Sunday
Mar132011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day
Mar 13, 2011 Economics Greens Politicians This was apparently posted to the comments on Christopher Booker's article today:
I have worked in government for 28 years as an economist, and for the last 20 years I have worked on environmental programs. In that time I have not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming, let alone man made global warming and I have not seen a shred of evidence that there is going to be a green economic boom. The only evidence I have seen is that there is a green economic bust, that money invested in green technologies is usually wasted and simply consumes investment that could be better used elsewhere. I think that anybody in government or industry who can not understand this is either dishonest, stupid, or both. That applies to Cameron - I think he is both.
H/T Messenger
Reader Comments (60)
The science is bust, the politics is suspect, it is only the finances that keep this thing afloat, and baby, it is a bubble. For how long it will last, even kim doesn't know.
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Make every day, Guy Fawkes day.
Sounds about right to me. The weak warming signal by no means appears in all ground stations with long records, for example in much of North America. It seems to require computer modelling to extrapolate/interpolate over un-measured regions, not least the polar ones, and hence is vulnerable to adjustment biases of the kind we have seen exposed in New Zealand. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a substantial consensus of a modest overall warming trend, albeit one which by itself gives not the slightest cause for alarm. Quite the reverse.
The agitations of the so-called 'greens' are based on what I recently saw described as 'the political concept of rescuing the planet.'. I think that is a very insightful phrase. It by the physicist Knut Löschke, and I first came across the quote here: http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/10/german-physicist-slams-climate-science-says-climate-politics-is-grand-deja-vu-of-communist-east-germany/
Doesn't sound right at all to me. In fact it sounds like this quoted guy needs to be handed a clue.
"In that time I have not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming, let alone man made global warming"
lolwot?
Reads a lot like creationists who say they haven't seen a shred of evidence to justify evolution. Obvious question is where have they looked? Often that's met with stammers and long silences.
In the opening he tries to imply he would have seen this evidence as a matter of course in job and so that he hasn't seen it means it doesn't exist:
"I have worked in government for 28 years as an economist, and for the last 20 years I have worked on environmental programs."
But no there's nothing in that described job role which tells me he would have been handed a thick wad of documents "justifying" global warming. I think he's much the same as everyone else - if he wants evidence he has to go research the matter outside his day job. And if he thinks there's no evidence for global warming, well he clearly hasn't researched it.
Rather telling that someone so clueless would be given air time here and on Booker's blog.
Ahh he is like a creationist.
It's rather telling that someone so clueless feels the need to attack someone they disagree with here.
It will be like an 'antivaccine' protester next.
@C --
The topic of the article, and the tenor of the comment, concerns the wastefulness of "green" subsidies. The important part of the comment is "money invested in green technologies is usually wasted and simply consumes investment that could be better used elsewhere."
Let's try to stay on topic. If you have an argument that green subidies are economically beneficial, please state it.
HaroldW Cthulhu
Agreed - I think the substantive part of the quote is that an economist (a government economist) involved with environmental planning categorically states that 'green' economics is incoherent gabbling.
Is that "green" as in "greenhorn"?
"Rather telling that someone so clueless would be given air time here and on Booker's blog."
That sounds suspiciously like Zed...
@ James P
Yes, I aggree, but its a pity to make a statement "not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming" - we'll be as guilty of exaggeration as the warmists are.
James P, Ctulhu normally posts at Tamino's, where a mind closed to reality is required.
The green economy consists of alternative energy scams, the reversal of economic development, and social and economic parasites employed to promote them, much like Joe Romm and Grant Foster really
James P
I absolutely believe Zed when she says she only posts as ZDB.
Cthulhu has an entirely different prose style and is apparently N American.
The creationist slur was offensive though, wasn't it? Just because not everyone here agrees with the consensus on climate sensitivity to CO2 doesn't make us all anti-science flat-earthers. Cthulhu would do well to remember this. And leave off with the cheap shots.
C's monicker is apt but a bit grandiose.
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PFM
>its a pity to make a statement "not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming"
Well, it isn't getting warmer at the moment. I think it's also true when looked at over more sensible timescales - 150 years of warming after a LIA isn't too surprising, either. I'm sure the reason that Geologists are more sceptical than most is because they've seen it all before. The climate has been all over the place in the last billion years...
Well Cthulhu might have seen some shred of evidence of warming in the last 20 years or so, but then he probably accepts all the bent data - BUT if you discount dodgy upward adjustments (NZ already mentioned - and people pressing for investigation in Oz as well), dodgy downward adjustments prior to 1950 (to exaggerate any warming trend), the massive UHI effects that are plain as a pike-staff virtually everywhere; added to the fact that it hasn't really done anything at all for 15 years then shreds are a bit hard to come by.
I think most Sceptics/Skeptics accept that the earth in warming a little, it patently has been since the MIA ended.
BUT
Land based temperature measurements are read to 0.1 deg C. and obviously have inaccuracies both in inherent calibration and in exposure. I am always a little surprised that anyone takes any notice of trends that are well inside the error bars. Especially with a concept such as mean global atmospheric temperature, which probably doesn't really exist on the spatial scale of the measurements.
@ Retired Dave
The likelier explanation of Cthulhu's views is simply that he's a bit thick.
One of the nastiest reviews of THSI was by one Professor Richard Joyner, emeritus professor of physical chemistry at Nottingham Trent University.
To get into NTU to read chemistry you need a B and two Cs at A Level, and the B needn't be in Chemistry. You can change its name, but it's still Nottingham Poly.
At UEA the tariff to read Climate Science is three Bs. In both cases this array of grades puts you in the bottom half of the class A-Level wise. Joyner is just a little bit in awe of a university such as UEA where the entrance requirements are so, to him, daunting.
Same thing with Cthulhu I guess.
Retired Dave
I think most Sceptics/Skeptics accept that the earth in warming a little, it patently has been since the MIA ended.
I see no evidence for more than normal cyclic variation over time. We had a bad winter in 1948, and indeed in 1945-1946, as well as another in 1978-79 and now this year.
So where is the long term trend? Back in the late 1970's "the new Ice Age" was coming, remember? I do.
"Back in the late 1970's "the new Ice Age" was coming, remember? I do."
Mar 13, 2011 at 5:11 PM | Don Pablo de la Sierra
Well you remember wrong if you're talking about science. I imagine, like most things you post, you're basing your claims on anecdote or hearsay, rather than having an actual scientific basis for them.
If you care to look at 'THE MYTH OF THE 1970S GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS' by Peterson et al (2008) you'll see that over 6 times as many of the papers being published predicted warming rather than cooling. Yet more cherry picking and/or lack of actual research. Your intention seems to be to support your position, rather than to be accurate.
To ZDB.
Honey bunch, it doesn't matter what you post here. The game is up. Greens like you are so last season. Protest all you want. Your culture is as short lived as a jumper 's leap from a high place, who was heard to mutter during the plunge to reality, " So far, so good". It's not the high speed descent that ends speculation, it's the crunching sudden stop at the bottom. Be thankful your psyche has its eyes closed. Fear of falling is a dreadful affliction and you have it in spades, my dear.
I remain,
Your obedient servant,
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Sarcasm button off.
Why only the last 150 years?
Has the 'globe' 'warmed' significantly in the last 1000 years?
Zed
IIRC John Holdren (President Obama's chief scientific advisor) and Paul Ehrlich warned of an aerosol-induced 'ice age' in the 70s. Surely that counts ;-)
Good reminder of a basic result, Shub. To get into detailed discussions of climate behaviour, and in particular about trends in time series, one really has top specify the time and space scales of particular interest in a particular discussion. The cooling trend of the Holocene over past 6,000 years or so seems global, for example. The warming trends we have seen in the 20th century may or may not be, since the rise is so small it is a problematic one to be very sure about, but we do have locations in which no overall trend has been observed in that time period - so that for some sub-global regions at least, there has clearly been no 'warming', manmade or otherwise.
I was at a university studying atmospheric physics in the mid 70s when the ice-scare was getting coverage in the mass media. It was not taken seriously in the department where I was. Indeed, the climate was regarded as so poorly understood, and the available data so ludicrously inadequate for anything other than speculation of various degrees of idleness. I remember in particular that Schneider was struggling to be taken seriously by his peers, and that may account in part for his dramatic excursion into messianic saving of the planet. It was a 'political concept' which presumably appealed to him, and later to others, in particular James Hansen who picked up the burning cross, the brightness of which became dramatically increased by the remarkable reverence shown by many for computer models of climate. A reverence inconceivable back in the 1970s. I suspect the political impact of the fatuous Club of Rome computer models of the global economy was like a revelation from on high for those who were to achieve an even more dramatic impact using GCMs programmed to give rising CO2 levels a dramatic role in climate. A role which the real atmosphere seems very reluctant to acknowledge.
ZDB read . Schneider S. & Rasool S., "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141
or .."The Genesis Strategy" warning of the coming glaciation (Ponte, Lowell. "The Cooling", Prentice Hall, N.J., USA, 1976), in which the author claimed that the climatic cooling from 1940 to the 1970s was but the precursor to the main event - the coming Ice Age.
Schneider was one of the first in the scientific community to warn of the impending Ice Age with this paper.
@BBD (Mar 13, 2011 at 6:31 PM) -
This disaster scenario did not seem to satisfy H&E, for they addedYou do recall correctly. This blog entry contains part of a 1971 essay by Holdren & Ehrlich concerning the global cooling trend and the possibility of an ice age.
In reading this, I am reminded of one S. Holmes: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
Don Pablo
Yes I totally agree - as I said, much headlined warming is fiddling with figures. The data is so riddled with problems it is hard is to tell where we are. BUT I think we are seeing a cyclical slow warming/cooling with a small overall upward trend, which as many have shown from CRUT data has no "unprecedented" warming in it.
Since your comment - I see ZEDS has been in to quote some source as saying that no science predicted in the 70's an Ice Age coming . I just love it when warmists try to re-write history, erasing MWP and MIA and the like.
Of course they have to erase the 70's cooling ideas because some of the main 80's proponents of CAGW (not Hansen I give him his due) were on the previous bandwagon.
What is really amusing about ZEDS comment though is the finger pointing at half-cocked cooling reports in the 70's as not scientific - heavens above we get AGW/CAGW crap like that every day. Several tons of it in fact.
It's hard to say which was stronger, HaroldW, for Holdren and Ehrlich; the desire for disasters or the need to blame man for them. But it was geschribben 40 years ago, now, wasn't it?
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Retired Dave
Right on about ZDB shooting herself in her foot with the unfounded claim that there was no such reports -- as several others document above. Me, I was there. I remember the TV reports while I was still in grad school.
The trouble with these young twerps is they don't realize that we are talking from personal experience.
As for the weather, it clearly runs in cycles. This year is clearly colder, as it was 30 years ago, and 60 years ago. Is the over all trend up or down or sideways? I would say that the data is to contaminated with bullshit that it should all be thrown out, especially sad when you realize that millions were spent on collecting it and the likes of James Hansen went out and purposefully contaminated it.
We need to clean house of "Climate Scientists" and get some real science done.
John Shade @ 6:43pm
An excellent summary of where we are and where we have been. I totally agree with your last two sentences.
Certainly the Hadley Centre started with the proposition of Global Warming and have been working towards it ever since. They have it down to a fine art now. If you pitch up there for a job saying anything other than you believe in CAGW, you might as well have saved the bus fare.
"Well Cthulhu might have seen some shred of evidence of warming in the last 20 years or so, but then he probably accepts all the bent data"
You mean like UAH satellite data? Are you implying Dr Roy Spencer is a fraud?
How skeptical of you.
I'll remember you as a counter example next time a denier reels out the tired "we aren't denying the world has warmed, just that..."
The myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus
Thomas C. Peterson, NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC, Asheville, NC; and W. M. Connolley and J. Fleck
Oh yes clean science, bloody good idea. Is that the Mr Connolley I think it is?
Cthulhu
Lovely to see you again and everything, but keep the d-word to yourself. Some here - myself included - fully accept the AGW hypothesis (theory if you will) and find the term profoundly offensive as well as obviously inappropriate. Don't bother with the bogus semantic arguments. I am talking about conflation with Holocaust denial and so are you. Stop it or leave.
Martyn
Yes.
Cthulhu. It's cooled since you went to sleep, and whilst you've been dreaming, CO2 levels have also been in decline. As John Shade says, it's a timescale thing.
Oh, and Dunwich also fell into the sea, but not to worry, that wasn't global warming, or your Dunwich. Still has a nice chip shop though.
Cthulhu
Remind me again - how far back does the satellite record go?
Since you like satellites (and don't we all) you will have noticed that the mid-tropospheric temp is at an ALL TIME LOW - just using AGW terminology there, sorry folks.
Mar 13, 2011 at 7:02 PM | Retired Dave:
"The data is so riddled with problems it is hard is to tell where we are. BUT I think we are seeing a cyclical slow warming/cooling with a small overall upward trend, which as many have shown from CRUT data has no "unprecedented" warming in it."
If the data is reliable enough to permit comparison with previous warming periods then it's reliable enough to know where we are. surely.
Don Pablo de la Sierra says the data is so contaminated it should just all be thrown out, yet I don't think he's really thought about the consequences of that. For a start if we did throw out all the surface temperature data it would have the effect of invalidating your argument that the data shows the recent warming to not be unprecedented.
Second if the surface records are thrown out the early 20th century warming, an event based on the reliability of surface temperature records, would become almost entirely baseless. Skeptic arguments based on the early 20th century would become invalidated. In contrast throwing out the surface station data would not affect recent warming. We have satellite observations of the recent warming.
@kim -
although in this case it appears that H&E are trying to freeze their cake and heat it too.Holdren & Ehrlich speculated, within the space of a paragraph, about both a tsunami from increasing Antarctic ice, and inundation from Antarctic melting. It reminded me of Robert Frost:
Don Pablo
Yes I remember it well. The coolists had much more of a hold for a little while than ZEDS realises - must be young.
These things are grabbed at by people with a doom mentality and a need to save the planet one way or the other.
I have noticed a trend recently ( I haven't measured it) sceptics are often now accused not just of "denying" warming is taking place, but of believing the new ice age is coming scenario. I just thought most people were trying to keep an open mind and monitor what is happening, but there it is.
cthulhu
That is just a mind dump of ramblings.
There are aspects of the surface instrumental record and how it has been measured and massaged that should concern all honest people with an interest in meteorology and climatology, whether they believe in CAGW or not.
We are talking about very small trends one way or the other, often exaggerated to look big by scaling. We now know from recent happenings in a few parts of the world (and from the ClimateGate emails) that some doubtful adjustments have been made - strangely always upwards since 1950. The New Zealand situation is just the tip of the iceberg.
It worries me that AGW foot soldiers like yourself are just willing to rubber stamp these things and believe the obfuscation put out by CAGW Central. Scientists do not delete emails, refuse FOI requests and try to block descenting evidence and its publication.
As James Lovelock said recently some of the people at the head of the AGW industry are growing fearful that they may not have a full grasp on what controls the Climate.
Sorry ZDB, but as a child growing up in the seventies (whose parents religiously watched the 9 o'clock news every night), the "start of the next ice age" was all over the media at the time. I was a strange kid, I was the only 10 year old who could explain Watergate to the class...
"not a shred of evidence" - While I agree that many 'green' programs are really just money-making schemes, that doesn't discredit what Human emissions are doing to the atmosphere.
There are no peer-reviewed or widely accepted scientific articles that discredit the biasing of climate via CO2. The effects of the warming are what are disputed; not the warming itself which is evident not only statistical trends, but in fauna and foliage migratory changes in the last century.
Remember that weather is not climate - How quickly denier dismiss record summer heat, yet hinge on snowy winters... When latent heat in the upper atmosphere does in fact lead to more snow.
Or weather stations that sit next to heat sources... Another bad science argument by non-scientists. A trend can be seen regardless of bias.
People that don't follow the scientific method fall into the trap of creating correlations and accepting that as fact. It's easy to look at a graph and make some sort of deduction... Even though you could be entirely and factually incorrect. CO2 lag is one of these areas where there is erroneous understanding of Polar heat exchange and the variables at play.
The fact is that Human beings have and continue changing the atmosphere's composition. We only have one planet, and not another to run tests on. We also evolved much later than millions of years ago when CO2 was higher, the Earth had shorter days, and the Sun was cooler.... People should really research the variables of AGW before they start blindly following articles.
Even Professor Lindzen himself is taken out of context - When he actually doesn't oppose AGW, but questions the accuracy of predictions. There's a lot of misinformation out there, most of it by people with little or no background in atmospheric science.
Back to the quote from Booker's article, we do indeed face grave problems from a certain individual who fails to see that the policy we are being forced to follow is 'either dishonest, stupid, or both'. Oh to wind the clock back to 2005, and imagine David Davis won.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232548/Climate-change-sceptics-control-debate-ahead-global-conference.html
FWIW, and 'sad' as I am, I have been monitoring Booker's column over at the DT for the last 24 hours. It's been a bit of a slow day - when you consider he often draws over a 1,000 comments, so far today is 555.
However, I know that over the last few months Booker has been attracting trolls who have disrupted the hell out of his comments. Quite often, I have seen teams trolls working shifts and often repeating the same points and cut 'n' pasting huge tracts of data to disrupt the flow.
But now, I think I have detected a worryingly new type of troll. It goes by the name of 'harryhammer', and manages to post data on just about anything and everything that a poster can come up with. It also manages to post comments in multiple places within the blog at the same time. My worry is that this is a troll bot - either more than one person sharing an id (likely), or a machine (very bad news).
I have my suspicions that this troll-bot is a creation from CACC and it is working full time on responses. Unfortunately, the DT uses Disqus to manage comments and one cannot get a complete, single page listing of all the comments in one go so it's very difficult to run any kind of analysis without having to read all the comments (and believe me, I've read 'em all now): there is a definite pattern emerging and I think it's a very disturbing pattern. Anybody like to go and take a look, you'll see what I mean in ten minutes of casual browsing...
Just say NO!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eeYt1gOHtiQ/TPwjvoKBSSI/AAAAAAAAAQc/vrjZIT6P-0k/s1600/v125+Weather+diversity.jpg
Kim - I'm going right back to the very first comment on this post and your comparison of AGW with other economic bubbles.
The problem is that this particular bubble, the AGW bubble, is that it has occurred on a scale never imagined before.
There are billions if not trillions entrusted (I nealy wrote invested) in green and renewable funds which will become valueless. Much of that is superannuation money.
(Everbody should make sure where your superannuation funds are invested and that you are satisfied that it is invested in your best interests).
But that is only a start.
Wind and solar farms, research into carbon sequestration, tide and theormal energy, electric cars and so on. All the government and private money down the drain in fruitless efforts to prove AGW is real (research grant money) rather than really finding out what causes the climae to change.
Then there are the government departments of climate change, doing whatever, when the money could have been better spent on improved health for example, or other useful things.
All the regulations now springing up to stop people building near the seaside and harbour, for fear of a non existent huge rise in the sea level, some time after we are all dead and gone - some properties are already valueless and incapable of raising bank finance, while a much greater number will become valueless, as this particular fairy story spreads through the media.
When this eventually ends, governments will fall, throughout the developed world, and with them top bureaucrats, scientists, heads of scientific organisations - the list goes on and on. Public trust in scientists in all fields will be shattered, giving rise to a field day for evey type of charlatan.
The bursting of the bubble coming on top of the current shaky financial situation will be another very large kick in the guts.
The South Seas Bubble set Britian back for some years, as did the bursting of the Tulip Mania Bubble in Holland.
These were financial bubbles.
The AGW mania has seeped into the heart of evey aspect of life in Western countries.
Have a nice day.
Are you guys kidding me?
A government economist? How is the economy going?
And this guy thinks he can talk about areas outside his "expertise"?
BAHAHAHAH he's almost as stupid as you guys are for believing him!
"Right on about ZDB shooting herself in her foot with the unfounded claim that there was no such reports -- as several others document above. Me, I was there. I remember the TV reports while I was still in grad school.
The trouble with these young twerps is they don't realize that we are talking from personal experience."
Mar 13, 2011 at 7:16 PM | Don Pablo de la Sierra
This is a wonderful example of how completely uninterested in science or facts, DPdlS and other people who inhabit this site actually are.
DPdlS clearly does not wish to engage with anything which might challenge his prejudices, proving that his entire stance is idealogical, and has no basis in reality at all.
He clearly hasn't bothered to actually look at the paper I referenced, which in no way says that "there was no such reports". In fact, he hasn't even bothered to read and take in my (fairly brief) comment, which also acknowledged that there were a small number of reports which predicted cooling.
Rather than looking at facts or science, what does DPdlS choose to use to form opinions? His own anecdotal experience of something he saw on TV 30+ years ago.
Is that it for his prejudices and assumptions? Seemingly not. He assumes I'm both female and young - I've carefully never given away any personal information which would allow people to deduce either - and just to put the tin hat on it, he calls me a twerp into the bargain. What a charming character.
To recap:
- doesn't bother to read science if he thinks it might disagree with him
- doesn't even bother to read (or deliberately misquotes) comments he doesn't agree with
- puts more faith in his own half-remembered experience of television, than he does in science
- full of prejudices and assumptions, and also insulting
And finally of course, the fact that this comment was over 12 hours (and many comments) ago, and not one person has picked him up on any of the flaws and inaccuracies in his post. Proving once again, how truly un-sceptical you all are, prepared to dismiss or ignore everything which disagrees with a stance you have previously taken, and unthinkingly support everything which doesn't.
It must also be noted that DPdlS has threatened internet sites he doesn't like with violent terrorist action before. Not everyone here may have seen that post on this website, but the total lack of negative comment upon him for that, also speaks volumes on all that post here.
John C - good that you agree that many 'green' programs are really just money-making schemes. As you have come here and asserted that we know nothing of atmospheric science, could you please provide some evidence for your assertions, i.e:
that the statistical trend which shows the slight warming of the late 20th century was directly or indirectly attributable to increased atmospheric CO2 ?
evidence for fauna and foliage migratory changes in the last century - again, any scientifically documented cases of this are attributable to CO2 emissions, which could not be explained by the gradual warming since the end of the Little Ice Age, or natural variation, or habitat changes etc. ?
"Remember that weather is not climate - How quickly denier dismiss record summer heat, yet hinge on snowy winters... When latent heat in the upper atmosphere does in fact lead to more snow." - words fail me, it is clearly not us who are in denial. Please take yourself as far as you can along either the 3 A roads in Scotland which are currently closed, or the main Inverness to Perth railway line which is also currently blocked with snow, and explain to the would be travelers it is fault of "latent heat in the upper atmosphere", and nothing to do with the mass of cold air which have covered Scotland for the last 5 days.
Or weather stations that sit next to heat sources... Another bad science argument by non-scientists. A trend can be seen regardless of bias.
You haven't thought about this have you. I agree that using anomalies reduces the resultant distortion from UHI, but creeping urbanisation and upgrades of heating/air conditioning systems on buildings adjacent to weather stations obviously do affect the resultant recorded temperatures, and trends.
People that don't follow the scientific method fall into the trap of creating correlations and accepting that as fact. It's easy to look at a graph and make some sort of deduction... Even though you could be entirely and factually incorrect.
I agree, but it is not the sceptics who are guilty of this.
Perhaps you should read the Hockey Stick Illusion, or if you don't have the time just watch the following presentation by Prof Richard Muller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk As for interpretation of graphs, try http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlIfeature=player_embedded for a start and some climate change context.
CO2 lag is one of these areas where there is erroneous understanding of Polar heat exchange and the variables at play.
Changes to long term ocean currents (and predominant wind directions) are a much more likely explanation of the Arctic sea ice. Look at the data for summer 2007, atmospheric temeperatures were below average - http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php and click on 2007 on the left - the disappearance of the ice was largely due to winds blowing much of down the Fram Strait, google you-tube for the videos of this, or take the word of NASA - http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html).
Aside from the peninsula (which obviously is more susceptible to changes in long term oceanic cycles), Antarctica has not perceptibly warmed (despite the best attempts by Steig et al in 2009, http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/2/8/steigs-method-massacred.html )
The fact is that Human beings have and continue changing the atmosphere's composition. We only have one planet, and not another to run tests on. We also evolved much later than millions of years ago when CO2 was higher, the Earth had shorter days, and the Sun was cooler.... People should really research the variables of AGW before they start blindly following articles. Agreed, we only have one planet, and I do believe we should look after it. That's one of the key reasons why I am so fecked off with the idiots who have taken over the green movement - the real issues, i.e. lack of clean water (and cheap electricity) in the third world, habitat destruction, and pollution of land and seas by heavy metals, are being ignored all for the sake of reducing our output of a harmless trace gas. (I don't think increasing the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere from 0.000285 to 0.000385 is really of concern. ( especially as human emissions are less than 4% of the gross natural emissions, and CO2 is only responsible for 7% of the 'greenhouse gas effect', and that CO2's contribution to this effect cannot significantly increase, due to Beer-Lambert Law.
Incidentally, humans evolved in warm temperatures of sub-Saharan Africa. Naked Humans die from hypothermia if the ambient temperature falls below 28C. Warmth is not a problem. Were highly adaptable and can now live in extremes of -30C in Nunavut to + 40C in Africa. A change of 1 or 2C is nothing to worry about. Higher temperatures will increase food production (as will increased CO2).
Even Professor Lindzen himself is taken out of context - When he actually doesn't oppose AGW, but questions the accuracy of predictions. There's a lot of misinformation out there, most of it by people with little or no background in atmospheric science.
Yes, agree with you especially on the second point there, and most of them are fully signed members of the IPCC's AGW scam.
"Andy" complains about creationism. " Andy" you are one sad misguided chump. Evolution is much less plausible than global warming which may be a fact although certainly not man-made. The global warming fascists who want to imprison, fine, or worse, those who disagree with the theory, or whatever it is, are the ones that irritate me. Do they want to impose something on us which is not proven. Oh the evidence from the scientists is overwhelming, they point out. Well, that is totally untrue. Many scientists have been pressurised into accepting GW on pain of losing their jobs ( just like with evolution, Andy). 100s of other ones totally deny it is happening. One of the founders of Greenpeace even denies it is happening at all (anthropogenically or naturally). The media and politicians do not really allow the other side to be heard. It is propaganda in the name of globalism.
I'm another ancient taught at school (1960s) that the new ice age was nigh. Children of today may think that nothing scientific/philosophical happened before (whenever). Climate change: ice ages, glacial/interglacial was well understood by 19th Century geologists.
I am a scientist, geologist and graduate of UEA School of Environmental Sciences (note plural). I weep to see how the School is brought low by the activities of the (attached) CRU. ENV taught a rigourous science course. The only name I recognise in the current fraud, taught policy, not science, and I though his half-unit weak.