It will truly be over when the media says Al Gore is a secret Republican, that polar bears like warm weather, and that warm weather and cold weather have been battling it out for millions of years, it’s proven in the geologic evidence.
I’ll wait this one out a bit. While it’s clear that anthropic global warming (AGW) advocates have grossly exaggerated their claims, I see some truth in there. For me, the benefit is twofold, it puts AGW advocates in their place. Next time, maybe they’ll depend on evidence and fact rather than herd mentality (or “scientific consensus”) and poorly tested computer models. And if there is some sort of measurable harm from AGW, it’ll be offset for a time by this period of coolness as long as that lasts.
Remember the tale of Peter and the Wolf? Basically, a kid in a small European village cries “Wolf” so he can get attention from the grown-ups. Eventually, they ignore him and that causes problems when Peter actually sees a wolf.
For better or worse, climate scientists and the attached political apparatus (the IPCC, etc) are our early warning system when it comes to climate change. They may sooner or later uncover a genuine climate threat. It would be a shame if they were to be ignored due to a long history of bad and fraudulent claims. I see this as an opportunity to clean up the snakes’ den a little and produce a better system.
And meanwhile Senator Lindsey Graham signs on to cap and trade. Can McCain be far behind?
Don’t you guys study human history? AGW is a religion. No amount of evidence will dissuade the true believers.
I suspect an inquisition is being formed right now on matter of “deniers” and their “so called evidence”. But, don’t fret, it’s sure to be a fair trial.
Remember the tale of Peter and the Wolf? Basically, a kid in a small European village cries “Wolf” so he can get attention from the grown-ups. Eventually, they ignore him and that causes problems when Peter actually sees a wolf.
Pesky facts ruining a perfectly good argument for statist control.
The key issue I’ve always had with the AGW-RED crowd is not the factual is-it-warming-or-not, which is still in doubt, but the rest of the faulty political/economic logic:
– warmer is bad (really?)
– warmer is caused by humans (are you certain?)
– removing the supposed human cause is the only solution (why?)
– Using big gov’t mandates is the only way to remove the cause (forsaking non-controlling solutions).
All of these are massively wrong.
* Warming could result in a healthier, wealthier humans and a greener, more prolific, more diverse ecosystem.
* Ancient periods of warming exceeding our current temperatures show conclusively that it is possible that other factors could be at play.
* Ancient cool periods show conclusively that the climate can be cooled via other factors. These might be cheaper and easier to apply rather than change our fossil fuel economy.
* There are compelling reasons to prefer a free, unfettered personal response to mild climate changes rather than draconian gov’t mandates on the means of production.
I look forward to the AGW-REDS resigning now that they have been shown to be fools
My bad. I got my fairy tales all mixed up.
FWIW, Karl, I was surprised to learn the original story had Peter as a Young Soviet Pioneer.
Good thing I didn’t know that when I was a kid enjoying the tale; I wouldn’t have been able to, er, enjoy the tale.
They’ve got no kick. They never expected the scam to last this long.
But it’s been 21 years. There are people whose whole career has been financed by global warming money. You can’t convince someone whose paycheck depends on not being convinced.
Let me pose this question. Am I, Paul Milenkovic, smarter than a Nobel Laureate (in Physics, guys, not that Peace Prize thang)?
Stephen Chu is questioned by some Republican Member of Congress and asked as a doorknob-parting question, “There is oil and gas in Alaska, how did it get there?”
Dr. Chu then gives this rambling answer, presumably out of his “comfort zone” and “area of expertise” (for the Secretary of Energy?) about plate tectonics and that oil had formed over “hundreds of millions of years” with the implication that the climate may vary, but only over geologic time.
OK people, who here can tell me that according to current theory guiding oil exploration, oil did not form over “hundreds of millions of years.” Most oil is believed to have come from the last tens of millions of years, and if there is oil from hundreds of millions of years ago, that is news to me, and I want to invest in your company where you plan to exploit Precambrian oil. Tom Gold tried it, but he only harvested a few barrels that some skeptics said came from his “drilling mud”, but you, Dr. Chu, are a Nobel Laureate and maybe have better insights on which Precambrian formation to look in.
OK, if it had been ol’ Paul Milenkovic being questioned instead of a Nobel Laureate, my Near Eastern cultural conditioning to look for some hidden agenda behind such a question would have kicked in, and I would have answered, “Senator, I don’t have the immediate answer to your question without consulting with someone on my staff, a member of the USGS, or perhaps doing my own library research on the topic. But oil is believed to have formed over periods from the Tertiary back to the Permian, and the climate is believed to been much warmer and at times much colder over those times than today, and there is also the factor of plate movement where Alaska could have been at a warmer latitude. But your question, Senator, perhaps ties into the broader question of Climate Change. Yes, it has been much warmer in the past, but in the distant past. The real question is whether the climate is getting rapidly warmer over the course of the next 10, 50, or 100 years, and if that rapid warming will impose an intolerable burden on your human civilization. That question is not answerable by considering the climate in Alaska tens of millions of years ago.”
Maybe I am not a Nobel Laureate because I spend too much time surfing Web pages to learn the basic facts of petroleum geology and the politics of the Global Warming debate instead of writing research publications. Personally, I am in the skeptic’s camp, but I have enough “lawyer” in me from high-school debate to be able to represent the Administration postion were I made a Cabinet Secretary.
So, how do I get that job?
Know somebody, I guess. I only have a vague impression of Stephen Chu, but my guess is that he’s going to be better prepared for that sort of question next time. Doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you can trip up in the same way twice. But I bet congresscritters have other tricks for the insufficiently wary.
It will truly be over when the media says Al Gore is a secret Republican, that polar bears like warm weather, and that warm weather and cold weather have been battling it out for millions of years, it’s proven in the geologic evidence.
I’ll wait this one out a bit. While it’s clear that anthropic global warming (AGW) advocates have grossly exaggerated their claims, I see some truth in there. For me, the benefit is twofold, it puts AGW advocates in their place. Next time, maybe they’ll depend on evidence and fact rather than herd mentality (or “scientific consensus”) and poorly tested computer models. And if there is some sort of measurable harm from AGW, it’ll be offset for a time by this period of coolness as long as that lasts.
Remember the tale of Peter and the Wolf? Basically, a kid in a small European village cries “Wolf” so he can get attention from the grown-ups. Eventually, they ignore him and that causes problems when Peter actually sees a wolf.
For better or worse, climate scientists and the attached political apparatus (the IPCC, etc) are our early warning system when it comes to climate change. They may sooner or later uncover a genuine climate threat. It would be a shame if they were to be ignored due to a long history of bad and fraudulent claims. I see this as an opportunity to clean up the snakes’ den a little and produce a better system.
And meanwhile Senator Lindsey Graham signs on to cap and trade. Can McCain be far behind?
Don’t you guys study human history? AGW is a religion. No amount of evidence will dissuade the true believers.
I suspect an inquisition is being formed right now on matter of “deniers” and their “so called evidence”. But, don’t fret, it’s sure to be a fair trial.
That was “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
“Peter and the Wolf” was a different story altogether.
Pesky facts ruining a perfectly good argument for statist control.
The key issue I’ve always had with the AGW-RED crowd is not the factual is-it-warming-or-not, which is still in doubt, but the rest of the faulty political/economic logic:
– warmer is bad (really?)
– warmer is caused by humans (are you certain?)
– removing the supposed human cause is the only solution (why?)
– Using big gov’t mandates is the only way to remove the cause (forsaking non-controlling solutions).
All of these are massively wrong.
* Warming could result in a healthier, wealthier humans and a greener, more prolific, more diverse ecosystem.
* Ancient periods of warming exceeding our current temperatures show conclusively that it is possible that other factors could be at play.
* Ancient cool periods show conclusively that the climate can be cooled via other factors. These might be cheaper and easier to apply rather than change our fossil fuel economy.
* There are compelling reasons to prefer a free, unfettered personal response to mild climate changes rather than draconian gov’t mandates on the means of production.
I look forward to the AGW-REDS resigning now that they have been shown to be fools
My bad. I got my fairy tales all mixed up.
FWIW, Karl, I was surprised to learn the original story had Peter as a Young Soviet Pioneer.
Good thing I didn’t know that when I was a kid enjoying the tale; I wouldn’t have been able to, er, enjoy the tale.
They’ve got no kick. They never expected the scam to last this long.
But it’s been 21 years. There are people whose whole career has been financed by global warming money. You can’t convince someone whose paycheck depends on not being convinced.
Let me pose this question. Am I, Paul Milenkovic, smarter than a Nobel Laureate (in Physics, guys, not that Peace Prize thang)?
Stephen Chu is questioned by some Republican Member of Congress and asked as a doorknob-parting question, “There is oil and gas in Alaska, how did it get there?”
Dr. Chu then gives this rambling answer, presumably out of his “comfort zone” and “area of expertise” (for the Secretary of Energy?) about plate tectonics and that oil had formed over “hundreds of millions of years” with the implication that the climate may vary, but only over geologic time.
OK people, who here can tell me that according to current theory guiding oil exploration, oil did not form over “hundreds of millions of years.” Most oil is believed to have come from the last tens of millions of years, and if there is oil from hundreds of millions of years ago, that is news to me, and I want to invest in your company where you plan to exploit Precambrian oil. Tom Gold tried it, but he only harvested a few barrels that some skeptics said came from his “drilling mud”, but you, Dr. Chu, are a Nobel Laureate and maybe have better insights on which Precambrian formation to look in.
OK, if it had been ol’ Paul Milenkovic being questioned instead of a Nobel Laureate, my Near Eastern cultural conditioning to look for some hidden agenda behind such a question would have kicked in, and I would have answered, “Senator, I don’t have the immediate answer to your question without consulting with someone on my staff, a member of the USGS, or perhaps doing my own library research on the topic. But oil is believed to have formed over periods from the Tertiary back to the Permian, and the climate is believed to been much warmer and at times much colder over those times than today, and there is also the factor of plate movement where Alaska could have been at a warmer latitude. But your question, Senator, perhaps ties into the broader question of Climate Change. Yes, it has been much warmer in the past, but in the distant past. The real question is whether the climate is getting rapidly warmer over the course of the next 10, 50, or 100 years, and if that rapid warming will impose an intolerable burden on your human civilization. That question is not answerable by considering the climate in Alaska tens of millions of years ago.”
Maybe I am not a Nobel Laureate because I spend too much time surfing Web pages to learn the basic facts of petroleum geology and the politics of the Global Warming debate instead of writing research publications. Personally, I am in the skeptic’s camp, but I have enough “lawyer” in me from high-school debate to be able to represent the Administration postion were I made a Cabinet Secretary.
So, how do I get that job?
Know somebody, I guess. I only have a vague impression of Stephen Chu, but my guess is that he’s going to be better prepared for that sort of question next time. Doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you can trip up in the same way twice. But I bet congresscritters have other tricks for the insufficiently wary.