictions

My god, are you just bought? Appeal to Authority: Inhofe's list.

Utter bullocks. Of course, you can hide behind this being an "opinion piece" and not an "article" so you can pretend Inhofe is not a bought-and-paid-for shill of Big Oil/Coal, etc., and accept his "list" as meaning something. Only one problem: It's bullshit. Very few climate scientists therein. And virtually none actually DOING or PUBLISHING any science. Just like you cowards: can't compete, so you JUST LIE.

Funny, but you equate seven hundred fools who ARE NOT doing science and many of whom were bought by EXXON, et al., over the two thousand plus climate scientists who did the science behind the IPCC IV report? Are you completely unbalanced? Do you need meds?

And you LIE about it! You present the final WRITERS of the report, 50 or so you say, vs. the 700 when all they did was WRITE UP the paper. That is how science is done! How the hell would 2,000+ people write a single report together? (Lying is bad. You will go to hell! Don't you know? Where does your Christianity get off to?)

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/inhofe-global-warming-deniers-47011101

Here's more to consider:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/langswitch_lang/pl

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/12/inhofes-last-stand/langswitch_lang/in

I guess you dumbasses want your title back? To wit:

Most consistently wrong media outlet:
The Australian (runner-up the UK Daily Telegraph). Both comfortably beating out the perennial favorite, the Wall Street Journal - maybe things have really changed there?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/12/2008-year-in-review/langswitch_lang/in

Or how about this pile of manure offered up by Inhofe via Moronic Morano?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/warm-reception-to-antarctic-warming-story/langswitch_lang/in

Let's get to your "science," you criminal against humanity:
Earth is cooling. What a damned fool. ALL of the years in the last twelve have been among the warmest in millions of years. ALL OF THEM. Oh, I know you're using 1998 as your start line because THAT IS THE ONLY YEAR YOU CAN START WITH TO GET A TEN YEAR TREND THAT GOES DOWNWARD. (Actually, you aren't. You have never read ANY of the science. That is obvious. You're just the bought-and-paid-for mouthpiece of the far right willing to lie so your children, should you have any, can die for your ideology because your party affiliation is more important to you than your kids, your country, your G_d.) You're too stupid about science to know a ten year trend is WEATHER not CLIMATE. If you look back over the history of the planet you will see many, many short-term trends embedded in long term trends. Look back through the temp record since 1850 and you will see a number of ten year trends that go opposite of the long-term warming. Why? Natural variability. (Go ahead, look it up. You know you want to.)

As for the piece of shit "paper" you started your rant about? Here's what real scientists have to say about it:

"...First off the authors of the submission; Alan Carlin is an economist and John Davidson is an ex-member of the Carter administration Council of Environmental Quality. Neither are climate scientists. That's not necessarily a problem - perhaps they have mastered multiple fields? - but it is likely an indication that the analysis is not going to be very technical (and so it will prove). Curiously, while the authors work for the NCEE (National Center for Environmental Economics), part of the EPA, they appear to have rather closely collaborated with one Ken Gregory (his inline comments appear at multiple points in the draft). Ken Gregory if you don't know is a leading light of the Friends of Science - a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group based in Alberta. Indeed, parts of the Carlin and Davidson report appear to be lifted directly from Ken's rambling magnum opus on the FoS site. However, despite this odd pedigree, the scientific points could still be valid.

Their main points are nicely summarised thus: a) the science is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009) reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c) the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing mass, no sirree…, e) the recession will save us!, f) water vapour feedback is negative!, and g) Scafetta and West's statistical fit of temperature to an obsolete solar forcing curve means that all other detection and attribution work is wrong. From this "evidence", they then claim that all variations in climate are internal variability, except for the warming trend which is caused by the sun, oh and by the way the globe is cooling.

Devastating eh?

One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution.

But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting..."

There's more there. Read it if you have the fortitude. (Propagandists never do, though.)

Screw it. You're obviously too embedded in your screwed up fantasy of ultra-conservative politics. Since you are too lazy to do any of your own research, here's where your opinions were created FOR you:

http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=13459

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=2

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/video.html


I advocate EcoNuremberg for any and all that have lied, are lying, or will ever lie about the state of the environment, for they are killing us all. May you all rot in jail, or, better yet, be left to fend for yourselves with nothing but your limited wits where Climate Change hits hardest.

Climate Change Denial, Family Style

So for months, well, years now I've been trying to get my family excited about responding to The Perfect Storm in the only way I know of that addresses all three facets of what we face: Anthropogenicaly-driven Climate Change (ACC, a.k.a. Climate Change, Global Warming), the economic crash and Peak Oil.

I've shared with them my observations and have found, happily they agreed with me! Yay! We all get that things are going chaotic! Yay! Peak Oil is real! Yay! The economy is run by crooks and liars! Yay! Real incomes haven't risen for decades! Yay!

Riiiiing.... riiiing.....riiiing....

Them: Hello?

Me: Hey, it's me. How's it going? (Blah, blah, blah.....) So, hey, bros, Mom, everyone... let's get the hell out of Dodge and set up in such a way that no matter how the future goes, we'll be able to muddle through!

Them: Ya.... er.... not so much, no.

Me: Huh?

Them: Well, sure, kinda sounds nice and all, but heck, we've got things going OK here.

Me: But, um... we can have things even better, and best of all, if things *don't* go to hell in a handbasket our lives will still be better, we can have a thriving business that helps reduce carbon emissions, live in homes that need no energy inputs for heating or cooling, thus save energy, produce goods and services that will always be in demand AND be as self-reliant as is possible. Let's do it!

Them: No, really, we've got things going OK here. And we don't like the cold.

Me: But you can't feed yourselves where you are. The water is running out. You're facing on-going droughts that could last decades.

Them: Avacadoes. We've got avacadoes. And our own water supply.

Me: I love avacadoes! But you can't live on avacadoes, can't sell them if there's no one to sell them to because there's no economy and you can't grow them if there's no water.

Them: Our own water supply.

Me: Cool! Aquifer?

Them: Rain.

Me: Hey, I'm all for water catchment. I think everyone should do it, buuut... the rains are pretty much expected to stop where you are. Even the massive reservoirs around you are having massive drops in level. And what about the temperatures? How hot can your avacadoes go? We're talking HOT ass summers. Even hotter than you've seen. So, sure, you can go in the house, but the avacadoes can't.

Tell you what. You guys stay there, but go in with us on this plan so we have enough resources to establish a place that we can all share if things get too tough where you are.

Them: Thanks, but... mumble mumble mumble.. natural.. mumble mumble..volcanoes.. CO2... mumble mumble...lying scientists....mumble mumble.. Al Gore...mumble mumble mumble... climate models...

Me: Dude, did you just say volcanoes? And you believe the "scientists" who have 1. done no science and/or 2. are bought and paid for or 3. aren't even scientists?

Them: You can't PROVE it!!!

Me: You really have no idea what you're saying, do you? Look, it's absolutely impossible to claim volcanoes do more damage than anthropogenic forcings do. It's flat wrong. It's a denialist talking point that has no grounding in science. Al Gore is not a scientist. That's a red herring. The climate models are wrong? Bull. In fact, their scenarios are underestimating the observable phenomenon to a great degree, so to say because they underestimate change that they don't represent any change is ridiculous. It makes no sense. Instead, you think the people who said there is NO change happening, thus deny ANY warming are more correct than those that underestimated. Seriously, WTF?

Oh, and if you think science, particularly climate science, begins and ends with modeling, then you really don't understand the most basic elements of scientific method.

Them: mumble mumble mumble.. natural.. mumble mumble.. volcanoes... CO2... mumble mumble... lying scientists.... mumble mumble.. Al Gore... mumble mumble mumble... climate models... You can't PROVE it!!!

Me: Prove it? Did you know E=mc2 was only mathematically proven in the last two or three years? ACC is pretty much the most intensively studied phenomenon in human history. There is ZERO doubt about the human factor. There is no debate based in science that is legit. The sun? Debunked. CO2 can't affect climate? Just ass-stupid. It's not us? 280 --> 387. 'Nuff said. Etc. Lying scientists? We have memos in hand showing that denialist organizations such as the Global Climate Coalition lied about ACC. We know for a fact that an organized effort to sow doubt - not disprove, which is an important point - about ACC existed and exists. ExxonMobile, the worst of the worst in this regard, has acknowledged ACC is real and happening and has promised to stop funding denialists' bullshit - though there's some evidence they lied about that, too.

Really, my head is going to explode. Tend your avacadoes. We'll be trying to carve out a way to help stop or slow ACC, deal with Peak Oil and survive should there be collapse of our civil systems, to whatever degree.

We'll leave the renewably powered light on if and when you change your minds.

Love you.

(Click.)

PS. watch the vdeo below. And this space. I might have a post just for you coming soon.

Re: Ten reasons why population control can’t stop climate change

This is a response to the essay found here:

Ten reasons why population control can’t stop climate change
1. Population does not cause climate change
2. The world is not ’full’
3. Social justice and contraception
4. The climate emergency demands immediate, transformative action now
5. Population arguments wrongly downplay the potential to win
6. Population control is an old argument tacked onto a new issue
7. Arguing for tighter migration restrictions in Australia is a dangerous policy
8. Population control has a disturbing history
9. People in the global South are part of the solution, not the problem
10. Who holds political power is the real ‘population’ issue

My response:

Speaking as a "leftie," Mr. Butler makes the same mistakes that most "lefties" do, and one is akin to the primary mistake that economists make: the invisible hand is invisible for a reason; it doesn't exist. What's best for one is supposed to be what is best for all, but this is never true in specific, thus we have the current economic madness visited upon us. The rich bankers of the world decided they had conquered risk and were far more important to the planet than, say, farmers. So they screwed us all for their own profits.

The same problem exists with regard to population. People will not stop having children "just because." They will do it once they are able to, via services and products not available to many, and once they are (relatively) wealthy. The problem here is, poverty is forever. There is only so much pie and there are always those who take more than an equal portion, particularly in a capitalist system (though we see this in every and any system). This will never change. Now, I would love to see a steady-state economy. I just don't think I ever will.

Thus, Mr. Butler's utopian view of population is a good way to get us all killed.

Mr. Butler's worst offense is to simply ignore three other factors: exponents, energy decline and Liebig's Law of the Minimum. These are all intricately woven together. Mr. Butler may want to look at consumption and population in the U.S. as an example of how not to think about population. Despite large gains in efficiency, the US continues to increase its consumption of energy. Curious! If we have become more efficient, and in some measures much, much more efficient, why has energy use continued to increase? The answer is obvious: population continues to increase. And it always will without some form of population control.

In fact, sustainable societies typically do manage population. One I read of, perhaps in Jared Diamond's Collapse, was a tribe that had lived for thousands of years in the same area. They were able to because they practiced infanticide of ill, weak, malformed babies, sent elderly people off to fend for themselves, practiced birth control and managed sexual behavior. I'm not an advocate of infanticide, forced sterilization, etc., but we must do something.

I recommend listening to Dr. Al Bartlett's lecture on this topic.

http://globalpublicmedia.com/node/461

And here are a few of my thoughts. Recommended readings/listenings, really:

http://aperfectstormcometh.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-exponents-growth-matters-or.html

Energy decline due to falling extraction of our most intensive source of energy, oil, means that per capita energy is falling. Falling energy = falling society. Everything we do takes energy and as the world aspires to the standard of living in the developed nations (at a minimum of ten barrels of oil a year/person, which is about 17 years of oil if we all live the same), that energy demand increases. It overtakes efficiency gains. You simply can't ignore Diminishing Returns.

Even if we move to all-renewables, eventually we run into Liebig's Law of the Minimum. That is, the weakest link. A system is only as robust as its weakest link, and a supply chain is only as long as its rarest resource/raw material. Even now, issues are cropping up with rare earth metals, 95% of which are apparently controlled by China.

Exponents. Energy. Minimums.

Population matters, Mr. Butler, and it is ignorance (non-pejorative sense) on your part that allows you to falsely reassure yourself and your readers otherwise.

Cheers