News

Local Power Key to Fighting Global Warming: Poll

Municipal officials have citizens' trust, but lack money.

By Colleen Kimmett, 27 Sep 2007, TheTyee.ca

Mike Harcourt

Mike Harcourt: towns 'groaning under weight'

[Editor's note: The Tyee is publishing reports from the Union of BC Municipalities Convention all this week.]

British Columbians are ready and willing to make "green" changes in their communities, and they want local elected officials to lead the way.

But delegates at the 2007 Union of B.C. Municipalities convention say they can only do so much without more funding and province-wide standards from the B.C. government.

"Municipalities are groaning under the weight of inadequate funding," said Michael Harcourt, chair of the Centre for Civil Governance advisory board.

The centre, which is part of the Columbia Institute, a non-profit organization that supports community activism, commissioned a poll of 606 B.C. residents last spring. The results showed that 65 per cent of respondents felt local government should take strong action on climate change even if it meant higher taxes.

Right now, municipalities receive eight cents of every tax dollar.

Sixty-nine per cent of respondents wanted provincial and federal governments to provide local governments with more regular and flexible funding, and 34 per cent said they would expect their local councillor to be the most responsive government representative in dealing with a problem.

'Money in hands most trusted'

"It shows absolute support for movement on global warming," said Charley Beresford, executive director of the Columbia Institute. "I think it also sends the message that they want to see the money in the hands they trust the most, and that's the local politicians.

"Local government actually have control over pivotal decisions when it comes to climate change...they don't have the dollars to put those in place."

The province recognizes the power of change at a municipal level. B.C.'s climate action charter calls on municipalities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy efficiency.

Local governments that sign the non-legally binding document commit to measure and report current levels of emissions, and (with the help of carbon credits) work towards reducing those to zero by 2012.

This means energy audits, education and additional administrative work, says Central Saanich District Councillor Zeb King, and that's a burden for small, often understaffed municipal governments.

"They've asked municipalities to sign on to this, but they also need to come forward with funding," he said. "We need help with capacity issues. Just piling more work on to us isn't going to help."

King said Central Saanich received a $50,000 grant from the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, used to hire a consultant who is helping develop a community energy plan. However the consultant only provides directives, says King, and councillors and staff must carry out those directives on top of "traditional" duties.

"We need to see the bucks," said King. "Coming up with pronouncements and goals is not enough."

Building code: behind curve?

King said municipalities also need province-wide policies that reflect and expand what some forward-thinking communities are already doing.

He said he was disappointed by recent proposed changes to the provincial building code. The Ministry of Housing has proposed new provisions that would require all new buildings to rate a 77 on the EnerGuide scale (a national standard that measures buildings' energy efficiency).

But some B.C. communities already meet and exceed this standard. Central Saanich requires that all new buildings score EnerGuide 80.

"If this is truly a green code, then we need them to actually lead with it and not just simply come up with a rating that's already behind what the municipalities are trying to get at," said King.

Another example of where some municipalities are leading the way is in solar water heating. It has been described as the single most cost-effective way to reduce residential energy use. It requires installation of the solar panels, usually on the roof, connected through a heat exchange pump to the home's hot water tank.

Solar potential

Dawson Creek has installed solar hot water systems in its city hall and fire station. Kelowna has two hotels with solar heated swimming pools.

According to Nitya Harris, project lead for the B.C. Solar Roofs Roadmap project, a provincial initiative to see this technology installed on 100,000 roofs across the province, solar heating has "huge potential" in B.C.

Although it's expensive to retrofit, it costs only between $300 and $500 to put in the infrastructure during construction. Harris said getting homes "solar ready" is very important even if panels aren't installed right away.

"If we start today, by 2025 when energy prices are going to be pretty high, we'll be really well set to take solar as one of our major energy sources," said Harris. "The technology is here...solar ready could be done today."

Municipalities can educate residents about the benefits of solar water heating, they can provide incentives for developers to build solar ready homes and they can install systems in municipal buildings -- but they don't have the mandate to require solar heating systems, or at the least the capacity for such, in new buildings.

The province can do this through its building code, but it hasn't.

'We should be leaders'

David Finnis, district of Summerland councillor, says he was frustrated that the proposed green code provisions didn't address solar heating specifically.

He said it would help places like Summerland, which are excellent candidates for solar heating systems, but lack the political will to make it happen.

"I wanted to see regulations that say you must be at least solar ready when you build a house," he said.

"It should be a really good option for us...we should be leaders. We just need to move."

Related Tyee stories:

 [Tyee]

150  Comments:

Login or register to post comments

  • Van Isle

    4 years ago

    The Liberal bandits in

    The Liberal bandits in Victoria, see in being "green", a wonderful opportunity to jack-up the user rates on utilities and now TILMA would be used to keep the bigboys happy because they could sue the Provincal Government for any restrictions on their investments.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    There's nothing to fight

    Another paper was just published which shows that warming precedes CO2 rises.

    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/uosc-cdd092507.php

    "Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age
    Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown, says study in Science.
    Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.

    “There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change,” said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.

    “You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages.”

    Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown – but was not its main cause.

    The study does not question the fact that CO2 plays a key role in climate.

    I don’t want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn’t affect climate,” Stott cautioned. “It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change.”

    While an increase in atmospheric CO2 and the end of the ice ages occurred at roughly the same time, scientists have debated whether CO2 caused the warming or was released later by an already warming sea.

    The best estimate from other studies of when CO2 began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago.

    “What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO2,” Stott said.

    But where did this energy come from" Evidence pointed southward.

    Water’s salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin – and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote.

    This water then was transported northward over 1,000 years via well-known deep-sea currents, a conclusion supported by carbon-dating evidence."

    He had to give the obligatory nod to CO2, otherwise the research money dries up.

    I think it would be a wise idea for all politicians to have read both Lomberg books before they start taxing CO2 production.
    http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/global-warming-the-great-lifesaver

  • Fogotwillingate

    4 years ago

    Proposed Topic

    Bruce Allen's harsh criticism of multi cultural groups warrants scrutiny. How about a post?

  • NicS

    4 years ago

    Global Warming & Sustainable Buildings

    A better BC Building Code (BCBC) is a must and don't forget that the current BCBC is only a minimum standard. It will take alot of improvement to prevent even another leaky condo scenario. Which is looming even as I write. So talk of solar hot water heaters on so many roofs is great, but adequate construction codes must be in place or all will be for not.

    Most roofs in BC are asphalt shingle and typically last 15-20 years at best. If you install solar hot water heaters, they will outlast the roof by about 2-1. Which doesn't make sense, replacing the roof before the solar water heaters. Green building practices are really just better and more efficient practices. Changing the ways we have built here in BC to a new more efficient way is going to take studies, trial and error and money from the gov't to properly support such an initiative.

  • sdgreen

    4 years ago

    Municipalities/Cities No way

    Keep the Municipalities and Cities out of the GHG/GM issue.

    All we would end up with is a bunch of new regulations, fees and nonsense. Besides even if local governments had the money, there are not enough experts around other than a bunch of radical environmentalists.

    Seems to me that the Federal government should set the standards and regulatory frame work for all to follow. Little fiefdoms doing so would be certain disaster.

  • The brain

    4 years ago

    mopled... what you are missing...

    Is this. CO2 has been in the past, a byproduct of life and the death of life. Thats pretty much where it comes from. Sure, a volcanoe or two, but it comes down to life. And as the planet breathes life (and death), so too, does it produce CO2. But what is it that gives the planet life?

    Try light. And what determines that light is the earths orbit. The earths orbital variations are long responsible for glacial retreats and melts. And the earths orbit hasn't always remained static, either. Its been smacked around a few times over the millenia with asteroids, a few large enough to alter its orbit, outside of the gravitational pulls and tugs of other planets and the moon.

    So with all of this in mind, what is it that protects the earth from too much radiation, the kind of radiation that can destroy life? The ozone. And in case anyone hasn't noticed, last year was the largest ozone hole on record over the artic. And what does that mean? Well, try more light, particularly the smaller wavelengths, the UV's and gammas. And these shorter wavelengths are colliding hugely with the earths surface and all of this extra CO2. The result? Try global warming at an excelerated pace and its not about to stop any time soon.

    Is anyone going around capturing freon from older fridges and air conditioners? Nope. Are we burning more fossil fuels every year? Yup! Global warming will accelerate and the situation is far more serious than anyone thinks, because our earth's orbit isn't about to help us in terms of a reduction of light for at least the next 2,000 years. So do the math. And use some common sense. Orbital variations are a part of it... but so is high CO2 levels and CH4 (florocarbons) effecting levels of radiation coming through the atmosphere to begin with and that is most definitely man made, inspite of what politicians/corporate lobbiests (one and the same these days) have to say about it.

    Lorne Mccuaig
    Revelstoke, BC

    And as far as Municipalities go, sure it helps to start at base levels with government, but its the provinces and feds that play a larger role in this and until we get rid of the corporate lobbiests that are currently holding seats in government, our environments will get worse. Or is anyone actually dumb enough to believe Cheney/Bush/HarperBlair has helped the cause...

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Re Mopled

    Without in any way disputing that CO2 is a major contributor to Global warming (GW), I'd like to second Mopled's contention above that there could be more to GW than simple CO2 loading – perhaps a lot more than credit is given for. That won’t necessarily discount the reality of GW – though some fear it will – but it might reduce the hysteria some elements are relentlessly promoting, often for other reasons such as those held by the anti-oil lobbyists. Act in haste, repent at leisure ?

    For example, it just may be that CO2 is only hastening a natural GW process already underway, as Mopled’s info suggests. In that case, perhaps a lot of the money some want spent on CO2 reduction should be spent instead on basic biological/botanical research into adaptive measures. I know that is neocon reasoning, but proof that for THEM this reasoning is only a grasped straw, is seen in the minute amount of money they are now spending in preparation.

    For many years now I’ve been following the pros and cons of scientific debates regarding the Milankovitch Cycle. This theory holds that as the Earth circles the Sun, there is a 100,000 yr +/- cycle, in which the High Latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere are at their coldest in each of the attitudes created by Eccentricity, Axial Tilt, and Precession (each on a different time cycle), when all coincide to produce a Glaciation, which from start to finish lasts about 40.000 years.

    But there is no debate that at the present time we are now midway between the end of the last glaciation (about 9,000 yrs ago) and the beginning of the next. We are now at or near the maximum extent of the subsequent warming-up period, and poised - as some would have it - at the beginning of the plunge toward the next glaciation.

    So, one is forced to ask, is the climate going to continue to naturally warm up as we approach the maximum Northern Hemispheric solar radiation in the present Malenkovitch Cycle ? Or are we at or passed the tipping point, and now cooling down towards the beginning of the next Glaciation ? Are the weather changes we are now witnessing partly the result of the of the former, or are they precursors of the latter ? (more below)

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Speculation

    Just for arguments sake, I’ll repeat what I was told some 25 years ago, when scientists were first starting in earnest to debate this topic.

    The ice covering the Arctic Ocean would melt, they said, and the normal albedo provided by the ice would be gone. Warming currents would begin circulating around the North Pole.

    Then the open Ocean would start absorbing heat from the Sun as well, and storing it. In winter, heavy snows from ocean evaporation would begin to build up on land, starting the process of snow accumulation which builds glaciers. This in turn would raise the albedo, radically cooling Northern Latitudes, setting in motion the process of glaciation.

    And that, paradoxically - if the Malenkovitch theory holds - is how warming in the Arctic might presage a coming deep-freeze.

    Yes, a lot of the above is speculative, but there are unanswered questions – beyond what the 18 scientists have affirmed - and exploration of all causes and effects might yield unexpected and positive results.

  • jimbob1

    4 years ago

    Unbelievable

    "Municipalities are groaning under the weight of inadequate funding," Harcourt.

    Raise property taxes and you can solve any funding problem. Oh, but then you hallway monitors and anti-private property lefty's don't get elected again.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Antarctic colder

    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd021207.php
    http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/environment/story.html?id=1edd8fbd-7084-4eb1-9f39-ecdee5378809

    So, the climate models have been shown to be wrong by reality.The whole global warming scam is based on faulty climate modeling by people unqualified to write the computer programs.

    Now it turns out with a new publication in Nature, that the ozone hole may have nothing to do with refrigerants.
    http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html
    Sep 27, 2007
    Scientific Consensus on Man-Made Ozone Hole May Be Coming Apart

    The Nature article is behind a subscription barrier, but is available at:
    http://www.icecap.us/
    So here we have a prime example of proceeding to alter our actions for no good reason except fear mongering by those who wanted to get a new refrigerant gas on the market.

    Why should we allow ourselves to be stampeded into taking actions which will make no difference to natural climate change?

    Energy efficiency and better housing design are laudable goals, so is getting more public transportation, but please don't buy into the CO2 scam.

    My fear is that we are going to be taxed on the basis of what is increasingly,obviously
    a false paradigm.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Nice collection of meteorologists

    at Icecap - Too bad the whole Nature article isn't available - Nice story about the rescue of Ronald Shemenski though - and nice of the National Post to actually include this:

    Quote:
    "Global climate models that are having some trouble at predicting the long-term behaviour [over decades] of Antarctic near-surface temperatures are not optimized for the unique atmospheric conditions over Antarctica, probably the most pristine place on Earth. The primary reason is connected with cloud formation. The global models treat the clouds like those in mid-latitudes, whereas they are very different in reality."

    Which doesn't exactly sound like the description of a 'false paradigm' to me...

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Missing information

    NONE of the climate models take water vapour-clouds into consideration.
    The reason is some of the basic work on cloud formation produced by cosmic rays is still being worked on.

    Since cosmic rays are prevented from hitting the Earth by Sunspot activity,it is a enormous variable added to the already complicated situation of evaporation.

    This is such basic science in terms of its importance to climate science, that to make predictions with these holes in knowledge just proves how silly all of this would be if it didn't have the potential for such economic destruction.

    Quote:
    Describing the comments of some scientists, Prof.
    Lindzen noted: “Attributing global warming to the
    rise in greenhouse gases has been reduced to an
    issue of religious faith modulated by policy
    relevance.” Pointing out that policy relevance was
    largely a political matter, he added: “Unfortunately,
    in my experience when politics enters the picture,
    science takes a back seat – even among scientists.”

    from:
    Climate Change Prediction:
    A Robust or Flawed Process?
    A seminar organised by the Institute of Physics
    The Institute of Physics held a seminar on 7 June 2007 to discuss the validity of
    current strategies, in particular computer models used to predict climate change, to
    establish and evaluate the link between global warming and human activity.
    http://www.iop.org/activity/policy/Events/Seminars/file_25825.pdf

  • alda

    4 years ago

    municipalities or feds?

    While I wholeheartedly agree that building controls SHOULD be federally mandated so that green codes are standardized across the country, face it folks, it's a pipe dream that many environmentally aware communities have lost complete faith in.
    The new movement is small and local, and for good reason. Politics is local. You can make changes on the local scene that you could never do on the national one.

    As those working within the sustainable communities know, the reality is we are going to have to fight CO2 from the local ground up via grassroots initiatives until the bigger cities and larger government finally capitulate. Leaving it in the hands of the feds at this point only means delay, delay, delay and denial, denial, denial, as seen by the recent federal initiative for "intensity based" regulations and the laughably miniscule legislation the Tories have implemented. What they've done so far is hogwash -- dog and pony show stuff -- as any informed citizen knows.

    That, by the way is why it is absolutely critical and even more imperative that every single municipalty in this country fight TILMA tooth and nail, or believe me, they will no longer have tooth and nail to fight anything from the corporate masters.
    I now believe big business saw local green environmental and sustainable legislation coming from a mile away, and covertly implemented TILMA to head it off long before it ever gets off the ground.

  • rangergord

    4 years ago

    Local politics undemocratic

    Many of these issues need to be settled at a higher level. I dont trust my elected municipal or regional district officials. Recently a councilor here was elected with a mere 50 votes. You can be mayor if you get just two hundred beer buddies to vote for you or get in by aclimation if no one else bothers to run against you. All sorts of insane bylaws are constantly on the table. I'll take the dictators in victoria and ottawa over these guys anyday.

  • alda

    4 years ago

    reply to rangergord

    I hear you, Rangergord, most or many local politicans are blindered fools, no doubt, but here's the critical difference: If you put in a few hours a week organizing things, you can actually gather enough people together at the local level via district community and environmental and sustainable groups to fight the local idiots. I know because I've seen it done.

    On the other hand, good luck trying to push out an MP or an MLA who belongs to a popular ruling party. That politician, you can be guaranteed, almost always has a ton of party money that will fight your opposition every step of the way. Unless the higher-up politician is a bonafide crook and everyone knows it to the point that it's made the front pages of your local paper, you're fighting the tide.

    Yet, even a normal, middle class person who couldn't be considered rich by any means can probably scrounge up enough personal or community dollars to run locally; that is not generally true at on the federal level.

    Just give it some thought -- run locally yourself! or get involved on the smaller level! That's the best bet for what we "little people" can do to change policies we think are detrimental to the society we live in.

    Think, eat, and live local. It's the way of the future.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Hey, True Believers

    It A Big Lie

    It's the biggest Big Lie ever pulled.

    Will you please educate yourselves. To do that, you are going to have to get out of that intellectual Green Ghetto you have been herded into by foundations supplying the funding for NGOs created just to push the false paradigm.

    Yes, it is a conspiracy!

    http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

    "The dirty little secret is that environmental organizations and global warming pessimists receive far more money from Big Oil than do global warming optimists such as myself. While professional environmental lobbyists are totally dependent upon environmental crises for their continued existence, atmospheric researchers and meteorologists have day jobs which are not. Some outspoken global warming pessimists have received large cash awards (hundreds of thousands of dollars) for the positions they have taken; there are no such monetary awards for global warming optimists. Instead, we have to endure scorn from several outspoken peers in the scientific community, some of whom are successful at thwarting our publication of scientific articles and government funding of our research proposals.

    As long as the global warming pessimists can convince the public that we skeptics are simply shills for Big Oil, they do not have to address our scientific arguments. The claims that there are no peer-reviewed scientific articles that oppose a manmade source of global warming are, quite simply, wrong (see below). Fortunately, the tide is slowly turning, and more and more scientists are now speaking out about their doubts concerning mankind's role in recent global warmth."

    Part of the preface to:
    Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat
    by Roy W. Spencer
    (text last updated August 9, 2007)

    Try it. Read it. Get happy!

    We are not going to burn up the earth by breathing and we are not responsible for climate changes

  • Booker

    4 years ago

    Yawn

    Mopled wrote:

    Quote:
    NONE of the climate models take water vapour-clouds into consideration

    Yes they do. Period. Go away.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    It's my tax money too

    The modelspredict cloud formation can't because the basic work hasn't been finished yet.

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/euxtv-on-cosmoclimatology.html

    http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/the-discover-interview-henrik-svensmark

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Sorry wrong button

    Meant to say, "the models can't predict cloud formation because the basic work hasn't been finished.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    It's all a huge joke. Increased C02 loading

    of the atmosphere is just as likely to have been the result of temporary warming as the cause.

    Water vapour is the only significant 'greenhouse gas.' The others, including C02, remain in the atmosphere as a result of a chaotic synergy between temperature and cloud formation, which creates the degree of longevity and their ability to temporarily influence the weather.

    Which, of course, makes long term climate prediction a bit of a crap shoot.

    Simple as that, folks.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Regardless, the idea that our atmosphere

    is going to heat up so quickly as to put the survival of our species in jeopardy is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated on a species of sentient beings in this or any universe. So not to worry, people. The big event, whichever the size of your anthropic view of life, is CONSCIOUSNESS and the hydrologic cycle will continue to support carbon-based lifeforms for a few more hundreds of millions of years.

    So yeah, eh--Gore and Suzuki, who pretends to be a scientist, are actually just comedians.

  • woody

    4 years ago

    Thank you, Saint Christopher's brother in law,

    Thank you, Saint Christopher's brother in law, Zeke, that there is someone out there such as Truman Green, who may possibly, instill some common sense into all those dooms day believers.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    booker

    double yawn!

    I see both Truman and his alter ego mopled have arrived for one of their usual conflabs.

    Interesting how the mind finds a way to cope with the unthinkable. Some people resort to denial, others to humour, still others to various forms of hedonism.

    The dissociative process finds ways to help each organism cope I guess.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    woody

    nice to see you back. I thought you'd given up on this place forever - I'd suggest your patrone ought to be St Jude...or perhaps St Anthony.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    And ever more ridiculous is the pretense

    that a few temporarily-added degrees of celcius will have a necessarily negative effect on humans.
    There is no empirical data that such will be the case.

    I think the 'consensus' lobby has all but sadly admitted that there just might be a few advantages to a bit warmer environment, albeit a temporary warming--and for the wine drinkers in Britain, for example, who love a good glass of champagne, the prospect of a 'home grown' variety, due to 'warming' of British grape-growing country, Gore's hysteria should seem, at least, a bit hysterical.

    So the garment industry is forced to make a few more billion T-shirts instead of overcoats--big effing deal, eh.

    One thing, though--which really warms my heart--is that the so-called scientists who were doing premature obits on the polar bear, have thankfully stopped their whining and recognized that polar bears, which share speciation with grizzlies are just as capable as walking a few hundred miles for supper (to warmer climes) as anyone else.

    Think, people.

    The big media is controlled by the consensus lobby. And others.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    G. West you're just not keeping up

    So much news has come out this past summer,
    the CO2 hypothesis has only the $100 million a year for the next 3-5 years to fall back on.
    I watched a chanel 4 film done in 1990 which blew the lid off the CO2 thing.
    17 years later and $50 billion spent on keeping up the phony consensus, and not only is the film still valid, there is much more peer reviewed science pointing in other directions.
    http://www.knowledgedrivenrevolution.com/Articles/200708/20070816_Greenhouse_Conspiracy_Documentary.htm

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0927/p13s03-sten.htm

    http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/environment/story.html?id=288ba340-98f9-4fbe-8412-acf920b32604

    And then there is James Hansen of NASA's behavior to factor in.
    http://www.dailytech.com/Update+NASA+James+Hansen+and+the+Politicization+of+Science/article9061.htm

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Yeh! Well

    keep on swingin' mope; maybe you'll give 'em a 'cold'.

    I'm up to date - I just have more valuable things to do with my time than play with you at your little conspiracy games my friend.

    I'm actually more concerned about the cash and lives pee wee is wasting on an American failed project in Afghanistan than bothering to counter you and Bjorn.

    As I think I said once before - I prefer Bjork.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Oh, just really G.West! Do tell!

    Oh, I forgot the time lag between warming and
    rising CO2 levels. First it warms up and then CO2 levels rise.

    " Lowell Stott, Axel Timmermann, Robert Thunell: "Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO₂ Rise and Tropical Warming"

    They study isotopes in sediment cores. The main result is that they can reconstruct the following chronology:

    * 19,000-17,000 years ago: deep sea temperatures increased by 2 Celsius degrees or so
    * 1,000 years later: CO₂ increases

    Not only the CO₂ lags by 1,000 years or so but the sea surface temperatures in the tropics lag, too. The deep ocean warmed much earlier than the surface."
    http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/end-of-last-ice-age-co2-innocent.html
    Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age
    Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown, says study in Science.
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/uosc-cdd092507.php

  • The brain

    4 years ago

    Sorry, ME2...

    Quote:
    We are now at or near the maximum extent of the subsequent warming-up period, and poised - as some would have it - at the beginning of the plunge toward the next glaciation. -ME2

    As I've already said, were 2,000 years away from the earths orbit getting farther away from he sun... you aren't the only one to look into the Milankovich theory which, by the way, if you've watched an inconvienient truth and saw the big graph Al Gore pointed at, will see that C02 noticably spikes every 100,000 years or so. You might do well to look up EPICA on the net as well.

    The eccentricity of earths orbit is the biggie with earths orbit, and while most science debunkers talk about how high levels of C02 are harmless, it should be noted that we are at levels 180% higher than any other time in ice assay recorded history which dates back to 900,000 years, and that it is most definitely a global warming contributer regardless of what global warming debunkers have to say.

    And as far as freon goes, CH4 is what it is... a highly corrosive gas that can penetrate the ozone and deplete it much the same way as any other acid breaks down whatever it saturates. Free radical theory is what it is, whether applied to the ozone, or human health.

    And for all the nutcases out there who think that global warming isn't for real or isn't something to be concerned with and that its just a "natural" event, this planet is heating up extremely fast by global standards. Our forests that provide a way to take C02 out of the atmosphere are being decimated, not just from logging but from global warming itself. Plankton which also contributes to the health of the atmosphere in large percentages, is also being destroyed due directly to a depleted ozone. Why, it doesn't take a genius to note how lethal the sun is to our skin compared to a mere 20 years ago. Cancer rates are skyrocketing from a host of causes, almost all of them environmental, and the only science debunkers out there are the ones who make a profit off of the destruction of the environment... or the incredibly naive. C'mon, folks. Use some common sense (which seems, ironically, to be not all that common). The ice is melting very quickly, the human population is growing and industrializing very rapidly and there is no connection? What, people who have flown on planes and see for themselves the way the human race has terraformed this planet, are too naive to think we haven't already altered our air, water and earth environments? Are we really this naive to be entirely blameless? Time to connect the dots.

    Lorne Mccuaig
    Revelstoke, BC

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Clarification.

    Just for the record, I oppose Mopled, TGreen et al in their contention that today's GW is not primarily the result of anthropogenic CO2 loading.

    And according to tonights news, so also does Dubya.

    OTOH, I do support those others who promote various local conservation measures, since everything I've read suggests at least half of the loading can be eliminated at the local level.

  • The brain

    4 years ago

    Afterthoughts...

    Fact: The ozone hole was larger last winter than any other year on record over the artic. What creates an ozone hole? Try extremely cold weather. But since the globe is noticably warming, the reverse should be happening. The ozone hole should be getting smaller. And while certain nutters out there are trying to spit out their unpeer viewed beliefs that Freon is harmless to the ozone, the fact remains... the ozone is getting shit kicked and if its not freon doing it, then what is it? Nature? Highly unlikely or in my own opinion, impossible unless we consider humanity to be natural.

    And this C02 business. C02 levels have nearly doubled in the atmosphere over the last 200 years, and humanity is responsible for it. Thats right, blameless humanity that has not changed earths environments according to the dullard dimwits, has actally changed earths environments a great deal.

    With respect to C02 and global warming, increased sunlight is the cause of global warming and C02 is the effect... which also contributes to the cause if anyone cares to think about it... over extended timelines... except this time its different. This time, humanity has dramatically increased the levels of C02 outside of the normal contributions of global warming created by increased light on the earth. And for anyone who considers themselves along with the rest of humanity to be blameless with global warming, they had better rethink it hard and serious.

    Its answered in a simple question. Has humanity changed Earths environments? And the simple answer is YES. And its not for the better... and there are most definitely going to be consequences. And to think that coastal flooding is good for the human race for example, where 80% of the population lives... or crop failures... is to believe that everything that Truman has ever said in his life... is true! So, dear Tyee readers... good luck with that.

  • The brain

    4 years ago

    ME2

    :-)

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Gee, Brain, the computer models project

    a couple (or three) degrees over a hundred-year period. Such models are subjectively loaded, of course. Regardless, the best thing that could happen regarding coastal flooding is that populations will slowly move away from flood plains where large cities should never have been located in the first place. A lot of things can happen in a hundred years. Try to imagine the changes that have taken place in the lower mainland over the last hundred years.

    It was warmer during the Middle Ages, and western civilization seems not to have been fried to a crisp.

    The Gorist-Suzukian fantasy is based on panic and hype. We can figure out how to live on this planet while the temperatures slowly increase or diminish a degree or three.

    That's why we have brains, eh.

    Look, can we all just think on our own for a bit. The people who walked from Asia figured out how to live without ever seeing a tree for thousands of years.

    Not to sound elitist, but smarten up, eh.

    Anthropogenic warming is a myth. Pollution is a real problem, however.

    3 or 4 parts per million is not enough to have a major effect upon long-term climate. Otherwise, Brain, please tell me what is so special about Carbon Dioxide that it can do what has been claimed for it.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Gentlemen

    You are parroting the Goracle...a great mistake! CO2 levels have been all over the place and higher 3 times in the last 150 years.
    Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2 March 19, 2004

    Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
    Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
    Warsaw, Poland
    http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
    "Improper manipulation of data, and arbitrary rejection of readings that do not fit the pre-conceived idea on man-made global warming is common in many glaciological studies of greenhouse gases. In peer reviewed publications I exposed this misuse of science [3, 9]. Unfortunately, such misuse is not limited to individual publications, but also appears in documents of national and international organizations. For example IPCC not only based its reports on a falsified “Siple curve”, but also in its 2001 report[14] used as a flagship the “hockey curve” of temperature, showing that there was no Medieval Warming, and no Little Ice Age, and that the 20th century was unusually warm. The curve was credulously accepted after Mann et al. paper published in NATURE magazine[15]. In a crushing criticism, two independent groups of scientists from disciplines other than climatology [16, 17] (i.e. not supported from the annual pool of many billion “climatic” dollars), convincingly blamed the Mann et al. paper for the improper manipulation and arbitrary rejections of data. The question arises, how such methodically poor paper, contradicting hundreds of excellent studies that demonstrated existence of global range Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age, could pass peer review for NATURE? And how could it pass the reviewing process at the IPCC? The apparent scientific weaknesses of IPCC and its lack of impartiality, was diagnosed and criticized in the early 1990s in NATURE editorials [18, 19]. The disease, seems to be persistent.

    Conclusion

    The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false. Therefore IPCC projections should not be used for national and global economic planning. The climatically inefficient and economically disastrous Kyoto Protocol, based on IPCC projections, was correctly defined by President George W. Bush as “fatally flawed”. This criticism was recently followed by the President of Russia Vladimir V. Putin. I hope that their rational views might save the world from enormous damage that could be induced by implementing recommendations based on distorted science."

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Oops.

    "3 or 4 parts per million" should have read "three or four hundred parts per million."

    And oh, Brain. Do you mind if I save this quote from your last comment in my special 'denialism' folder:

    Brain says: "With respect to CO2 and global warming increased sunlight is the cause of global warming and CO2 is the effect...which also contributes to the cause if anyone cares to think about it..."

    All of which somehow allows the brain to happily identify his admitted preference for the cause of global warming (that being increased sunlight) as no more important than that which he identifies as an EFFECT of global warming.

    Not to do mean ad hominems here, Brain, but may I suggest you rethink these ideas a bit.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    A quandry ?

    Well, Mopled, I’m no Phd – not even a BA – and so I find considerable difficulty in digging out the “spin” which turf-warring academics insert into their papers. That said, I found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read Professor Jaworowski’s paper, such as the bit about the denial of the Little Ice Age, which I have researched.

    The Professor noted that he has published this paper and others in quite a number of prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals, and I know that this process is taken as proof that the writer has followed a rigorous scientific protocol in which all credible contrary opinion is dealt with and that the reviewers can detect no sleight-of-hand in the data or its presentation. Thus, he certainly doesn’t appear to be a flake.

    Once over the peer-reviewing hurdle, his published paper and its conclusions must then have survived critique from the scientific community at large, and this usually comes in the form of contrary opinion published in that journal and elsewhere, after which a consensus, pro or con, usually emerges. I would then assume that since the results of other ice-core research has been widely reported and has formed the basis of such a large body of CO2 interpretive conclusions, that if Professor Jaworowski is correct, then a massive cover-up has to be in place.

    It wouldn’t be the first time, of course, since the meme can flourish within the scientific community almost as well as in other areas of human thought. But since I was very much impressed with many of the 18 names who signed the letter addressed to Bush in support of the IPCC’s findings, I would be very, very upset to find out that they’d neglected to do their own homework.

    So how do we tell who’s right ?

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    17,200 Deniers

    http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm
    The Petition Project
    During the past several years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.

    Quote:
    Global Warming Petition
    We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

    There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

    Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate.

    Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth's plant and animal life.

    Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 17,100, approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition.

    Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified.
    The costs of this petition project have been paid entirely by private donations. No industrial funding or money from sources within the coal, oil, natural gas or related industries has been utilized. The petition's organizers, who include some faculty members and staff of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, do not otherwise receive funds from such sources. The Institute itself has no such funding. Also, no funds of tax-exempt organizations have been used for this project.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Letter to Harper

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/harper_conservatives/pdf/lettertoharper2.pdf
    contains the signatures of 31 prominent scientists, including Freeman Dyson whose own article is worth a read.

    HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
    By Freeman Dyson

    My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

    [more]

    http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Mopled

    Thank you for the Freeman Dyson piece, Mopled. Not that I agree with everything he wrote, but rather that he makes one think, which is, of course, the raison d'etre for the EDGE site.

    Mental laziness prompted me to quit reading it two years ago, but I guess now I'll make another stab at it.

  • alda

    4 years ago

    To the uniformed,disbeliving

    To the uniformed,disbeliving posters above:

    Point #1
    Our district's pond did not freeze over last winter in Alberta for the first time ever that we know of.
    While one might wonder if the warm temperatures that caused the pond to stay semi-liquid "might" have been a naturally occurring phenomenon or a pure one-off coincidence, when worldwide (global) anecdotal evidence in ALL cultures these days (most convincingly lately by the Inuit) also point to the EXACT type of warming and terrifically, unusual physical ircumstances, all thinking, logical persons intuitively begin to understand that worldwide scientists' who contend that global warming is real, ARE undoubtedly correct.

    Point #2

    While one personal anecdotal experience (see above) without any scientific evidence backing it up, does not, in itself, prove that warming of the earth is human induced, any thinking, well-informed person understands that, in LIGHT OF WHAT HE READS and has observed throughout life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

    A prudent and wise society plans for the worst while hoping for the best, and plans, plans, plans. Self-sacrifice is built in - think of the ant and the denying grasshopper (there's no such thing as winter). So, okay, you don't get to drive your gas-guzzling SUV, so you're forced to use cloth shopping bags, so you must convert your green lawn into something ecologically friendly, so you have to buy a dual flush toilet, so you have to convert your electricity to wind and solar and geothermal or insulate more heavily, and so we as a society have to pay enormously for those changes..... what are you so afraid of? The spending of paper dollars? Yes, it's ALWAYS about money with you folks, isn't it. It's all about greed. Why not think of those preparations as mere insurance?

    After all, preparation is precisely what intelligent cultures do while preparing for emergencies that "might never come" or are dubious in nature. Those people who say otherwise need to re-examine their flawed Disneyesque belief systems (and heads, imo), and pray dearly in the meantime. It's obvious they believe in nothing but la-la-land miracles and have bought the corporate line hook, line, and sinker, without any recogniztion of what laughable, progammable, gullible dupes of the corporate consumer system they are.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    ALDA

    1/ Ad hominum attacks such as yours are the stock-in-trade of people who, having grasped one idea, are fearful of contemplating new ones. (GWest, please note)

    2/ Most of the above critics of GW do not deny GW, but rather challenge CO2 loading as the primary cause.

    3/ The papers so far advanced have demonstrated that the supportive science for CO2 loading is HIGHLY speculative.

    4/ No-one has suggested we do nothing, only that before we spend enormous amounts of money on such things as CO2 sequestration, we'd better be damn sure we are addressing the real problem. Think of the benefits of spending that PUBLIC money elsewhere, such as on social programs.

    In this one evening's reading, I've gone from being dead certain that anthropogenic CO2 loading was the cause of current GW, and am now a definite skeptic, having read discussion of issues I'd previously discounted as irrelevant.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    ME2, you give me hope

    that there are still rational, inquiring minds around. I bought into AGW until seeing
    "Global Warming Swindle" in mid March. It took a while to figure out the who and why perpetuating what would normally be dismissed as profound silliness.

    What has impressed me most is the media complicity which is on a par with the media complicity on most public lies, but with a twist. The people and news sources a lefty like me would normally trust are just the ones most ardently pushing this biggest of Big Lies.

    The genius of this psyop has been to have Fox news, Limbaugh and Glen Beck types exposing the scam and dear Dr. Suzuki promoting it.

  • The brain

    4 years ago

    Back at you, Truman!

    a couple (or three) degrees over a hundred-year period. - Truman

    3 degrees world wide is like 12 degree increases in the North. Old news. And its not happening over 100 years like models suggest. Its happening over 20. How many models that were "peer viewed" were claiming an open artic over the next 1,000 years, never mind 20? Someone should keep track of the names of all the bozo's who never got it right.

    So we can chase our tails about increased light that is happening from earths orbit getting closer to the sun, or like I KNOW, which is an increasingly damaged ozone, and talk about this model or that, but one thing is for certain, in case we all haven't noticed....

    This planet is warming up, and its happening far faster than any comp model has ever indicated... and that is not something thats coming from a model or land of pretend. Its real and can't be faked. And its going to get costly.

    To think that coastal flooding and crop failures is a good thing for humanity tells all in terms of how fatalistic and pessimistic we really are and how short sighted we are in terms of real solutions to the problem. And thats sad. In fact, somewhat pathetic. And its nothing new.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Simply not true

    The warming trend peaked in 1998 and you mistake normal climate shifts for catastophe.
    In fact it turns out the 20th century wasn't particularly warm.
    http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/09/25/questioning-20th-century-warmth/
    "A recent issue of Science contains an article not likely to receive any press coverage at all. Gerd Bürger of Berlin’s Institut für Meteorologie decided to revisit the work of Osborn and Briffa, and his results raise serious questions about the claim that the 20th century has been unusually warm. Bürger argues that Osborn and Briffa did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses. Bürger repeated all analyses with the appropriate adjustments and concluded “As a result, the ‘highly significant’ occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear.” Further, he reports that “The 95th percentile is exceeded mostly in the early 20th century, but also about the year 1000.” Needless to say, Gerd Bürger is not going to win any awards from the champions of global warming – nothing is more sacred than 20th century warming!"

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Go here: "US Senate," then: "Prominent

    Scientists Reverse Belief in Global Warming"

    Then maybe go study some C02 science on the "C02 Science" website (of all places) especially where it claims that C02 should be considered as plant food, not a pollutant.

    Then wonder why some scientists are working on methods of sequestering C02 in the oceans in order to increase the supply of phytoplanktons.

    It's all there--plain as the nose on your face, Brain.(And Booker {G.West})

    And Brain, you claim that the North will be heating up at a rate of 12 degrees in 20 years. Get out your calculator because I think you might need it. 12 degrees in 20 years is 60 degrees in a hundred years, eh. (5 times 12)

    Are you serious?

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    And for those with a more instintive

    route to truth, I'd suggest that for 60 prominent scientists to reverse their position on a scientific paradigm can be considered near absolute proof that the skepticism is warranted by the science.

    Your assignment for today, true believers is "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," by Thomas S. Kuhn. The Second Edition is good, wherein Kuhn explains Suzukiism--the adoption of popular scientific belief by those who secretly know better, but who like to be popular--even prophetic, if possible.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    instintive

    ???????????

    It is too bad that you seem to have nothing more worthwhile to do than calling people names; implying that you know 'who' various Tyee posters actually are when you’ve been told dozens of times you don’t know what you’re on about; insinuating that you're the only one with the route to true knowledge and then suggesting that anyone who doesn't agree with you and your conspiratorial counter-orthodoxy is stupid or slow.

    Kind of sad actually.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Yes, it's all about Memes

    Suzukiism - Ahhhh, there's a topic dear to the politically-correct rent-a-crowd who are in denial that they've castrated the environental movement with their advocacy of end-justifies-the-means argumentation.

    But I'll leave that one alone lest GWest calls in the Thought Police - even if he did say he ain't gonna follow this thread.

  • alda

    4 years ago

    spending money elsewhere

    ME2:

    Thank you for your reply, but I encourage you to use your God-given logic. While the planet is burning, it will do people little good for money that SHOULD be invested non-CO2 emitting, alternative renewable energy programs (passive solar building design, super insulating programs, rail transit, local gardens) are spent on social programs instead, as our burning planet is already hastening, and will continue to hasten, the following:
    1. scarcity of water
    2. rising temperatures, repelled by the use of air conditioners that further exacerbate the problem
    3. famine, disease, pestilence (ie. pine beetles diminishing forests)
    4. chaotic migration that jeopardizes stable communities
    5. continued devastation of the earth in the quest for more and more raw resources

    There is no debate - these things are ALREADY happening.

    Given the scenario of a burning planet, in the end, spending dollars on laudable social programs alone would be akin to putting a bandaid on a gangrenous wound while allowing the weapon that caused the wound to continue doing its horrific festering damage.

    As Einstein said (or words to this effect) - "trying to fix technologically induced problems with yet more technology (ie. your CO2 sequestration idea, one which I do not believe will work on a large enough scale to count, if it works at all) will never work."

    IMO, people (including yourself, if your post is any indication) put too much blind and Disneyesque faith in the wonder marvellous discoveries of science and technology, when a wiser person puts his real faith in nature itself. But this is something you'll have to figure out for yourself - when you are evolved enough to understand what sustainable community actually means.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Remember folks. It's all here. Just google

    THIS:

    "Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-Made Global Warming."

    But don't be too shocked that, while this is the biggest environmental story of 2007, none of the big media chains, tv or print will be carrying the story.

    Then ask yourself: Why not?

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    alda, excuse me

    but none of what you just said is true. How do you get the planet to "burn up" with a rise of .6*C in 100 years? That goes beyond simple alarmism to being irrational.

    You are the one putting "too much faith" in a warped report based on cooked up data.
    Just read anything on http://www.icecap.us/

    Then read about the real Gore and his real environmental record.

    http://www.debatethis.org/gore/enviro/

  • aftermath

    4 years ago

    Local awareness

    While discussing if CO2 is a cause or effect of global warming I think we miss the substantial point that the issues around climate change need to be handled at the local level. This will require a rethink of where the finanacial resources whould lie to deal with the serious issues around global warming and what is essentially local adjustments to deal with the changes which arise.

    Currently we seem to be in a reactive mode when it comes to issues around the enbironment - reactive to the point that we are seldom willing to look at the ways we may be conributing to our own distruction.

    Global warmng is an issue which all levels of government need to take seriously. This shift of consciousness is unlikely to occur except in a government which is in closer contact with its electorate. Finding a way to address this in the context of BC is especially hard because we have a system which requires representatives to be elected by the entire municipality. It also requires that sifts of responsibility to lower levels of government need to be dealt with by appropriate taxing strategies. This means getting the province to five municipalities the opportunity to raise funds with some form of income tax.

    The problem we face is that downloading has become commonplace and likely the province, under any current party, is not prepared to consider that option.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Isn't that bas ackwards?

    You assume that higher levels of CO2 are problematic.

    The truth is that has not been proven and is unlikely to be.

    It's not broke, don't try fixing it! Are you advocating paying taxes to support a destructive scam?

    May I suggest a bit of time with Bjorn Lomberg's books or at least an article or two.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/science/earth/11tiern.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1189501618-rFyi6tcdnT9sfBp3LYo/lA&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Alda

    And though we may be appear to be supporting a counter-orthodoxy based upon conspiracy theory, the science so far quoted has avoided the ad hominum-style "proof" conspiracy theory depends upon.(And such "proof", incidentally, flourishes in pro-CO2 agit-prop.)

    There are a number of facts which are incontrovertible; The first is that there are huge recent changes to weather patterns all over the globe.

    Another is that by far the majority of climatologists refuse to identify CO2 as the main cause, saying not enough is yet known to make any such statement.

    Another factor is that although average global temperatures have risen, climatologists point out that these MAY be just normal fluctuations, and that the commonly cited rise is subsequent to the Little Ice Age (LIA), and ignores the very high temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), which preceded the LIA. This raises the question “What are normal climate fluctuations?“

    And although you mocked Brain for his claim of rising temperatures in the Arctic, TGreen, no-one has suggested a continued rise to even near 60 degrees. In trying to keep it short, I over-simplified how the Milenkovitch Cycle drives climate, though it was close enough to explain the mechanism.

    All the Milenkovitch Cycle does is explain why, at various times over a roughly 100,000 year cycle, our Northern Hemisphere receives more sunlight than normal. Because there are three variables at work, the system also produces variable amounts of Northern heating – and also cooling - the results for either of which are as yet poorly understood.

    The fact is that oceanic temperature gradients mediate climate systems all over the world. In the Northern Hemisphere, the mediator of primary interest is the Gulf Stream, which warms our higher (more Northern) latitudes. It is hypothesized that the LIA was brought on by the MWP, which caused severe melting of he Arctic ice.(as is happening today) The fresh water from this melting of the ice sat atop the North Atlantic, covering the incoming warm tropical saltwater, (and cutting off warming air for Northern Europe) and slowing down the sinking of cold water normally destined Southward in a process called thermohaline circulation.

    There’s lots yet left to learn, Alda, and guessing like you guys are doing isn’t good enough.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    ME2, you slightly understood my mocking

    of Brain. It was pricisely as you say. Noone has even remotely suggested a rise of 60 degrees over a hundred year period-or even a 12 degree rise in 20 years--except Brain.

    And while we're on 'counter-orthodoxy,' I think it's important to mention one of the other silly hoaxes, so-called 'fossil fuels.' There are no 'fossil fuels.' These fuel hydrocarbons were not derived from the corpses of dead animals and the remains of plants and forests. They were 'abiotically,' derived exactly in the way that the hydrocarbon lakes were derived on Titan. (See: hydrdocarbon lakes on Tita)

    In fact, if you dig deep enough you can find oil just about anywhere.

    See: "Abiotic Oil."

    And so "Peak Oil," the idea that we're running out of oil is just another hoax in tandem with 'fossil fuels' and 'global warming.'

    The really big money is always in big lies and big hoaxes.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Hey, Truman

    Look what I found. Saturn's moon Titan has LAKES of hydrocarbons. OMG. Maybe there is something to the abiotic oil idea after all.
    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia09102.html

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Nature of Things...

    Of course why listen to David Suzuki when we have Truman Green and mopled! While advocates for looking deeper into the way we conduct ourselves are all around you, you prefer to pooh-pooh all of that and take the side that big oil/business/media would be proud to present. Climate change will have an impact because of where we decided to set up business and residence. This will always be the case, with weather, floods, landslidess, drought, famine, sea level rise, glaciation. The obvious problems are sustainability and the degredation of the ecology that supports us. These are things Suzuki has been bringing to our attention for decades.
    But here the likes of you tee off on Suzuki and for what? So what if he and others are wrong on GW? The real crises of society are not far away now, and then we'll get to hear more shite from the likes of you that we really don't need stuff like bio diversity, and ecology and things like increased levels of cancer are just the price we pay for society. Shear numbers of human carbon units now insure many more crises to face. Hopefully more of us will actually get outside and off the couch and visit the great outdoors and see for themselves what you so obviously miss sitting in front of your digital landscape. Truman Green vs. David Suzuki? You'd have to be a bit off just to think you're in the same league buddy.... Another party coming up TG, but as usual, you're not invited!

  • alda

    4 years ago

    Club of Rome comments

    Good reply.

    There's no talking with people like Truman Green and Mopled, etc., however, who are waiting for their idiotic own brand of incontrovertible proof about CO2 emmissions - proof that is defined by their own peculiar and narrow but ever-changing parameters - one that almost always supports their illogical view that "excessive growth (as in the destruction of natural resources to get it)" is necessary, natural, and a good thing.

    That so many people are unable to understand that a wise society is prudent and forestalls trouble at the pass as a precautionary measure (and we're far beyond that), only goes to prove how much the education system in this country has failed us all.

    I agree with you, Club of Rome - watch them (or their children) wait until TSHTF, and then watch the shock and awe as all the nonsense they believe in melts away like the glacial ice in the Arctic. Only then, it will be too late.
    Human stupidity at its absolute finest hour.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Clubofrome, you once said, and I quote,

    that I am (meaning me, Truman) is "as smart as ten smart men."

    So why the change of heart?

    And you say, "So what if they're (Suzuki et al) wrong about global warming."

    Well, I think this proves your academic and moral expediency. My entire thesis is that they're wrong about humans causing a warming of the earth's atmosphere. I have never doubted the need to control pollution.

    I'm saying that human, that is to say anthropogenic causation of warming is a ridiculous hoax. It's not remotely possible that carbon dioxide can absorb enough infrared radiation to cause a NET increase in global temperatures.

    As I've said ad nauseum: WATER VAPOUR IS THE ONLY SERIOUS GREENHOUSE GAS.

    And yes, I do think I'm exponentially smarter than David Suzuki.

    You might not have noticed but when you admit that he might be wrong, you fail to understand that I was never fooled by the global warming nonsense in the first place.

    So, if I'm right and he's wrong... who's smarter?

    And yes, I tee off on Suzuki mostly because his reputation as 'one of Canada's most emminent scientists,' as one poster referred to him last year on this forum, is a major hoax. He's not a scientist. The last work he did as a practising scientist was back in the 60's on drosophila melanogaster-fruit flies; the biggest so-called discovery he ever contributed was that a certain kind of fruit fly can only reproduce at 29 or so degrees. The guy's a brilliant broadcaster, but not a scientist.

    And yes, it's my heart-felt opinion that anybody who's as smart as Suzuki also knows that anthropogenic contributions to global warming have been at least vastly overstated.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Alda, did you go through the list of

    prominent scientists who have reversed their belief in human-caused global warming, yet?

    Google: "Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-Made Global Warming."

    Again: "Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-Made Global Warming."

    Amazingly, I just read Clubofrome saying this again:
    "So what if they're wrong about GW."

    Which, for the cranially sufficient is an ACTUAL ADMISSION THAT CLUBOFROME DOESN'T CARE IF THEY'RE RIGHT OR WRONG.

    Duh, that's what the entire controversy is about, Club--whether they're right or wrong.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Hey, thanks, Mopled

    Alda and Club of Rome, may I suggest you go look at Mopled's photos of hydrocarbon lakes on Titan--oil, that is. Then start thinking about what it means that the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, which all the major media has ignored, has actually produced proof that liquid hydrocarbons on earth were not produced by the 'fossilization' of dinosaurs and trees, but rather by the same process that produced the liquid hydrocarbon lakes on Titan. Of course, I understood this concurrently with figuring out that Santa Claus was a hoax.

    But tread lightly into this new area of unorthodoxy. It doesn't bring out the best in either of you--academically speaking, that is.

    Clubofrome claims that Mopled and I appreciate 'excessive growth.'
    Besides that phrase being nonsensically self-defining and tautological, whoever said that Mopled and I are not as concerned with the the environment, pollution and unsustainable growth as anybody else?

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    It's hard to change one's mind

    http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=927b9303-802a-23ad-494b-dccb00b51a12&Region_id=&Issue_id=
    Here's a link to old news. After the publication by Tsonis et al, in June on how when global ocean currents synchronize climate changes,I expect many more have quietly seen the light.
    http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/environment/story.html?id=288ba340-98f9-4fbe-8412-acf920b32604

    I explained the scam to a 90+ year old life long environmental activist friend. She was so relieved to find out the planet is in no danger from CO2, that I expected everyone would react the same way.

    The brain is unfortunately wired to consider information it has heard from 3-5x to be the truth and will make up reasons to defend the falsity and it even rewards itself with a shot of endorphins whenever it does. I learned that from Barry Zwicker's book on 9/11 and the Media called Towers of Deception.
    I lent the book out, so I can't quote it, so this will have to do:
    "Because rejecting truth "feels good"

    Most of our disgust with the lapdog nature of the dominant media is focused on its refusal to simply report the truth. This perfectly fits in with our innate desire to blame anything but ourselves when things go wrong.

    But brain mapping techniques reveal that "we derive pleasure from irrationally sticking with beliefs against evidence," wrote Dr. Drew Weston in a paper published in January, 2006, after completing research at Atlanta’s Emory University.

    Dr. Weston’s research showed that, "there are flares of activity in the brain’s pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected."

    What this means is, once most people internalize a system of beliefs, changing those beliefs in the presence of new and compelling information may bring pain (in various psychological and social forms) while denying the new evidence to maintain old beliefs brings immediate biochemical pleasure.

    The point of bringing this up now, on this page, is so we can better understand the full spectrum of issues associated with individual opinions and mass-mindedness. The more we know about how forces outside ourselves are taking advantage of our human frailties, the more likely we will be able to frustrate their intentions.

    ~With thanks to Barry Zwicker for dedicating a chapter of his new book "Towers of Deception" to the "tricks" being played to prevent us from seeing the obvious."

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Good, Mopled, and now for something

    really obvious: REAL POLLUTION LIKE ACID RAIN--CAUSED MAINLY BY SULPHUR DIOXIDE--

    COOLS THE ATMOSPHERE; IT DOESN'T HEAT IT UP.

    As will anything else that creates increased cloud cover. This is really sophisticated I know, but whatever blocks incoming radiation from the sun also prevents the bouncing of infrared radiation from the earth and prevents it from being forced back into the upper atmosphere, where plant food like C02 would have to do its 'warming.'

    It it could, that is.

    This is all a huge joke, folks. I wouldn't kid you.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    All of which explains why none of these

    global swarmers or foundationalized profits--oops--prophets, have used the words 'acid rain' or 'sulphur dioxide' in any recently-spoken sentence, (or any sentence dealing with climate change)--as they once so happily did regarding pollution.

    Remember the fad called 'global cooling.'

    Same thing--a pile of crap.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Ten Dumb Guys...

    My point has and always will be that the expontential growth of humans and their deeds are the problem. Pollution, loss of diversity, and the stress on individuals to fit in to this global consummer society are going to cause much more harm than global warming whatever the cause of it. So waht if Suzuki is wrong? No one, including you is always right, and claiming that you are a better scientist than Suzuki is just a fluff statment on your part. So even if he is just a broadcaster, he has educated more people than you ever will. Sorry If I waded into the CO2 debate, but I tend to agree with
    you and mopled than their is more to it than the lies perpetuated in the media. The media is just an arm of the criminally insane. Suzuki doesn't appear to me as having some hidden agenda that diverts attention from the truth so he can amass wealth and apply evil to take over the world. We can leave that up to the likes of Monsanto and Cargil. My limited reasearch and instinct tells me that over development and the assault on ecology are the main problems facing society now and in the future. Ed Deak has proven his economic theory and we can see it's effect on individuals as we're told there's no such thing as job security anymore, and the poverty of third world nations mounts so we can have hot and cold running water. The system is out of balance and CO2 has nothing to do with it. Nor do the vast reserves of hydrocarbon lakes on Titan. It only takes a few paid scientists to sway the public or plant doubt, and then the truth usually is lost in the fallout and pointless debate. I'm sure than you and mopled with your large brain pans have seen much evidence and research on other issues more worthy of debate than CO2 so lets hear it. Otherwise I'll have to revise my estimates to you being smarter than five smart guys...

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I wouldn't kid you.

    Actually Truman - I think that's about all you ever do anymore.

    I think I can sum up your heterodoxy in a few sentences:
    1) the HIV virus doesn't cause AIDS;
    2) oil is abiotic because you say it is and a flyby satellite "confirms" there are hydrocarbons on Titan;
    3) George Bush crashed jetliners into the WTC and the Pentagon;
    4) the only serious pollutant in the atmosphere is water vapour, and;
    5) Every serious scientist who disagrees with you is corrupt or on the take.

    What have I missed Club?

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    May I remind you that the topic is

    about fighting Global Warming?

    Since the whole thing about CO2 is a fake and there is nothing to fight.......CO2 IS a "worthy issue." The scam is going to cost us big bucks and warp everything in the wrong direction because CO2 is not a pollutant. With everyone focused on the wrong molecule, the real nasties will be given a pass. "We are too busy fighting Global Warming and CO2 emmisions to pay attention to dioxins anymore" . I can hear it now. "Doncha know there's a war on?", was the excuse for everything gone wrong in everyday life during WW2.

    About the topic. I don't think we really trust our municipal level of government more, I think we feel we are more able to control it.
    But after this last revision of the Municipal Act called the Local Government Act, we have far less control than we used to.

    The last person I'd trust about anything is Sullivan.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    On credibility

    Well, Suzuki has done much for environmental awareness, and IMO is an honourable man.

    Though that suggests his counsel should always be listened to, it's no guarantee he's always right.

    Even the Greeks had enough sense to see their Gods being improperly swayed by emotion.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Actually, G.West, I didn't say that

    water vapour is the only serious pollutant. So you're either academically corrupt or you're just plain mistaken. I suppose you could just be having difficulty reading, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

    I said it's the only serious GREENHOUSE GAS.

    Water vapour is not a pollutant; nor is carbon dioxide, which is it currently being marketed as.

    Unfortunately I just wrote the most beautiful expose of the usage of 'surrogate markers' to identify disease, including Aids, but I got a message saying: "You're over 3000 characters."

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Then who is posting in your name Truman?

    Because I just copied this from your post a few centimetres up this thread:

    Quote:
    As I've said ad nauseum: WATER VAPOUR IS THE ONLY SERIOUS GREENHOUSE GAS.

    And yes, I do think I'm exponentially smarter than David Suzuki.

    Since all the fuss is about greenhouse gases, and since YOU used the word serious, I'm pretty sure who's actually spinning the truth Truman.

    And don't bother with that 'beautiful exposé' Truman - we've seen it all before.

    It's a dead letter.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Water Vapour is the only

    GHG worth looking and it wasn't for two reasons.
    1. It is very complicated, since it is not just a question of evaporation alone. Sunspots, solar wind,cosmic rays all seem to be involved.
    2. The whole reason for the IPCC was to find CO2 to be a culprit so the scam could go down.

    Dr Vincent Gray has been a member of the expert reviewers’ panel for all of the IPCC assessment reports. You might want to read what such a witness has to say about the rigging of the IPCC process.
    http://www.nzclimatescience.org/images/PDFs/gray2.ipcc%20spin.pdf

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    G.West, of course I said water vapour

    is the only serious greenhouse gas.

    If you read your number 4. in your list of things I supposedly wrote, you wrote this:

    Truman said: "The only serious POLLUTANT in the atmosphere is water vapour."

    Try to read it correctly, G.West. I'm claiming water vapour is the only serious greenhouse GAS, not the only serious POLLUTANT.

    And yes, I know you've seen my expose of surrogate markers before--the same ridiculous markers that allow Merck to sell tons of unneeded, untested and useless GARDASIL to kids. Not to mention false disease diagnoses of "AIDS" employing cluster differentiation type four T-Cells, viral loads and immunoglobulin (antibody) productions--all surrogate markers to antigens which might be from up to 70 various pathogenic syndromes.

    Let me know when Merck rejuvenates its latest ridiculous fake search for an Aids vaccine. The last one just failed--again due to a pathetic search for a vaccination to a retrovirus which causes no illness in human beings.

    Google: "Merck fails in search for Aids Vaccine." Of course there's just as many bucks in LOOKING for an Aids vaccine as there is in actually FINDING one--which will never happen.

    The big joke about so-called HIV-AIDS vaccine is that hiv is such a simply- sequenced (9 kilobases) reverse transcriptase virus that if it actually caused Aids a vaccine would be THE SIMPLEST VACCINE EVER DEVELOPED.

    I could probably develope one myself in my carpentry shop.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Re. Suzuki being smarter

    Re. Suzuki being smarter than I. Come on...some of you guys could get Suzuki on here to debate me on global warming. I challenge you to come on this forum, Mr. Suzuki with more of your inane nonsense about glaciers falling into the sea and polar bears lying dead all over the ice.

    That's what glaciers do--fall into the sea.
    Always have, always will.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I disagree Truman

    Suzuki would wipe the floor with you!

  • VancouverPointGreen

    4 years ago

    Ideologies analysis

    It's ironic that the Green Party of BC and Greens around the globe have always stressed the need for more local power. The NDP have traditionally centralized on a socialist/labour platform that constantly criticises the opposition, even when in opposition without any real genuine concensus... The irony is that Christopher Bennett and the GPBC were prohibited from participating in a dialogue that has been a top priority concern (Climate Change) for years before any other political party recognized the need! Now, we have an ex-premier reciting the Green Book! I guess it's finally sinking in as it has with Gateway! Not only should we be leaders, as the Summerland councillor acknowledges in the article, we could be leaders with the proper incentives and mechanisms to address this crisis. Let's hope the premier, Penner and Falcon and co. listens to Al Gore and puts his money where his mouth is. Meanwhile, the next GPBC leader, to be decided on Oct. 20-21 in Victoria, will be holding the traditional parties accountable for their policies or lack thereof...

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    G.West maybe on writing for grants,

    but on global warming, Aids, Peak Oil, and Abiotic hydrocarbons, the proof would be in the eating, not the wiping, eh.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    We're gonna be milked

    The cows are standing at the gate waiting to bed led in.They are bellowing in their impatience to be milked We are being worked like cattle.

    VPG...didn't you read who Gore is? What his record is? See http://www.debatethis.org/gore/enviro/
    Go to Molten Metals. In business with Maurice Strong. $33,000,000 in research from the DOE, the penny stock went from above $30.00 to less than a dollar after the DOE announced the ending of the grant. The principles sold their stock two weeks before the announcement. Martha went to jail for a great deal less.

    Why are you trusting these jokers. How many times have we been hornswaggled by Campbell?

    Bush is bad, but Gore is not good either. It's the difference in personal style one reacts to immediately. Gore is a much more attractive man than GWB, and every time he refers to the "lost" election(look up palooka) we all automatically go dreamy eyed. The Clinton/Gore Admin. was no Camelot, guys.

    Dear Dr. Suzuki could be blinding himself to the truth. It would be pretty embarassing after that exhausting bus tour to admit that he was wrong. Then again there are the various foundations attached to the brand... and income could drop off...so for various reasons it might be a good idea for him to continue to go-along-to-get-along.

    Back to the analogy. You know how goats used to be used to lead cattle to slaughter? You could also think of some of these guys as goats. They're just there for the feed. They don't identify with the cattle.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I disagree

    What are you actually good at Truman - other than being obstreperous?

    By the way, what was in those transfusions that infected so many hemophiliacs with HIV, many of whom have since died and several thousand of the remainder are now suffering from AIDS?

    They call them Judas goats mopled. I'd say you're having a little trouble attracting a following. Camelot was no Camelot!

  • G West

    4 years ago

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Well, of course

    You are right about Camelot not being everything it was cracked up to be...but there was the marital infidelity going on in all three.

    I know it's a Judas goat, but the last time I used the phrase (somewhere else) it was thought to be an anti-semitic comment. It seems the phrase is rather obscure to most people these days.

    As to the NYT article...yes! The Arctic is melting...but it did it before in just the last century.

    http://www.arctic-warming.com/how-was-the-warming-discussed-in-the-1930s.php

    Johannsson elaborated the temperature conditions at Spitsbergen with reference to Birkeland’s research from 1930. Although Johannsson focuses his investigation on the relevance of sun-spots, some analytical consideration is nevertheless interesting, for example:

    * In 1919, the statistical means crosses zero-value; or in other words, all previous years are colder; all later years are warmer (p. 86).
    * The climate had become more maritime related (p. 86).
    * Between 1917 and 1928 the increase during the summer season is of +0.9°C per 10 years, and in winter, of +8.3°C, in February, of +11.0°C (p. 87).
    * There was a colder period from 1912 to 1917 (p. 90), which, had this not occurred, would have resulted in a 1.1°C increase at the Green Harbour Station (p. 91).
    * As is known, the winters in Europe over recent decades (after 1880, even more since 1900) have become milder, the climate more maritime, the annual temperature means higher (p. 91).
    * It seems that the changes are coming from the North, but this is not necessarily confirmed by temperature observations at some stations (e.g. Stockholm, Edinburgh), showing a warming from 1876-1920, but not later (p. 91).
    * Temperatures in North Norway show no change between 1891 and 1905, but a +0.4°C change between 1921-30 (in Svalbard, 2.5°C), indicating that the increase in N-Norway is only delayed, and presumably also in Svalbard (p. 91f).

    So, since the Arctic melted during the 1920s, why are we allowing our knickers to be knotted by con men now.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    As Mopled points out, you

    As Mopled points out, you can pick any number of phenomena as the cause of GW, including TGreen's water vapour.

    All combined (including CO2) may produce a cumulative effect, lending credibility to the claim of some that today's warming is just another of those short-term climatic glitches the climatologists refer to.

    Since I prefer to think in terms of how the Milenkovitch Cycle (MC) performs, I'm more partial to seeing the climatic perturbations in the mid latitudes as being caused by shifts in the great Oceanic currents, which move water-stored heat from (in our case) South to North.

    I wrote in an earlier post that some people believe that the melting of Polar ice brought the Little Ice Age to Europe by intefering with the Gulf Stream.

    The MC does not suggest that more sunlight strikes the Earth, only that more hits the Northern Latitudes at those times when the Earth's orientation to the Sun allows. The amount striking Equatorial regions never changes.

    There is absolutely no arguing that the Northern Regions are heating up - and fast - precisely as the MC model predicts. Nor is there any argument that we are now at the apogee of the warming-cooling period between glaciations. The only argument there concerns just where are, at the beginning or the end of this short curve.

    Thus the ignorance of those who sneer at the concept of global cooling while we are experiencing a warming trend. As I recall, back in the early days of interest in the MC, it was held that the "tipping point" could be only years or decades in being arrived at. Since the decades are done, could we be now looking at years?

    Because there are three variables which drive the MC, each of which operates on a different time cycle, and is a climate driver on its own, it is far harder to form an understanding of the whole than what one would think. Try it folks, with Precession first.

  • alda

    4 years ago

    interesting read

    The critical trait that obtuse politicians such as Stephen Harper lack despite any fine scientific or mathematical talent they might possess (or think they possess)is that of a broad humanitarian vision and the ability to envision -- thus prepare for -- the future.

    Havel says it all. I absolutely love what he wrote. His admonition that we should prepare and act as if global warming is a certainty even if it isn't!, is the point I was trying to make to some of you earlier. Perhaps you'll have more respect for his words than mine.

    (short article below)
    ========================

    Our Moral Footprint
    Vaclav Havel, New York times

    ...Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan. There can be no doubt that for the past hundred years at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following their example. Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back. There is little point in asking whether we have borrowed too much or what would happen if we postponed the repayments. Anyone with a mortgage or a bank loan can easily imagine the answer.

    The effects of possible climate changes are hard to estimate. Our planet has never been in a state of balance from which it could deviate through human or other influence and then, in time, return to its original state. The climate is not like a pendulum that will return to its original position after a certain period. It has evolved turbulently over billions of years into a gigantic complex of networks, and of networks within networks, where everything is interlinked in diverse ways.

    Its structures will never return to precisely the same state they were in 50 or 5,000 years ago. They will only change into a new state, which, so long as the change is slight, need not mean any threat to life.

    Larger changes, however, could have unforeseeable effects within the global ecosystem. In that case, we would have to ask ourselves whether human life would be possible. Because so much uncertainty still reigns, a great deal of humility and circumspection is called for.

    We can’t endlessly fool ourselves that nothing is wrong and that we can go on cheerfully pursuing our wasteful lifestyles, ignoring the climate threats and postponing a solution. Maybe there will be no major catastrophe in the coming years or decades. Who knows? But that doesn’t relieve us of responsibility toward future generations.

    Vaclav Havel is the former president of the Czech Republic.
    (27 September 2007)

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Camelot mopled,

    Is an imaginary place that never existed except in the minds of marketeers and public relations people.

    I believe and I think the evidence and the science supports this, that we are very near the tipping point and those who pretend otherwise are exactly like those who believe in conspiracy theories because they're so attached to their tax dollars.

    As to historic parallels, spare me. You expect fractional degree precision and adjustments from NASA for their measurements since 2000 but you're prepared to accept without question the reports of a bunch of half-literate explorers with often faulty equipment for data from the 18th and the 19th century.

    Give your head a shake.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Oh, please!

    How you do carry on....and take jokes seriously. It's the "Tipping Point" thatis the product of maketeers and PR people. There is no evidence of any such thing.

    The satellite data says there has been little warming. The ground station data is tainted by unsuitably bad collection sites which reflect the "heat island" effect of cities, suburbs and paving.

    The 19th and early 20th century scientist were good at what they did. Your dismisal of their evidence is pure sophistry and frankly classist.

    The fact is the Arctic melted during the early 20th century and the warming lasted until 1940.

    The present melt may be more extensive, but it is hardly unique.
    AND THAT IS THE POINT.
    What is happening is not unique...it is being spun that way for nefarious purposes.

    Why was Greenland named GREEN and how come it was farmed for 400 years by the Norse. Recently Greenlanders have even been able to grow a few potatos, which they haven't been able to do since the 1940s. That's a good thing.

    So, if warming has happened before, I ask you, why is this time different?

    Maybe because if it isn't presented as unique with a bleeding tipping point, everyone would yawn and do something useful instead of counting carbon.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I disagree

    Historical temperature measurements in the 18th, 19th and 20th century were not accurate.

    As a matter of fact, I happen to have 35 years of personal diaries from the prairies in my possession which cover the period from 1915 through 1950. There is absolutely no evidence (in fact quite the contrary) that the daily temperatures recorded in those diaries indicate any warming at all during that period - in fact, the winter temperatures during those years were significantly lower then than current average temperatures.

    I wouldn't form a theory about anything on that basis though - although 'famous' Tim Ball has done something equally absurd with measurements gleaned from archival material taken from a handful of Hudson's Bay posts.

    You set your hair on fire because of partial degree discrepancies in NASA measurements, mopled, and yet you're prepared to accept evidence that is no more than anecdote and Norse myth from past centuries.

    Yawn is right! If all you've got left is the fact that someone called "Green"-land green I don't think I'll waste another moment on you.

    By the way, I know you're the one with nefarious intent in mind...all in aid of finding a way to try to protect your tax dollars from some nebulous conspiracy of shadowy villains who, with the exception of Al Gore, are mostly well-qualified scientists with no axe to grind. In my vew.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Make up your facts as you go along?

    http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/11/17/cooling-the-debate-a-longer-record-of-greenland-air-temperature/#more-188
    Written before the revised data 1934 the warmest year,1998 second, 1921 third.
    November 17, 2006
    Cooling the Debate: A Longer Record of Greenland Air Temperature
    Filed under: Temperature History, Polar, Arctic —

    The reconstruction of Earth’s climate history is important because it contextualizes the recent global climate for which we have direct evidence through instrumental observation. Therefore, reconstructions are an important component of the climate change debate, as they speak to alarmists’ claims that Earth’s climate has warmed to a level that is unprecedented within the last two millennia, and therefore unnatural. The natural proxies used for reconstructing climate (e.g., ice and sediment cores) must be verified through comparison with an overlapping instrumental record, and obviously, the longer the instrumental record, the better.

    Contextualizing the recent climate in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere is especially important, as it is across this region that the largest increase in surface air temperature has been both observed during the 20th century and predicted for the 21st century. These ideas highlight the importance of snow cover, its sensitivity to temperature, and its positive feedback to the overlying atmosphere. Higher temperatures in typically snow covered regions may lead to a reduction in snow cover, and in turn, a reduction in the refrigeration of Earth’s atmosphere from beneath, and even greater atmospheric warming. The vision of out-of-control warming in Earth’s frozen regions makes the leap toward a breakdown of the global oceanic circulation system and global sea level rise an easy one.

    Until recently, the instrumental air temperature record for Greenland, an epicenter of glacial study and climate reconstruction, was confined to the period 1873 to present. However, recent collaboration between the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (United Kingdom) has resulted in the compilation of instrumental data for 13 stations along the southern and western coasts of Greenland that date back to 1784. The data represent the addition of 74 complete winters and 52 complete summers to the previous record along roughly the southern two-thirds of the western Greenland coastline.

    The extended surface air temperature record was constructed and analyzed by a group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and the aforementioned CRU (United Kingdom) and DMI (Denmark) (Vinther et al. 2006). In satisfying a major priority of the work, the temperature record clearly verifies ice core records for Greenland.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Fact

    In satisfying a major priority of the work, the temperature record clearly verifies ice core records for Greenland. A second priority of contextualizing the recent climate of Greenland has resulted in further complication of the global warming debate. As the popularized side of the debate has led us to expect, the authors found that the coldest year (1863) and the coldest decade (1810s) are early in the record, well before the ballyhooed warming of the 20th century. Problematic from a climate change standpoint is the fact that the two distinct cold periods that made the 1810s the coldest decade followed an 1809 “unidentified” volcanic eruption and the eruption of Tambora in 1815 – unusual geologic events that defined the climate. However, of greater importance is the fact that the researchers found the warmest year on record to be 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the warmest decades on record.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Nice you have the diary though

    This represents very bad news for climate change alarmists, since the warmest period was NOT the last quarter of the 20th century. In fact, the last two decades of the 20th century (1981-1990 and 1991-2000) were colder across the study area than any of the previous six decades, dating back to the 1900s and 1910s (Table 1). When examining the instrumental records of the stations it is apparent that no net warming has occurred since the warm period of the 1930s and 1940s (Figure 1).The historical record of seasonal and annual Greenland surface air temperatures after merging data from three stations with long instrumental records. The thick lines represent decadally filtered data, where grey lines indicate filtering based on incomplete data. The thin, horizontal grey lines represent the 20th century average temperatures. Data coverage for each of the three stations is indicated by the horizontal bars at the bottom, for which black bars indicate complete observations and grey bars indicate incomplete observation years. (Taken from Vinther et al. 2006)

    In a region of the world where climate models indicate that the greatest impacts of CO2-induced global warming will be most rapid and most evident, this recent extension of instrumental surface air temperature records produces a climate history that seems to suggest otherwise. If global climate models are correct, the increase in CO2 concentration since 1930 should be evidenced rather dramatically in air temperature across a high-latitude region of the Northern Hemisphere such as Greenland. The evidence provided by the instrumental record of air temperature along the western and southern coasts of Greenland produces doubt in the degree to which increased CO2 concentrations impact high latitude climate as represented by the climate models upon which climate change alarmists are hanging their hats.

    References at site

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    FRIENDLY quetions, MOPED

    Your dates of 1863 and 1810 correspond to the Little Ice Age, the effects of which - such as iced-in harbours in winter - were then still being felt in North Coastal BC, volcanos notwithstanding.

    Since your Greenland records seem inconsistent with the reported and observed rise in temperatures elsewhere in the Arctic, perhaps an explanation might found in colder sea-surface temperatures around Greenland?

    It is reported that the Greenland ice-cap is melting at a rate never before recorded and increasing in pace yearly. One glacier is retreating at the rate of 2 meters AN HOUR.

    Since it is said that fresh water lying atop the incoming warm Gulf Stream can impede the transfer of its heat to the air, perhaps that can explain the colder air around Greenland?

    And since in a colder Greenland the ice melt should be slowing down, not speeding up, could it be that Greenland is receiving more sunlight?

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Remember, the name of the hype is

    "Global Warming." These local fluctuations in temperature plateauing have always occurred. Accelerating warming of Greenland ice is no more indicative of GLOBAL warming than the cooling of the lower mainland of BC over the last year.

    Antarctive ice fields are increasing in size lately.

    Melting ice just has a more spectacular impact upon impressionable minds.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I disagree

    ...temperature measurements in the 18th, 19th and most of the 20th century were not accurate. Any analogies or conclusions formed on that basisi are equally conjectural.

    Climate change is happening now and we've likely waited too long already to actually address it effectively.

    You might want to look at this:

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3980

  • David Beers

    4 years ago

    Administrator

    Global warming deniers

    Just to let our readers know, on the All Comments thread after this story various commenters are piling up their theories of why global warming is a hoax, or not due to human behaviour, or not worth trying to reverse. And various commenters are rebutting. After the first few comments, we won't be moving that argument to the Best Comments thread. The story was full of specifics about people's views on governing, solutions, etc. In such cases, we'll choose comments that relate more specifically to the piece, and leave the general (endless) debate promoted by global warming deniers to the All Comments threads here on The Tyee. Those interersted can find it there. Thanks.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    I understand

    The warming of the 20s-40s happened very fast
    starting around Spitzbergen, scene of sea battles with heavy use of depth charges. It is speculated that may have had something to do with it. There are many undersea volcanoes,over 80,000 and numerous vent with their own ecology...corals in the Arctic.

    The transfer of heat from inside the earth has more of an effect on ocean temperatures than the air above them. It is the ocean that warms the air more than the opposite. The 20th century warming seems to have been more severe near Europe than North America.

    Climatology is in its infancy. When I think about what mankind has endured from medical science in the past, I don't feel comfortable accepting life changes and economic agendas based on our sometimes faulty and miniscule understanding of how things work.

    GWest, your insistance on lack of accuracy in the instrument temperature data is silly in the face of the fact that the IPCC used only proxy data to construct their temperature chart which came to be known as Mann's Hockey Stick. It scared the bejesus out of me the first time I saw it. It was constructed using Bristlecone pine tree rings until 1898 and CO2 emissions from Moana Loa volcano with a 52 year gap between the two data sets. Accurate? The combination of data from two unrelated sources is not even acceptable scientific practice!

    The Council On Foreign Relations magazine article would seem to be onside with Lomberg, and supports the idea that taking care of the effects of AGW is going to be cheaper and better than not using toilet paper anymore. It also accepts the fact that we can't do anything about stopping a natural process even though it clings to the "we done it" position.

    "International lenders like the World Bank have only begun to invest in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; they need to give greater emphasis to projects that limit developing countries’ vulnerabilities to climate change. The scientific community will need to do a much better job of predicting climate impacts at a regional and local scale. Governments will need to support this process, to collect and assess the information that results, and develop their own plans. Riding out the consequences of a warming world will be difficult, and we need to prepare now."

    The use of "riding out" would seem to imply the understanding that the situation is temporary.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Don't forget pompous ass....

    Yes Mr West, it's more than obvious that TG would rather continue to prove his own ignorance by trying to point out the flaws in others. Very scientific debating tactic. Perhaps he's just too "book" smart for his own good? Maybe an intellectual perfectionist? If you watch long enough a perfectionist usually will have a mental breakdown or heartattack after throwing one too many of their child like tantrums. Either way TG can't see the forest for the tree's. Simple questions seem to bog him down or he feels too superior to address them. He's above it all. It's why he doesn't get invited to parties. But like Scrooge or the Grinch perhaps he can change, perhaps there is still time. Come and join us Truman, the real people of the planet who care for our communities.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Hogwash

    Here is an example of the double standard mopled.

    Quote:
    Climatology is in its infancy. When I think about what mankind has endured from medical science in the past, I don't feel comfortable accepting life changes and economic agendas based on our sometimes faulty and miniscule understanding of how things work.

    Then your view of who and what international lenders should do in the developing world to limit vulnerabilities. Your whole point was not to spend money on useless CO2 reduction, based on your vast history of climate and then you admit you don't feel comfortable about what we know! It's hog wash I say. My point has been that it is easy, it's only perfectionists and evil doers that want you to believe it's complicated. Politics, religeon, economics it's too vast to comprehend!! Bull! It's simply a matter of right and wrong, and eliminating greed. Most people around this planet don't cause wars. Corporate leaders like Ray Anderson woke up one day and realized he was a plunderer, not a hero as a captain of industry! Most people around this planet want to live simple lives in their communities with their families. Get back to basics kid, that's all that's left when you continually cough up the puck...

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Cool it Club

    I think the changes are natural. What you are advocating is the King Canute Solution.

    You can't stop a natural Earth Cycle...you can only adjust to it. That's what the article GW posted winds up saying.

    Hysteria doesn't do us any good in any emergency and Climatology is a multi-disciplinary study which only came into being less than 60 years ago.

    Would you want to be operated on by an 18th or 19th Century surgeon?

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Hysterical? Advocating?

    The only hysteria I've seen around here is you and TG going to great lengths to get your point across. You must have me confused with some one else. TG was quite right above when he said I don't care, but I do think it sad. I'm advocating an end to a consummer driven world, based on greed not need. Jesus H Christ! What's wrong with you people? Who the fuck is King Canute...?

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I disagree mopled and TG

    And I don't think there is one iota of doubt left (even in the mind of a Bjorn Lomborg) that human activity has had and is having a profound and damaging effect on the environment. If we don't wake up and start paying the price now the costs will simply go up and the chance of survival go down.

    I think the best comments/all comments format is ridiculous but I must say that keeping you and Truman on the siding instead of the mainline in this case is probably a good thing.

    Someone might actually waste their valuable time reading your nonsense if it were in the 'best comments' lineup.

    Thanks David.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    My dear CoR

    King Canute sat by the sea and commanded the tide to stop rising. Actually, he did it to illustrate a point about his limited power.

    I've been trying to temper alarmism by presenting fact and pointing out that the media are trying to whip us into a frightened frenzy over what is a natural cycle.

    Restricting CO2 will have no effect on climate change, but will be very destructive of emerging economies, let alone our own.

    I wonder why you are pushing the language
    boundaries here. Looking to get shut down?

    I'm with you on consumerism. I haven't bought a piece of new clothing except for socks and underwear in 30 years. My car is 21 years old and has less than 166K..not miles on it. I've been practicing what you preach for a very long time.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Fine and Dandy...

    First, remember, I am not the one arguing with you. I was hoping that Truman (lost cause) or yourself could pick up on some of the finer points of research where climate change is concerned. Over development, daming of rivers etc. I'm just speaking in general terms. Cutting down Amazon rain forest bad. Burning hydrocarbons bad, using alternatives good. Overfishing.... bad! Farm fishing bad. Using corn for bio fuel bad, feeding people with vegtables good! Solar and wind power good! New socks and underwear good!! New SUV or luxury car bad! Voting Liberal/Conservative bad, voting Green good! Of course now someone will wade in and say the leader of the greens is blah blah blah.... The context is the point here.

    I admire your passion for seeking the truth, that is clearly evident. There is great value in truth for all and peace that is needed in these troubled times. The fact that governments and journalist lie to us must be of grave concern. You may even be greener than me, I've had two vehicles the past 24 years. But never a Ford! Perhaps the issue here is what the public believes. If we can say that they are easily swayed by misinformation from lobbyists then what's the point trying to deny CO2 as part of the problem? We know the real story, but we need to start somewhere. But frankly if I thought there was any hope of truth in journaliism I'd say that that's the place to start, but until the majority can stand on their own two feet and think for them selves it's more of the same, and that bus is headed for the cliff...

    We have more in common than not and enjoy a good debate, don't let the language bother you, it's all tongue in cheek. People quit taking me serious, so I did too. But don't mix that with what I do or say, as those are real concerns and a lifetime of experience. Trouble is brewing out there and all signs point to the detours around it and other diversions to keep us from the path of enlightenment and truth. Those signs are evil and must be stopped so we can salvage parts of this society worthy of saving. Things like art, peaches, sailboats, rum and music. You know the important things... Bon voyage!

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Why we mustn't go along

    "If we can say that they (the public)are easily swayed by misinformation from lobbyists then what's the point trying to deny CO2 as part of the problem?"

    1. it is not "part of the problem" whatever that "problem" is.
    2. we would go down the wrong road to helping to "heal the planet." Real pollution could be ignored.
    3. controlling CO2 emmissions is counterproductive since CO2 isn't doing anything except helping plants to grow.
    4. we will be taxed and squeezed for no good reason.
    5. Global Warming/Climate Change is not just a little white lie, it is a scam.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    I think your overweaning concern

    I think your overweening concern about your number 4 is your real motivation mopled. Truman seems more motivated by anger and something else I can't quite put my finger on.

    You two aren't exactly the warm and fuzzy type and I think this campaign, just like your fevered imaginings about bush and 9/11, are actually all about the two of you.

    So I'll stick with the science (despite its obvious limitations) and a strong sense of understanding that the environment and the climate I know is in deep trouble; in large part because of what selfish people have been saying and doing to scam the other 95% of the world's population for a generation.

    I know you'll be back and I'll try to ignore you as I try to ignore all fanatics.

    Cheerio!

    Although I do have some serious problems with Al Gore...I'm not all that convinced of his bona fides either.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Typical G.West Strawman technique,

    pretending that Mopled, ME2 and I don't recognize that human activity is causing degradation of the biosphere.

    We're saying that C02 doesn't cause global warming, and particularly that anthropogenic contributions are overstated, probably even non-existent-- and that it's important to understand this.

    Alda and Clubofrome are tinkled pink to use C02 as the scapegoat whether it's guilty or not. All that we're saying is if the science isn't correct, identifying C02 as the culprit will result in trillions of dollars that could be used in the prevention of real degradations being tossed into the toilet or find their way into the pockets of the global warming profiteers and carbon brokerage firms.

    As for David Beers' claim that those of us who challenge the global warming orthodoxy are 'deniers,' (a historically-loaded term), well I think it's obvious that such could be used to described those who deny the skepticism of the many prominent scientists who are changing their minds on this issue.

    And who gives a hoot who thinks what comments are 'best.'

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Oh, just as I was offering this

    An absolutly awesome illustration of what we don't know about Polar bears and also a gift.

    http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/audiogallery/soundseen.shtml

    SoundSeen: Audio Slideshow
    Stuart Brown describes Norbert Rosing's striking images of a wild polar bear playing with sled dogs in the wilds of Canada's Hudson Bay.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    CO2 sources

    Help me then....
    Your points 2 & 3, CO2 is not harmful, and we need to control real pollutants...
    Forgive my ignorance and lack of time to for anything but the fast and dirty research. Real pollution IS being ignored. Where does the CO2 come from? Second and last question, are there not other pollutants, real pollutants, released during that process? I'm speaking manmade of course... Are there not other sinister molecules lurking in the refining of hydrocarbons for energy and all it's other industrial applications? Whatever the problem is? We're telling you what the problem is and like the general public you nod your head and go and buy a smart car! Or an energy saving appliance. Well, not you personally maybe, but the swayed masses. As they see the melting glaciers and other FUD campaigns on TV, misinformed by the long arm of the criminally insane! So you'll go to war in Iraq/Iran. So that the elite can continue to steal the wealth from the global community and it's future. Global warming is climate change and is real. Your right, we can't stop it, most of it may be natural but to say that man has not had a hand in our ecological decline is simply untrue. We don't know ecology any more than we do climatology. Suzuki said that 20 years ago. You can't break down a complex ecosystem into the individual parts to understand how it works. We simply don't know. A tree farm is not a forest let alone a diverse part of nature. Who really knows the interaction of out actions including CO2? No one. You'll just have to trust someone sometime mopled and admit it's way bigger than all of us, but we should maybe, just maybe, attempt to err on the side of caution. That was Suzuki as well...

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Truman

    Hit yourself in the head with the cartoon frying pan please. Then repeat after me... clubofrome is not tickled pink to use CO2 as a scapegoat. I've said otherwise with every word possible in the english language. When you stop vibrating across the room from the reverb of the frying pan, try and read the words again. For someone as smart as five smart guys, you sure seem blinded here. I assume you don't really care what side of the scale you're on, but you are inching more to my side if you continue misquoting me. I, on the other hand am proud to be on the side of the scale that says I'm as dumb as ten dumb guys. It's easier over here, admitting your wrong is easy, cause we're dumb there are no expectations! Wanna come to one of our mixers?

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Why err at all, Club. Why not drop the

    CO2-causes-warming crap and concentrate on getting the sulphur dioxide (remember acid rain?) and diesel particles, and other noxious fumes and chemicals, like bisphenol A out of the environment.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Right!

    That's right! Now just ask the scientists, the 1700 that have said CO2 is not the problem to tell us that! No one listens to me anymore, proven in this little exchange.... well you don't, but maybe others will and act! Then one day we can work on the trillions of dollars already being diverted from good causes to the pockets of the elite or as I refer to them "the criminally insane."

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    BECAUSE CO2 is NOT A PROBLEM

    Club, do stop and think.

    Capture the real pollutants from burning coal, petrol, wood, natural gas....whatever.

    Forget CO2.

    Leave it out of consideration BECAUSE

    it is BENEFICIAL.

    CO2 is not a pollutant, otherwise we should all walk around with gas masks on, not to protect us, but to protect the environment.

    Ultimately if this assininity continues we will be taxed for breathing.

  • clubofrome

    4 years ago

    Brilliant!

    Capture the real pollutants from all of our industrial activities! Why didn't I think of that? Right, as you pointed out I didn't stop and think! Damn, I guess that's why I play defence... here let me try that pass up the middle in our own end again, I'm sure it'll work one of these times....Doh!

    I think we're done here.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Just straight nonsense, CoR

    And its all just to prove that you haven't been rushing down the Primrose Path in endorsing whatever BS your deified Gurus think is necessary to convince us plebes to behave in an environmentally correct manner.

    Using "the end justifies the means" argumentation for abandoning scientific rigor is precisely where the reasoning of CO2 advocates has arrived on this thread - along with their liberal use of straw mee,

    So, given the reality of GW and/or environmental degradation, does it then matter whether CO2 loading is the main contributor - directly OR indirectly, just aa long as we DO SOMETHING?

    Without directly naming the syndrome, Mopled has been referring to the LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. Here's an example of good intentions gone wrong:

    Ever since the CO2 issue first arose, enviros have been championing the use of Biofuels. Scientists have consistently pointed out that this is a zero-sum game at best, and enviros have consistently responded with virulent ad-hominum argument, etc.

    Now it turns out that biofuels will likely result in widespread hunger in the third world, and wee see mass destruction of jungles for palm oil plantations.

    But where are the usual rent-a-crowd protesters in this situation? They're palalysed - leaderless - since after all their prior hullaballoo, their gurus would look downright silly crying "Stop !! We were wrong"

    And so it is and will be re CO2 loading.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Ah but ME2

    Mopled's no lawyer! He's a self-admitted conspiracy theorist and so is Truman Green.

    It's not just the message you have to look at, it's the science (or lack thereof) the rigor (or lack thereof) and the motivation of the messengers.

    As much as I dislike george w bush, anyone who spends more than half their time spewing nonsense about 9/11 and the fact that HIV doesn't cause AIDS has a good deal of convincing to do before anyone should pay them much attention.

    Instead, you'll find that what they mostly do is make fun of their interlocutors, call serious scientists corrupt, and imply that anyone who doesn't agree with them is nuts - or bought off.

    It's important to be clear about the message - it's also vital to look at who's carrying the mail. And I want to be clear, this message is for you, ME2, I’ve said my piece to both Truman and mopled.

    As for your observations about the dangers of adopting certain options like ethanol and/or biodiesel as simple replacements for oil - I very much agree with that point of view.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    The Gatekeeper Hangs On

    I guess you figure if Chomsky doesn't see anything wrong, why would you.

    Here is a fun video for you G.West
    I like the part where the lady says" 2 airplanes and three buildings fall."

    I'm no theorist. I just present evidence.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn58fw4pjyY&NR=1

    That is just what I have done here on the AGW/CC scam, present evidence. I'm sorry if it upsets you to have the consensus challenged.

    ME2 has been looking at the science and he changed his mind.

    What can I say, some people's BS detectors are better than others. And some people need to be with the majority to feel secure.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Yep! and my BS detector goes off like crazy

    Every single time I see your handle here at Tyee.

    Funny that!

    Keep on swinging.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    But did you watch the vid?

    Oct 02, 2007
    Totalitarianism vs State Climatologist in Virginia

    By Lubos Motl, The Reference Frame

    The members of the global warming movement have offered us another piece of evidence that their thinking and behavior is not too different from the Nazis and communists. The State Climatologist of Virginia and one of the most esteemed U.S. climate scientists, Prof Patrick Michaels, was effectively stripped of his title.

    Environmentalist activists complained that Michaels’ opinions could be interpreted as the official climatological opinions of the state of Virginia. Well, it was my understanding that this was exactly the very purpose of the chair of the state climatologist. Who else should determine the key answers about the climate in that state?

    But the green scum simply didn’t like Michaels’ conclusions. So they just fired him through a disgraceful governor, Mr Tim Kaine, and replaced him with a Philip “Jerry” Stenger. Let’s now look what scientific credentials were sacrificed in the name of an ideology. Google’s Scholar finds 411 articles with Michael’s name and those that he co-authored have hundreds of citations. Among 9 papers with the name of Stenger, only a few were co-authored by Stenger and all of those have Michaels on the author list, too. Nevertheless, the total citation count of Stenger seems to be 1 citation.

    For purely ideological reasons, the quality of the office of the State Climatologist of Virginia was reduced by nearly three orders of magnitude. As a reader says, sharp scientists are being replaced by party officials. Much like the activists in Germany of the 1930s, these people are plain mad. They never realize that a possible decision could simply be over the edge. They are ready to do absolutely anything and everything for their silly unscientific ideology.

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/patrick-michaels-fired.html

  • G West

    4 years ago

    And I'm a youtube fan as well

    I especially like this one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno

    Enjoy, and keep swinging mopled, I admire your enthusiasm - if little else.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    GWest

    I used the biofuels illustration to show that the pro forma following of leadership can have results far different than originally intended.

    I was not looking for approbation for saying biofuels are the wrong answer, and most particularly not for patronising support from you, designed solely to distract from my main premise which was as you knew aimed at people like yourself.

    Whether or nor TGreen or Mopled are conspiracy theorists is of no interest to me or to the discussion we've been involved in. My interest was in their arguments and the threads they presented, only a few with which I disagreed.

    And if we should be looking for conspiracy theorists, you are one prime example, given the line of FN propaganda you've swallowed hook-line-and-sinker, and refuse to debate regardless of the issue. And of course your excuse is that I'm a "racist", right?

    If you read your last posting carefully, you will find you've used the same insulting and dismissive tactics neocons use against us Lefties to avoid rational discussions which might not be to their advantage.

    So now that you've disposed of the others and I of you, I guess we can all go and play in our own sandboxes, eh? Oh, and don't forget to take your ball with you, too.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    GWest

    Sorry, I forgot to change "ball" in the very last line to rubber ducky

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Thought you'd try sucking up to ME2, eh

    G.West. hee hee ha ho haa hee

    Is this your version of devide and conquer?

    Didn't work, eh. ME2 has the unfortunate ability to think for him/herself.

    Just to be clear about what conspiracies I'm theorizing about lately, here's a list.

    1. 911--no a bunch of Arabs, several of whom are still alive, didn't blow up the world trade center buildings. (Building number 7 wasn't even hit by a plane, so I guess it fell as a kind of sympathetic expression of solidarity with its mates.)

    2. hiv doesn't cause anything except wealth in the pockets of the anti-retroviral makers. Aids in Africa is just more of the same--immune suppression caused by war, starvation and disease. A positive hiv-antibody test means exactly nothing except that the immune system has reacted to one of 70 possible antigens or chemicals in the neighbourhood. 90% of the people who are hiv-positive will never get ill unless they take the protease inhibitors and chain-terminators, like AZT, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

    3. Human papilloma virus doesn't cause cervical cancer. Giving Merck's 'gardasil' to kids is a mistake and waste of money.

    4. Peak Oil's a myth. Dig deep enough and you'll find oil just about anywhere. Regardless, new oil fields are being found all over the place.

    5. There is no such thing as a 'fossil fuel.' Fuel hydrocarbons are not originated from dead critters and plants, but as a result of pressurizing of fluid in the mantle of the earth. See: ABIOTIC OIL.

    6. Carbon dioxide could not possible increase global temperatures.

    7. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

    8. Global warming's a myth.

    I think that probably 99% of the scientific consensus on other issues is correct. These 8, I think, should be revisited.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    ME2

    I'm glad you're not looking for any support, patronizing or otherwise from me - because I'm simply bored by your repetition of old canards long ago dealt with by others far more eloquent than I on the issue we had our first disagreement about.

    Truman's arguments amount to, in the end,
    'Global Warming is a myth hee, hee, hee....' as amply demonstrated above here and mopled is not much better as David Beers noted above yesterday.

    I'd like to see Truman explain what killed the innocent Canadian hemophiliacs who were transfused with HIV infected blood derivatives - but only after he's explained how the death rate from starvation in Africa is going down while the rates of infection and death from HIV/Aids there hasn't.

    But that's another story. The 9/11 stuff is just as laughable as the group of idiots who haven't yet accepted that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy.

    Enjoy your paranoia - you're welcome to it!

    Welcome to the monkeyhouse - I'm leaving - and btw mopled I watched your video - I enjoy Bill Maher too.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Of course, there are no "hiv-infected blood

    derivatives."

    Another G.West invention, just as the other names he goes by: James Burns, ov, Alcibiades, Booker, Sharing is Good, Maestro, Gerhardius, Frank, Flattax etc.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    BORING

    Truman: Perhaps you should bring your phony allegations to David Beers' attention. He knows exactly who I am and that I've only posted, ever, under two names - G West and Alcibiades.

    And I’ve explained far more often than should have been necessary why I did that and for how long. Your continued repetition of such nonsense as what you just posted insults a lot of people and yourself; by all means though, keep it up – it helps immeasurably in making the case for diminishing the residual value of whatever else you write.

    Like I said, I'd like to see you explain what has ruined the lives (ending many of them) of a large group of Canadian hemophiliacs and their families who are now suffering from AIDS and/or Hepatitis C as a result of receiving blood products for their condition.

    I guess that's just their imagination too. I don’t understand how you can be so cavalier with other peoples’ lives and pain – aside from your facile fascination with pretend science and wild theorizing.

    I'm proud of everything I've written here at Tyee and more than willing to stand behind it. Others need to take responsibility for what they write. And that includes you Truman...whether you use your own name or not notwithstanding.

    As for invention - that's your department Truman - you still do provide some pleasant comic relief now and then.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Between '84 and '95, I think it is, 75% of

    hemophiliacs were 'contaminated' by so-called infected factor 8. If hiv was really the cause and not foreign-protein mediated-immunodeficiency, they all would be dead by now--only a tiny percentage of them have died due to immunodeficiency.

    Regarding hepatitis C. Another harmless para virus. Here's the secret: When you get your first hep C diagnosis, change your lifestyle, stop doing drugs and mainly STOP DRINKING ALCOHOL.

    Because it's these that will ruin your liver, not hepatitis C, which is completely harmless.

    Another Hep C joke. Doctors used to say it will make you ill in five years; They've now extended that to probably 30 years.

    The hep C caper is probably only second to the hiv swindle, and third to the human papilloma virus-causes cervical cancer nonsense.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Yep Truman

    I'm gonna post your facile explanation on one of the blogs where these poor people gather to talk about their dead and dying relatives Truman - if I can find one. Just to see what the reaction is.

    You really are a dangerous person and these people already had a pretty sad lifestyle just dealing with hemophilia.

    Have you put out a shingle yet and started to practice medicine? Do you answer the phone when people call you for medical advice?

    Sorry Truman, you're beyond the pale - anyone who spends more than a moment on your pet theories and fevered imaginings is wasting his or her time.

    Poking fun at the ill and dying and pretending all of these problems and illnesses are just a consequence of some bad lifestyle choice is irresponsible.

    Reminds me a lot of a former Chancellor (J.V.Cline) at UBC who drank a tumbler of 2-4D to prove it was harmless…Remember him?

    Good bye.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Google this. "Does the hepatitis C virus

    carrier state really exist?"

    Then study the articles for a few days.

    I tried to tell people back in the 60s that the Viet Nam war was a hoax, too, and that nothing good would ever come out of it, except angst and more slaughter. And when the yanks started bombing Cambodia I tried to warn that it would play into the hands of the Khmer Rouge--which it did resulting in the genocide of 3 million Cambodians.

    The airwaves were packed with G.West types pretending that people who shared my views were idiots.

    Some heavy-duty gatekeeping you're doing there, G.West.

    Millions of people share my doubts about orthodoxy.

    In fact, you're probably the only one in North America who is so confident about Lee Harvey's role in the Kennedy Assination.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    And while you're pretending to

    believe that I'm just a paranoid flake, G.West, don't forget to google this, eh:

    "Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-Made Global Warming."

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Dear Mr. Beers

    I'm a Denier and proud of it.

    So there!

    Whatever Denier means.

    I only deny that the CO2 produced by human activity can produce the climate changes happening now.

    If that is your definition of denial my dear Mr. Beers, so be it.

    Given that the phrase was applied to the people who think the way I do, and even some of those who are willing to allow some effect of the extra 2-3% of the total of .038% of CO2 in the atmosphere from all sources,(yup, that's all the CO2 there is floating around. It amounts to only .038% of the atmosphere. It is a trace gas!) it is obvious to me that Denier is meant to smear by association to THE holocaust, (let there be no others discussed, for ever and ever amen!)

    Given that scientific papers showing other causes of a very complex mechanism like climate change are piling up, the only recourse is to re-enforce the Biggest of Big Lies by spending $100 million a year for the next 3-5 years as the earlier Advertising Age story I posted earlier announces.

    So, again Mr. Beers, I wear the label you have pinned on my position proudly.
    But with Miersheimer having appeared on The Colbert Report, using the phrase might pigeonhole the user.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    You might want to try and explain

    the 'hoax' of the Vietnam war to the 1.5 to 2.0 million people on both sides who died while it was going on Truman.

    You make of yourself what you are and the words 'paranoid flake' are of your choosing, not mine. But anyone who's afraid to answer his telephone in the evening has some kind of a problem my friend.

    You spend your time studying whatever 'theories' you please - just don't expect me to be very impressed when the way you 'defend' them always degenerates into exactly the same kind of personal ad hominem name calling and 'heh, heh heh' nonsense that it has on this thread.

    I'm sure the 250,000 Canadians with Hep C will be happy to know they have nothing to worry about - including the 160,000 who contracted the disease through injected blood products and the 80,000 (roughly 1/3 of them) who will almost certainly experience cirrhosis, cancer and eventual failure.

    When their disease turns out not to be 'nothing' I'll send them your way. Bye Truman, you’re just too ‘dangerous’ for me.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    More G.West 'strawman', pretending

    that I thought the war didn't actually exist or something--who knows what this guy is talking about. He knows perfectly well that I was referring to the similarities between the phony reasons for the invasion of Irag and the phony reasons for the invasion of Vietnam.

    And yes hepatitis C is another pathetic bunch of nonsense. It's a timid little virus that does virtually nothing, and the best treatment for it is to stay away from alcohol. I challenge everyone to go to the many hep C sites on the web and meticulously study the regimes for diagnosis and treatment. If your brain is functioning you'll slowly understand that there's no proof that hepatitis C does anything at all except make one eligible for government funds.

    The PERFECT SCAM. I don't imagine anyone who's in line for big bucks is going to complain: "But I'm not really sick, you guys."

    Despite the billions doled out to 'victims' of the blood 'scandal,' there have never been the kind of studies that would determine the liklihood of hep c infectees ever getting ill. Of course big pharmcorpia and their government-placed stooges never do the proper studies when they would endanger the huge profits developed by their many phony diseases and treatments.

    Here's the test: double-blind, placebo-based clinical trials.

    Which have never been done for hiv infection regarding progression to illness.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Not at all Truman

    No one can have any idea what's on your mind except from the words you write. You called the Vietnam war “a hoax”. Would you care to deny it? As for the idea of 'invasion' - the US was in Vietnam from before the time the French were defeated, propping up the government in the South - it was not a case of invasion. That part of the analogy with Iraq is disingenuous, in my view.

    I have no idea 'what' you mean unless you take the time to explain - and when you do the explication frequently turns out to be unexceptional, pedestrian and mostly wrong.

    Although I share many of your views about the organizing principles of corporate capitalistic structures, that doesn't mean that the whole system and the people who work in it are corrupt stooges. The vast majority of them are dedicated, well-educated and responsible professionals.

    Moreover, for the most part the words you do use are disrespectful, dismissive, arrogant and rude toward anyone who doesn’t ‘buy’ your prejudicial, self-promoting and iconoclastic opinions: Toward those who read you, disagree with you and especially toward those whose personal suffering (and often death) you appear to have no empathy with or for.

  • woody

    4 years ago

    West against the ropes.

    Truman Green, you have him on the ropes, he's attacking your character and not the subject, generally, this is considered an admittance of defeat.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Wowie...Over The Top GW!

    I can certainly sympathize with Truman if he expresses his frustration. It is really hard to stay civil to you when you pull such silly tricks like supposedly taking umbrage at Truman's use of the word hoax. You've pulled that kind of caper too often.
    In the meantime:

    Ignoring a Natural Event to Blame Humans

    By ignoring a natural event scientists
    blame climate changes on human activity
    John McLean
    October 2007
    Introduction
    In the last week of September 2007 we had yet another example of a well-recognized natural climate event being ignored in order to sell the notion that mankind is responsible for global warming. Maybe it was deliberate or maybe just ignorance, but you'd think that capable scientists would look closely at prior research and the data and not just be activists for their latest cause.
    This time it was Power and Smith, from Australia's CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology respectively, who were reporting a weakened Walker Circulation over the last 30 years and a concurrent period of unprecedented El Niño dominance [note 1], both of which they blamed on human activity.

    Last year in May it was Vecchi et al [2] who told us that the same Walker Circulation had weakened by 3.5% since the mid-1800s and there that there was a just 1% probability that this was due to natural events. Vecchi and Soden [3] recently continued their line of argument from 2006 by claiming that an ensemble of 23 climate models confirms that weakening of the Walker Circulation is to be expected under anthropogenic warming.

    These three papers seem to be the product of researchers lost in their computer simulations and putting the virtual reality of computer models ahead of observational reality.

    What they attribute to human activity are natural events that have been well described by other researchers."
    http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Walker_Circ_2.pdf

    Interesting 6 page discussion of things like El Nino/La Nina and the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976. Interesting maps of currents. Since we here on the West Coast are very much subject to these shifts, it behoves us to know about them. Or else very bad people will find excuses for robbing us.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Woody

    He's already admitted that Woody, he's said at least three times on this thread that if we don't play by HIS rules, he's gonna leave.

    So why does he keep coming back ???

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Not for enlightenment ME2

    This thread has all the fascination of a train wreck, that's all.

    I hope your expanded reading, which now apparently includes at least one Ronald Wright title, won't be limited to just that one book of his.

    When you have some time, you should take the opportunity to read his STOLEN CONTINENTS as well.

    As to "my" rules, at least your imagination appears to be operating reasonably well despite your advanced age and you have certainly removed any question that my original impression of you might have been mistaken.

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Who gives a tinker's damn

    Who gives a tinker's damn what you think of them GWest?

    Regardless of who’s right, this discussion has been a learning experience for me. And even if it displeases Mr Beers, it has become a quite long thread, and I suspect is being followed by a lot more people than just the participants. Thus, however much it might assault his notions of political correctness, if I were Mr Beers, I would welcome more readership.

    And so while your last link was interesting, Mopled, and while I don’t dispute the interaction of the Hadley Cells, Walker circulation, ocean currents etc, all combining to create perturbations in Mid-latitude climate, I am still left baffled by the complexity of it all and am harkened back to the observations of the many climatologists so far cited who say not enough is yet known for anyone to make a positive statement about anything – including CO2.

    And so far – at least in my opinion – no-one’s yet delivered a telling blow to my hobby-horse of the Malenkovitch Cycle. Its only real flaw concerns the “tipping point” – whether or not its time-scale is relevant to the current debate. Mopled’s site sent me surfing this afternoon, and here is some food for thought :

    http://media.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398 2005 Failing ocean currents raises fears of mini Ice Age

    http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12494#comForm Aug 2007 "The North Atlantic is stirring fitfully. A new monitoring system has shown that the ocean's currents change rapidly, surging or slowing from one week to the next. …….it may be decades before scientists understand the natural variability of the ocean and identify any effects of human-driven climate change. "We hope to be able to explain all variability eventually," Cunningham told New Scientist.

    http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/ June, 2007 Mythology of Gulf Stream causing Ice Age. This paper argues that it is atmospheric changes (air currents) that bring on Glaciations.

    All of which suggests to me that you can pick your own model and then go looking for the science to support it. Maybe we’ll be arguing with a whole new data set in 3 - 4 years.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Aw!!! ME2

    Then why'd you post this?

    Quote:
    He's already admitted that Woody, he's said at least three times on this thread that if we don't play by HIS rules, he's gonna leave.

    So why does he keep coming back ???

    methinks ME2 doth protest too much.

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    I think CO2 can be ruled out though

    A new paper
    "SUN STILL APPEARS TO BE MAIN FORCING AGENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE"

    Reply to Lockwood and Froehlich - The persistent role of the Sun in climate Forcing

    In a recent paper (ref. [1]) Mike Lockwood and Claus Froehlich have argued that recent trends in solar climate forcing have been in the wrong direction to account for "the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures". These authors accept that "there is considerable evidence for solar influence on Earth's pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century." But they argue that this historical link between the Sun and climate came to an end about 20 years ago. Here we rebut their argument comprehensively. [...]

    By Lockwood and Froehlich's own data, solar magnetic activity is still high compared with 100 years ago. As to when the recent easing of activity began, counts of cosmic-ray muons at low altitudes were historically low when the muon record-keeping ended in the early 1990s (ref. [7]). That implies an increase in relevant solar magnetic activity continuing till that time. A scarcity of muons can be linked to elevated global temperatures by a reduction in low cloud cover (ref. [8]) and low cloudiness was indeed at a minimum around 1992-93. By other solar indicators, like those cited by Lockwood and Froehlich, the minimum muon counts may well be a little higher in the current solar cycles. That would explain the pause in global warming evident in our Table as well as in Lockwood and Fr”hlich's own Fig. 1e.

    That would explain the pause in global warming evident especially in the ocean (Fig. 1) and the troposphere (Fig. 3). The continuing rapid increase in carbon dioxide concentrations during the past 10-15 years has apparently been unable to overrule the flattening of the temperature trend as a result of the Sun settling at a high, but no longer increasing, level of magnetic activity. Contrary to the argument of Lockwood and Froehlich, the Sun still appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change.
    http://www.spacecenter.dk/publications/scientific-report-series/Scient_No._3.pdf/view

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    I missed this until a few minutes ago.

    G.West writes this: (about me)

    "Toward those who read you, disagree with you and especially toward those whose personal suffering (and often death) you appear to have no empathy with or for."

    So now my views on global warming somehow make me a psychopath with no empathy for those who suffer and die.

    Strange that those who know me personally usually conclude that I'm far too concerned with the well-being of others.

    A new, ridiculous low, G.West.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    However, there might just be a low

    which is even lower than the aforementioned, that being Michael Byers' essay for the Liu Institute entitled: "On Thinning Ice," in which Mr. Byers pretends that he's got all the chaotic scientific issues settled, including easily identifying the net effect of bacterial binary fission reproduction supposedly speeding up C02 emissions because of an increase in phytoplankton production.

    You can't miss it. Go here: "On Thinning Ice," by Michael Byers.

    Then go here: "Bad Reporting about the Northwest Passage," in which the author breezily locates 12 vessels which have glided through the Northwest Passage since 1900, strongly suggesting that the recent warming of the Passage is nothing new, and that the endless proclamations of fantastic open seas in the passage are nothing more than pure hype.

    Remember the St. Roche, folks? It went through with a bunch of mounties. It was made of wood.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Your words again Truman

    You wrote:

    Quote:
    And yes hepatitis C is another pathetic bunch of nonsense. It's a timid little virus that does virtually nothing, and the best treatment for it is to stay away from alcohol. I challenge everyone to go to the many hep C sites on the web and meticulously study the regimes for diagnosis and treatment. If your brain is functioning you'll slowly understand that there's no proof that hepatitis C does anything at all except make one eligible for government funds.

    The PERFECT SCAM. I don't imagine anyone who's in line for big bucks is going to complain: "But I'm not really sick, you guys."

    Despite the billions doled out to 'victims' of the blood 'scandal,' there have never been the kind of studies that would determine the liklihood of hep c infectees ever getting ill. Of course big pharmcorpia and their government-placed stooges never do the proper studies when they would endanger the huge profits developed by their many phony diseases and treatments.

    I know some people whose lives and whose families have been ravaged by HIV and Hep C acquired through transfusion.

    You called them scam artists and people with phony diseases.

    I think my description of your attitude as a lack of empathy was rather MILD.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    The St Roch

    On the first passage (the Southern route) the St Roch spent two years - most of time locked in the ice)...

    As for the reasons for the trip - you might be interested they were geo-political and related to the war and the capture of Denmark by the Nazis.

    If you're interested, you can read more about the real reasons behind her voyage here:

    http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic46-1-82.pdf

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    I'll read yours if you read my, G.West.

    Go here: "Bad Reporting About The Northwest Passage." The passage has been thawing out intermittedly for thousands of years. Big media reported the most recent thawing as an entirely unprecedented event.
    It isn't.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Of course, there is a dangerous

    hepatitis virus. It's called hepatitis 'A' or infectious hepatitis. I oughtta know. I contracted it myself from holding an infant who had it. I lost 30 pounds within a couple of weeks; the whites of my eyes went yellow. My doctor diagnosed my problem as malnutrition; I diagnosed it as hepatitis and recommeded he order a blood test. Which he did.

    But hep C--another kettle of fish. A mild little infection, blown completely out of proportion by the intervention of pharmacorpia. Maintain a healthy lifestyle; stay away from alcohol and you won't have a problem.

    Which is exactly what the doctor of a very good friend who has hep C now tells his patients.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    A little justice finally:

    Read all about it. "ALL ACQUITTED IN TAINTED BLOOD SCANDAL."

    The Financial Post's story is as good as any.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    The case was about 'criminal' liability Truman

    I think you need to read a little more closely - the criminal courts acquitted OJ too remember!

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    Thanks for the tip, Truman

    I went looking and found this very good piece with embedded links showing that the Northwest Passage has been passable numerous times in living memory and even numerous times since satellite observance started in 1978.

    http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/bad-reporting-about-northwest-passage.html

    A single mom of my aquaintance was going through menopause and having 2-3 glasses of wine with and before dinner. She'd been alone for 9 years,chaste and had never had a blood transfusion. Her only medication or drug was the wine. For some reason, menopause reduces the liver's ability to deal with alcohol.

    Feeling increasingly rotten, she took herself off to the doctor and was diagnosed with Hep C (for which a causal organism has been assumed, but never isolated, let alone tested using Koch's Postulates.)

    The nurse who informed her of her "fatal" condition told her that if she didn't want Interferon, she should "go home and die."

    She was introduced to Vit C and Milkthistle, stopped all alcohol and finally gave up smoking.

    Ten years later she's just fine.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    Go here to get a smidgeon of

    reality concerning the history of ice fields on planet earth, and why my dismissal of Michael Byers'global warming confidence regarding ice science is more than just gratuitous skepticism.

    http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ice factsheet.pdf

  • mopled

    4 years ago

    This link works

    the link above is incomplete.

    http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ice%20factsheet.pdf

  • ME2

    4 years ago

    Mopled

    Good link, but IMO they mix apples and oranges when trying to find "average" world temperatures.

    The Malenkovich Cycle predicts a (summertime) warm Arctic and a cold Antarctic alternating with a warm Antarctic and a cold Arctic at different times during a 100,000 period.

    Understanding why requires an understanding of Precession, a mechanism it took me quite a while to comprehend, especially since it is complicated by the extents of the other two variables, Axial Tilt and Eccentricity, all on different time scales. (Well, if I had to explain precisely how it all fits together. I couldn't :-))

    One of the papers states that the Earth has been as cold as today, with the Poles iced over, for only 5% of its history. That is consistent with the Continental Drift idea in which the North Pole has been blocked off only very periodically.

  • Truman Green

    4 years ago

    The 'big picture' realization, I think,

    from studying all of these inconclusive and conflicting studies and research papers is that predicting what the climate will be in a hundred years is currently beyond the scope of climate science, and that consensus about the certainty of the effect of C02's ability to absorb rebounding infrared radiation is unwarranted by the current knowledge.

    • The discussion for this story is closed. No more comments can be added.