Tyre Oliphant wrote on November 09, 2009 02:31 PM: Vin
I just discovered your column an love it.
As for GW, my daughter is in 5th grade and they are learning about the climate. In her government approved text book it states that Climate is determined by weather cycles. This would mean that there is warming and cooling at different times. These are cycles that make up the climate. If my 5th grader can understand this, why can't these so called experts.
Keep up the great columns

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 13, 2009 11:01 AM: devsin,
Why don't you spend a month or two actually reading the material before shooting yourself in the foot?

devsin wrote on January 13, 2009 07:39 AM: Mark,

All of those folks seem to make their living through delegated coercion. I am sure it is unbiased.

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 13, 2009 06:25 AM: For those, unlike devsin, who wish to understand how serious the problem of AGW is please start with the "Start here" option at the top of the page here:
http://www.realclimate.org
For more on the science:
http://www.ipcc.ch
For the consensus:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm

devsin wrote on January 12, 2009 11:35 PM: I am for a global tax to stop GW. We need action now and given the current economic climate as the pinnacle of social engineering success, there is no better institution than government to save us from cow farts.

Not only that, but the self-serving and condescending Al Gore needs our green dollars for his British company, "Genaration Investments". After all, he has your health and future in his gigantic heart.

How are those sunspots going? What is the history of extended low activity, btw?

I am for nuking China and India since China is the biggest greenhouse gas producer and both nations are hellbent on consumption of energy. It is not like we don't have enough nukes, some of them are old and need to be disposed. Launch 'em!

Exactlty what is the coorelation between energy consumption and life expectancy? Am I to conclude that those who wish to redude energy consumption are in fact advocates of shorter lifespans?

FYYFFs!!!!! TG for the 2nd amendment, as we will need it soon! The heard is about to be thinned, I hope it starts in DC and NY, the two cess-pools of humanity and destroyers of liberties!

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 11, 2009 11:43 PM: So Henry,

You actually believe the canard that Real Climate is financed by George Soros? Even if that were so, which only the delusional believe, what can you point to, specifically, that is factually wrong on that site? Based on what evidence? Come on and give sources rather than pointless assertions.
Finally, I challenge you to meet me face to face at the UNLV Lied Library bulding and show me what you have looked in the way of background for AGW. Put up or admit you haven't a clue what you are talking about.

Henry Galt wrote on January 11, 2009 11:03 PM: Mark Schaffer,

To quote yourself....

"The first step in invalidating you and your assertions is your name calling...".

Faith will not get you through this even if you are consumed by guilt, which I suspect from your references. Ain't much science at either of those places guy. I know who funds, controls and administers realclimate. As for the ipcc, does cognitive dissonance blind you to the "governmental" part of their moniker?

Seeing as how the debate has been stifled everywhere but on the web how about you produce some of that "empirical data proving AGW" here and enlighten all of us. Just the most concise piece will do. I have been searching for years, a couple more days wont hurt. You could make a name for yourself.

Bluster and bullying, along with ad hominem and appeals to authority, give you away for the malleable servant you so obviously enjoy being.

This cognitively challenged liar bids you adieu.

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 11, 2009 06:00 PM: Henry,
Can you prove you have actually looked for the empirical evidence or, as I suspect, are you just lying? There are thousands of peer reviewed journal articles with empirical data proving AGW in good research libraries all over the globe. The only conclusion I can draw is you are just too cognitively challenged to do the actual reading.
For others start here:
http://www.realclimate.org
http://www.ipcc.ch

Henry Galt wrote on January 11, 2009 01:26 PM: Mark Schaffer wrote "... a willingness to go back in time to the late nineteenth century."

Yes. There is a lot of "stuff" from that era that has stood the test of time.

Funny how billions have been spent yet zero empirical evidence is shown as to how 3% of .03% of anything can affect the climate.

I tried to post earlier this weekend and waited for it to appear but no joy.

The whole point about the Swiss glacier was that it has melted 4 times, that we know of, thereby exposing artifacts from 5 eras during which humans have been able to traverse it (doubtless due to climate change). Hmmm, indeed.

rick wrote on January 10, 2009 05:25 PM: If it is too HOT, Go up Mt Charleston.

Susan wrote on January 09, 2009 09:01 AM: Vin, you are a complete idiot. It doesn't take a nuclear scientist to see the trend and facts of global warming. And, like a sine wave, it increases in its rate of change as it moves along. We are in for it, but you're so old you'll be dead when Vegas fries in 2020.

notacon wrote on January 09, 2009 07:55 AM: Vin is an idiot. Ask any mountaineer. Glaciers are receding all over the world, and virtually every glacier is receeding. In my lifetime I have personally seen glaciers in Canada that I walked on in the 1970's recede at least a half mile in length.

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 09, 2009 06:36 AM: Hey Henry,
The first step in invalidating you and your assertions is your name calling. Real Climate is run by working climatologists from around the world. What specific article have you read that you have peer reviewed evidence is false? None!
Next, I googled your exact quote and guess what the second paragraph says:
"The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier." Hmmmm.....
The rest of your diatribe consists of a loose collection of quotes by fringe people without referencing a source. This only convinces the ignorant. The only non fringe person you quote, Freeman Dyson, is retired and has done no research as a climatologist. Emeritus professors are stating their opinions as amateurs. Next time try referencing legitimate literature Henry.

Henry Galt wrote on January 08, 2009 03:01 PM: Mark Schaffer

Invocation of surrealclimate disbars you from rational argument. Those mice are in charge of the cheese.
You may as well recommend climateprogress.org.

Google "Schnidejoch new stone age trove" then tell me why that pass was open in 5 human eras and closed 4 times by glaciation.

Another, for you, would be - why has the world paid billions of dollars in the last 20 years for us to be told that CO2 science was "settled" in the 1800's?

Where is the engineering quality paper (just one would send me back under my rock) that gives empirical evidence that CO2 has/will/can ever warm the atmosphere?

Your consensus is political.

Ferenc Miskolczi - "There has been no increase in the effective amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere during the last 60 years" and

Hans Schreuder - "No greenhouse, whether made from glass, plastic, cardboard or steel will reach a higher inside temperature due to the magic of re-radiated IR energy. If it did, engineers would have long ago been able to design power stations made from air, mirrors and glass, extracting more energy out of it than was put into it - if only!"

Dr. David Bromwich, President International Commission on Polar Meteorology - “It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.”

VK Raina, India's leading Glaciologist - "...out of 9,575 glaciers in India, till date, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers. It is simple. The issue of glacial retreat is being sensationalized by a few individuals."

Freeman Dyson - "The fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated," and "the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models".

MIA NONY wrote on January 07, 2009 11:03 AM: What a relief in this, the age of post rationalism, to see this matter eloquently exposed as the Luddite piety it is. The Climate Inquisition offers the chattering classes a chance at pseudo moral superiority, Greener Than Thou. I view the climate debate as 'modern' cleverly fomented class warfare. For far too long a time I lived in close proximity to "voluntarily poverty" & "enviro-mental-ism", much of it paraded by those content to live off the public purse. No small number revealed their agenda through righteous "Eat The Rich" rhetoric. In reality they saw themselves not as lazy or idle but as dispossessed victims of corporate capitalism - yet at the same time envious, resentful, busy rationalising parasitic theft, behaving more as if they missed out on their share of the plunder, despite in many cases having chosen life long unemployment on the dole. Talk about tax funded freedom! That group had all the time in the world to protest whatever they resented. However, be warned that those whose first resort, when faced with facts, is to act smugly superior & hypocritically righteous are never content to live self marginalised lives, not content to work it through privately, or live as private self flagellating ascetic monks. The witch burner element at the extremes of the beleaguered climate debate resemble not only those wilful hysterics who relished burning others at the stake, (see The Crucible) but still more those who begged for the likes of Stalin/Gore to destroy freedoms for everyone - but himself. They also bear a startling similarity to the nasty & the vengeful who delighted in the blood lust & ugly revenge fed by adding up "deserving" severed heads in guillotine baskets, during the French revolution. Beware the madness of climate mobs.

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 06, 2009 09:13 PM: OK Tannim,

Link to a primary source research article from a peer reviewed journal that shows the evidence for your claim especially as a way to exclude the far greater effects of CO2. Although I know in advance no such exists give it a try. Same for the your weak magnetic field idea.
Aerospace, what a laugh.

Tannim wrote on January 06, 2009 01:54 PM: I work in aerospace. We deal in astrophysics as a matter of course, and the solar cycles correspond directly with the temperature changes. Most "global warming" malarkey is based on regional readings and have no bearing on reality. Nobody checks the air temperature in the middle of the ocean, do they? Why not? Because it kills their theory completely.

Also check the relationship between shifts of the magnetic field and the climate, and again you'll find correlation.

Mark Schaffer wrote on January 06, 2009 09:25 AM: For those interested in the science rather than idealogy please click on the "Start Here" option at the top of the real climate website here:
http://www.realclimate.org
For the worldwide consensus among credible science organizations as well as other established institutions see here:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm
Another action individuals can take is to visit a good research library and read the primary literature, but be prepared for an extended stay and a willingness to go back in time to the late nineteenth century.

Dennis wrote on January 05, 2009 11:43 PM: Thank goodness someone has the @#&^! to call "global warming" for what it is: junk science. There is no real proof that such a thing exists. Most scientists are no doubt cowed into going along with the PC position, for fear that they will lose all standing in their field.

MasterBlaster100 wrote on January 05, 2009 07:25 PM: Hey, did anyone watch the Twilight Zone Marathon on New Year's Day? You should have. I think the Global Warming/Climate Change crowd should take notes from the episode where a young woman in a city apartment building and her neighbor go through a heat spell that keeps ratcheting up and up until the young woman faints from the heat. Of course, she awakes only to find her older woman neighbor and the doctor telling her she is recovering from a fever. They then contemplate how they will deal with the climate being ice cold and without sunlight and the doctor saying he will move his family to Miami where it's warmer. Could Rod Serling and his writers may have had their episode plagurized? That's what this whole global warming science is.......science fiction.

Paolo wrote on January 05, 2009 11:39 AM: If we really are on a cyclical global warming trend, this could be a good thing. Perhaps there will be productive vineyards in northern England again, as there were in the warm period of the early Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages warm period was not caused by industrial pollution, by the way.

Bill Smith wrote on January 05, 2009 11:35 AM: Hey fiddlecraig, stop blaming the free-market since it does not exist in Amerika, if it ever even did.

Bill Smith wrote on January 05, 2009 11:32 AM: Oh yes, JB, NOAA and NASA (run by the government with money stolen from the Amerikan people) are not in the least politically motivated.

Bill Smith wrote on January 05, 2009 11:29 AM: Patti O'Riley, obviously you don’t know what an anarchist is. Only anarchist believe in a real free-market.

Patrick wrote on January 05, 2009 11:24 AM: Well done Vin.

Benjamin CA, what are you talking about when you say that the rise in co2 correlates with rises in temperatures in the last century and this. Absolute codswallop! Have you actually seen these graphs? the co2 is smoothly increasing at a somewhat logarithmic rate while the temps go up and down (with 75% correlation to sun activity). The warmest year was actually around 1920/30's, 1998 was the second warmest, and since 1998 there has been a cooling trend that has been significantly increasing in cooling rate in the last couple of years. The only bit you could say could correlate is if you average the temps from the mid 70's to 1998, yes, the trend is up but that is the only correlation that can be found and is coincidental, full stop. Oh, and I suppose the heating up of the other planets in the solar system from the mid 70's to approx 2000 (and they, like the earth, are now cooling) was also due to mans output of CO2!!

It is very very clear and quite sad to see that the people promoting AGW have moved it to the realms of a religion, suplamented with flawed computer models just designed to show what the designers want (warming) and with just a very small and often flawed real world data often used out of context while ignoring all other huge volumes of data that contradicts AQW.

Bob wrote on January 05, 2009 07:49 AM: Good job, Vin.

As for AGW/"Climate Change" and CO2, we need know only two facts: first, ice cores from Antarctica show that CO2 rise LAGS warming by an average of 800 years in every case, and second, Professor Reid Bryson, considered the foremost authority on climate, noted that the dreaded retreat of alpine glaciers in recent years revealed as they melted, "A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

In fact, it has historically been both warmer and colder than it is now. Any concern over detrimental effects of AGW need to be tempered with the observation that human prosperity as a whole increased during the warmer times and decreased, or slowed its increase, during the colder.

Facts are not on the side of the AGW scaremongers. Their agenda is control and nothing less.

Wake up, people!

itzik basman wrote on January 05, 2009 07:28 AM: http://basmanroselaw.blogspot.com/

sub wrote on January 05, 2009 02:57 AM: this column is perfect. period. the al gore et al freak show on this issue is akin to a witch hunt (except if you're al gore and his house in TN) another loony agenda from the left, which will succeed a la welfare, prison reform, education, and all the other "causes" they've championed so well. when there's clear consensus from non partisan scientists, then i'll listen. until then, AL Gore, you can go pound sand. brilliant article....

Jeremy Janson wrote on January 04, 2009 11:31 PM: Although I myself have not looked at the science and claims against long enough to have any educated opinion on the matter, I would point out one problem with a particular claim of the author:

The quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere is proportional to temperature and inversely proportional to pressure. If the quantity of CO2 increase creates an increase in temperature to ANY degree, it will create a similar increase in the amount of water vapor, creating a further increase in both greenhouses gases and temperature. Again, I've not looked to see if these conditionals are correct.


All the same, I would agree that the environmentalists have logic that is far worse. I find it a moot point to even look at the environmental theory, because their proposed solution to it is so fundamentally flawed, ideologically driven ("profligate energy consumption," what are you a puritan! "Improper Energy Production" I could see the logic in, but this whole collective unity thing makes me consider you a cult, and methinks it fitting. I wonder what Wilde would say about this), and shallow that there is no point in even considering the problem if only two choices (the other being nothing) are given, as in either case, nothing is likely more effective, as you can simply not start from that kind of viewpoint and philosophy and reliably produce ANY positive result, and I know that wealthy countries have become cleaner as their standard of living has increased, so let the fun begin!

tj wrote on January 04, 2009 10:50 PM: Benjamin CA? What do you not understand?
Memo to the Moonbat-enviro Nazis. The consensus among those NOT receiving government “research” grants is that “global warming” is a myth and a hoax. Time to wake up and go home. Your party is over.

dave wrote on January 04, 2009 09:52 PM: Being a libritarian, I understand that the only time to use force (ie government) is to protect people from being unduly harmed by others and to enforce private contracts. Lets say one night someone drives drunk, they significantly and iresponsibly raise the chances of hurting someone else, though most likely they won't. This is rightly a crime because your right to drive drunk should not come at the expense of others incurring the significantly raised chances of them getting hurt. And even though most likely any drunk driver on any given night will not crash, if that 1% chance does happen, the results are catrostrophic. This example shows why it IS appropriate to use the government to combat Climate Change. Of cousre the sun is the main driver of earth's temp., and of course predicting weather trends borders on pure speculation, but also consider CO2 levels are higher now than they have been in the last 650 thousand years. And it is exactly because wether is unpredicatble that we should be concerned. We have suddenly (in terms of earth's history) increased a few elements into a delicatly balanced system that took eon's to form. Maybe nothing will happen, or maybe it will get slightly warmer, or maybe the polar ice caps melt and millions are displaced, or maybe the world is plunged into an ice age. My point is, it is irresponsible to roll the dice with THE ENTIRE PLANET when all that is being asked of you is to use different (not less) forms of energy

Benjamin CA wrote on January 04, 2009 08:53 PM: Wow. Yes, solar activity does have a large impact on Climate Change, however, it does not correlate very closely with the modern increase in temperatures--thus it is not likely that it is the cause of the warming.
CO2 does correlate very nicely, however, at the same time correlation does not equal cause and effect. There are a plethora of factors involved in the global warming and cooling phases--however, none of them, correlate as closely as CO2, which is the best answer we have. To respond to the "Ivy League Engineering Professor," he is right in a way, there is only one Earth. However, I fail to see how he can so easily buy the author's original argument that North America has had record snow and therefore climate change is not legitimate. I mean, cherry picking regional temperatures, without looking at the whole globe and the general trend, is completely ridiculous.

SAM NY wrote on January 04, 2009 08:09 PM: Well done. Such clarity in a world gone cuckoo. Thanks.

chris wrote on January 04, 2009 07:17 PM: The great plains of America was once a vast inland sea. We know that by the marine fossils found. For whatever reason it dryed up. I would love to have seen the hysteria if the greens could have witnessed that.

Neil In New Hampshire wrote on January 04, 2009 06:44 PM: You state, "Yes, the mechanism of global warming is well-established."

I would submit, that the prevailing theory of the greenhouse effect doesn't pass anything close to critical examination. The proponents of this theory point to Venus as an example of a "runaway greenhouse effect" in order to scare the hell out of everybody.

Proximity to the sun certainly explains the inner planets' relative temperatures.

The greenhouse effect may be well established inside a plastic enclosed building. But, it is NOT at all true that at the planetary level the same causes hold true.

Otherwise, Mars should be far warmer than the Earth - after all, it has far more CO2 in its atmosphere, per capita, than the Earth.

JWQ wrote on January 04, 2009 06:32 PM: fiddlecraig wrote:

"Greenhouse gases from natural sources are the baseline. Additional greenhouse gases from man made sources are creating imbalances that push us ever closer to a tipping point."

What?! Are you saying that if we had 3 or 4 large volcanic eruptions it would be ok and not "count?" You really need to go back to (or attend?) school.

If you can, please purchase some sense.

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