Mooney on Will on Warming
Chris Mooney offers a really good response to that recent George Will op-ed in the Washington Post that amounted to a raft of lies about global warming: Climate change’s myths and facts.
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?
As Mooney’s article demonstrates, yeah, actually, we can. I’m happy to see the WaPo running Mooney’s article now. But I’m disturbed by what it says that it took so long for them to do so, after all the high-profile outrage that Will’s original piece produced.
For those on the right who persist in maintaining that global warming isn’t real, remind me again why defending your right to delude yourself is worth imposing a bullshit tax on scores or hundreds of future generations. Because I’m just not seeing it.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Will’s article was a classic of spin, worth the read for the way it illustrates how to argue effectively in the public domain using ridicule, ad hominem attacks, false comparisons, etc. Mooney’s criticism of Will’s article was gentle, yet still set the record straight. I bet there were about hundred drafts before they finally toned it down enough so that Will, as an op-ed columnist, did not so obviously become painted as a raving fool (must have been a lot of internal politics behind the scenes at WaPo in te intervening month.) Well done Mooney for getting some factual material into the light and thanks jbc for bringing our attention to both.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Oh that was funny, the spinning pot calling the spinning kettle black. That piece deserves to taken apart point by silly point, but it is hard to talk sensible to religious fanatics.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Ok, I can’t help myself. The author says that what skeptics are not telling you when they say temperatures have not risen in ten years is that they have been the highest on record. Yeah, so what, no one is saying they haven’t been the highest on record, we are saying they have leveled off. Anyone that has ever looked at a graph knows that before something changes direction it levels off, it reaches a high or low point for a while and then moves in the other direction. The point we are making, the point HE conveniently omits is that while Co2 has been rising, temps haven’t been rising. So he is spinning just as he says we are spinning, which doesn’t come as a surprise, this is an old liberal ploy, say your opponent is doing what you are doing even if they aren’t.
So since he isn’t being totally candid, and is in fact misrepresenting, should he be silenced? I see we have gone from the debate being over to those that decent should be silenced, chilling isn’t it. I don’t know about you but I have always held free speech close to my heart, especially when it comes to science, economics and politics. It seems the left holds the First Amendment less dear all the time.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:00 am
That’s a false equivalence, shcb. The promotion of such false equivalence to imply that there exists a scientific controversy over whether or not global warming is happening, and is being caused by human activity, is at the heart of my beef with the denialists, and (more importantly) with the editors at the WaPo who cleared Will’s op-ed piece for publication.
You have the right to hold whatever ridiculous opinions you want to hold (to save you the electrons, yes, just like I do). In the Internet age, you even have the right to put those ideas out there in the public sphere. What you don’t have a right to is to be taken seriously by people who know better. The positions you regularly argue in the comments here, just like the position Will argued in his op-ed piece, betray a broken system of assembling, interpreting, and fact-checking information. You (and he) are slanting your analysis to favor a particular a priori position, one that is not supported by the facts — and what is more, that a good faith effort at confirmation would quickly reveal to not be supported by the facts.
For you (and Will) to continue to push those arguments means that you’ve given up the right to participate in forums that require a grown-up level of discussion. That’s why I haven’t offered you an authoring account on this site: I value an open comments section, and accept that the spouting of ridiculous conspiracy theories by people who are essentially cranks is a cost of having one. But for the people I’ve given author accounts to, I expect something more: An adult attitude toward the facts.
Yes, everyone has their own biases. But everyone also has an obligation to work to overcome those biases. That process will never be perfect. But in my mind there’s a certain minimum standard that you, and George Will in his recent column, fail to meet. Given that failure, you don’t deserve to be paid attention to in a grown-up discussion of the issue. Not because you’re being unfairly persecuted by the thought police. But because by your own actions, you’ve placed yourself in the category of annoying child who should be excluded from the adult conversation.
The WaPo editors should have known better. I realize that editorial standards are generally eroding, since newspapers’ editorial operations are no longer being subsidized by the classifieds. And they get some points for running the Mooney piece now. But it would have been better if they’d refrained from giving Will the soapbox in the first place, just as they would have refrained from running an op-ed on how the earth is flat or evolution is a myth or the moon landings were a hoax or the WTC collapse was the result of controlled demolition.
Such arguments are fun on some level, and in the modern era they’re easy to put out there. But the pages of a large-circulation daily newspaper are not the place for them.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:34 am
I read Will’s article. meh. He offers nothing but warmed over talking points from the right: it isn’t happening, if it is we are cooling, and then a tangent about the price of metals (I suppose to cast aspersions on them dang ‘intellectuals’ n eggheads n such). What? no blaming it on sunspots or God’s Will? His last sentence is a whopper, since the graphs all trend in one direction: hotter. Sure George, you can pick an outlier data pt here and another pt there and – presto – you have a cooling trend. Now can we stop cherry picking the data and look at everything, the whole picture, please? The trend is hotter.
Then I read Chris Mooney’s article. It pretty well removes the gloss of lipstick that Will was smearing all over his pig (can we just call em Palins from now on?) One observation: links in each article. Will’s has exactly one, to a poll of what Americans are most concerned with in 09. Well, duh, after the Rs repeatedly drove the country into a ditch everyone is worried Hoover2 done f*ckterated the economy! Mooney’s article has 10 links, all to climate experts and organizations, intellectuals, you know, egg heads n scientists n such (ptoi!).
I know the IPCC is a bunch of lefty hippy commie fags n all shcb, but it seems pretty clear that if we don’t do something about climate change then we will have some pretty huge problems come rushing down the pipe in practically no time. Within a generation our descendants will live in a vastly different world. The Defense Department thinks anthropogenic climate change is real.
Mooney’s wrap up is succinct and moving:
There are a bunch of synergistic pluses with going green: we reduce our dependence on foreign oil (ME oil), we perhaps avert global catastrophe and we clean up the environment. So costs go up on fossil fuels… wwnjs ran the price of gas up to almost $6 a gallon! We can afford a carbon tax on fuels to fund their replacements.
If we don’t alter the trajectory of China and India, this planet will be in deep deep trouble.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Nice reply jbc, except the final sentence of your penultimate paragraph.
“earth is flat” – now an easily demonstrable false hypothesis.
“evolution is a myth” – overwhelming scientific evidence confirms basic premise of evolution are true, despite an ever changing understanding of the details.
“moon landings were a hoax” – I am not very familiar with this one, (& it never seemed to have much traction or relevance.)
“WTC collapse was the result of controlled demolition” – agree that does not belong in an Opinion Editorial piece. It is more properly being vetted through the Architects and Engineers speaking engagements and academic papers posted to http://www.journalof911studies.com/
In contrast to “earth is flat” meme (over the past 500 years) or the “evolution” argument, there has been a profoundly problematic treatment of the evidence by official WTC investigators and this is one example:
From: http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST_and_Nano-1.pdf
March 25th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Question for SHCB:
Do you believe that CO2 does not have significant greenhouse gas properties?
Careful – the answer is a verifiable scientific fact.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
JBC,
Thank you for considering giving me authoring rights, I appreciate that.
I find this so fascinating, someone like you that is obviously intelligent and I would think somewhat open minded on most issues can be so close minded on this issue. I guess passion tends to blind us.
You are constantly saying that my ability to assemble and disseminate facts is broken, I assure you it is not, I wouldn’t be employed in my profession if it were. I routinely research raw data, inputting hundreds of numbers into my own spreadsheets to analyze myself before I write on these pages. I get that raw data from respected universities, the people I quote are for the most part experts in there fields, I double check their assertions wherever possible, I don’t know anyone else here that puts that much effort into assembling and disseminating facts to base their opinions on.
Will gave a dozen references to his assertions, was he wrong?
I find it very troubling when people want to stifle reasonable debate simply because they disagree, very troubling indeed.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Knarly,
Sure Co2 is an important greenhouse gas. It pales to water vaper on a percentage basis but of course it is important, without it we wouldn’t have plants. Without greenhouse gasses we would be Mars, really chilly. So what?
March 25th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Shcb,
I read in a local paper today that we’re entering the cold part of a 30 odd year North Pacific temperature oscillation, which, if so, translates into colder winters for the next 30 years here on Canada’s wet (west) coast. (It didn’t mention any effect on summer weather.) So in the near to medium term pehaps we could use some of that CO2 warming effect…
Will wasn’t so much wrong as he was cherry picking articles to further promote a(n apparently false claim) that there was a consensus in the 1970’s of an impending ice age when (a) there was apparently no consensus and a larger body of thinking was of a warming planet, and (b) the comparison of now to 1970’s is irrelevant anyway due to vast differences in knowledge about planetary climate and therefore it is dishonest in the extreme for Will to be pushing that point. That’s just paraphrasing Mooney.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Knarly,
And I’m sure that is right. As it turns out the people who said the earth was about to go through a warming period were right :-) I remember those times a little, I was in high school, so getting laid, (never did) was more important than climate change. But I do remember being concerned after hearing people like Dr. Carl Sagan say we were all going to freeze, and yes there were people saying we were about to start to warm or had actually started to warm. And they said it was largely a natural cycle. Their voices were just drowned out by the people saying we would get colder forever. Sound familiar?
To your question of Co2, it does seem that if we increase Co2 it will get warmer, but it also seems other factors override the Co2. So if this next 30 year cooling period were to drop temperatures 100 units with Co2 remaining stable maybe it only drops 93 units with a 5% increase in Co2. Is that troubling and should we do something? Absolutely. But it isn’t the end of the world either. If it is going to take 50 years to find a replacement to coal and we can cut that to 30 with some wise government funding I don’t think anyone would mind; but let’s not run around sticking our lances in windmills (or solar panels). I did some figuring the other day, I based this all on a solar farm in Spain, the largest in the country according to the article. It is 63 acres and produces 9 MW, I then extrapolated that out. Now there were a lot of zeros on either side of the dot so it wouldn’t be hard for me to have goofed by a factor of a thousand but if my figures were right filling California with solar cells would produce 8% of the power we get from coal plants, in America alone. So while solar has some wonderful uses and wind can be used to take the edge off future increases in electrical need, we should be honest about their limitations. And we should be honest about man’s impact on the environment. That’s all I or Will are asking.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:49 am
Go back and read Will’s article, I don’t think he said there was a concensus, I think that was Mooney’s assertion, I could be wrong, I haven’t reread it myself.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Actually, Will did say there were those who questioned the cooling trend would go on forever
March 26th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Right-wing Americans are only hurting themselves and their country. While they try to create skeptism about all this, much of the rest of the world is moving forward with developing clean technologies.
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/608451
You’re only screwing yourselves. Oh well, more jobs for us.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Actually we have two wind turbine plants opening within a ten mile radius of here, we also have large solar cell company starting up operation in that same radius, large enough that Obama made a personal visit to it while he was in town signing the stimulus bill. We’re not sitting on our hands, but we need to be honest with ourselves, and reasonable debate is the way you do that. What other debate would you like to stifle? Maybe we can do like China and simply block sites like Lies.com, the communists seem to think no debate works for them. Of course people like Mooney don’t want to end debate, just the debating points of their opponents. There is plenty of room for debate if you agree with them.
One other item, we just bought a solar panel company and there is talk that I may get tasked with incorporating some of their technology into some of my product development, but that is down the road a year or two, if ever. So we aren’t ignoring the technologies completely.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:02 am
You still don’t get it. The scientific debate over this has ended already, the only people debating this are right-wing ideologues and bloggers. Science won. (See IPCC)
If you want I guess we can still debate the rotation of the earth, or the existence of gravity, or where babies actually come from… or my new favourite – if condoms spread aids.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:01 am
sorry, you are simply wrong about that
March 26th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Yea, perhaps NL is wrong about that: just like people were wrong to argue in the 1960’s that the scientific debate on health effects from tobacco was over.
shcb, let me know if you find any further significant evidence that climate change is not anthropomorphic or potentially catastrophic (or that smoking enhances health.) I’ll leave this discussion for now with a final jab, a simple a quote from the LA Times on the Chamber’s argument against climate change mitigation efforts:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-ed-epa24-2009mar24,0,3664320.story
March 26th, 2009 at 9:31 am
But that is a political issue, not scientific. I’m going to try and make it home, wish me luck. The north side of town is getting hammered with a nasty snowstorm, we sent everyone home an hour a go, my daughter said all classes are canceled at CSU and the streets are just a little wet in south Denver, you gotta love the weather in Colorado.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Drive safe, and just a reminder that Earth Hour is this Saturday ;)
March 26th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Yes, be safe shcb…
March 26th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
everyone made it home safe and sound
March 26th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
good to hear
March 26th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
shcb – back to youyr pre-snowstorm post (hey, aren’t all your posts snowstorms?)
It’s not a strictly “political issue”.
The political issue was the Bush administration stalling.
The other issues are legal (that the EPA must act on their findings) and scientific (the EPA had zero scientific evidence to claim that global warming wasn’t harmful.)
March 26th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Knarly,
I’m sorry but I won’t be able to give you any more information regarding the impact of humans on global warming. In case you hadn’t heard, the science is complete, there is no need for future research in any way. Now of course there will be some old guys who will hold on to that antiquated notion that science is a never ending quest. The intelegencia understands this continued quest by these simpletons could undermine their supremely noble cause. At first these keepers of mother earth wanted to round up these dreadful fools and spirit them away to re-education centers, but there were simply too many of them. With a heavy heart the decision was made to allow them to wonder aimlessly amongst the population. These heretics are easy to spot at scientific symposiums and Star Wars conventions by the scarlet “H” on their foreheads.
A new threat has arisen however, pundits. It seems that while the scientific community is now in control there exist historical documents, quotes and such from a time long, long ago. At this point the hue and cry of silencing these individuals is being left to their publishers but if this doesn’t work it may be necessary to do it legislatively, the Fairness Doctrine may have to be reinstituted. This is a rather ham handed way of dealing with the situation but while regrettable it may be necessary to sacrifice the free speech of people like George Will to protect the planet.
So I am afraid I will not be able to offer you any more insights, not because I haven’t retained enough historical documents, or because my boss, Dick Cheney isn’t keeping me up to date on the work of the underground scientific community, but because I cannot take the chance of a scarlet H on my forehead jeopardizing my lucrative modeling career. Alas, I am but a coward.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
And now unfortunately the EPA will not be able to determine if there is a risk or not since the science is complete.
Back to the snow, it was so bad coming home I got lost twice in my own neighborhood.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Maybe we should just outlaw greenhouse gasses, they outlawed nuclear warfare in Boulder a few years back and they haven’t had a nuclear event since.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
shcb, Your 5:57 post may have been the best thing I’ve ever seen you write. At least you’re being honest now that Cheney is your boss. ;-)
Re: your 6:01 post, but the EPA has made a determination based on the science “being complete”. No? And thanks for reminding us that “science being complete” is a meaningless phrase, although for practical purposes (e.g. using Newtonian physics to build rockets) there comes a time to stop writing theoretical equations on the blackboard and chuck the chalk at the punk (aka “pundit”) in the back row making dumb-ass wisecracks. Theoretical ideas, equations and models about trajectories are thus confirmed by the dusty white line between the pundit’s eyes.
Mooney gave Will one of those lines.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Sadly I don’t know enough of recent British history to say whether this is accurate, but it sure as hell is a good 3 minute speech. From the European Parliament http://www.blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2009/03/24/so_i_said_to_gordon_brown_i_said
March 27th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Knarly,
Thanks, that was fun to write, a little, well a lot of a dig without being mean.
I guess I just don’t think the science is that far along. In your example of rocket physics, sure there is a point where you can reasonably say this is pretty definitive, but there is a time between where an honest man will say we know absolutely nothing about this subject and we now almost everything. In that transition there will be many people that at various times will state the science is now complete, a long time before it really is, I feel that is where we are now.
This science isn’t like rocket development where you can have a test firing every morning if you want collecting reams of data in a timeframe of your choosing, you simply have to wait until next year for your next data point. And then to just ignore the last ten years of data? None of that is very scientific to me. As I have said so, so many times that doesn’t mean we can’t do something now, we just need to be reasonable.
My problem with this EPA thing is twofold, first it subverts the legislative process, you rule by changing regulations not the law. This seems to be the way this administration has chosen to lead, there is pattern developing. That is sad. The second is this sort of double negative, if something can’t be proven that is safe we should regulate it? So no one has died or has even been made sick by my new soda pop, but I can’t prove that someone might not get sick so it should be regulated or banned. Do I have that right? Seems sort of backwards to me, maybe that is why Bush didn’t buy into it.
March 27th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Man I kind of miss the snow, we usually still have lots this time of year, but it’s 75 degrees and sunny. It’s like the climate is changing or something.
March 27th, 2009 at 6:47 am
I want to expand on my third paragraph a little and bring Will into it. As Will is pointing out, there were many that said the earth was cooling to the point of no return in the seventies, that is the point of the article. Many of the people that were saying that are now on the global warming bandwagon, those that aren’t dead anyway. So we can say we have 30 or 40 datum points (one each year from some point in the ‘70s), of those 30 or 40, 10 are at odds with the hypothesis. So we are to believe 20 to 30 points absolutely prove the theory with no room for reasonable discussion left but 10 are too few to matter? Maybe if there were 3 or 4 hundred points for the hypothesis and 10 at odds with it, remember this is what I do for a living. Add to that the science was declared complete about the time the trend started to turn. Now this may just be old farmer logic but I don’t think I would buy a horse from that man.
March 27th, 2009 at 6:55 am
NL,
The weather here is pretty normal for Colorado; March is our snowiest month. We usually get one big dump in this month, now it will all melt in a period of three or four days. I just finished plowing the drive and it is already starting to melt. It is so thick and wet my little tractor could hardly push through it. But of course this is in the center of the United States where temperatures have remained constant for the last 40 years, I haven’t even heard a guess why that is, too bad we aren’t studying it anymore, that would have been interesting to find out.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Just in case you were wondering what the end game is here, it is socialism, pure and simple.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510937,00.html
This is of course a rhetorical question but let me answer it, the money will flow from the producers to the non producers, from the rich to the poor. When the rich have been sufficiently fleeced the problem of global warming will miraculously have been solved and those ten years of consistent and lowering temperatures during the Bush administration will remain a queer anomaly, or will just be ignored as they are now.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I think the science on global warming is ‘in’ enough that if we don’t take action now, we may have a global catastrophe on our hands. No one is taking away your first amendment right to make an ass of yourself (besides, occasionally you are funny). But by all means continue to study anthropogenic climate change while the rest of the world deals with it. Just stay out of our way while we fix yet another bush era screwup (obviously not all the blame rests at dumbyat’s door, but the inaction, coverups and skewing the science to fit the R agenda have left us worse off than before).
I know foxnoise is hysterical about these FEMA camps (started under bush right?) To house emergency refugees from natural disasters, right? No one will ‘re-educate’ you boss. Your initial ‘education’ seems spotty enough. Like most die-hard Rs you are incapable of admitting mistakes or changing cherished a priori beliefs.
But to drone on about socialism and marxism and revolution and armed and dangerous. Combine the over the top rhetoric of Rep Bachmann (R/Crazy – MN) with the howling madness of the Palin/McCain rallies and it won’t take much for the good ol boys to start shootin.
I know you think Rs are the Producers, while all the lower life-forms just demand their entitlements, but nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatism has held mankind back at every turn in the road. But please just re-read Atlas Shrugged (I bet you skipped the monologue, admit it), bleat about ‘going Galt’ and continue to oppose anything that might help us out of the mess you folks put us all in. There is plenty of blame for wrong decisions from Ds and so on, but the absolute abrogation of facts for a comforting fiction has become the defining tenet of modern conservatism.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
You know, if someone told me his process was in control when 20 to 30 percent of the product tested was at or out of tolerance I would fire them. That would be what, .1, .2 cpk?
March 28th, 2009 at 7:21 am
perfect non sequitur answer
March 28th, 2009 at 10:32 am
how so?
March 30th, 2009 at 1:36 am
How I wish the devout Global Warmists among us — those who believe we have no choice but to permanently divert untold trillions of dollars out of the economy, so as to achieve some barely-measurable reduction in the rate of climate change 100 years hence — I wish you would kindly explain how you expect to regulate out of existence the two greatest natural sources of atmospheric carbon emissions: volcanic eruptions and forest fires.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:03 am
You’re missing the point, we must do something, anything!!! Please make the guilt go away!!!
March 30th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
shcb, please start making sense.
Welcome oplydoleo, sorry you aren’t concerned about how human activity is affecting the Earth.
In your post, the CO2 reductions are both A) trillions of dollars and B) barely measurable in a hundred years. Both statements are provably false, but your last sentence out does your previous doozy. Are you lil bobby jindal come over to play for the day? Because when you mock ‘volcano monitoring’ and then a major volcano blows, you look even more silly than usual. Did you know that volcanoes are actually a source of global cooling? Are you aware that some scientists are studying intentionally geo-engineering volcanoes to blow up? The idea is that they can form a sort of crude brake on the run-away temperatures by dispersing hydrogen sulfides into the upper atmosphere.
Before you make comments that are, shall we say, lacking in nuance? I suggest you check wikipedia and/or snopes. Conservapedia is not a source of accurate information btw. Turn off foxnoise and rush dimbulb. Avoid AM radio entirely.
Let me repeat that manmade CO2 is 130 times what volcanoes cough up every year.
Forest fires? Only you can prevent forest fires. ;-)
March 30th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
ooops, you actually have a single long run-on sentence, my error
March 30th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
you see enky, if you listened to more talk radio you would understand what I was saying.
March 31st, 2009 at 6:53 am
I think when our planet was created it was designed to handle natural occurrences like volcanic eruptions and forest fires.
What it wasn’t designed for is a species of 6 billion raping and pillaging it and spewing shit into its air and water.
March 31st, 2009 at 8:40 am
NL – exactly
though I wouldn’t use the word designed, perhaps evolved
shcb – now I have to read your mind or listen to hate radio?
bleep that
your post made no sense in relation to the previous posts (as they so often do)
then your reply is that I should listen to PRAVDA or something like that to attain enlightenment?
seriously, when wwnjs think volcanoes and forest fires are the problem (of course they are big local problems, just ask lil bobby jindal about how super stupid volcano monitoring is!)
manmade CO2 is more than 130 times volcano CO2 (and increasing)
but don’t let the facts, don’t let the science, don’t let reason or sanity or humanity get in the way of your partisan poltroonery…
March 31st, 2009 at 11:11 am
Then let me explain it to you. Liberals are notorious for being guilt ridden, so many times their solution to a problem is just do something, even if it won’t do any good, unfortunately many times the unintended consequences are worse than the problem they are trying to solve. Conservatives understand that there are some problems that just can’t be solved, they can only be mitigated at best.
One of the theories of why the folks in Hollywood are predominately liberal is they have this guilt for making so much money for doing so little. I think it is more left brain, right brain myself, with right brain people being more creative so they tend to be artists and at the same time less logical.
I wasn’t in the volcano discussion, haven’t looked into it. The only thing I have been reading on volcanoes lately is that there seems to be a ridge of volcanic activity from Greenland to Alaska that is more active lately and may be one the factors of ice melting in the North Pole region. I haven’t looked into it enough to know if I believe that or not.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
sweet cheese and rice, but now you actually think volcanoes are what is causing global warming? volcanoes melted the polar icecap? forgive me, but man made CO2 is 130 times what volcanoes produce… volcanic heat inputs would be miniscule in relation to other inputs
so let us say it IS sunspots
or magic or whatever crap wwnjs think it is on any given day
your solution is: do nothing, it’s all natural, kumbaya and pass the ammo
The vast majority of ‘the science’ says human activity is the cause (CO2, other GHGs, albedo changes, blacktop, cities, deforestation etc), but no, you KNOW better. Why? Because Al Gore wants ter give ye the socialism!1!!1!1 or some such nonsense.
Look, just step aside while the sane people deal with reality and try to fix the messes you dolts have made. Please.
Tell you what, I’ll ask all pretty please with some nuance on top: can you try to make sense, just for a minute, of your post from
http://www.lies.com/wp/2009/03/24/mooney-on-will-on-warming/#comment-143659
?
liberal guilt? it is to laugh
March 31st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
be glad to, which one are talking about? the 143659 doesn’t give me enough.
March 31st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
um, click on the link to be sent to the mid thread anchor point?
this is like a conversation with a two year old
I understand the words, but they make no sense in the thread.
the usual non sequitur…
March 31st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
it pointed to two comments, I wasn’t sure which you were talking about, I’ll explain tonight, it gets technical.
March 31st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Cpk is a unit of measure we use in statistical process control, I’m not enough of a mathematician to know if it is used in other areas of statistics or not. It is a simple formula, has to be for me to understand it, math was never one of my strong points, that calculates the number of rejects in parts per million. It is built around the theory that any group of related data will form itself into a bell curve. The shape of this bell curve in relation to the tolerance of the dimension being tested returns a number from 0 to 2. At 2 the ppm failure rate is less than 1 (.00198) this is 6 sigma. A cpk of 2 is generally considered unobtainable. For most processes a cpk of 1.33 (4 sigma) is considered “in control” this will yield about 64 ppm failure rate. This allows us to spot check sample batches of generally 25 to 50 and be relatively assured a failure rate.
The way this works in practice is you want to not only get your process inside the tolerance, you want to get the measurements in the center of the tolerance and you want the tolerance as large as possible so the grouping is concentrated in the middle third of the tolerance, any samples outside that middle third quickly drop your cpk. Any sample s outside the tolerance kill it. You can have a process that is in control and have just one rouge sample and drop the cpk to well under 1 (2,700 ppm).
Now how this relates to the topic is we have about a 40 year period (40 samples) our hypothesis is that the earth is warming, now there is a tolerance for this warming, at some point the temperature change would be ridiculous. Now it is conceivable that there could be a year or two where the temps could actually drop and still maintain a positive climb so our lower tolerance (lsl) would be a negative number our upper tolerance (usl) would not only be positive, but would be much more positive than our lsl. If the mean were 0 then our hypothesis would be that temps are not changing. Surface data shows an increase of .17 deg c per decade for the last 30 or 40 years, this would be our trend line (mean) but for the last ten years the increase of is roughly .06 deg c with a couple of those samples below 0.
Now of course we don’t have a “tolerance” for global warming but if we did and 25% or 30% of the samples were 30% of the mean with a couple at or outside the tolerance the cpk would be considerably less than 1.3, now .1 or .2 is probably an exaggeration (we generally stop at .4, not much point below that), so let’s say .8.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:49 am
I wrote:
And your rambling post still don’t. So let me see if I understand this correctly… you are saying (by pulling numbers from your ass) that ‘the science’ on climate change is something like 80% ‘in’ but you won’t accept that and make some analogy with a known manufacturing process? Because 20% of the science isn’t ‘in’? Forgive me for pointing this out, but how much of the science is ‘in’ on gravity. We know much about how gravity affects our world, but very little about how it actually works on a particle/wave/energy level. I bet you aren’t convinced about gravity either.
But to get back to mocking your analogy: a completely known man made process is compared to the largest natural system in the known local universe (our ecosystem). That is like comparing monkey wrenches and apples. They are both things, nouns and so forth, but to comparing them is just plain nonsensical.
The earth has not been cooling in the last ten years. Stop cherry picking a few outlier data points to make a argument that doesn’t even hold its own water. Show me the data that supports your bullshit. You can’t. It’ll be some crap from foxnewts or macho mikey rosebud.
Please step aside, stfu and let the adults fix the stuff you morans have fucked up so very badly. Thanks.
April 1st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The data for the temperature change over the last few decades was compiled from information from the Hadley Centre and UAH satellite records. Here is a sample of the data if you would like to look through it.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Now of course you are misstating what we are saying as per usual, we are not saying the temperature has dropped in the last ten years we are saying it has not increased significantly in the last ten years and has fallen slightly in the last couple.
The science that is in simply isn’t good science, if 100% of the science is “in” but it wasn’t done properly it means squat. I don’t know how much of the article on Freeman Dyson you read, it was really long, but that is what he is saying, along with several other scientists I have heard on, yes, Mike Rosen.
This is why my cpk analogy is pertinent, it doesn’t matter whether we are talking global warming, process control, detective work, or trouble shooting computer problems, there is logical procedure you use that is all based on the scientific method and it simply isn’t being used here.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 am
hmmm yes, great link
my analysis of those numbers shows a definite warming trend
A brief perusal of the available science on climate change points to human induced changes being the cause. I am all for more study. The failure to reach orbit of the OCO sat was a major blow to accurate measurement of atmospheric composition. But beginning to work together on addressing climate change is a step we must take now if we hope to avoid disaster. Fine fine, you want to believe it is sunspots? volcanoes? ANY other reason then human induced CO2 and other GHGs… whatever, great, now what is your plan? oh, you don’t have one…
You would rather compare a monkey wrench and atmospheric/climate science… one is a physical thing built to certain very much known tolerances another is a large and exceedingly complex body of knowledge about the most complex biosphere known to man. Yes, i too have some considerable respect for Freeman Dyson, but even he hedges his rhetoric and could very well be wrong.
Enough of the science is ‘in’ that it is prudent to begin to address the likely causes. I never claimed it was 100% in. But you just love to pull ‘info’ and invective out of your ass. A carbon tax would begin to deincentivize fossil fuels. Good idea. That might help us get the hell out of the middle east and clean up the atmosphere at the same time (all while powering the next wave of the industrial revolution: clean green tech). But we have to get the Indians and Chinese on board.
This is like ‘debating’ a two year old, you are just not capable of rational thought when it comes to anything partisan or political. Your mind is already made up, you seek only information that reinforces your a priori prejudices and revel in the homespun stupidity and poltroonery.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
:-) Give your brother my sympathies, I can see why he placates you by seeming the “rational” conservative at family functions. My guess is there is a woman, your mom or his wife that has given him the business about staring anything with you. It was probably accompanied by a furled brow and shaking index finger.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
yet another non sequitur answer
completely not germane to the issue at hand
so now you claim to know my brother’s mind better than I do?
you know more about our relationship than we do?
you know my mom is more left leaning then he or I? (waaaaay wrong)
my bro and I talk several times a week, we email nearly every day for business, he stays with us when he comes out for biz, but you KNOW better.
Last time he stayed with us a few weeks ago, we were drinking some beers, and flipping around the idiot box for a bit, someone was on fox (whoopi?) and I paused to listen for a bit. he asked “you actually watch that crap?” “well, if there is something interesting on any channel we’ll stop and watch” his reply “fox is crap, oreilly is nuts, beck is certifiable” my reply “yeah, but occasionally they are funny”
You are a fool sir, a child in intellect and a partisan poltroon of the worst stripe.
jbc didn’t give you posting authority for good reason
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:53 am
as usual, you clutch your pearls and can’t actually ‘debate’ anyone who has the backbone to say “bullshit” to your right wing nut job bullshit.
typical
What makes this especially ironic is I am not even a big Climate Change ‘believer’. I just look at the available layman’s tracts, the charts and numbers that I can grok and I’ve gradually come to the realization that if we don’t take action, we’ll be sucking down ME oil for the rest of my life time. And my children’s. Burning crap isn’t the way to power an advanced civilization. CO2 is only one of the things that comes out of a smokestack, and it may have real detrimental effects changing our atmospheric composition like we are doing.
But wwnjs think it is all about Al Gore giving us teh Socialism!!1!1!!!1