What I Thought, Plus Some

[Art]

https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/6/29/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare

Like Michael Moore who did a documentary exposing corruption in the environmental movement this guy is going to get a lot of heat.

When the Al Gores and Bill Nyes of the world say 97% of scientists operating within their area of expertise say climate change is happening they include people like this guy, or the lady meteorologist who I heard say that the effects of global warming were minimal (her view was even less politically correct than that in the above article.) When asked why 97% of scientists disagree with her she said "I am in the 97%" This because anyone who believes that human beings have anything to do with the climate, no matter how minimal, are included.

The author is wrong about one thing. He states the environmentalists have been forecasting the imminent end of civilization due to global warming since 1980. Actually the real start date was the late 1960s.

[Vern Humphrey]

Wait a minute -- back in the '70s it was another Ice Age they were predicting. Remember, they wanted the Air Force to spread lamp black over the polar ice caps to prevent that.

[togor]

It recently got above 100F in Russia above the artic circle. But it's 70 in the den by the computer so who knows what those climate people are talking about.

[togor]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger

BTW he isn't denying that climate change is happening (spoiler alert for some here). What he is doing is arguing against many of the proposed responses to those alarms. I suppose we'd have to read the book to find out but I imagine that after dispensing with what he thinks won't work, he'll get around in a back chapter to what he thinks will work.

By analogy, someone is driving on the highway and an alarm indicator goes off on their car. What to do? A group of people with limited understanding of cars will suggest many different things. Some will be well meaning but only make things worse. For example, low oil pressure and low battery voltage require two very different responses. I suppose people who don't like the inconvenience of breakdowns can claim that the alarms were put there just to drive up business for service centers. Hey did you ever notice that the people who make money selling cars also get you on the back end with "repairs"? Is that a scam or what? Too bad the earth didn't come with an "owner's manual".

[Art]

Two things:

1. What one temperature for one day is means nothing. The Alaska record high set in 1915 was 100 degrees F. at Ft Yukon which is well above the Arctic Circle.

2. That the earth has gotten warmer is not the issue. The issue is what it means. I'd be a little more sensitive to what environmental extremists have to say if any of their predictions between 1970 and 1990 had come to pass in any significant way.

[togor]

Help me out here.

What Hansen was saying back in the 80's, the warming trend, continues unabated. That's a foundational prediction that is holding true.

Is the reaction to find side predictions that have not panned out and use them to justify inaction on climate change?

A bit like saying a friend had a bad experience at the garage so therefore the right move is to ignore the check engine light.

[Art]

Help me out here.

Is the reaction to find side predictions that have not panned out and use them to justify inaction on climate change?

The "side predictions" form the intellectual core of the environmental action movement. Fifty years of conclusions mainly proven eroneous don't exactly inspire confidence. The fact is the world today is nothing like the environmentalists between 1970 and 1990 predicted it would be. The reasons may be complex. I have stated before that since 1960 the U.S. has reduced all air pollutants 70% while it's population increased by 50%. That could have something to do with it. But its also a fact that the effects predicted by Hansen and (especially) Ehrlich have not happened. Ehrlich, a few years ago, conceded that his c 1970 era predictions were in error though he did not recant his conclusions. How many times to you get to be wrong??

Also the lock step opposition to nuclear power and natural gas as at least partial solutions while encouraging burning biomass (wood) smacks of the religious fanaticism people on the right are often accused of.

[blackhawknj]

There's an old story that when someone asked J. P. Morgan for investment advice he replied :
"The market will continue to fluctuate."
There was the Cold Summer of 1816, caused by a volcanic explosion in the Dutch East Indies in 1815. During the Civil War it was noticed that many battles were followed by rain which many thought was caused by all the gunpowder. In March 1888 in NYC there was the Great Blizzard of 1888,in the Summer of 1896 they had a killer heatwave. There was a prolonged drought here in the Northeast 1961-1967, that was blamed on atmospheric nuclear testing-ended by treaty in 1963.
Then in the Summers of 1971, 1972 and 1973 we had "The Storm of the Century !"
People forget the heatwaves, they don't photograph well.

[Vern Humphrey]

I remember a friend of my mother's saying (in the late 1950s), "It's all these satellites they're sending up that's affecting the weather."

[Sandpebble]

As a child I lived in London where homes were heated by burning coal.

In the 1960's coal burning was banned..... and the weather did change. ....So did lung disease diminish ....

[S.A. Boggs]

As a child I lived in London where homes were heated by burning coal.

In the 1960's coal burning was banned..... and the weather did change. ....So did lung disease diminish ....

Didn't help British intelligence now has it?
Sam

[RED]

There are some facts that the extreme left ignores. The first fact is that the climate on earth has been changing for the past four billion years. The climate always changes.

Weather changes are not climate changes. Climate changes are not measured in days and weeks but in eons, Planck time, and supereons. How did the glaciers that once covered much of the U.S. melt? The Stooges claim buffalo farts and hair spray were the reason.

[togor]

Red for the last 10K years, until the last few decades, the climate has been remarkably stable, and also: the climate in which human civilization began. If not mistaken atmospheric CO2 is now higher than at any time in hominid history. We are doing the large, uncontrolled experiment. People think: stuff can't go off the rails anymore. Of course it can.

[Gun Smoke]

Geological drilling has found that Antarctica was once a tropical paradise. Now it is covered by 2 miles of ice.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/17/antarctica-tropical-climate-co2-research

The earth use to be completely covered with water. Now it is only 2/3 covered so overall water is receding not rising.

Mars used to be covered with water. The red planet would have once been known as the blue planet. The "Rover" has shown that hardly any water at all exist now and there's no evidence of cows or any other living creatures ever existed that would have farted it all away.

Once again: if any of this global warming farce is true how can dumping billions of dollars into a democrat controlled "slush fund" help and why didn't it help during all the years the money was thrown away?

[Vern Humphrey]

Geological drilling has found that Antarctica was once a tropical paradise. Now it is covered by 2 miles of ice.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/17/antarctica-tropical-climate-co2-research

The earth use to be completely covered with water. Now it is only 2/3 covered so overall water is receding not rising.

Mars used to be covered with water. The red planet would have once been known as the blue planet. The "Rover" has shown that hardly any water at all exist now and there's no evidence of cows or any other living creatures ever existed that would have farted it all away.

Once again: if any of this global warming farce is true how can dumping billions of dollars into a democrat controlled "slush fund" help and why didn't it help during all the years the money was thrown away?

Hmmm. . . I think I'll stake out a few thousand square miles of Antarctica and wait until I can run cattle on my new ranch.