I have concerns about the climate, and about man’s involvement in them.
I have bigger concerns about being logrolled.
I have nothing to say about Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ “Green New Deal” (which got disappeared after it was revealed to be something a spoiled sixth-grader could have, and may have, written) y abou that David French at National Review doesn’t say better.
Read the whole thing. I add emphasis:
Nobody has to be a progressive to be concerned about the environment. Nobody has to be a progressive to respond to climate change. Any proposal that conditions response to climate change on the adoption of the full progressive platform is not only doomed to fail, but it raises the question of whether the declared climate emergency is more pretext than crisis. There’s a need for a serious discussion about our climate. The Green New Deal is not serious.
Did you miss it before it got disappeared yesterday? Have no fear, people glommed onto it. And David Harsanyi found the 11 bits you really needed in the first place.
Why call it The Green New Deal? A better name would be The Great Leap Forward.
“I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who claim it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” –Instapundit
Don’t like logrolling… For someone as sharp as you, Mitch, you sure seem to enjoy getting gaslighted (gaslit?) by French and the boys at NR.
French is complaining about style and how the AOC manifesto was not serious. And just to show how serious he is about this, French strokes his chin and exclaims that because of this episode, the climate emergency may be more pretext than crisis. Gasp!
NB, anything French writes sounds to me like it’s intended to spoken with a Cary Grant accent.
Her fact sheet reads like a transcript of a conversation between Antifa slobs tripping balls on ‘shrooms.
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Green-New-Deal-FAQ
I endorse the high visibility profile the fake news media is affording Tide Pod Evita. All that’s lacking is the bread.
Honestly, how can the Fellini movie the reprobates are acting out not be helping Trump2020?
And, given the disaster unfolding Virginia and now, North Carolina, in I wonder if anyone in the Democrat party is regretting the deep dive they took into Kavanaugh’s high school years?
Redicioulous!
I see the leftists have realized that 5 year plans are unworkable, so on to the Ten Year Plan!
have you noticed how many people have simply accepted the cockamamie notion that man-made climate change is real, and that we must DO SOMETHING?!
It’s a HOAX, folks. There is zero scientific evidence that man-made CO2 is the primary driver of global temperatures, and there is near-conclusive and exhaustive proof that it is not. Just look out the freaking window! Temperatures have been increasing at about the same rate for over 100 years, snowfalls are normal, hurricanes are below normal, droughts and floods – both caused by global warming by the way – are normal, and sea levels continue to rise at the same very low rate as they have for over 100 years. If it isn’t catastrophic, we don’t need to do anything unusual, and if it isn’t man-made there is nothing we CAN do! Stop the crazy train!
Ace’s new nickname for AOC is Breakfast Club Evita. Boy, along with the title of this post, two great nicks. Man, two, two, two nicks in one.
The plan proves at least twothings.
-Anthropogeic Climate Change theory is, in fact, ginned up to justify a takeover of the economy of the wealthiest economy in the world by a socialist faction.
-Ocasio-Cortez is dumb as a rock. Her undergrad degree is in ecoomics, but she does not understand Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy. she seems tobelieve that you can create wealth by paying people to break windows every night, and paying the same people to fix them every day.
My favorite quote about the “Green New Deal” comes from some idiot who founded a “think tank” called Data For Progress.
Have fun parsing this sentence:
“Every week it seems like the risks of climate change become more real, and the amount of devastation it is going to wreak upon humanity becomes larger, and that means we have to do bigger things.”
Read the Ocasio-Cortez and Markey bill and remember the many times that progressives have accused the GOP and Trump of “fear mongering.”
Joe Doakes on February 8, 2019 at 7:30 am said:
“I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who claim it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” –Instapundit
Yeah, instead they act like they have hit the jackpot.
GND is essentially the Bible of modern environmentalism. Environmentalism just officially went from a movement to a religion.
The 5 step program. Plug in your cause:
1) We must do something.
2) This is something.
3) We must do it.
4) It fails.
5) Obviously, we didn’t do it enough.
It is a giant scam. All the dire scenarios are based on computer model assumptions, and are of course always in the future. It “might” do this or it “may” do that. The only empirical evidence of the effects is a greening of the earth. Computer model assumptions aren’t proof, nor are they evidence.
It is shocking that the alarmists don’t apply the basic test of reason to AGW. Did the models made 20 years ago correctly describe the current climate? (they don’t).
A few more more observations:
-The “Green New Deal” describe the predictions of the IPCC as certainties. The IPCC does not, and instead speaks of “confidence levels” (that way they are never wrong).
-NPR seems to think that the creation of a constitution-shredding fascist super-state is just fine.
-The “Green New Deal” merely takes the climate alarmists at their word: if the problem is as dire as they say that it is, literally anything you do to combat global warming is permissable.
Because I am interested in science as a technique to explore natural history, I wonder if there is any evidence that we are better at making long term climate predictions than we were a half century ago?
It seems intuitive that, since we are better at measuring the current climate (more, and better sensors), and we have better computers (to analyze the data from the more and better sensors), that we should have improved our ability to make long term climate forecasts.
But do we know that this is true?
We are assuming that more data abut the current climate increases the validity of forecasts. Maybe global temp has a significant stochastic element?
Normally models are validated by comparing them to real-world events. How is it possible to do this with climate predictions?
Normally models are validated by comparing them to real-world events. How is it possible to do this with climate predictions?
MP, good comments (this and the previous). I’ve always thought the (stupidly obvious) first step in the validation of a “new” model would be to see if could predict the past.
I mean, we know, or we think we know, what has happened before now. Can any of these climate model predict what happened from 1970 to 1980? Or if that’s too short, 1870 to 1980? I don’t recall ever having seen this tho’.
It, of course, raises the question of whether the declared climate emergency is more pretext than crisis.
Several valid questions being raised here:
1. No, the computer models do NOT correctly predict the past. They are WAY off.
2. No, the computer models of 1990 (and still today) do not predict the present climate AND they are “off” at the 95% confidence level.
3. Predictions of increased floods and droughts (both!), hurricanes, tornadoes and sea levels are ALL completely in error.
4. Most of all, they keep pushing the fundamental deception that “climate change” and “MANMADE climate change” are the same, and they are not. We have absolute proof that fossil fuels contribute essentially nothing to the global climate. It’s a HOAX, folks!
As a young man, I worked for a time in the oilfields of western North Dakota. Turns out, the Hells Creek formation has dinosaur bones, you can see them in a couple of different museums, all dug up locally.
Wait – I thought dinosaurs were cold blooded. How could they live in tropical swamps eating ferns on the shores of an inland sea big enough to cover Minnesota (which explains the endless formations of sedimentary rock – limestone and sandstone – that formed under the sea)? Why wasn’t it all frozen?
Because the Earth was warm enough to have year-round ferns growing in North Dakota, then it cooled off and everything was covered by glaciers, then it warmed up again to the temperatures we enjoy now.
So who caused the global warming that predated the glaciers? Fred Flintstone driving around in his foot-powered car? If global warming is occurring, how do we know it’s being caused by my SUV and not whatever caused it the last time?
Whoa, whoa, whoa there, J. Ewing… it seems like you’re going beyond merely raising the question of whether the declared climate emergency is more pretext than crisis; it sounds like you’re raising doubts, nay, ascribing fabrications, falsehoods even about Science Itself!
Uh, Joe.
When critiquing tide pod science, make sure you get yours right. If I am not mistaken, someone correct me if I am wrong, during the age of reptiles (Mesozoic), North Dakota was contained in the continent of Laurasia, which straddled the northern tropics. In other words, North Dakota was in the position of Mexico for much of that time, while China was in the arctic.
Granted the earth was warmer – but let’s not confuse climate with continental drift.
Regarding climate science, here is a good read: the testimony of Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama Huntsville Climate Science department before a US Senate committee in 2012. It’s quite relevant to the discussion. https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/users/john.christy/docs/ChristyJR_SenateEPW_120801.pdf
In general, American “progressives” appear to thrive on predictions of apocalyptic futures that can ONLY be solved by government intervention and elimination of capitalism. I’m only slightly exaggerating. The environmental movement was a success because the average American could look out his window and see the problem. The overpopulation “crisis” wasn’t as good a sell because in the US, population growth was limiting itself by individual decisions, not government oversight. Plus, the overpopulation was more in third world countries, and immigration was more of a challenge back then. The energy “crisis” wasn’t a shortage of raw material, it was market manipulation by countries hostile to Western democracies and well-intended but short-sighted environmental concerns.
Climate is a different animal. It changes over generations and millennia. In spite of Al Gore’s (many false) predictions and over-the-top movies like “The Day After”, people can’t get excited over it. Maybe because of those predictions, now that I think of it. Anyway, the increase in hurricanes/tornadoes/wild fires allegations have been shot to hell (see Dr. Christy’s testimony), and nobody deep down really gives a hoot about polar bears, except indigenous Northern tribes, whose practice of killing polar bears for food with modern weapons has done more to reduce bear populations than making electricity with coal and natural gas.
So AOC, with the help of a Ouija board and recycled Marx/Lenin/Mao, comes up with a plan to make serfs of us all. Please believe us, folks: this time, we promise that socialism will work.
AOC’s Green New Deal includes “eliminating all cows” because cows fart. This will eliminate a significant food source for the global population. Which is likely going to have the intended effect of increasing vegetable consumption/vegetariansism. But wait. Plants need CO2. If CO2 is a pollutant and we’re trying to reduce or eliminate it, plant life will be reduced. If there are fewer plants to feed people, people will be reduced.
AOC is new spokes
babewoman for the 21st century Malthusians.Regarding “getting science right”, let’s consider the question of whether we “know” Nordakota used to be tropical in light of whether you could actually prove it from factors other than “well, these appear to be tropical animals”–that’s a circular argument, really, and one that ought to be taken with a big grain of salt given that Maximo, the titanosaur recently installed in the Field Museum in Chicago, came from Argentina.
OK, Fargo is 46 degrees north, Buenos Aires is 34 degrees south, hard to get BOTH of those places in a tropical zone without a significantly different climate. There may be a workaround, but let’s not pretend the science is settled in this.
Wow, you’re right, Greg. Continental drift does explain a lot. Never knew that. Thanks for the insight.
http://paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=time_space§ionnav=state&name=North%20Dakota
I’m curious about one thing: when they say “As the climate became cooler and drier . . .” are they saying “as the continent drifted Northward” or are they saying “the world actually got colder?” And when they say “The cooling trend continued during the Quaternary, and ice sheets advanced and retreated across the state,” are they saying “North Dakota drifted North and South” or are they saying “the world got colder and warmer?”
If ice sheets no longer cover the state (at least, not year round), did it drift back South again? And is it continuing to drift South now, which would account for warming temperatures?
I accept your correction that continental drift could have accounted for dinosaurs located in the North, but still don’t understand how the Earth could have been warm, then cold enough for an Ice Age, then warm again, then cold enough for a Little Ice Age, and now warming again – all before industrialization produced massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
In other words, I’m not suggesting the climate hasn’t changed. I’m asking how we know man is causing the change, instead of whatever caused it last time?
The best explanation for periodic warming and cooling of the earth is Milankovitch cycles There are other greater and lesser cycles, such as the ocean oscillations and dissolving of mountain ranges…..
And all that.
But the current topic of climate change can be divided into four group: the good, the bad, the ugly and the hideous.
The good is physics and that is rock solid. We have known for well over a century that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and if you double it over pre-industrial level, you will probably (note the emphasis), get a 2C warming. You do not ever want to argue against the physics, it is a losing game.
The bad is temperature records and proxies. They kinda work in the near term when they are not getting jacked with.
The ugly is climate models. The two most powerful factors for predicting climate over the next century are aerosols and water vapor. Yes, water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas, not CO2. The thing is, we don’t know what numbers to plug in for aerosols nor water vapor, so it is a guess. Guesses are NOT science. Even the IPCC admits that Global Climate Models (GCM’s) are not predictive, even though they base predictions on them…..and the GCM’s are produced using econometric models that are less accurate than Ouji boards.
The hideous is climate communication. Which is nothing more than keyboard activists with a BA in Journalism, who get their facts from HuffPo, Slate and Salon. My favorite is the morons who do not know the difference between a rising sea and sinking land.
I think I”m following, Greg. The reason the Earth is getting warmer now, is because we’re generating so much more CO2 now than before the Industrial Revolution.
And we know that because we measured CO2 before and after using . . . ?
This is a great read: https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm
It’s from the AIP (American Institute of Physics). It generally supports AGW theory, but it give a long history of the history of trying to measure and predict climate change. Overall it’s self defeating, it describes the false trails, eccentric science, and outright hoaxes in climate historiography — and the time that there have been disciplines called called climatology and paleoclimatology is only decades old.
Until the 1990s, scientists would spew out theories explaining variations in the earth’s climate almost randomly. One would catch on a few years, and then be replaced by another (solar cycles versus volcano – driven climate change, for example).
It wasn’t until the 1990s that the theory that the idea that the main driver of the earth’s climate was theorized to be the human use of fossil fuels, and that unprovable thesis meshed perfectly with the power dreams of our elite class. You can’t do anything about volcanic eruptions or solar cycles, but ration wealth? By God, our bourgeois could do that! They want to do that more than anything!
closing tag.
I would restate that to read. “One reason the Earth is getting warmer….”
Some of the reasons can be attributable to humans such as deforestation, changes in agriculture, even the tossing around of a whole lot of concrete (urban heat islands) but for larger changes like ocean temperature (not well measured) there are the ocean osculations.
How to measure the CO2 levels of the past? Ice cores; ice traps CO2 quite nicely. How to monitor it from year to year? Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii.
People express skepticism about these measurements, but at least in my mind that is focusing on the wrong thing. Accepting that human have an influence on global temperature because of what we have actually observed does not rationalize the ramblings of Al Gore or the terror story of The Green New Deal.
Use the example of sea level.
Take a penny and lay it flat on a table. Take another penny and stack it flat on top of that. That’s 3mm, the average annual rise of the seas. Now take one penny away because sea level has been rising 1.5mm per year for centuries. So one can rationally argue that the remaining 1.5mm may be due to the thermal expansion of the seas caused by man (and the draining of aquifers).
So how does one penny rise per year constitute a crisis? How does it rationalize hysteria? How does it support hyperventilated news stories?
Mammuthus,
Keep in mind the great leap of faith by the Climatistas. Also keep in mind that water vapor is the PRIMARY greenhouse gas, much more prevalent and powerful than CO2. It is what controls the earth’s thermostat.
The Climatista’s theory (positive feedback theory) goes like this. Think of a bullet, Man is the firing pin. CO2 is the primer and water vapor is the charge. Human activity causes rising CO2 levels which in turn cause temperatures to rise THUS causing more water vapor and more water vapor induced warming.
Their theory, one that drives every climate model, predicts rising water vapor and heating levels in the upper troposphere in the mid-latitudes. This is called the HOT SPOT.
Thirty years of satellite measurements and tens of thousands of weather balloons has failed to observe the hot spot.
Notice how I used terms like faith and believe for what climatistas say and the word observed for what is actually happening.
Physics says that a rise of 2C can be expected for a double of CO2 over pre-industrial levels. We are pretty much on that track – but that is below the lowest prediction of the IPCC. The positive feedback theory is what gets them to scary scenarios.
Thanks, Greg. The penny illustration is excellent.
Going back to the dinosaurs, the article mentions the Earth getting warmer and colder, ice sheets advancing and retreating. And we know there have been much warmer and colder periods extending over centuries (the Little Ice Age). All of that occurred before the Industrial Revolution. All of that occurred before man-made CO2.
My question still remains unanswered: how do we know that the cause of the current temperature increase is NOT the same cause as the prior temperature increases?
We don’t, not with any certainty, but I wouldn’t tuck my opinions behind that.
We know the physics of rising CO2 levels, so it is hard to say that is not a factor – but there are always other factors at work. Aerosols from smokestacks cool the atmosphere – but the black carbon (soot) on the snow warms the Arctic and it is the Arctic that is responsible for the majority of the earth’s warming.
The sun’s radiance is at its lowest level in centuries. The last time this happened, people were skating on the Thames River – but they are not. The sun is cooling, but the climate is not. It is held mostly stable since 2000.
I consider myself a lukewarmer. It is one who acknowledges that human activity has contributed to rising temperatures but also acknowledges that quantifying how much warming is due to human activity is unknowable in the short term – in the long term…… Let’s just say we don’t want to be driving pickups that get 8 mpg in 2100.
I would just add that as small government conservative, one who is tired of the media hysteria over global warming, and everything else, I would not argue that global warming is not happening, nor would I argue that natural forces are the primary factors – because we just don’t know.
It is hard to argue about what you do not know – but it is easy to argue about what the other guy does not know but claims he does. It is better to punch holes in the Climatistas hysteria rather than cast shade on the areas of science that are the most certain.
Every moral panic begins with a grain of truth. Fighting against that grain puts you on unfavorable ground. Fighting against the exaggerations and hysteria forces others to fight on the ground of your choosing.
Excellent advice. Thanks, Greg.
Joe, I think you will enjoy this. It is the best example of lawyering that I have ever heard.
For sake of argument, accept that global warming is real and is caused by human activity. Beyond that there are two views: one that it is no big deal, the other that it is catastrophic.
Over the last couple of years, the world’s ugliest woman, Naomi Oreskes, sister of NPR’s METOO disgraced ex-news director, began a campaign to sue oil companies….because they did it, dontchya know – and like this could be as big as Tobacco!!!
She enlisted several AG’s and multiple municipalities, including San Francisco and San Mateo. These entities argued that they have been greatly harmed by raising seas and torrential rain/drought as well as frogs falling from the heavens and the death of their first-born.
The courts leaned in and listened, sharpening their pencils for huge compensatory and punitive damages….
Until a smart lawyer for the defense thought……..Hmmmmmmm, when municipalities sell bonds, they have to list the impacts of potential risks, let’s see what they say about global warming.
To everyone’s shock and dismay, these municipalities were telling their investors that the threat of global warming was no big deal, and that hey, it’s all uncertain anyway, so don’t worry your pretty little heads and buy our bonds.
Exhibit A meet Exhibit B.
I love a happy ending. (sniff)