Global Warming Non-science

[Verrocchio]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

freezing in the dark is not an option.
One can see this same CAN-DO spirit to-day in China at the Three Rivers Gorge Dam which will provide enumerable benefit to mankind including some 18,200 megawatts of power from 26 generators, beginning in 2009.

Sure we have had some negatives from the Seaway such as some salt-water specie transplant to the Great Lakes, especially the issue of muscles being transplanted into the formerly prestine lakes. But the benefits to mankind have far out-weighed the negatives.

Nice rant, Starving Steve!

Development of energy resources and transportation infrastructure isn't inevitable, however. Cost-benefit analysis is used to determine project feasibility. Engineers attempt to use current knowledge to design projects that are clearly on the plus side of the ledger. They don't ignore risks; they take them into account and attempt to avoid the negatives.

CAN-DO spirit in the PRC? Take a look at this:
Three Gorges Dam risk to environment, says China

China's showcase hydro-engineering project, the Three Gorges Dam, could become an environmental catastrophe unless remedial action is taken, the state media reported yesterday.In an unusually blunt public assessment, officials warned that landslides and pollution were among the "hidden dangers" facing the world's biggest hydro-electric plant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/stor...177847,00.html

The St. Lawrence Seaway has returned enormous benefits to the US economy by opening up the interior of the Midwest to water transport. If we knew then what we know now, we may have prohibited the release of ballast water from ocean-going freighters.

The zebra mussels that plague the Great Lakes aren't "salt-water specie." They came from the Caspian Sea. Meanwhile, they've been sighted as far west as Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, as far south as Mississippi and Louisiana, and as far east as Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania. Economic impact? Adult zebra mussels colonize all types of living and non-living surfaces including boats, water-intake pipes, buoys, docks, piers, plants, and slow moving animals such as native clams, crayfish, and turtles. They even attach to each other, ultimately forming dense layered colonies up to one foot thick. Mussel densities of over 1 million per square meter have been recorded in parts of Lake Erie. In 1989, the town of Monroe, MI lost its water supply for three days due to massive numbers of zebra mussels clogging the city’s water-intake pipeline. Since then, water users such as power companies, steel plants, city water suppliers, and golf courses, have had to retool their water-intake systems or apply chemical treatment to prevent zebra mussel related problems. Swimming areas in Lake Erie have had increased costs associated with removing tons of mussel shell that wash up on beaches during storms. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the potential economic impact to be in the billions of dollars over the next ten years to U.S. and Canadian water users within the Great Lakes region alone. See: http://www.glsc.usgs.gov/main.php?co..._invertebrates

[sadsack]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

I always find any discussion of climate/biome somewhat shortsighted. After all, a mindset conditioned on a timespan of less than a century can be shockingly narrow.

In my mind, the "eco-freaks," etc. are guilty of the high crime of narcissism/hubris. I.e., the way the world should be is the way I remember it to be in my subjective, idealized (aka flawed) memory.

For a geological perspective on the good or evil effects from pollution, consider the case of cyanobacteria.

These bacteria were among the first (if not the first) organisms capable of photosynthesis. Over several hundred million years, this adaptation enabled them to conquer the world (photosynthesis conveyed an extraordinary competitive advantage).

However, the byproduct of photosynthesis, free (atmospheric molecular) oxygen, was one of the deadliest poisons to nearly all (hypothesized) lifeforms of the time. The cyanobacteria, through their wanton pollution of the world's environment, killed off nearly all other forms of life save those which could withstand the corrosive effects of an oxygen atmosphere.

An inkling of the scope of the hypothesized near omnicide can be found in the hematite deposits in the ocean crust. Hematite is an iron compound, and iron is essential for cell growth. In the time before free oxygen, vast amounts of iron lay dissolved in the primative oceans, which would hypothetically have supported a lot more bacteria, etc.

After oxygen built up in the atmosphere and dissolved into the oceans, virtually all of the iron precipitated out, conceivably starving out whole kingdoms of creatures.

Today, we can see the advantage of an oxygen-based metabolism, and we can pine for clean air (21% oxygen). Just remember, though, the legion of archaea that had to be exterminated, strangled in the crib of the new earth, so that we could enjoy aerobic metabolisms and blue skies in the present day . . .

[Verrocchio]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Me and my friends the cyanobacterium vs all those anaerobic critters!!!

Funny, sadsack, and beautifully written, too...

[sadsack]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Me and my friends the cyanobacterium vs all those anaerobic critters!!!

Funny, sadsack, and beautifully written, too...

Thanks - glad you enjoyed my ironic confection . . .

Etiological (i.e, are we the disease, or the cure) considerations aside, it comes down to an Archimedian analogy:

Are humans the fulcrum, mass, or the lever in the scheme of life? If we're the mass, then on which side of the lever should we be exerting ourselves?

A la Schumpeter, does the potential creation warrant the destruction?

The thoughtless drive toward survival by the cynobacteria epochally changed the course of life on Earth. Is humanity today a similar agent for a new regime of change?

Flip a coin - your guess is as good as mine . . .

[Starving Steve]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

It's March 1, kiddies, and that means the February monthly mean temperature is posted at San Francisco Airport. Go to www.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr and click the Climate-Local on the left-side of the page. Then open the monthly figures at SF Airport.

And the Feb. mean temperature at SF Airport (SFO) was 51.7 or -0.7 degrees F. below the normal of 52.4, compiled from records dating back to 1927. So February continues the trend of below normal monthly temperature observations in recent years. These negative deviations are nicely cancelling the positive ( above normal ) observations in temperature observed during the El Nino years of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Rainfall at SFO during February was just over 2 inches, about half of the normal of just over 4 inches for the month. So, Februrary was dry, but 2008 being a La Nina year, one would expect below normal rainfall. Again, the more things change in weather, the more the climate seems to be the same: i.e, the same old patterns in the weather keep re-appearing.

A statistician would say that the data keeps reverting to the mean, and this is what the climate data suggests at SFO.

Less talk by BBC and CBC reporters about polar bears drowning in Hudson Bay and more study of the Earth's boring climate data is what is needed, wouldn't you agree?

[Andreuccio]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

It's March 1, kiddies, and that means the February monthly mean temperature is posted at San Francisco Airport. Go to www.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr and click the Climate-Local on the left-side of the page. Then open the monthly figures at SF Airport.

And the Feb. mean temperature at SF Airport (SFO) was 51.7 or -0.7 degrees F. below the normal of 52.4, compiled from records dating back to 1927. So February continues the trend of below normal monthly temperature observations in recent years. These negative deviations are nicely cancelling the positive ( above normal ) observations in temperature observed during the El Nino years of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Rainfall at SFO during February was just over 2 inches, about half of the normal of just over 4 inches for the month. So, Februrary was dry, but 2008 being a La Nina year, one would expect below normal rainfall. Again, the more things change in weather, the more the climate seems to be the same: i.e, the same old patterns in the weather keep re-appearing.

A statistician would say that the data keeps reverting to the mean, and this is what the climate data suggests at SFO.

Less talk by BBC and CBC reporters about polar bears drowning in Hudson Bay and more study of the Earth's boring climate data is what is needed, wouldn't you agree?

Steve, this is hilarious. Are you really suggesting that slightly cooler temperatures during one month at one location (SFO during February, 2008) disproves global warming? Get serious. The discussion is about Global Warming, not SFO warming.

I poked around a bit at the National Weather Service's site you linked to. If you go here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/index.jsp you'll find some charts that might be more informative regarding global warming than just looking at the February 2008 data for San Francisco Airport. The page is labeled "Global Climate at a Glance". I tried the third option, "GHCN Land Surface Data". Set the "Zone Menu" to "Global". If you do just February you'll see that between 1880 and 2007 mean global temperature trended up 0.08 degrees C per decade for Feb. Or set the begining month to January and the end month to December and you can see that mean global temperatures have trended up by 0.06 degrees C per decade overall.

There's also a nice blue trendline on the graphs that you can look at. It clearly shows how temperatures have been trending up, and will give you an inkling just how cold it would have to get, and for how long, before we could consider them to be trending down. It will take a whole lot of cold years before any serious statisticians start saying we've reverted to the mean.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Steve, this is hilarious. Are you really suggesting that slightly cooler temperatures during one month at one location (SFO during February, 2008) disproves global warming? Get serious. The discussion is about Global Warming, not SFO warming.

I poked around a bit at the National Weather Service's site you linked to. If you go here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/index.jsp you'll find some charts that might be more informative regarding global warming than just looking at the February 2008 data for San Francisco Airport. The page is labeled "Global Climate at a Glance". I tried the third option, "GHCN Land Surface Data". Set the "Zone Menu" to "Global". If you do just February you'll see that between 1880 and 2007 mean global temperature trended up 0.08 degrees C per decade for Feb. Or set the begining month to January and the end month to December and you can see that mean global temperatures have trended up by 0.06 degrees C per decade overall.

There's also a nice blue trendline on the graphs that you can look at. It clearly shows how temperatures have been trending up, and will give you an inkling just how cold it would have to get, and for how long, before we could consider them to be trending down. It will take a whole lot of cold years before any serious statisticians start saying we've reverted to the mean.

Thank you for your post and for the opportunity to discuss global warming here:

I picked SFO to study because they have a long record of climate data. Their record goes back to 1927. And the record is reliable because it was collected by the government. Also, I like airports to study climate because there is a lot of open space around airports, so the data is not biased by urbanization effects --- like the reflexion of radiation from buildings, the transmission of heat from buildings, the reduction in vegetation in urban areas, etc.

I suspect that so-called global warming is actually the effect of urbanization around weather stations. Because heat-island effects are purely local effects around cities, data from city stations needs to be discounted from the global warming debate. ( No extrapolation to the global climate can be made from urban stations because buildings and pavements are always changing the micro-climate in urban areas. )

I am quite willing to accept any airport or rural data in this global warming debate. Any data collect at sea would also be acceptable, too. Any water temperature data is biased by ocean currents and depth of measurement, but water temperature data is also interesting to study.

Now, as for the data that you presented, you say that the Earth's temperature warmed by 0.08 degrees C since 1880. I don't dispute that; in fact, I think the figure is higher than that. The figures that I have seen are around 1 full degree C. since 1880.

But I would expect some warming of the Earth since 1880 for several reasons: 1.) The Earth is coming out of the Ice Age; 2.) The Earth is coming out of the Little Ice Age; 3.) The Sun's radiation is not constant, as once thought by climate scientists; and 4.) There is more CO2 in the atmosphere of Earth.

My thesis is that everything on this planet is changing, but the changes in the last century have been remarkably small.

And one last point: If you truly interested in cutting mankind's carbon emissions ( a worthwhile goal ), I hope that you will join me in supporting the construction of nuclear power plants everywhere.

[Guest]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Starving Steve -

With respect - you either inadvertently, or advertently missed the entire point, or decline to reply to it. Your prior post to which Andreuccio replied, was to our amazement attempting an entire refutation of global warming from only one datapoint.

Immaterial whether it's the best or the worst datapoint in the world - anyone here who observes you extrapolating a "theory" regarding global warming from a single annual reading derived from a single geographic datapoint, ( in all apparent seriousness! ), automatically will assume you've got a "small bee in your bonnet" about this topic.

As a self avowed student of climatology, you must doubtless be aware that collecting relevant data to discern trend in any field relies on collecting a large quantity of data points, and even then allowing for a high degree of variability.

Yet here you are posting about a single temp reading at SF Airport and solemnly opining as to the merit of the global warming thesis in general? This implies either your expectation that the readership here is highly ingenuous, or that you yourself are either highly ingenuous or highly disingenuous.

As I'm quite impressed by your acuity on other posts, I surmise "disingenuous" must be the correct descriptor. Interpolating the merits of climate change from the 2007 temp (on a single day!) at SFO is nonsense, because it turns the idea of statistically valid pools of data on it's head. You know it, I know it, Andreuccio knows it. What are you on about? Can't quite discern a logical argument in that.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Starving Steve -

With respect - you either inadvertently, or advertently missed the entire point, or decline to reply to it. Your prior post to which Andreuccio replied, was to our amazement attempting an entire refutation of global warming from only one datapoint.

Immaterial whether it's the best or the worst datapoint in the world - anyone here who observes you extrapolating a "theory" regarding global warming from a single annual reading derived from a single geographic datapoint, ( in all apparent seriousness! ), automatically will assume you've got a "small bee in your bonnet" about this topic.

As a self avowed student of climatology, you must doubtless be aware that collecting relevant data to discern trend in any field relies on collecting a large quantity of data points, and even then allowing for a high degree of variability.

Yet here you are posting about a single temp reading at SF Airport and solemnly opining as to the merit of the global warming thesis in general? This implies either your expectation that the readership here is highly ingenuous, or that you yourself are either highly ingenuous or highly disingenuous.

As I'm quite impressed by your acuity on other posts, I surmise "disingenuous" must be the correct descriptor. Interpolating the merits of climate change from the 2007 temp (on a single day!) at SFO is nonsense, because it turns the idea of statistically valid pools of data on it's head. You know it, I know it, Andreuccio knows it. What are you on about? Can't quite discern a logical argument in that.

Dear Lukester:

Thank you for your post, and I shall now take the opportunity to reply to it:

I am not a believer in global modelling as a valid approach to determine climate change. Rather, I like the rather unsexy and arduous (sp?) approach of taking well chosen data points on Earth and examining the data carefully. This is how some of the best science has been done in all fields--- by careful and well thought-out observation.

I should also digress to say that some of the most absurd work in the field of economics has also come from the modelling. In that field it is called econometric modelling.

Let me get back to climatology: I chose SFO, but I am open to examination of data from any well chosen location. Honolulu Airport would be most interesting, also the Guam Airport, Wake Island, Midway, among others. Or LAX would work, or any airport around the world.

Tropical locations are of more interest than high latitude locations because tropical locations demonstrate resistance to data fluctuation (constancy in climate). Also marine locations resist fluctuation. (Their climate is constant, too. )

Finally, I used mean monthly data at SFO. I picked the first day of the month because NOAA compiles the mean from the prior month on that day. And I agree that annual mean data would be more important to use in climatology than monthly mean data, but I thought that monthly mean data would be more fun to debate with because it is more timely. (You witnessed the month, and I did too, and here is what the data at SFO said.)

By the way, this year the winter has been unusually cold in the Eastern and Central U.S. Eastern Canada has been cold, too. This nicely cancels some of the warming witnessed east of here in the early part of this decade.

Also, the ice sheet is growing back nicely in the Arctic Ocean, or so I am told. But on your side of the debate, the winter has been unusually warm in Finland, or so I am told.

Now, does anyone know if the glaciers are returning to Glacier National Park? And how are the polar bears doing in Hudson Bay?

[Guest]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Steve -

I don't agree wth your take on this, nor your method, but I'm certainly not going to get into a lather about it. I appreciate some other excellent posts of yours regardless. Your basic advice to people on what kinds of investments in gold to make I found to be excellent, veteran's advice.

I also much appreciated your insights as to how central bank liquidity shenanigans can work to depress bond yields in an otherwise "bond-adverse" (read inflationary) environment.

Great stuff. However, on the climate change thingy I think you're a dingbat (respectfully).

[Starving Steve]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Steve -

I don't agree wth your take on this, nor your method, but I'm certainly not going to get into a lather about it. I appreciate some other excellent posts of yours regardless. Your basic advice to people on what kinds of investments in gold to make I found to be excellent, veteran's advice.

I also much appreciated your insights as to how central bank liquidity shenanigans can work to depress bond yields in an otherwise "bond-adverse" (read inflationary) environment.

Great stuff. However, on the climate change thingy I think you're a dingbat (respectfully).

THANK YOU, LUKE.

[Guest]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

Starving Steve -

BTW,

I understood from a previous post of yours that you are experiencing some significant 'turbulence' on the job front with the cutbacks occurring in California within the school system.

Please therefore accept my full solidarity with you during this stressful time. I hope (and I'm sure everyone here hopes) that these difficulties will be resolved for you with good fortune as the outcome.

[Brooks Gracie]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

I cannot understand why there is so much uproar about this issue. It seems pretty clear to me that we are going to run out of fossil fuels before we heat up the earth to the extent that it will cause a real problem. At the end of the fossil fuel era, we either find some alternative energy solutions (nuclear plants powering trains, subways, light rail and streetcars anyone?) or a great die-off begins because of a lack of means to transport our food. Frankly, I think Congress should be funding a huge number of nuclear plants and mandate that automakers make a certain percentage of their vehicles that run on electricity. But of course the Republican Big Oil group would have a few problems with this, and Detroit (if there are any big three companies left at such point), wouldn't be happy.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

I cannot understand why there is so much uproar about this issue. It seems pretty clear to me that we are going to run out of fossil fuels before we heat up the earth to the extent that it will cause a real problem. At the end of the fossil fuel era, we either find some alternative energy solutions (nuclear plants powering trains, subways, light rail and streetcars anyone?) or a great die-off begins because of a lack of means to transport our food. Frankly, I think Congress should be funding a huge number of nuclear plants and mandate that automakers make a certain percentage of their vehicles that run on electricity. But of course the Republican Big Oil group would have a few problems with this, and Detroit (if there are any big three companies left at such point), wouldn't be happy.

Thank you for your post. I agree with it.

Somehow we have to get this message to the Obama campaign. In other words, there has to be a Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear power in the U.S, and this has to be done by the President declaring a national emergency because of energy. The solution would be government-supported atomic power plants built en masse, everywhere that space can be found to build them, and this project has to begin immediately, the moment Obama takes office.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Global Warming Non-science

If British lefties can come around on Nuclear, than ours (USA) can as well.

The desire to restrict carbon dioxide emissions has also thrown the spotlight back on to an energy source that has long been a hate figure for the environmental protection community: nuclear power. This is the only source of non-renewable energy that causes no emissions of carbon dioxide. "Nuclear energy is one part of the answer to our urgent problems," argues Lady Judge, Chairman of the British Atomic Energy Authority. The Labor politician, who actually demonstrated against nuclear power when she was young, now declares her belief in this "clean energy." And global developments suggest she is not alone: After a barren period in the 1990s, the number of nuclear reactors is now on the rise once again. Nor is it just energy-hungry Asia that is looking to nuclear power. Energy-rich Saudi Arabia also wants to build a nuclear plant. Meanwhile, the first nuclear power station to be built in Europe since the reactor catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 is under construction: Finland is looking to use this new plant as a way to reduce its dependency on Russian energy supplies. Environmental protectionists are not happy about this development. The head of Greenpeace, Gerd Leipold, calls nuclear power a distraction from the urgent problems faced by the world. But his words cannot stop this moving train.

Steven Klatt, writing for Credit Suisse