"As they passed the rows of houses they saw through the open doors that men were sweeping and dusting and washing dishes, while the women sat around in groups, gossiping and laughing.
"What has happened?" the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby-carriage along the sidewalk.
"Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty -- as you ought to know very well," replied the man; "and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City."
"Hm!" said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. "If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?"
"I really do not know," replied the man, with a deep sigh. "Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron.""
- L. Frank Baum, "The Land of Oz"
Monday, June 23, 2008
This is going to be a post on global warming, or global climate change if you like. Before I start, a few things about me:
- I am not an anti-environmentalist. I think Christians are meant to be good stewards of God's creation. For what it's worth, I take public transportation to work, drive (relatively) fuel-efficient cars, live in a 1,750 sq ft. house (there are six of us living here, plus a dog), we had our AC replaced with a more energy-efficient model a few years ago - although not by choice - and my carbon footprint is WAY smaller than Al Gore's.
- I am most definitely anti-baloney-sausage. I'm a big fan of straight, agenda-less talk.
- Since I've lived for awhile, I remember the hysteria of the 70s. Back then, we were definitely all about to die from global cooling. In addition, we were going to all starve to death due to over-population. Also, there would be no oil left by 1981. I seem to remember another Gore - the Vidal one - scaring me out of my bell-bottoms on that one. But it didn't matter, because we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust anyway. And all of these bad things were going to happen, simultaneously, the day after tomorrow. So please don't hate on me as an enemy of the earth if I am a little skeptical of hysterias of all kinds.
- I am excited about all the strides that are being made and will be made in alternative energies, because I love seeing creative, inventive minds work. I think the high market price of oil is about 1,000,000 times more effective in spurring this kind of inventiveness than Government fiat has ever been.
- If rising global temperature changes are a) caused by the actions of mankind, b) going to result in worse things than the temperature going down or staying the same and c) something we can do something about, I'm all for whatever we need to do. But I want us to be sure we're doing the right thing, and not just pursuing a bunch of high-sounding plans that won't really work and might even make things worse or result in other unintended consequences, such as food riots and poor people starving to death.
- The only kind of scientist I claim to be is a computer scientist. So C02 ppm, ocean currents, El Nino, and the like are all greek to me.
Ok, so here are my questions:
Are we all about to completely die?
The year of Hansen's original testimony [1988] was the world's hottest year on record. Since then, 14 years have been hotter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Or what?
The ten hottest years ever measured happened thousands of years ago and 2005 was not one of them. Gore must be using only temperature readings from the 125 year thermometer set, a very short time to look at when one is trying to understand Global Warming, but this period of time suits the environmentalists because it is a time in which temperatures happened to be wandering up. Alarmists refuse to look at the big picture because it shows what they refuse to believe. For the US, the recently revised NASA GISS Annual Mean temperatures show 6 of the 10 warmest years were from the 1920s to the 1950s and only 4 since 1990.I'm asking a serious question. Because I'm getting tired of the dueling statistics.
(Also not a big fan of global-warming "stagecraft" - e.g. Hansen's testimony in 1988)
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Comments on "Maybe I'm the Only One Who's Confused":
2. Bird
- 06/23/2008 9:36 pm CDT
I remember the hysteria of the 70s
That gives me hope that one day the Global Warming hysteria will pass, and we'll be on to other Doomsday scenarios to worry about.
3. Jeff the Baptist
- 06/24/2008 9:44 am CDT
Are we all about to completely die?
No. While temperatures have risen since '88, they haven't risen significantly since '98. This doesn't prove that the globe isn't warming because temperature plateaus are common. But it does show that the current models suck because none of them see see this behavior.
Most of the climate graphs you see by the alarmists are from "modern data" starting in the mid-1850s to present. This allows them to start their graphs during the colder temperatures of the Little Ice Age. This artificially inflates the temperature change they can display.
You never see the alarmists showing data from the last thousand years that includes the Medieval Warm Period (or if they have they've played with it ala the hockey-stick chart) or even longer term data that shows the Holocene Climate Optimum ten thousand years ago. Why? Because then you get good perspective about how global temperatures shift cyclically and how current temperature shifts aren't really that remarkable.
4. jen
- 06/24/2008 10:01 am CDT
One volcanic eruption does more damage to the atmosphere than we humans can ever hope to inflict with our carbon footprint.
In addition, there are a lot of scientists who believe that the sun's activity has more to do with global warming/cooling than anything else - heightened sun flare activity will increase the global temp and reducuction of the flares will cool things down. The 10 year warming period has been tied to incresed solar flares, according to one report I read a month or so ago (I can't remember where).
I like Junk Science for a dose of reality. As for our impending doom, the Bible assures us that global warming or the oil issue are not reasons the world will end. ;-)
5. Joseph D. Walch
- 06/24/2008 9:40 pm CDT
As for our impending doom, the Bible assures us that global warming or the oil issue are not reasons the world will end. ;-)
Amen to that, but for those who don't believe in the Bible, the evidence is pretty conclusive that we aren't going to see any kind of Global Warming catastrophe. I like Senator Inhoff's assessment about the extremely poor reporting done by journalist who have probably had one required biology class and who are completely clueless as to the statistics or the science of Climate science.
Personally, I think (having lived in a third world country for more than two years) that the most pressing concern especially for people of faith is the poverty. Reduce poverty and we will see decreased pollution of the sort that can kill people TODAY not in 100 years (e.g. sewer contamination of drinking water, infectious diseases that debilitate large groups of people).
By the way, I love CO2. What's so bad about CO2? It's the building block of plants. Where do people think trees come from? it's not from the ground but from the air: CO2 converted into biomass through photosynthesis. The more we have in the air, the taller our forests will grow, the more food will fill the oceans supporting more marine life, etc. I mean, do those environmentalist really want to take the food away from those poor humpback whales?
Leave a Comment:
I have no idea if current climate changes are caused by human activity or not. Scientists obviously have modeled cases that they are.
However, I know a lot about models, particularly financial ones, and know that models, no matter how sophisticated, are built on all sorts of human assumptions. Assumptions, not facts. Furthermore, what isn't in a model is often far more important than the assumptions in the model -what Donald Rumsfeld famously called the unknown unknowns in regards to what might happen in Iraq.
For a recent example of poor models that were thought to be foolproof, the financial experts and credit agencies modeled all this subprime mortgage debt and securities to be safe investments, They are now writing off hundreds of billions of dollars of losses, because all their models failed to account for numerous real world facts.
I know that many scientists are legitimately concerned about potential severe impacts to human life from climate change, although I tend to respect more the ones who acknowledge that the impacts are not clearly known.
I see a far more insidious purpose among many politicians pushing climate change legislation, particularly Democrats. Regulating carbon dioxide admissions gives them a foot into regulating every human and every human activity on the face of the earth. Most of these people are extremely fond of government/socialist control of nearly all industry, and even more dangerously support so-called family planning and population control measures.
My position is this. I will try to personally be a good steward of God's earth and not be wasteful. However, I will not support any political efforts to declare carbon dioxide a 'pollutant' which allows governments to regulate the very air I exhale. I find that far more threatening to human life than climate models which suppose some environmental doomsday.