Yeah sure, Chris

I hear bridges are on sale too - cheap.

interesting quote

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

- "The First Global Revolution" Club of Rome report (1991)

Global warming, is an excuse to implement a global tax to fund a global one world government and control the individual to a point of minimal freedom.

brianwhite

Is that really true? Or is it the usual attempt by an apostle of the climate camp to suggest that anyone that questions man made global warming aka global cooling aka climate change is paid by an oil company?

rangergord - too true. Hope you've got yourself some gold stashed away and have enough land to grow your own potatoes when it hits.

brianwhite

This statement is based on the assumption that CO2 emissions cause global warming. It is a nonsensical logical arguement.

Global warming never happened pre-humans? There was me thinking North America used to be under ice. Must have been those mammoth driving SUVs.

Please put forward arguements that establish a causal relationship between human activity and global warming.

Warmism? Bah

They can't spark.1234. All they can do is throw a welter of confusing and often totally conradictory figures at us. By the time we've found the flaws in them, they've another batch to throw at us.

So I looked at GWest's offering from the Daily Mail's e-zine, which notes with alarm the breaking off from Ellesmere Island a section of 4500 year old ice shelf, the main body of which broke off "in the early 1900's"

"Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s."

So, was there Global Wa..Oops, "Climate Change", 4500 yrs ago?. Geez, I wonder how much Carbon Credits sold for back then? And then, I thought, all this Global Change has begun relatively recently, right? But why should I be alarmed with the ongoing breakup of an ice self which began doing so following the end of the Little Ice Age?

And if what I read in a scientific report that last winter was the coldest on record for the Antarctic is true, then what does that have to do with loss of ice shelf and Global Climate Warming Change?

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever, and we'll also never find out how all these other stats and events the warmists fling about, are related to each other. Why? Because they aren't.

errata

That's 'constant' not contant - sorry!

I almost missed the fun

I am rotfl, as they say, about the heat is there, hiding bit.

Did he mean undersea volcanos heating up the water?..... but that's not CO2, although volcanos do belch alot.

The Argo program has been running 5 years.

We don't live in a Bell jar.

The Hockey Stick still sucks.

Pine beetles wouldn't have been so bad, warming or no, if Gordo hadn't cut funding to Forestry by 30 % when they asked for an increase to clean up beetle infestation before it got out of hand.

Ice shelves are made over water by growing glaciers...when they break off that's called calving. Some do it more frequently than others and it was only a small bit of the total ice on Ellesmere .

Man-made global warming? Worry about the sun by Nigel Calder
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/3425/OPINION-Manmade-global-warming-Worry.4467252.jp?articlepage=1
Excerpt:
"A group of scientists who make fanciful computer models of the climate for the United Nations have allied themselves with politicians in many Western countries, with environmental lobbyists, and with journalists who have forgotten to take official pronouncements with plenty of salt. The science of man-made global warming is settled, they chorus, and there's nothing to discuss except how to avoid the climatic apocalypse.

Future historians will laugh about how climate science went crazy, but meanwhile life is not so funny for my friend Henrik.(Svensmark) For 12 years, I've watched scientists who take the official line bad-mouthing him, starving him of funds and making it hard for him to publish his reports. Other physicists who think that the Sun rules the climate, or merely criticise the man-made warming theory, report similar experiences. They've certainly not had the open discussion of the evidence that scientists are accustomed to expect.

I'm afraid that the issue will now be resolved, not by rational argument, but by unmistakable global cooling, which will be bad news for farmers and everyone else."

Judging from the reaction here, I think the scam has been played out....now we just have to let the politician know that we know.

Hi mopled

Still posting from that old National Post series I see.

I know Svendsmark isn't convinced - that's hardly surprising, but I think the research from the University of Lancaster has pretty much put paid to his theory.

For researcher Terry Sloan (who set out to prove or disprove the Danish theory) the message is simple.

"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right.

"So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions."

Amen

Apolgies

For mis-spelling your avatar's name.

C'mon GWest, you are not giving credit where it is due..

In GWest's world..

TIMOTHY BALL: amateur climate scientist and "denier"
BA (Honours)
MA Geography (Univ of Manitoba)
PhD - Geography (Univ. of London, England)
Professor of Climatology, Univ. of Manitoba, Winnipeg

while

AL GORE: real climate change expert
BA in Government (Harvard)

I am begging to see a pattern here...

Dr Alexander

Please, have a look at the source of Tim Ball's data - he's an expert on the contents of the Hudson's Bay Company archive - that's about all.

I never quote Gore - he's just a politician.

Don't know how long you've been around Tyee, but this is all very old stuff.

Gore the Politician

And a not very successful one at that.

You don't bother to read things, GW

The Nigel Calder piece was from Belfast Today and is dated tomorrow.

Tim Ball's expertise is not to be sneezed at, since the HBC factors recorded weather,ice and other data from observation from all over the Arctic. He has only been allowed to present his case without sophmoric smearing in the right wing press. That is most unfortunate, since ditto heads on the left keep themselves in intellectual ghettos and seldom stray out of them.

You keep trying to dismiss relevant information as old stuff and therefore of no account..

I love this one, it just shows that the Trickster has a sense of humour.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/09/09/another-message-from-kyoto/
September 9, 2008

Another Message from Kyoto (excerpts)

"With interest in Kyoto and Japan, we found information in a recent article in Weather more than interesting; the article was written by Professor Takehiko Mikami of the Department of Geography at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Mikami begins the piece noting that in Japan, there are “several kinds of documentary sources for reconstructing climatic variations in historical times: 1) Cherry-tree-flowering date records since the eleventh century; 2) Lake-freezing date records since the sixteenth century; and 3) Weather diary records since the eighteenth century.” We at World Climate Report love real-world data, and we couldn’t wait to learn about the climate history of places like Kyoto"

"Next we learn that “In Japan, a large number of weather diaries from most parts of the country are preserved in local libraries and museums.” One diary from Tokyo was used to reconstruct summer temperatures from 1721 to near present. Again using statistical procedures, the author produced the reconstruction of summer temperatures shown in Figure 3. Mikami notes “From 1721 to 1790, temperatures are estimated to have been around 1 to 1.5 deg C lower than at present. During this period, July temperatures show large year-to-year variability with the lower values below 22 °C in 1728, 1736, 1738, 1755, 1758, 1783, 1784 and 1786. It should be noted that the temperatures in the 1780s were often extremely low with large inter-annual variations. In the summer of 1783, they experienced an extremely poor rice harvest under the influence of exceedingly cool and wet climate conditions, and this unusual weather brought a historic severe famine in Japan”. Cold sucks!"

You might want to read all of it.

The Japanese researchers even found the Medieval Warm Period that Michael Mann tried so hard to disappear with the Hockey Stick...yet again."

Westie, it is time to dismount the tiger if you are maintain a shred of credibility around here.

I'm sneezing

Dr. Tim Ball, one of the first Canadians to hold a Ph.D. in climatology, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of London (England) using the remarkable records of the Hudson's Bay Company to reconstruct climate change from 1714 - 1952. He has published numerous articles on climate change and its impact on the human condition. Dr. Ball has served on numerous committees at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels on climate, water resources, and environmental issues. He was a professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years. He has written a regular column on weather in the agricultural magazine. Country Guide, for 14 years. He is currently working as an environmental consultant and public speaker based in Victoria and has written, with Dr. Stuart Houston, 18th Century Naturalists on Hudson Bay, a book on the science and climate of the fur trade (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003).

As to comparing the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company for historical data on temperature to the results of ice core assays for climatologically accurate data...well, draw your own conclusions.

Pretty much what one expects from the Fraser Institute.

speaking of 'reading'

Did you read this mopled?
www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721

Deja vu all over again.

The energy we release as heat by burning fossil fuels is miniscule compared to that delivered to the Earth by the Sun.

As I understand it, the Warmists hold that the CO2 released in the burning of fossil fuels etc, creates a "blanket" of CO2 which doesn't allow the Sun's radiation to escape. Other Warmists hold that no, it isn't the CO2, but instead atmospheric water vapor that is reflecting the heat back Earthward.

We've had exhaustive, interminable and basically unresolvable discussions re GW on these TYEE threads, and to date I've seen just as much negative opinion here re the two scenarios above being put forward by credible climate scientists, as I've seen positive reports from equally credible people.

The reason for this is readily understandable, for neither body of opinion rests upon hard empirical evidence, but rather upon notoriously "soft" computer projections, of which it has been said "Garbage in equals garbage out".

For now, I'll withhold my disdain for the sheep who are being lured by the false promises of those who are promoting money-makers for the rich such as carbon taxes and carbon credits, and point out once again that as the evidence unfolds and the knowledge accumulates, all signs seem to indicate that we are seeing the Malenkovich Theory being vindicated.

One indication of this is the hot summers / cold winters which are supposed to occur AT THE POLES during the apogee of the post glacial warming-up period, just prior to the plunge toward another Glaciation.

Maybe we should be pumping MORE CO2 into the atmosphere, eh? :-)

Weather: summer 2008

Global warming: huh, what happened?

http://theyorkshirelad.ca/3sailing/desolation.sound.2008/sailing.desolation.sound.2008.html

Hudson's Bay Company Data

Any credible scientist will tell you that historical data recorded "on the spot" and, at some time in the future, analyzed with the consideration of limitations and biases that may be present in the recording of that data, is no less valid than using a proxy as an estimator of a previous event.

In fact, a proxy must be validated by actual and historical measurement and the scrutinized data provided by the Hudson's Bay Company would be a contribution no less scientifically valid than scrutinized ice core or bristlecone pine data.

Regrettably, these days it has become, or is being portrayed as, a battle of my proxy is better than your proxy. Depending on whether or not you are trying to make money for the Oil Company or for the Carbon Credit Trading Company.

I disagree - and so do most serious scientists

Why anyone would suggest that the temperature measurements of indentured employees of a European fur trading company taken at locations which aren't geographically precise, at times which are totally unreliable, would have any scientific precision or validity is a mystery.

Ball's findings are utter garbage as science (but very interesting as history) and a global warming denialist who expects fractional precision from NASA while accepting fictional and anecdotal estimations from Tim Ball on the basis of the archival records of the Hudson's Bay company had a real problem from the get go. Many of the Factors were practically illiterate – and yet Ball expects their temperature readings to be taken as gospel!

Have a look at their records. I have.

Seriously. I have a 35 year record of daily temperatures from a dead relative recorded at a particular location in the first half of the 20th century along with daily diarized entries of other weather conditions.

Maybe I'll write an academic paper making the case that such anecdotal evidence means something scientific.

Then you'd finally be an expert

snert

Just flagged that comment as personal and offensive.

ALL data is interesting

The temperature measurements taken by indentured employees etc etc etc do have scientific validity when scrutinized and biases and errors are taken into effect. Biases and errors take place no matter if they are in mercury thermometers, Nansen bottles or satellite data. Besides, one can only expect a certain level of precision from a mercury thermometer as compared to the level of precision that is advertised for satellite data. One discusses their (or others) data relative to the conditions the data was acquired in.

Basically, whether it is the data that Ball uses, or the data that Michael Mann uses, it is all useful and it does a disservice to call any data "garbage" unless it can be demonstrated that the data was falsified or analyzed in a biased manner designed to produce an ultimate conclusion to the benefit of the investigators personal bias. This, of course is scientific fraud. To say that the data used and interpreted by Prof. Ball is scientifically "garbage", is tantamount to saying that, in terms of climate research, Prof. Ball is a scientific fraud.

GWest, are you ready to say that?

I understand

Now I understand. Cool weather means hot weather. Cooling is warming. Long term climate study is not what is important.

Scaring people now is.

Regarding snert's "Personal and Offensive" comment

C'mon GWest

Lighten up a little. You got to be able to take it as well as dish it out.

This is the West Coast. This is Vancouver. We all have jobs to go to and things to do. This topic and this thread is not our reason for living. It is something we are interested in and we want to foster the free and unfettered exchange of ideas in friendly way.

It's not like the Earth is coming to an end. Is it? : )

OK Everybody. Have a Great Day, I gotta go to work. Alex

Alex

You really haven't been around here long have you?

There are rules here for commenting - please check the comment code of conduct.

No one is more in favour of free and mostly unfettered expression than I am and if you'd been around here very long you'd know that.

I've been banned for a day from this place for allegedly being 'condescending' - others have been banned permanently for little more and sometimes less - often unilaterally and with no notice.

Those are the rules I'm obliged to play by - I can see no reason why others aren't too.

I have no problem with anything you've said or written, but I'm not prepared to sit still for personal nonsense like the above example.

As you so aptly put it - we're all busy.

In any case, welcome to the fray.

Send me an email if you have any other concerns:

And yes, that's what I'm saying

About Tim Ball.

On climate science, he is a scientific fraud.

@ G West

"G West

Actually, here's a recent article that pretty much debunks the bebunkers - maybe you missed it. - The hockey stick has legs, apparently. - The hockey stick is real - the skeptics, led by amateur climate science 'expert' Tim Ball and his gang, may not be real - their conclusions are certainly unjustified as 'real' science."

G West, you are well behind the times. You should be well aware that the hockey stick was disproven originally by McIntyre and McKitrick, resurrected again, disproven again, re-proposed by Ammann and Wahl, disproven again and finally resubmitted by Mann only a short time ago.

Most of these attempts to foist incorrect science on the world have been documented at CA in detail. An overview is here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/CasparJesusPaper.pdf. This most recent attempt is being pulled apart at CA as we speak, but two days ago Dr Jolliffe weighed into the argument. He is the world authority on the 'decentred’ PCA statistics which Mann used to construct the hockey stick. And he now says that Mann's maths was 'dubious statistics' and that it 'is just plain wrong' to say that he endorses it. Here is the link: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601 .

The hockey stick, as of 8 Sept 2008, is just plain dead. If you disagree, address any comments to Dr Ian Jolliffe.

Relax, truth has surfaced

KEVIN Rudd's global warming guru has finally - and reluctantly - exposed the con. Ignore everything the Government has told you.

The truth, conceded Professor Ross Garnaut last week, is that it really is cheaper for Australians to do nothing about global warming.

And, no, it's not immoral to figure there's no point spending big money to "stop" this warming when it won't make a blind bit of difference.

No wonder the Rudd Government refuses to comment on Garnaut's latest report, released on Friday. Much of the argument for its grand plan to make us slash emissions from 2010 has just been destroyed.

I guess it's just hoping no journalists, most of whom are warming believers, will care to notice what Garnaut has just admitted through gritted teeth. As far as I can tell, only the Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman has drawn the unmistakable conclusions."
continues to
"Why, Garnaut is asking, must we add to our climate woes by cutting our economic throats as well? A good question. And I'd go still further than Garnaut yet dares, even though his own figures say he should: Why try to stop global warming, when doing nothing is cheaper? Indeed, why spend billions to stop a warming that in fact seems to have stopped already?"

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24321608-5000117,00.html

Also from Australia

Climate case built on thin foundation
Excerpts:
"In other words, the supposedly 53 independent voices are in fact one dominant voice with 37 people behind it, two voices each with two people behind them, and perhaps 12 single voices. A closer check reveals that many of those 12 were academic or work colleagues of members of that larger network. One lead author was from the University of Michigan, as were three contributing authors, two of whom were not members of the network. Another lead author was associated with Britain's Hadley Centre, along with eight contributing authors, one of whom was not included in that network of co-authors.

All up, the 53 authors of this chapter came from just 31 establishments and there are worrying indications that certain lead authors were the superiors of contributing authors from the same organisation. The very few viewpoints in this chapter might be alleviated if it drew on a wide range of references, but among the co-authors of 40 per cent of the cited material are at least one chapter author.

Scientists associated with the development and use of climate models dominate the clique of chapter nine authors and by extension the views expressed in that chapter."

"The IPCC has misled us into believing the primary claims were widely endorsed by authors and reviewers but in fact they received little support and came from a narrow self-interested coterie of climate modellers."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24315169-7583,00.html

Faith based science.

As usual the climate change faithful are up-in-arms over the mere suggestion that doomsday may not be coming as ordered.

Any science that "cannot be questioned" is simply not science, it's belief.

I don't understand what the Cult of Climate Change has to fear, even if an ice-age came it would still be blamed on humans and more specifically SUV's.

And "wild weather" is nothing new, read anything from the flood in Noahs Ark to the tornado in Wizard of Oz.

It's time we took environmentalism back from the fanatical extremists and started listening to the real environmentlists who have been put on the back-burner as climate hysteria rages on.

Faith based science

Well nominalis,

It is a good thing the crew of the St. Roche didn't have faith in science but did have faith in local observations when they did the Northwest Passage twice in the early 1940's.

You mean THIS Ian Joliffe?

I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics. Misrepresenting the views of an independent scientist does little for their case either. It gives ammunition to those who wish to discredit climate change research more generally. It is possible that there are good reasons for decentred PCA to be the technique of choice for some types of analyses and that it has some virtues that I have so far failed to grasp, but I remain sceptical.

As Dr Joliffe writes, let's forget the hockey stick, there's lots of other evidence.

OK with you?

Hope you don't mind my bolding what I think is the central issue here.

local observations

Local observations play a huge role in science, but when the data's cherry-picked and massaged to support trend-driven political activism portrayed as science, it's loses it's validity.

Actually, the Hockey Stick was all of it

It was the only evidence and it was and is manufactured by getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

So, what "other evidence" is there aside from the kind of stuff below?

"A complete list of things caused by global warming" with links to 580 articles on everything from acne to yellow fever.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

Here's Andrew Marshall's latest with copious references.
Climate Change: Breaking the "Political Consensus"
The Science of Climate Change: What does it Really Tell Us?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9763

Soo oo oo, let me get this straight

Dr Joliffe is your boy - except when he isn't.

Does that cover it?

And now we're back to the same old, same old.

Did you actually read the pdf and the other materials?

The Real Tim Ball

Seeing how there are allegations that Prof. Tim Ball is a scientific fraud, I thought it wise to check into his background and similarly so for Dr. Michael "hockeystick" Mann.

Timothy Ball:

-dubious climate science
-notoriously poor tipper
-does not shine shoes properly
-orders red wine when white is appropriate
-uses last years poppy on Remembrance Day
-likes watching reruns of "Benny Hill"
-is really and agent for the Illuminati
-his mother wore Army boots

Michael Mann

-impeccable science
-channels Gandhi and Mother Teresa
-properly eats asparagus with fingers
-walks on water
-never sleeps
-can trace his lineage all the way back to Betsy Ross
-did a whole hour long lecture with a painful hangnail
-actually asks for directions when lost
-his mother wears Manolo Blahnik shoes

Who Knew? :-)

What I actually said...

On climate science, he is a scientific fraud.

There is a difference.

Further

Ball's research history

Ball retired from the University of Winnipeg in 1996 and a search of 22,000 academic journals shows that, over the course of his career, Ball has published 4 pieces of original research in a peer-reviewed journal on the subject of climate change Ball has not published any new research in the last 11 years.

I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

I haven't heard what the final outcome of his suit against the Calgary Herald was.

Then do the right thing

If you have evidence to show that Timothy Ball's climate science research is fraudulent then you must contact the relevant journals and inform them of such.

If it is your "opinion" that Timothy Ball's climate science is fraudulent... then, well... you know what people say about opinions.

Already done

Merci

I know this is old news, but

If you're still interested in Tim Ball, this bit by Mitch Anderson from the Straight is probably about the best summary:
http://www.straight.com/article-67107/trust-us-were-the-media

What it says about Canada's major print media is also kind of interesting.

Poor red-herring Dr. Ball

As if the entire case against this evil scam were dependant on how many papers he wrote and published.

Call it a scam...call it a business plan

"Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple."
- Kary Mullis, Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

"'Protecting the Environment' is a ruse. The goal is the political and economic subjugation of most men by the few, under the guise of preserving nature."
- J. H. Robbins

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…The real enemy, then, is humanity itself….Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…”

- The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome

Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring about?
Maurice Strong

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
- Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister

"Ideology on which the Kyoto Protocol is based, is a new form of totalitarian ideology, along with Marxism, Communism and socialism. We had doubts about the Kyoto Protocol, we wanted reasoning from our partners in the European Union, in the IPCC. Formal requests had been sent to these organizations. But we have not received responses yet, which suggests that no coherent answers can be offered. What we hear is ‘it is not comprehensive responses that matter, we will not give them anyway; what is important is whether you believe us or not’.”

“We have received no single argument in favour of this document except political pressure. No link has been established between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. No other objective facts have been presented in recent time. The IPCC's reports in 1990 and 1995 show it clearly.”

“We are close to a consensus that the Kyoto Protocol does huge economic, political, social and ecological damage to the Russian Federation. In addition, it certainly violates the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens, and well as the rights and freedoms of citizens in those countries which signed and ratified it."
- Andrey Illarionov, Economic Adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin

don't forget....

on Friday, UK Environment minister said:

He described green campaigners' views on global warming as "hysterical psuedo-religion," and said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change.

"The tactic used by the 'green gang' is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact,"
Wilson said.

Anyone who thinks there is not a move towards a one world governement/dictatorship needs to go and read a few books about the subject. Global warming is definitely being used to get us there.

Hmm

So does that mean the whole Global Warming thing is a bus driven by the environmental Left to take us into a future that they control?

I assume then that this means Stephen Harper is the only one who sees through this scam and as a courageous defender of freedom we should all vote for him to stop the forces of evil environmentalism?

Let's go shopping!

For gloves, and maybe some thick woolly socks too. Global Warming is going ballistic, according to all the agitated experts and the doomsdayists, and actually that means it's going to be a very cold winter.

How did this end-is-neigh religious fervor take hold so strongly? Why do the believers harangue non believers and proselytize so vociferously? How did this religious sect become so dictatorial? What do we call this sect?

LAST week Environment Minister Sammy WIlson caused anger among some environmentalists by questioning whether global warming was caused by man. The Green Party has already hit back - now NIGEL CALDER, former editor of the New Scientist defends Mr Wilson's position.
There are warnings of gales in Shannon, Rockall, Malin ... .' When shipping forecasts like that occur repeatedly in summertime, you have to wonder if the global cooling feared by the best-informed climate experts has already begun to bite. The UK's rotten summer weather of 2007 and 2008 is a good reason to reopen the debate about global warming, as Northern Ireland's Environment Minister Sammy Wilson proposes.

Unseasonable storms plagued the Spanish Armada too. After the fights in the English Channel, it escaped homeward around Scotland and Ireland. But high winds, in the late summer of 1588, wrecked two dozen ships on the north and west coasts of Ireland. As Queen Elizabeth's Armada medal put it 'God blew and they were scattered'.

Why is that 420-year-old weather bulletin relevant today? Because a worldwide cooling event, the Little Ice Age, was just then becoming serious. A local symptom was summer storms tracking across the British Isles, rather than passing to the north as in warmer medieval times. The gloomy and wet weather brought misery to farmers, and between 1550 and 1600 the price of wheat in England went up by 200 per cent. With occasional intermissions, and a maximum chill around 1700, the Little Ice Age continued until about 1850.

A lazy sun explains it. The solar magnetic shield was weak, and the Earth suffered a larger influx of swift atomic particles coming from exploded stars.

http://www.icecap.us/

Oh happy day

I for one think its great that there hasn't been any change in the weather at the poles. No more worries about polar bears.

In the last few years the earth suddenly decided the Northwest Passage should be ice-free and behold, it is.

Excellent, now we can get at those raw energy products easier.

Perhaps

Given the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said recently that the UK economy is in its worst shape in at least 60 years, I'd suggest the Brown Government has other things to worry about than Mr Wilson's ravings.

Sounds a lot like, who was it, the former Prime Minister of Australia... a certain Mr Howard ...before he suddenly discovered global warming and lost the election....

So, now that we have consensus, I expect all you climate change deniers will have been contacting Gordon Campbell and telling him to listen to his brother and scrap that nasty Campbell tax....

Can we look forward to that?

Or would Barack Obama's observations about lipstick on a pig be more appropriate?

I've read a lot of history

But that's the first time anyone's suggested that a better weather forcast would have reversed the awful fate of the Spanish Armada.

Somehow I was distracted, apparently by some or all of the following — the execution of Mary, the attack on Cadiz ("singeing the beard"), the capture of Sluys, the battle of Coutras, astrological predictions for 1588 (when all they had to do was check for the weather report), the day of the barricades, preparating the fleets, tactical running battles up the Channel, the fireships at Calais, the change in the wind which saved the Armada off Zeeland (forgot about that one apparently - did the Spanish mint a medal too?), Elizabeth at Tilbury, the battered ships limping home, the assassination of Henry Guise. The roles played by Elizabeth I, Philip II, Henry III, Sixtus V, Henry of Navarre, Parma, Drake, Mendoza, William Allen, Henry Guise, and Medina Sidonia. Henry of Navarre's failure to follow up after Coutras, Drake's eye for a bit of loot and a well-turned ankle, Elizabeth's insistence on keeping the English fleet in port during the winter of 1587/88, or Medina Sidonia's reluctance to take command of the Armada.

God. The time I could have saved.

sorry for the errors

Don't often get a softball like that - I posted without checking my spelling and grammar.

Sunny logic

So if the Sun was hotter before and now its cooled giving us a somewhat less than hot past summer, how is it that the same Sun melted the Northwest Passage?

After all, if the Sun was hotter before wouldn't it have melted the Passage 20 years ago?

Also, as a follow up to an earlier query, if the "alarmists" are using the threat of global warming as a backdoor to global domination what prevents the current powers that be from just shooting them when they walk in the front doors of the powerful and say they run the place?

Because somehow I don't see Harper telling Lizzie May that the IPCC called and he now has to relinquish power to her.

The really really BIG conspiracy

Perhaps the anti-"global warming" people are all Canadian farmers and real estate developers?

Sound even more far-fetched than enviros taking over the planet?

Well according to this non-peer-reviewed article apparently these are people who would benefit most from global warming eh?

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060702-2.htm

So maybe they don't want it to stop so they tell everyone there is no such thing and yet with each passing year their plans come closer to fruition. Longer growing seasons, cheaper shipping and beachfront property on the massive Hudsons Bay coastline!!

More delicious globalist bits

'The 1991 statement by the Club of Rome -- which gave us Limits to Growth in 1972 and, subsequently, Mankind at the Turning Point in 1974. In their 1991 publication The First Global Revolution by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider, we find this illuminating statement:

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill . . . . All these dangers are caused by human intervention. . . . The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

By adopting this unifying strategy, the Club of Rome puts readers on notice that several “global environmental crises” actually provide a basis for World/Global Governance which will entail the dissolution of independent nations and a supra-national realignment of power.

An editorial in The Economist completes our brief inventory of the Green Political Agenda, for it confirms the Club of Rome view that “the real enemy, then, is humanity itself.” Its author boldly states:

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing. . . . This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.”

http://www.sovereignty.net/floy/ethical_issues.htm

The left wing of the NWO takes care of "sustainability" issues and the right was given The War On/Of Terror. Harper increased military spending to support Bush's wars. There just isn't ANYBODY to vote for. I'm voting CAP as a protest.

And since this is the 10th of September, in honor of tomorrow I leave you this.

ZERO : An Investigation Into 9/11 - PART 1-10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YqET96OO0&feature=related

Italian film-maker Giulietto Chiesa, who was in Berlin for a screening of his documentary which questions the official US version of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has called for an international tribunal to probe events.

Chiesa was in Berlin at the weekend for a screening of his film which features, among others, novelist Gore Vidal and playwright Dario Fo as well as retired American professor of philosophy David Ray Griffin who advances evidence that contradict mainstream accounts of events of 11 September, 2001.

Federal Aviation Administration controllers, US Air Force pilots, military commanders and physicists also appear in the critical documentary, which the director hopes will create "political awareness" of the "faulty" official investigation into the events by the 9/11 Commission.

"Some of the individuals appearing in the film are former FBI and CIA agents, people who have in a sense taken a very big risk in speaking out. I am very grateful to them because they have done a big job," said Chiesa."

So Frank

Whacko conspiracy theories on all sides aside just what do you suggest we as Canadians should do? All 30+ million of us who if we all disappeared tomorrow would not cool down this pressure cooker one millionth of a degree if it, the pressure cooker, exists at all.

Name-calling doesn't alter the facts

Hi Chris,

Your article lacks charm for the great number of ad hominem remarks against those who find your arguments unconvincing, and you address little of substance.

One thing you say:

"Put simply: the planet may be colder for the moment here, but it is certain to be warmer somewhere else. Short-sighted climate ostriches have reported that according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, global average temperatures dipped between 1998 and 2005."

First, the NCDC makes temperature reports. There is not an ostrich in sight. You cannot blame a person for talking about them.

Second, you draw attention to the variability of temperature across the globe, but forget that the average temperature takes that variability into account—that's why it's called average. You cannot claim that a warmer region will offset a colder average you don't like, since no such unincluded region exists.

Third, global average temperatures stepped up a little in 2001 but were mostly fairly flat from 1998 to 2005. The claim of "dipping" seems wrong. A reference to the actual NCDC report would help in evaluating what you say.

Certainly, the UAH figures at http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe.html show a substantial drop from 2007 to August 2008. That is a fact, it's just later than you say.

Your discussion of thermal ocean layers is more interesting. There's a great deal we don't know about the oceans and heat transport, that's for sure!

You say: "But the heat is still building up. It may be trapped … in … submerged layers of the sea. But it is not gone."

This sounds feasible, but if the heat is trapped, it is most certainly not building up, for how would the new heat get through the trap? And it is most certainly warming its new surroundings, dissipating as it does so. So it cannot re-emerge in years to come just as hot and raring to go, as it were.

Perhaps your New Scientist reference is illuminating—I'll never know, since I have no subscription. It's not helpful to give unreachable references, you know.

How can an ecological overdraft (whatever scary thing that might be) run flat-out towards a precipice? And wouldn't that be a good thing, if it self-destructed?

Finally, the current global temperature decline stands a much better chance of refuting the AGW theory than the Indian (or any other) storms have of proving it. You cannot use local phenomena for that purpose—you must use global averages or principles.

Cheers,
Richard Treadgold,
Convenor,
Climate Conversation Group.

snert

I suggest we continue to study "global warming/climate change" and in the meantime clean up the real environment.

That doesn't mean making low-income people pay more in gas taxes, it means actually spending money to clean up land, air and rivers, protect habitat, stop over-fishing around the globe and prevent toxins getting into the environment.

Destructive practices like the tar-sands would also have to stop because whether you believe in global warming or not the tar-sands are a negative force as far as the real environment is concerned. It looks like a mess because it is a mess.

Another change that will have to occur someday is the idea we can keep growing forever. We can't unless we find a bigger planet to live on.

We need cleaner energy, a reduction in our societal waste, more buying local and less globalization.

As far as global warming goes, well, while we're fixing all the other environmental problems evidence will continue to come in and the argument over CO2 will be settled one way or the other eventually.

That doesn't work for me

"Just leave it alone and it will go away" won't work with a scam that is taxing us on energy use.

Yes, let's clean up our act on all the other things, but if we allow this nonsense to continue it will escalate. That is not conjecture since the tax on gas, home heating fuel, propane and natural gas is slated to escalate to 7%.

The evidence already is in...but those who try to expose it are called names like Denier and accused of working for or having sold out to oil companies.

It will be hard to reverse that mythology and it will be very difficult for most people to accept that certain trusted media figures have betrayed the public interest.

It is certainly going to be hard to pull the politicians back from the trough, but we had better start sooner rather than later.

snert

"Whacko conspiracy theories on all sides aside just what do you suggest we as Canadians should do?"

Just because you haven't read about a subject does not a conspiracy make.

I concur with mopled. The 'environ-mentalist' movement has been easily co-opted through MONEY (grants from Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford Foundations etc...). Whether they know that they have been co-opted or not for a larger purpose - we can only hazard an educated guess. Their agendas have been either promoted or suppressed through grants or nothing respectively.

Enough already?

So now that they are finding their Global Warming scenario scientifically indefensible, the Warmists are shifting to a sleazy, deliberately misleading platform of "Climate Change". They can't be challenged on this one of course, since the World's climates have long experienced both large and small climate shifts over varying time periods.

Now conveniently ignored is the still unresolved scientific debate over whether or not it is anthropogenic CO2 driving "Global Warming", since the shouting down of naysayers seems to be working and the carbon taxes are a sure thing. That is very convenient, since they've yet to produce any hard data as to how CO2 warming occurs. Lots of theory, lots of computer projections, but no hard data, just lots of scaremongering "What ifs".

And so we wind up being diverted into fruitlessly debating the merits of experts who specialise in fields we know virtually nothing about, with all the aplomb of children shouting "Nyah nyah, my old man can beat up your old man".

Someone made reference above to the IQ of such people, but IMO, intelligence has nothing to do with it. All that is required is convincing enough people to get hooked on an ideology or religion, who will then unquestioningly follow its Gurus.

It's the same old scam which in its endless variations our elites have laid on us over the millennia.

mopled-spark1234-ME2

First, "global-warming" is not indefensible as any idiot can look at the Arctic and can see for themselves the huge changes there.

Unless those who don't believe can explain how that happened at a time (when you yourselves say the world is not warming because the sun isn't as hot) when its "not supposed to", you're not going to convince anyone global warming is a hoax.

Anyone remember 1st year philosophy and the old argument put forward by a Greek whose name I don't recall that "proves" we don't exist?

That's how I see this debate over the science of global warming. It doesn't matter how often the science of global warming is attacked when I can see with my own eyes the changes. Unless someone can prove the Northwest Passage hasn't really melted the argument that global warming isn't happening is in the same drawer as the one about angels dancing on the head of a pin.

As for carbon taxes, don't fight them on the basis that there's no problem, fight them on the actual facts, that they're nothing more than an increase to the gas tax, and that they hit the poor harder than the rich, and that they're not going to fix anything anyway.

The 'Bible' weighs in

By DAVID TIRRELL-WYSOCKI, Associated Press

Last update: September 10, 2008 - 10:56 AM

DUBLIN, N.H. -- The Old Farmer's Almanac is going further out on a limb than usual this year, not only forecasting a cooler winter, but looking ahead decades to suggest we are in for global cooling, not warming.

Based on the same time-honored, complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac hit the newsstands Tuesday saying a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate point to a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.

"We at the Almanac are among those who believe that sunspot cycles and their effects on oceans correlate with climate changes," writes meteorologist and climatologist Joseph D'Aleo. "Studying these and other factor suggests that cold, not warm, climate may be our future."

realisticman

So explain the arctic? I'll quote you as my reply :

Glad to hear that according to you and the Almanac the Arctic is melting because the world is cooling. That makes a lot of sense.

Politics instead of Science

I find it sad that the science seems to have been lost on this issue. There is no doubt that humans are emitting millions of tons of C02. The dirty little secret of the IPCC is that although C02 is indeed a greenhouse gas, it is a very poor greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gasses are greenhouse gasses because they interact with infared radiation from coming the earths surface. C02 is a symetrical molecule, it resonates with infared radiation at approximately 1, 10 and 14 microns. The interaction is very weak, This contrasts with H20 which has strong interactions over most of the infared spectrum, some of which overlaps with C02. H20 makes up about 95 percent of the greenhouse gas effect. The ppm thing behind the C02 stands for parts per million. During the Carboniferous Period around 300 million years ago the C02 levels were estimated at about 1.5 percent. The math just dosen't add up.

About 50 million years ago C4 plants evolved during a period of low C02 levels, C4 plants evolved using slightly different pathways, in the Krebs cycle, independently in about 12 separate evolutionary events. C02 plants are more inefficient than C3 plants in photosynthesis but they fix carbon in a low C02 environment. We are still living in a period of low C02 levels, compared to the past.

Frank

So you agree with lower consumption taxes, as the Conservatives did with the GST, Frank?

Frank

We're not expanding, somebody else is.

As to as your other suggestions, noble goals all. You might want to add 'don't panic' to the list.

realisticman

I was against the GST when it was invented by the Conservatives, I was against it when the Libs reneged on getting rid of it and I'm still against its existence in spite of it being lowered by the same party that invented it.

You?

Frank

What I was saying Frank was that the article by Chris Wood is so convoluted that one has to stand on one's own head to understand the theory. The bi-polar reference is because he seems to be standing in the pouring rain insisting that there's a drought.

snert

Actually, I do feel a sense of "panic", not about global warming but about the amount of over-fishing in the oceans, the amount of garbage and toxins being dumped into the oceans and the loss of wildlife habitat on land. Lakes in Africa drying up, increases in the size of deserts, species becoming extinct.

All of that does indeed produce in me a sense of panic. I just don't feel the same way about CO2 levels. So as a result I feel far apart from the enviros who spend all their time demanding carbon taxes as if that 2 cents a litre will save tigers and salmon.

spark.1234 I think you give them too much credit

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080906.COVER06/TPStory/?query=suzuki

http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ic

http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ice_Can/Arctic/NCW_MINBARGRAPH.gif

... so Frank, if you're so ademant that the Ice is melting because of us, rather than other means which is has done for millenia before we arrived, why the increase in ice from 1998 to 2005. Did the world ratify the Kyoto protocol without my knowledge and cut total CO2 emissions by oh 0.1% or so when volcanoes and the pine beetle are involved

spark.1234

Your graph says there's less ice now. Which coincides with what we see in the photographs.

Are you saying the arctic ice is getting thicker?

Because I don't think anyone will believe that.

Northwest Passage

In the entire time since Euros arrived in North America the Northwest Passage has not been ice-free. Yet, the trend is definitily toward that being the case.

Why?

Quote:Your graph says

Are you saying the arctic ice is getting thicker?

Because I don't think anyone will believe that.

Read my message again Frank. It is not my contention that the ice is getting thicker. I am asking you to provide a causal relationship between man made CO2 emissions (which account for a miniscule percentage of CO2 output from the earth incidentally) and the ice melting. You have put forward a circumstatial arguement: the ice is melting, we are outputting CO2, therefore the ice is melting because of our CO2. My point is, amonst a few others I can pick in this logic, if humans constantly output CO2 at an increasing rate between 1998 and 2004, and CO2 causes the ice to melt, why did the ice volume increase for 6 long years?!

The FARMER'S ALMANAC

You've got to be kidding!

Getting back to that article from the Straight, wonder what kinds of conversations go on between the two Campbell boys now that the CEO premier's Campbell Tax has turned into such a turkey?

Vancouver Sun business columnist Michael Campbell (B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s brother) regularly holds forth on climate change. Last year, he scolded the scientific community for its slapdash work: “I see little evidence that proponents of man-made global warming know how damaging the shoddy science behind some of their claims has been to their cause. They don’t seem to understand that for many of us, global warming is not an article of faith, but rather of science. And when the science is faulty, it damages the credibility of their cause.”

We can only assume that Campbell is referring to those dullards at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its 2001 assessment report stated: “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”

Maybe that rube goldberg tax, you know the one the regulations to which I've heard Carole Taylor hadn't even read before she signed them, really wasn't meant to do anything except burnish brother Gordon's image after all.

Quelle Surprise!

spark.1234

I have no idea.

But since its your chart and you are putting it forward as an argument that we have no effect on the environment, why don't you tell me why there's less ice now than last year, 2 years ago, 3 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 100 years ago and 500 years ago?

And since your claim that ice "increased for 6 long years" even though there was less ice in that period than a decade earlier, but you're doing so based on one particular year (1998), explain why you're hinging your argument on that 1 year, 1998, and why was there so little ice that year?

I believe earlier you put forward the idea of lots of sun spots in 1998?

If so, you've already explained why there was so little ice in 1998 and why ice began to form again afterwards. But that doesn't explain why the ice has been lessening now at a time when you claim we're cooling.

Frank

Why is the Arctic ice melting, you say.

There doesn't seem to be a consensus. Although a lack of sun-spots may cause less northern storms which could reduce sunlight radiation from increased cloud cover. The only other possibilities, which haven't been substantiated, are warmer ocean currents, less salinity or convectional heat from warmer air flows.

Also, there seems to be a correlation between years of enhanced solar activity (heightened sunspot numbers) and the severity of weather systems in the northern hemisphere. No one really understands what the connection is.

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2105.html

--------

Funny to see Garth defending Global Warming by criticizing Michael Campbell. As they say, all politics is local.

Correction! Let's try this again;

Although, a lack of sun-spots may cause less northern storms which would reduce cloud cover and increase sunlight radiation.

Actually, the point was

Since you seem to have missed it - that the Campbell brothers seem to have a bit of a credibility problem AND/OR, that the Campbell Tax is exactly what I've been saying it is - a money-laundering scheme that has no practical effect on C02 while making normal life harder and more expensive for the BC Citizens the CEO premier neither cares about or understands.

Maybe you didn't read the whole article - the link is above here if you're interested...LOL

Frank, it has happened before

In fact Arctic warming happens every 60-85 years.

Novermber 1922 - Arctic warmth, vanishing seals, melting icebergs
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/2008/03/novermber-1922-arctic-warmth-vanishing.html

What Does Arctic Climate Tell Us?
http://www.russia-ic.com/education_science/science/breakthrough/597/

CLIMATE CHANGE:
Atlantic Climate Pacemaker for Millennia Past, Decades Hence?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/41

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L17706, doi:10.1029/2006GL026242, 2006

Climate impacts of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
Abstract

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a near-global scale mode of observed multidecadal climate variability with alternating warm and cool phases over large parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Many prominent examples of regional multidecadal climate variability have been related to the AMO, such as North Eastern Brazilian and African Sahel rainfall, Atlantic hurricanes and North American and European summer climate. The relative shortness of the instrumental climate record, however, limits confidence in these observationally derived relationships. Here, we seek evidence of these links in the 1400 year control simulation of the HadCM3 climate model, which produces a realistic long-lived AMO as part of its internal climate variability. By permitting the analysis of more AMO cycles than are present in observations, we find that the model confirms the association of the AMO with almost all of the above phenomena. This has implications for the predictability of regional climate.

Received 8 March 2006; accepted 27 June 2006; published 2 September 2006.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026242.shtml

NAO Images
http://www.secam.ex.ac.uk/index.php?nav=752
Exeter Climate Systems » Climate Analysis » North Atlantic Oscillation

Another source of Arctic heat:
Feature: "Baked Alaska" Mud Volcano Discovered in North Atlantic

"Researchers on a cruise have confirmed that a hot mud volcano on the sea floor between Greenland and Norway is oozing mud, seeping gas and spewing a gas-laden plume of warm water into the North Atlantic."
"The flow of heat rising within the volcano (up to one or more watts per square meter) is one of the highest measured in the ocean, apart from the boundaries of tectonic plates or "hot spots" such as Hawaii."
February 26, 1997
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102778

There is more evidence for the warming being part of a cycle, but this should give you an idea of the multiplicity of factors involved in Arctic warming, and it has little to do with CO2.
There are numerous papers showing that rising CO2 levels follow warming. It is an effect of warming, not its cause.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html

Quote:First,

why did the ice volume increase for 6 long years?!

I have no idea.

You might want to re-evaluate your reasoning methodology Frank. I would argue that if you're going to be taxed on the air that you breath out of your mouth, restricted in how many children you can have because of their 'carbon footprint', given a carbon credit card which you can choose to spend on either travel abroad, or food - then you might want to question why the ice grew back for 6 years despite growth and unrelenting CO2 emissions.

First, it's a government Canada chart, not mine. Second, I am not contending that we have no effect on the environment. Why so many people cannot differentiate between harmful pollutants causing respratory and genetic disorder, and CO2 emissions causing global warming is a testament to the lack of logic in this society. You are still forwarding a circumstantial arguement. If we were alive, you could equally have asked me then why all the ice in Greenland was melting and how people were managing to farm there. Was it because humans were emitting CO2 - of course not - there was not enough corporate controlled mainstream media back then to brainwash most people to thinking that it was.

p.s. you owe it to yourself to research 'the club of rome' and 'council on foreign relations'. These think tanks have more effect on public opinion than you could ever imagine.

spark.1234

The ice grew? Again, it didn't unless you want to say 1998 is your base year.

If you were going to take averages you would say the last 10 years has seen less ice than the 10 years before that.

You're ignoring the question so I'll ask it again, why was the ice cover in 1998 low? You think its an important year obviously since your entire argument is based on it. So why is it important?

As for carbon taxes, I don't support them.

So are you. Its based on the circumstances of 1998.

We ARE alive and I didn't know there was farming in Greenland. I assume you mean at some point in the distant past, say 1000 years ago?

Or perhaps the view that the Chinese fleet sailed around Greenland in the 1420's?

To return to my earlier point, you're simply cherry-picking a conspiracy. Why not pick mine where the farmers and developers, who have more power in Canada than the Club of Rome, are running a conspiracy telling us global warming isn't happening because they'll profit from it?

mopled

I don't doubt there is a cycle that warms the arctic over long periods of time. The thing is, looking at spark.1234's chart, the warming seems to have occurred very suddenly.

Also, I don't want to play the links game with you but in this article from the NY Times which I happened to read yesterday (I didn't go googling it today) it mentions the following

Some scientists who have long doubted that a human influence could be clearly discerned in the Arctic’s changing climate now agree that the trend is hard to ascribe to anything else.

Whole article here

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html

PS. I have your 9-1-1 video bookmarked and will watch when I have time

realisticman

So why do you support the Campbell carbon tax?

Why not simply agree we need to keep studying the issue but instead hold the gov't accountable on all the other anti-environmental policies in place?

of course you can view the

of course you can view the results in a different light by varying averages. And yes, I took 1998 as the base to illustrate a point - if CO2 was the be all an end all of global warming ake global cooling aka climate change, for what reason would we get a 6 year respite?

In your same logic, I could look at another 'cherry picked' aspect of the world to base my view of man made global warming on. It's called antartica and the temperatures have been falling there for decades and the ice cover is expanding. I wonder what the ratio of arctic to antartica news/scare stories are? If the ratio were reversed, would the artic still be your mental basis for satistfying yourself that man made global warming exists?

Frank

.... used by so many Gorists...

"The last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned. Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said"

no humans = slow gradual cimate change? Doesn't look like it.

spark.1234

Perhaps the reason I'm more interested in the arctic is because being Canadian I see and hear a lot more about it. As for Antartica I've heard, true or not, that warming has occurred there producing more moisture and thus more ice. I don't know if that's true but the point is, Antartica simply isn't on my radar whereas the Northwest Passage and Hudson's Bay are. In fact I plan on visiting the area next summer.

Again, I don't know why. But did you not put forward the view that the 90's were warmer? So wouldn't that explain the respite?

As for 1998, I don't think it should be the base year since it looks out of place with the years after it and before it. Why not simply write it off as a weird year?

spark.1234

I had never heard that before. I had always been under the impression ice ages and warming trends were gradual and didn't occur in one single year. Is that view the concensus?

have a quick read of this if

have a quick read of this if you have time:

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html

I'm no climate scientist, but I've found lots of references to warming and cooling happening very rapidly in history. I don't know how indicative this article is of the concensus view, but it's from the Environmental sciences division of the US department of energy so it can't be too quacky. Google some other sources yourself, I'd be interested to know if you find the same.

excerpt:

Quote:As for Antartica I've

That would be a great theory if it was happening at the North Pole too.

North pole versus south pole

Well, one can expect some differences since one is an ocean covered with ice and the other is a land mass covered with ice. It would be kinda weird if they reacted exactly
the same.

So what you believe is that the 1990-2008 period just happens to be one of those times in history where there is suddenly a change in climate? And that it has nothing to do with us and we should simply ignore it and go on as always?

what I believe is pretty

what I believe is pretty irrelevant because I'm not a climate scientist. I've done enough research to know that there is not a concensus between climate scientists though and enough research on the global elites to know that they have either manufactured consensus on the subject or are using it to forward their own objectives.

I know that I want to have as many kids as I choose, not be taxed on the air that I breath out and not be micro-managed by the government on the basis of some obviously contentious scientific theory.

I believe nothing that has been put forward by man made global warming aka gloobal cooling aka climate change advocates in this forum has been particularly persuasive in a causal rather than circumstantial aspect, just as my comments have probably done the same to their beliefs. I believe that since climate has changed in the past, at a rate that is equivalent or faster than we are seeing today, it is entirely feasible that CO2 is not to blame. And if it is, I believe that if all man died tomorrow, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to CO2 emissions. I also believe the sunspot activity has a far higher contribution to global temperatures than CO2 ever could.

OK, Frank

You dismiss my peer-reviewed evidence and then recommend a Revkin, NYTs opinion piece from last year and then I remember you said you know nothing about science.

So, let's talk you through this.

June 25, 2008 (our November equivalent)
ANTARCTIC SEA ICE AT RECORD LEVELS
http://adognamedkyoto.blogspot.com/2008/06/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-levels.html

Since the Arctic was warming and the Antarctic is steady to colder, do you understand that the planet isn't burning up?

Can you understand that the actions of a trace gas at 385ppm just couldn't accomplish such different outcomes between North and South due to atmospheric influence?

If you can't see that, then you really must examine the basis for your continual support for the concept of "Man-made Global Warming" now morphed to "Climate Change".

Is it because you are a party loyalist and the Greens, NDP and Liberals are all in support of our "guilt" and liability for costs?

Examine your beliefs and loyalties, because
I think that is what is holding you back from recognition of reality.

spark.1234

Well I'm not a climate scientist either as mopled has often reminded me.

So its fair to say you agree we should keep studying the issue but right now we have other environmental concerns that are being ignored?

On a related note, do you support or oppose tar sands development?

Quote:So its fair to say you

Absolutely - I'd be happier if equal funding were given to scientists studying solar behaviour and its consequences, but that's probably not going to happen. Environmentally, I'm way more concerned with Genetically modified foods, pesticides, codex alimentarius, Bush relaxing countless environmental laws for big business, sodium flouride and chlorine in the water supply, forced vaccinations, restriction of alternative health products and the carinogenic effects of exposure to all sources of radiation.

-tough call. I like driving my car, so I cannot complain, but I can be abhorred at the treatment of the indigenous people there and the suppression of alternative fuel sources by the global elites.

spark.1234

To me it doesn't really matter if you don't believe the global warming scenario as long as you believe that we have severe environmental problems that have to be fixed.

I tend to believe the global warming bit not because I have any scientific ability to check all that data myself but simply because I trust what I hear about a consensus having been reached. I don't expect you or anyone else to believe in that consensus just because I do. I would note however even the Pentagon believes in it and has made it part of their planning for the coming decades. Again, you may have your own reasons for disagreeing and that's fine.

As for the tar sands, the mess and the thirst for water it entails make it a terrible idea in my books regardless of the CO2 arguments.

Quote:To me it doesn't

I don't agree with you there Frank. Different problems call for different solutions. If the problem is CO2 forced global warming, the solution is apparently tax the hell out of the average Joe whilst leaving the major culprits - volcanoes, the ocean and big business to do what they like. Alternative environmental problems call for, god forbid, the people to question their own governments actions. The key to global warming is that humanity/citizens are themselves viewed as the wrong-doers. The other environmental problems are a direct effect of government policies. See how global warming deflects a nice huge chunk of dissent from the government and puts it back on the people. I repeat the quote from Club of Rome (the marketers that tell the marketers what to think):

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

How dare Canada and the US allow genetically modified food to enter our food chain with no markings on the packaging and with no FDA testing for effects on humans. Fortunately a few scientists did testing on rats and mice, and guess what - they all died or got cancer - countless books on the subject if you're interested. Who's fault is GMO? Government.

Forced vaccinations: lobbying by the pharma companies to obtain mandated profits. Proven to cause and trigger many health defect. Who's fault? Government.

Sodium flouride in the water: Used by the Nazi's to pacify Jew in the caps. It is listed as a poison, causes an IQ reduction of up to 20 in one study, and actually causes flourosis of the teeth (which it is supposed to help!). Who's fault? Government.

Global warming, which most environmentalists spend their time worrying about. Who's fault? Us.

spark.1234

But that is what I mean. Let's say you campaign against any action to do with global warming but campaign for any action that cleans up other environmental problems. I'm saying that's fine with me even though I will support policies that really do deal with emissions (the carbon tax doesn't).

In other words, if we agree on 50% of the problems and we get those 50% fixed and yet disagree on the rest the way I see it at least the first 50% got fixed.

I'm not an "all or nothing" guy on this.

An interesting point

That I've observed about many global warming/climate change skeptics is that their enthusiasm for denial seems to correlate positively with a lack of enthusiasm for:
1) any real change in their own lifestyles - cars, kids, houses, grub etc., and;
2) an even more pronounced antipathy for any tax increases that addressing the problem might entail.

I've often thought that, were it only a question of lip-service to the idea that climate change might be happening (and we could do bugger all about it) that everyone would just happily whistle their way to the graveyard with a smile on their lips and a bottle in their hand.

In a way, like most hard choices - few folks really want to make them.

Solving global warming - like fighting the second world war - isn't going to be a picnic. But that's no excuse for saying it isn't a reality and that the overwhelming scientific consensus (like the Wehrmacht crossing the Polish border in September of 1939) is impossible to ignore.

speak for yourself

I'm in the process of buying a patch of land to retreat from city life participation, live sustainably from a micro-hydro source and eat organically from home grown food (my wife and I plan to start an organic farm). I would say that's a fair bit of effort.

Does that fit into your pre-conceived notion of a MAN MADE climate change skeptic? I am not skeptical about climate change.

No, but this does...

I know that I want to have as many kids as I choose, not be taxed on the air that I breath out and not be micro-managed by the government on the basis of some obviously contentious scientific theory.

As does this:

Forced vaccinations: lobbying by the pharma companies to obtain mandated profits. Proven to cause and trigger many health defect. Who's fault? Government.

Sodium flouride in the water: Used by the Nazi's to pacify Jew in the caps. It is listed as a poison, causes an IQ reduction of up to 20 in one study, and actually causes flourosis of the teeth (which it is supposed to help!). Who's fault? Government.

Global warming, which most environmentalists spend their time worrying about. Who's fault? Us.

and this:

The key to global warming is that humanity/citizens are themselves viewed as the wrong-doers.

We tend to get the governments we deserve...and, when they put their feet wrong (as several national political leaders did relative to the seating plan at the debate) the public can set them straight now and again.

On global warming and the capacity of the earth to feed more than 6 billion souls at something above subsistence levels, I think the average dick and jane - all of us - are going to have to step up.

Time to stop with the excuses - one way or the other we'll have to pay. I certainly don't support Pigovian taxes as the way to do that, but if tax money were used to provide real alternatives for people and their lifestyles (even if we all have to give up our SUVs) then that, like the war economy, is what we have to do.

Time to stop with the excuses, my view.

Like Frank, and my colleagues who work in the north, I believe the case is obvious and the science is decided.

Frank, it doesn't work

You can't cut this baby in half.

"I'm saying that's fine with me even though I will support policies that really do deal with emissions (the carbon tax doesn't)."

First, since "emmissions" haven't been proven to change climate...why, for heaven sake, would you support punitive taxes, quotas or restrictions.

Second, do you think "cabon cap and trade?" is the way to go rather than taxation....an even bigger heist than the tax?

And from whence comes the money come to fix those other problems?

Cap and trade profit goes to the comodities brokers.

Taxation in BC is going to general revenue.

Given the above, your supposed even-handed reasonableness is bonkers.

Uh,oh, there goes West again.
"We'll fight them in the smokestacks" to paraphrase Churchill.
That has got to be the most fanciful of all your contributions to tyee ever.

As for reluctance to change lifestyle, I'm pared down now....there is little income to spare for this outright scam. Are you perhaps watching to many episodes of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". You don't seem to get how financially stretched the bulk of the population is.

I was thinking of switching to electric heat, but since Hydro brought in a 1350KW
a month allowance without triggering a higher rate, I will stick with what I have.
There is no doubt in my mind that higher heating costs due to colder winters will be a hardship for many.

It is rather insulting to be taxed to prevent "global warming" while trying to keep warm.

West, "believe" is the operative word in your last statement. More proof that what we are dealing with is a secular religion.

Just because there is less ice in the Arctic doesn't mean humans are culpable, especially since it HAS HAPPENED MANY TIMES BEFORE NOW.

We have been sold this scam on faked and massaged data. Hansen has messed up the land based temperature data so that the real numbers may be irretrevable and there are now calls for his dismissal for advocating vandalism. How does that compare with your favorite scapegoat, T. Ball's supposed sins?
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/note-to-nasa-fire-dr-james-hansen-now/

Quote:Like Frank, and my

You are a believer, and that is your perogative and right.

I may choose to have 1 child or none, but it will be my choice, not that of a politician like in China or India. Incidentally, the Ted Turners and Aldous Huxleys of this world who are pro eugenics and population reduction always have more kids than they know what to do with. It is us unwashed masses that are all made to pay. The Malthusian mindset, to which it sounds like you subscribe, has been debunked in 'The Malthus Factor', amongst many other books. The elite usually like to keep this thinking going though to help them retain some aspect of control over the masses. Keep in mind that we used to be a nation of farmers before agro business and its respective subsidies quashed the little guy. We are so dependent on a system which takes control away from us. GMO mono-cropping and pesticides promote massive land leaching and destruction of the soil. That wasn't anywhere near as prevalent with 'organic' (I call it normal, because it was done for thousands of years before corporations took over) farming.

And don't get me wrong, I still write to my MP and I'm considering become involved in local government because this country is going to hell in a handbasket, but I am fully prepared to put in work for what I believe are the growing problems.

If you are as well, that's great - a functioning democracy requires that an electorate constantly questions the actions of its own government.

C02, Chlorophyll, Plant Evolution

My comments above about C3 and C4 plants and CO2 was not very clear, so I will attempt to explain.

Photosynthesis is a process where a plant takes energy from the sun, absorbs C02 from the air and uses chlorophyll as a catalyst to break the Hydrogen and Oxygen bonds in water molecules, to produce sugars for the plants use and releases oxygen gas as a byproduct.

The C02 is a nutrient for the plant, and it is a one of the factors that limits plant growth.

The first plants to evolve were called C3 plants. C3 plants are very efficient at producing sugars from sunlight, but they are not very efficient at absorbing C02 from the atmosphere. At about 50 million years ago, atmospheric C02 levels started to drop, and C3 plants were having difficulty fixing the sugars necessary for growth.

C4 plants started to evolve at this time. C3 plants all used the same chemical pathways to produce sugars. C4 plants are more interesting in that they used different mechanisms for sugar production, this indicates that a number of separate C4 plants evolutions occured, perhaps as many as a dozen separate evolution events.

C4 plants require an extra turn around the Krebs cycle which causes them to be less efficient at fixing sugar, but the mechanism allows them to absorb C02 at lower levels, and they also require less water.

Lawn grass is an example of a C3 plant. Weeds in the lawn are C4 plants. If a lawn is well watered and cared for the grass will choke out the weeds, because they are more efficient. In adverse conditions the weeds will prevail

The whole point of this blurb is that C02 is a nutrient that is a limit to plant growth, and the low atmospheric C02 levels lead to a major evolution event in plants.

p.s.

Proclaiming consensus is frankly rediculous. A brief re-read of these comments can conclusively prove that. Let's call a spade a spade and say that you have been persuaded by the evidence and news you have read. I have read widely on the subject too, as have many others and have not been persuaded.

I think something is ridiculous, all right.

I was simply remarking that you don’t seem to be willing to make any change – or take any action that you don't 'choose' to make - it really doesn't have anything to do with the evidence - which is pretty clear from an empirical point of view. Your inclusion of the example of compulsory childhood immunization is a good example – anyone who would be willing to risk a return to the bad old days of killer childhood diseases for their own vain reasons is a real problem from my point of view.

Although it is your choice not to accept the evidence of the scientific consensus on global warming and the empirical evidence of the need for universal inoculation it is not possible to deny that there certainly IS a scientific consensus, added to which is the gross and readily observable evidence in the Canadian North.

It's possible to cherry pick data from largely discredited 'mavericks' and put up a Potemkin village to avoid making the necessary hard choices - but to suggest you're doing your part simply because you're living the way you apparently want to anyway (as long as it doesn't cost you any money and no agency limits your choices) is, to my lights, putting yourself ahead of the good of the greater community. If you’re not going to have your children inoculated, in my opinion, you are doing them – and your fellow citizens a disservice – something you might care to ask about in the Mission area by the way.

As much as you might not like China and her methods (and I'm not keen about them either) it is extremely hard to make a case that that country has not made more progress - on average - in the last 60 years, than any other nation on earth..

Addressing global warming is going to take the same kind of community and cultural commitment to the future on the part of citizens of the whole world.

I realize there's no cultural consensus - but I do think there is a scientific one and denying it isn't much different, mutatis mutandis, than the folks who are claiming that the CERN large hadron collider is going to generate a black hole that will eat the globe.

That doesn't stop you, and mopled, and the rest from believing and it doesn't stop, in my opinion, the selfishness and greed that got us here. But it’s not simply a matter of two competing ‘belief’ systems. Tim Ball, Exxon and the Fraser Institute is something your side of the argument has to wear.

Like compulsory immunization, there are some things, in the end, that we all must accept for the good of the collective - whether we like it or not.

That being said, the solutions should be as fair and equitable as possible, they should be designed to hurt the weakest and poorest among us the least. And they should not be frivolous and wasteful like the Campbell tax…

"Ridiculous" is right.

From someone who, as you are, is so always on the ready to accuse others of being offensive, Garth, it should be instructive for you to review the unbroken stream of condescension you have just directed at us.

It's your par for the course, Garth, and unlike the others who have taken your bait, I will not follow my first impulse and respond with invective.

"Like compulsory immunization" indeed. You missed your calling, you should have been a priest.

And BTW, unless you're a Yank, "immunization" is spelled with an "s".

ME2

I didn't bring it up. Spark did.

Please check back up the thread where it was first mentioned.

Withoug compulsory immunization we would still be suffering the scourge of smallpox, polio, diptheria, pertussus and mumps.

In fact, because some religious extremists have refused to have their children innoculated there have been outbreaks of mumps in the Fraser Valley and parts of the Lower Mainland.

And by the way

It's immunization - from the OED - shorter edition at page 1317.

errata - inoculated - however

was spelled incorrectly just above here.

What is

a "...double helix..."? Prose?
Can't find a definition for your use...

"...the planet may be colder for the moment here, but it is certain to be warmer somewhere else."... "...the heat is still building up. It may be trapped for the moment, perhaps even for a few years to come, in tropical oceans or deeply submerged layers of the sea. But it is not gone."...
Bottom line-you're guessing.
Applying the theory of all things being equal is a bit tricky with this subject and using the elastic doesn't help, obviously.

There is no reprieve from "climate change".

Barf Garf

Actually, it is the self righteousness of the tirade that I find offensive.

As to association with Exxon and the Frazer Inst....that is the part of the scam that really tees me off. The scripts were handed out and we are all supposed to read our lines?

I've never been a right winger in my life.
Those are ad hominems by association..or whatever...but I do not have to and neither will I "wear them."

If avenues to the media hadn't been shut off,I'm sure many would prefer to have their work published elsewhere than Canada Free Press. Given what the CBC has become, there is not much choice.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/510

Only 3 years before the CBC had done the excellent "Doomsday Called Off". Do read the notes on the video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3309910462407994295

Your use of "good of the collective" is a dead give-away to an authoritarian mindset...and given the corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, how do we really know that. An industry whose dividends and profits is their most important product, is not to be trusted to protect anybody.

BTW, in Canada there is no compulsory vaccination and neither is there compenation paid for damages.

Medicine likes to take credit for triumphs of sanitation and nutrition. The rates of infection for the diseases vaccinated against were falling with affluence and engineering.

The fraud behind the scam has been exposed, and you insist we go along because you belong to a party that's helping to push it.

When consensus triumphs over concience we get corruption.

If you're kids aren't vaccinated

I don't care who you are - I want them nowhere near mine...Big Pharma is a big problem - going back to the time before antibiotics would be a lot bigger.

I belong to no party and I don't call people names mopled - as you well know - go ahead and follow Timmy Ball off into the wilderness - I'm sure the two of you will have George Bush indicted for blowing up the WTC in little more than a week or two.

I know there is no compulsory vaccination - there damn well should be.

Errata

That's YOUR kids!

Jeez - can I plead too early....?

Science is not about Consensus

It really isn't. Science is about hard working people working mostly in obscurity, trying to learn more about our planet. Its about proposing theories, then testing those theories through experiment and measurement.

The problem with climate change, is that it is a political beast, not a scientific beast. The IPCC has a political mandate to explore climate change. The political mandate totally destroys the scientific process.

The problem really comes down to this if the IPCC does not find evidence of climate change, then they are out of a job. If someone on the IPCC has two papers in front of him, one supporting man made climate change, and one dismissing it, then his career will be furthered if he gives more weight to the first paper.

turn off the Fox news G West

I concur with the others on your self rightous tirade G West - that was quite over the top, even for you.

As for your views on forced vacinations (which I am aware that are not here YET although they are trying to pull the same tricks as they are in the states), I suggest you do some research on the safety of vaccines before you get rightous about the subject. As great as the idea sounds, to protect children, that's not a tremendous amount of consolation to the parents whose kids now have autism due to the vaccine (and successfully sued the government before you get on your podium). There are many many other horrific problems associated with them including massive increases of risk in Diabetes, alzeihmers and cancer, but really the point is moot, since in a free and open society, which this one proclaims to be, citizens have the right to choose how they are going to medicate themselves and their kids.

You seem to miss the point that with a totalitarian government who claims their right to forcefully vaccinate a citizen, what they are doing is claiming that they own you and your child. The arguement could be made that they do actually own us now, going back to marine law and its place in modern law, but in the traditional consensus view, the government thankfully leaves the individual some autonomy and self responsibility.

It sounds like you're all for the policies of China and North Korea. Having been to China, I would rather not live there - I like being able to critize the government on comments sections like this without fear of jail. Give them an inch of totalitarianism and they will take a mile.

Isn't Calculus Great!?

Even old school friends who avoided physics ‘know you are wrong’ when you pooh-pooh ‘anthropogenic global warming’. But before I was a geophysicist I understood what Poincaré intended by ‘it’s nonsense to say the earth turns’ and why Kepler entitled his master work ‘Harmonies of the World’, not ‘Harmonies of the Earth’. Their understanding is that the earth is to the universe as the sailboat is to the storm; i.e. the earth, and man, are included in a fluid-dynamical continuum inherently beyond ‘local’ control that sources our motive power and steerage and that induces us to attune to and sustain dynamical balancing with(in) it. ‘Interdependence’ permeates our natural living space and there are no absolutely ‘local’ point-sources of causal results. And, no, Virginia, just because Al Gore’s hand holds the ‘smoking gun’ of the first signed authorization for expenditure on the internet does not mean that he is the local causal agency responsible for its coming-into-being. The ‘causal model’ is built on the simplifying Newtonian assumption that the present state of the world is determined by local causal agencies operating on the immediate past. E.g. if we find neat rows of grape-vines on land that was ‘unproductive’ in the immediate past, we deduce that the causal agent responsible for the ‘improvement’ of the land is the vintner. Never mind the neighbours attuning to the ecosystemic unfolding they are experiencing inclusion in, who complain about the rectangle that was so rudely carved out of the forest ecosystem, how its peripheries are now exposed to wind damage from winter storms, how the altered run-off and pesticides are wiping out nearby sensitive wetlands ecosystems, and how the vintner’s wells that tap common aquifers are drying up the water supply that those on the other side of the vine-covered slopes have depended on. Man’s egoist belief that his local causal powers can force nature to do his bidding (that he is ‘improving’ the land’) closes his mind to the reality of his being a bull loosed in the unfolding ecosystemic ‘china shop’ of nature.

Poincaré labelled the Newtonian approximation ‘ a ‘simplification of convenience’ since it allows us to ignore the overall complex unfolding of natural phenomena. And Kepler similarly observed that scientists have the habit of “choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy”.

Yesterday, the earth was cooler, there were no grapes in the forest and there was no internet. Today, ‘we have global warming’, ‘we have grapes’ and ‘we have internet’. By Newtonian sleuthing wherein the responsible causal agent’ equates to ‘the smoking gun-holder’ sandwiched inside of this time-sliced difference, we can deduce that; ‘man made the difference’, ‘the vintner made the difference’ and ‘Al Gore made the difference’. Aren’t ‘fluxions’ (calculus) great!?

mopled

Why not? Is saving salmon attached to CO@ PPM via an umbilical chord?

First, since "emmissions" haven't been proven to change climate...why, for heaven sake, would you support punitive taxes, quotas or restrictions.

I would not support "punitive" taxes however I would support restrictions. And the reason I would is that I do believe the evidence that change is occurring. If you don't, fine. Its just like I believe the homeless would like homes. Many on here say they don't, its personal choice. I think they're wrong.

Why is it a bigger heist? Anyway, I'm not sure about cap and trade, it sounds like it would actually reduce emissions but I think I'd prefer straitjacket regulation.

So you're one of those that claims we can't fix the environment because we can't afford to? How can we afford not to? Or do you plan on your grandkids not needing an environment on this planet to live off?

Here's a thought, use the money we spend on tax breaks for people attending NHL games on the public dime. Its not enough, but its a start.

Illahie

Unfortunately the opposite is also true. Tim Ball only makes money as a speaker if he tells people what they want to hear.

Frank

two wrongs do not a right make.

Sorry

I'm not convinced and, as I said to Mopled, I don't want your kids sitting next to mine if they're not going to be vaccinated. Why don't we just turn back the clock to the point where the greatest killer in history, smallpox, can ravage the earth again.

I know, I know, you don't want fluorine in your water either.

I never watch Fox news and my family is full of advanced degrees in science and medicine...there are costs to living in a collective culture - and everyone should pay them.

Nobody gets a free ride - but, if you're inclinded that way, a small homestead in the deep woods is an excellent way to go.

Just dense or gatekeeper?

Let's try it again Frank.

Nobody can show that CO2 can change climate. It is a false construct.

Regulating or taxing CO2 production on the basis of cooked-up data is a money grab
and a fraud.

'This is just a money grab. Only the mafia could create an organization that would skim money off the top the way this legislation would skim money off the top.' -- Longtime cap-and-trade advocate Jim Rogers – CEO of Duke Energy, before that of Cinergy (which merged with Duke), and before that protégé of none other than C)2 cap-and-trade pioneer Ken Lay of Enron – speaking on the failed Leiberman-Warner Bill.

Dragging poor old retired Tim Ball into this as someone who profits from trying to help people in local community halls and service clubs understand the scam is a pretty desperate red herring.

Shall we talk about the well-rewarded and "prized" James Hansen in contrast.
$250,000 from Teresa Heinz Kerry's foundation, a gold Rolex from WWF and recently $750,000 from George Soros.
That's real money. Hansen doesn't have to pass the hat to pay for gas.

"We have a situation where we have 3 people. Hansen, Karl and Jones with strong activist ties serving as gatekeepers to the world’s station data bases with free reign to select and adjust that data as they see fit. That alone is an unacceptale position. When they abuse the public trust by refusing to release data, procedures or algorithms (Jones). Allow 87% of the stations to fail government standards for siting and then remove the urban adjustment in the station data bases for change analysis and then lead a biased group of enironmental activists in producing the least scientific and most biased document I have ever seen (far worse than the IPCC) in the CCSP (Karl). And continually adjust the data with a clear bias to cool the prior early 20th century warm period and warm recent years and then travel the country and world testifying against new coal power plants, calling train coal cars the equivalent of holocoust death trains and now advocating vandalism to stop the building of coal and nuclear plants that even environment friendly governments realize will be necessary for years to come to provide for the energy and heating needs of the populations (Hansen), it is time to sweep house. Hansen by his actions deserves to go first. We need an independent data group not beholding to anyone to review and reanalyze the old data. We have fortunately the satellite groups UAH and RSS that we can rely on going forward but their data unfortunately starts in 1979 at the beginning of the only two decades in the last 7 where temperatures actually rose!!!"

http://www.icecap.us/

mopled

I hope you're trying to be funny.

Did you see the controversy

Did you see the controversy around an ABC news (Australia) internet 'game' that tells kids when they should die based on their carbon footprint.

I'm not drawing any parallels to your views G West, but you did advocate population reduction and making a concerted effort to lower your carbon footprint right?

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23765244-5014239,00.html

Aldous Huxley would have a wry grin.

I never advocated any such thing

And I defy you show where I did.

I did, however, write this:

On global warming and the capacity of the earth to feed more than 6 billion souls at something above subsistence levels, I think the average dick and jane - all of us - are going to have to step up.

Time to stop with the excuses - one way or the other we'll have to pay. I certainly don't support Pigovian taxes as the way to do that, but if tax money were used to provide real alternatives for people and their lifestyles (even if we all have to give up our SUVs) then that, like the war economy, is what we have to do.

You can look back over everything I've written on this thread and you won't find even a hint that I'm in favour of 'population reduction'.

I'll await your apology.

apologies

you are right. I wongly drew that conlusion from your advocacy of Chinese 'progress'....

... your mention of the 'good of the greater community'

... and as you mentioned above, your belief that the earth cannot feed much more than 6 billion people.

These same contensions are those of the elites, who also advocate reduction of the world population.

Please watch 'Endgame' - I think you'll find it very very interesting:

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1070329053600562261&ei=1MDKSNWdMJjUqAO_sZW6Ag&q=endgame&hl=en

Once again, you fail to understand what I wrote

What is it about that statement you disagree with?

The one about China - where I clearly stated that I'm not a supporter of her 'methods'.

There is such a thing as community - I think it happens to include the whole world, not just the tiny proportion of the 6 billion who live here in North America.

I definitely think that the elites who think they can continue to consume at the rates they currently 'enjoy' have a lot to learn - those are the elites who don't want to pay any taxes or shoulder any of the responsibility for the condition of the world (apart from their own address) - and I'd suggest that raising the economic standing of the endangered 2/3s of the earth's population would go a long way to addressing concerns about population.

That being said, if we in the west want big families - there are lots of ways to get one without procreating.

I appreciate the apology. Thank you.

Political Science and Science Science

I do not know very much about politicians, so I am going to assume that Glen Clarks hunting Knife is just a hunting knife. I will further assume that the police raids on the BC leglislature were in search of doughnuts, and that Brian Mulroney's bags of money was due to a good night at a charity bingo. So the IPCC scientists must be a pretty good lot too.

I know a little more about science than political science, so I thought that it might be helpful to see how a scientist might approach the topic.

Most scientists start off as little kids, so a model of a C02 molecule might be helpful. It's pretty simple, one carbon, 2 oxygen in a straight line, that's pretty much it. For C02 to be a green house gas it has to take energy from infrared radiation and impart the energy into a molecule. A scientist may spin the molecule along its axis, that will absorb energy. It could spin end over end, that would take energy too. Hey it could spin end over end and rotate on it's axis at the same time. Lets look for at least three interactions with C02 in the infared spectrum.

Scientists like to experiment, so lets experiment. Why do we not get an energy source that radiates energy in the Infared spectrum and point it at an spectrum analyser, that would be fun. Lets measure the amount of energy thats is received by the analyzer, lets call that our base measurement before infared energy absorption. Lets do it in a Vacuum. That did not take very long lets do it slowly over each part of the infared spectrum, lets do it numerous times so that we get a measure of the variability of our sample. Lets put in some C02. 400 parts per million might be in order, better yet lets fill it with 100 percent C02. We could stick a thermometer in our experiment so that we could measure the warming that is taking place. We might see that there is some absorbtion of infared at wavelengths of approx 1, 10 and 14 microns, but not very much. Lets assume that we absorb all the energy at 1 10 and 14 microns, and that nothing radiates into space, it is all retained on earth. Oh it is still insignificant. This is such a trivial topic for scientists to investigate, that it is hardly worth writing up a report

Lets go for coffee, and design another experiment after lunch, plate techtonics perhaps?

Debating why I thought you

Debating why I thought you were for population reduction is not a good use of time.

From another Tyee article I think we have some common ground - that privatization is not in the best interests of the average citizen. I'm interested to know how this ties in with your view that vaccines must be good for people. If you are aware that any corporation's number one goal is profit making, how can you rationalize that vaccines are inherently good bearing in mind that it is in the financial interest of pharmaceutical companies to keep people purchasing - i.e. sick? I think even the most cursory research on this subject would alter your opinion here.

wow - I missed this one. It's a small stone's throw from this to 'the means justifies the end' which elites use constantly to dismiss things such as civilian deaths in war. As long as the country is headed for democracy (pfffft), a few (1.2million in Iraq) deaths is acceptable.

So in your opinion, is it acceptable if a few kids get autism because of a shot, as it is justified by the greater good? Would you be saying the same thing if it was your kid? I'm guessing you missed the news story about a pharmaceutical company being caught giving out vaccines with live AIDs viruses in it to tens of thousands of people? I'm also guessing you missed the news about mercury in the vaccines. You really need to watch endgame.

Hardly

The connection between vaccination and autism is tenuous at best.

I've read all the other stories and researched them - most of them are half-baked and apocryphal and the ones with some slight factual background are unfortunate.

However, I'll look more closely at anything you can post - just as I did Truman Green's contention that there really isn't any connection between HIV and AIDS; just as I looked at the 'evidence' that George Bush blew up the WTC.

However, I have a condition. You research the history of infectious diseases and the effect of universal vaccination. Pay particular attention to Smallpox, Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella and other childhood diseases.

Then we'll talk.

GWest

You state :

"It's immunization - from the OED - shorter edition at page 1317."

Doubtless, if size becomes the criterion, your OED can beat up on my OED, since I have the CONCISE version.

My dictionary gives the spelling as :

"Immunize, v.tr...(also ise)..." My bolding. I'd guess yours says the same

Since you are so quick to critique spelling here, I assumed that you knew that the CANADIAN choice is for ise, a perhaps small rebellion against the American tendency to dumb down the English language. They "ize" anything and everything.

You are adjusting well to the eventual US takeover :-)

PS to those of you who own only a Webster's, don't bother to try to understand why the above means anything......you won't get it anyway.

I'm so quick to critique spelling?

I also have an old Oxford Concise - fourth edition revised - 1951 - it was my Mother's - it doesn't give the alternate - only the main entry...Immunize.

Would it be fair for me to remind you that YOU brought up the subject (some 23 hours back up the thread) and, in rather a fit of pique, asked me if I were a Yank? Which effrontery I see you're still dishing out today.

I think the general rule that British spelling uses "s" and US uses "z" (that's zed) is true...but, like so many English rules, there are exceptions. I think this is one. Fowler, in Modern English Usage (Oxford, 1926) at page 258 has this:

immunize has - zable; see Mute E...

Horwill, Modern American Usage(Oxford, 1935) - has no entry and provides no guidance.

David Crystal, in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995) is no more help although he does note the difference in pronunciation between the US (zee) and British/Canadian (zed).

In Crystal’s remarks about Canadian English he notes that British Columbia (and Vancouver particularly) is strongly influenced by US English norms and he notes several particular BC terms which have become part of Standard English......such as logging, rigging, yarding, caulk, boom chains, jackladder, salt-chuck and kokanee.

That's the problem with having a decent personal library...one doesn't get many chances to use it anymore.

Just for wannabe Yankees

My Concise OED is the Eighth Edition - 1990. Recent enough, I think.

Since I have a thing about z for s, I often look up the correct spelling. More often than not, "ise" is given as an alternate.

If I can find a friend who has a newer edition, I'll check to see if they've changed their opinion.

Examples

Standardize - US;
Standardise - UK.

Economize - US;
Economise - UK.

The suffix use - ise in the UK and ize in the US and Canada is, I think you'll find, standard usage now.

Unlike the or/our example, (colour here and in Britain) and color in the US) Canada has adopted American usage for the most part - I'd still maintain that the example of immunize - probably because it's a relatively new word in the lexicon - is generally spelled ize.

The fact that older dictionaries and the Fowler's reference don't mention the ise variant seems to reinforce that view.

Anyway, that's my view.

Just for a lark, I pasted the above into Word and it’s the ‘ise’ variant that comes up as the default mis-spelling.

Could we back up a bit.

I watched all of Endgame as recommended by Spark 1234 and although I'd been exposed to some of the material before, the film does a good job of illuminating things like the tradition of banking supplying both sides of wars with money and fomenting them to reduce population and increase profits.

The history and influence of the Eugenics movement is also worth the 2 hrs it takes to view. It shows how the Global Warming Scam fits right in with the population reduction agenda.
Highly recommended.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1070329053600562261&ei=1MDKSNWdMJjUqAO_sZW6Ag&q=endgame&hl=en

And from someone who knows totalitarianism when he sees it, Vaclav Klaus:
"Current Global Warming Alarmism and the Mont Pelerin Society’s Long Term Agenda

"Many of us know (or at least should know) that this panic doesn’t have a solid ground, that it has not been set off by rational arguments, that it demonstrates an apparent disregard of the past experience of mankind, and that its substance is not science. It is based, on the contrary, on the abuse of science by a non-liberal, extremely authoritarian, freedom and prosperity despising (and destroying) ideology which I, together with many others, call environmentalism. (2)"
And
"I consider environmentalism and its currently strongest version – climate alarmism – to be, at the beginning of the 21st century, the most effective and, therefore, the most dangerous vehicle for advocating, drafting and implementing large scale government intervention and for an unprecedented suppression of human freedom."
(continues @
http://klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=KaTffYUet0Rm

links for g west

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/government-concedes-vacci_b_88323.html

The child’s claim against the government — that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism — was supposed to be one of three "test cases" for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.

The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).

AIDs virus in vaccines knowingly given to thousands of people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcFDOWIl7Nw

Merk admits live cancer virus in vaccines:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyIHC2hT5yM

About Jollife, G.West

He said:
"I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics."
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601

He is a statistical expert making a judgement, as did Edward Wegman, prominent US statistition. The judgement by these experts is that Mann el al don't know what they are doing. Joliffe also point out he doesn't know about AGW/CC, instead it is his "strong impressive"....in other words he's just as subject to media influence in establishing a false consensus as the rest of us.

The Hockey Stick, in all its incarnations is DEAD. It's got a stake through it's heart, but given the $300 Million Gore has to spend on public relations climate terror pieces, it will echo for a while.

Spark.1234 &, marginally, mopled

I'm aware of the history of the problem of mercury in some vaccines. It has been addressed.

There MAY he a connection between mercury and autism is some individuals - that doesn't mean there is a connection with vaccination per se. Correlation does not imply causation.

I'm also aware of the other issues. Including the early problems associated with Salk and Sabin Polio vaccines. And, if you go back to my earlier post, you'll see I am not running up any flags for big pharma - I'm one of their most strident critics - business and profiteering has the potential to ruin most decent and honourable efforts.

But, as I wrote earlier, I'm not unaware that the consequences of not having vaccines would be immeasurably worse.

If you've done any research into the history of infectious diseases - my brother in law was a board certified specialist in the field - you might appreciate why I feel the way I do.

You brought up Joliffe mopled, remember? Has he morphed from an ally into an enemy in three short days?

And no, I don't think you have read the pre-publication pdf that I posted above here, nor the additional material about methodology. If you had, you wouldn’t be so sanguine about the demise of the graph.

OK.

Furthermore, railing against Al Gore is a waste of time my friend, he's a cheese eating politician - I never cite him for scientific purposes.

Vaclav Klaus

You're right about Klaus, he certainly does know totalitarianism - he sees it every day in the mirror.

My Czech friends could tell you a good deal about Mr Klaus...as a climate scientist he's even less credible than Tim Ball though.

Snappy irrelevancies.

Klaus isn't a "climate scientist". He is an economist, as is McKitrick who helped demolish the first "hockey stick" graph.
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.mckitrick.2003.pdf
Part of the problem with "climate science" is that it is heavily dependent on statistical techniques and they pretend they what they are doing without having any actual expertise, a fact commented on by Dr. Wegner in his report.
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

I'm sure you have a wide circle of Czech friends because you told me so, but I would have to conclude they are your friends because you think alike....and we already have seen a teeny, tiny streak of authoritarianism in the name of humanity you have displayed, so I can understand their antipathy to Klaus.

I don't cite Al Gore either, but that $300 million poured into PR which he announced on CNN last spring can not be so easily dismissed. It is what keeps the false consensus going by generating endless scare stories then picked up and disseminated by the 5-6 media empires.

Joliffe never morphed, except maybe in your mind. His expertise says this new "hockey stick" is equal in balderdash value to the first.

I was commenting on his being puzzled by the continual harping on the "hockey stick"....he genuinely thinks there must be better evidence for AGW.....and there isn't....that's it and that's all.

That's not what Joliffe said

And you know it.

There's nothing authoritarian about me - but I'm beginning to wonder about you.

I am in favour of humanity - and I make no apologies for it.

G West, only you could take

G West, only you could take a definite ruling by a Federal court and dismiss it as only a 'possible' connection between mercury and autism. They WON, because they proved the link. They got money. The case was closed. They walked away. - did you even click on the Huffingdon post link?

And your point " that doesn't mean there is a connection with vaccination per se. Correlation does not imply causation." is exactly the point the defense made when they LOST. They used lawyer speak to say that the vaccine triggered a pre-existing genetic disposition which caused the autism. Not much consolation to the parents whose child would have otherwise not become autistic. And well done on dismissing the 4900 people waiting in the wings of these test cases.

Also, your wide sweeping proclamation that the mercury 'has been addressed' is to spout the Pharma party line. Despite corporate press releases to the contrary, Thimerosal is still in vaccines - I have read many articles to that effect, and checked on the packaging myself, which I assume you haven't.

To be honest - if you can look at a court case ruling and dismiss it because it doesn't line up with your own thinking - discussing anything with you seems futile. Stubbornness is good when you have a good point, but when it stands in the way of learning, I suggest you re-evaluate your method.

Oh dear, do I really have to

cut and paste what Prof Joliffe said again?

I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics. Misrepresenting the views of an independent scientist(here he refers to hiself) does little for their case either. It gives ammunition to those who wish to discredit climate change research more generally. It is possible that there are good reasons for decentred PCA to be the technique of choice for some types of analyses and that it has some virtues that I have so far failed to grasp, but I remain sceptical.

Ian Jolliffe
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3608

I suppose you realize the risk I have taken...or is that your plan GW...to get me banned for having posred more than 3 times in a 24 hour period.

I, unlike you who seem to be granted unlimited posting priviledge, have been restricted for months.

Is that fair?

Is that even wholesome given, as pointed out above by spark 1234, your ability to deny fact because it doesn't fit with your preconceptions?

I do hope this does not cost me my posting priviledge, but if I disappear, you all will know why.

Did you actually read what I wrote?

In Africa where vaccines (largely because of Western action or inaction and the overweening profit motive) are not made available to the population of that continent the ravages of infectious diseases of various kinds continue unabated.

So.

I'll discuss the risks of vaccination and balance it against the humanistic irresponsibility of those who don't have their children inoculated (both toward society in general and toward their own offspring in particular) when you're prepared to acknowledge the kind of world this would be without the protection of immunization.

It's fine and dandy to criticize what you take to be my tactics - but hardly fair to ignore your own reluctance to contend with the hard facts of the matter.

I don't know if you've had the misfortune to see children suffer from some of these diseases or if you've had relatives who've been cursed for life by the ravages of poliomyelitis - some of us have.

Nope

That's entirely unfair and personal.

You aren't going to be convinced by anything I post anyway. I wish you'd read the study I posted up thread here - it was just released and it responds to many of the concerns Joliffe addressed in his earlier remarks.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full.pdf+html

You'll note the date - Sept 02, 2008

In any case, I'm much too fond of you mopled to wish to jeopardize your continuing presence here. I think you’re mistaken – but I do respect your enthusiasm.

Let's let it go – we simply disagree.

Cheers.

That's just Mann's paper

Note the date on the discussion at the Climate Audit link: September 8th, 2008

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601

Really, GW. If that was supposed to be an ace up your sleeve, it's a joker.

Problems with the Climate Models
By Michael R.Fox Ph.D., 9/12/2008 8:59:42 AM

Recalling that people such as Robert F. Kennedy have called climate skeptics “traitors”, David Suzuki calls for their jailing, the Grist website called for Nuremburg trials for them, NASA’s Dr. Jim Hansen calling for their trials for treason, along with the habitual insults from Al Gore, its been difficult for anyone to respectfully dissent. It’s been difficult to stick to the rules of hard science, by demanding evidence and replication, both of which require questioning but are often followed by insults and threats.

The world owes a lot to many climate scientists who are closely studying and reviewing the claims of the global warming lobby. They are also attempting to replicate some of these findings without the traditional support of the originating authors. Ordinarily, in the world of hard nosed science, such scrutiny and replication has been historically welcomed. No longer. The well-known name calling, the dismissiveness, the ad hominem attacks, is regrettably now the standard level of discourse. Additionally, these include many laboratory directors, media editors, and Ph.D.s who for whatever reasons adopt the same low roads of discourse and the abandonment of science.

These are difficult times for traditional climate scientists who do practice good science, serious peer review, welcome scrutiny, replication, and the sharing of data. Thanks to the whole world of the global warm-mongers and indentured PhDs, the integrity of the entire world of science is being diminished, followed by a loss of trust and respect.

Among the giants challenging the global warming dogma has been Christopher Monckton. He has been a strong international leader, spokesman, and expert in unraveling the complexities of the man-made warming hypothesis.

The greatest drivers behind the hypothesis have not been the actual evidence, but computer models. Relative to the largely unknown climate complexities, these are still known to be primitive and incapable of replicating climate data as measured from observations. If a hypothesis can’t explain actual evidence and climate observations, it is wrong, and needs to be modified or abandoned. (continues at
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?bcb0b0a8-86dc-4f0d-acce-dec9605c9b7a

You will find this gem:
"The modeling problem is delightfully defined by atmospheric physicist Dr. James Peden, who recently said Climate Modeling is not science, it is computerized Tinkertoys, with which one can construct any outcome he chooses."

I disagree

I read that stuff - it's not science, it's not a serious sudy of anyone else's science, in fact it's little more than hyperbole and interconnected references to a tiny clique of science deniers, in my view. The suggestion that the paper I linked to has had any kind of 'serious' study and analysis in less than 10 days is risible.

I'd suggest you know that. There's a difference between peer review and the kind of thing climate deniers indulge themselves in.

Anyway, that's it - you go ahead. If it makes you feel good, keep it up.

I just hope most readers see what's actually going on here - all in aid of you hanging on to your tax dollars.

Calls for a Climate Inquisition

from Gore, Hansen and Suzuki aren't "hype"? At least I hope so. "Tiny clique of science deniers" isn't hype when there are close to 32,000 who have signed the new Oregon Petition?

The Hawaii Reporter piece I posted was by a PhD commenting and quoting on a peer reviewed paper. Your comment about lack of peer review is then made odd and red-herring like. Fishy, if you will.

Mann's paper is just more of his same, only this time he leaves out bristle cone pines. Loehle used many of the same proxies and got much different results.
http://www.ncasi.org/Publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025

Here's a brand new paper reinforcing the skeptical arguments.
"Northern Hemisphere Controls on Tropical Southeast African Climate During the Past 60,000 Years"

"The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1160485

Mann stays away from sediments because, as shown by Patterson and Stott among others, they are a record more easily read than tree rings or leaf stomata.

The latest sediment study shows "Tanganyika temperatures follow northern hemisphere insolation, and indicate that warming in tropical Southeast Africa during the last glacial termination began to rise ~3000 years before atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1160485

You keep trying to pretend that it is the scrooge instinct that drives those of us opposed to this scam. How about outrage at fraud?

You also try to pretend that the Warmist crew have a scientific leg to stand on, when the very fact that it is warming that increases CO2 and not the other way around, as has been shown in many peer-reviewed studies,
destroys the CO2 hypothesis immediately upon examination.

Ten of the Best Climate Research Papers (Nine Peer-Reviewed)
"The accusation of a lack of peer review (PR) by those who mount arguments against anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is at the heart of the elitism, consensus and ad hominem approach used by many supporters of AGW.
It is a red herring. Science should be like the Law; transparent and universally accessible. "

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/ten-of-the-best-climate-research-papers-nine-peer-reviewed-a-note-from-cohenite/

We've had a 2 year global cooling trend and a quieter sun with cooling oceans after an 8 year temperature plateau. Mother Nature demonstrates that we still don't know how it all works, since the AGW climate modelers didn't predict this downturn.

Warmists have now, in turn, become Denialists.

The New Denialism insists on defending the indefensible.

Are you, perchance, a New Denialist?