A review of a deplorable record on the environment.
Now that John McCain has picked a running mate, Sarah Palin, it is a good time to take a look at what a Republican victory this fall might mean for birds and wildlife.
Endangered Species
For some time now, the Republican party has not been particularly friendly to the conservation agenda. The Endangered Species Act has frequently been under attack from the current administration, and suffered a revision in 2004 that limited the impact of the law in protecting our most at-risk plants and animals (Eilperin 2004). A bright spot in the Bush administration's dealings with endangered species was considering the listing of the polar bear.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Cannonshop
Ahem?
The Experiment doesn't Support the Models, so we'll throw the experiment out because otherwise, the Models are WRONG, right?
Global Warming panic is too important to the agenda to bother with inconvenient facts.
27 - Jordan Richardson
One thing I haven't quite gathered from you kind Americans is how global warming is a political issue at all. Can someone fill me in?
28 - Lisa Solod Warren
I can't read Ruvy any more because he has this Armageddon stuff going so much of the time... and because it seems like he is saying that if I were a good Jew I would move to Israel and think like he does.... so it is hard to separate out what he might say that makes sense, like yeh, his civics lesson about the VP power. OTOH if Palin gets into the White House with McCain she had wrest whatever power she wishes, a la Cheney, who has had NO PROBLEM flouting the Constitution to do pretty much as he pleases, and IF the Big C takes out Old John while he is in there then she can absofuckinglutely do whatever she wants about whatever she wants a la our current Prez.
And Jordan, that is a perfectly reasonable question to which I do not have the answer. Just like abortion, global warming seems to have taken on some sort of mythic quality and become an US vs THEM issue. And has been politicized. There are those who say OK, yes, it is happening but it is just nature and therfore not our fault and so we don't have to do anything about it and fuck worrying about emissions and stuff like that and there are those who say but even if it isn't our fault we can do something to curb it and there are those who say it probably is partially our fault and so we must do something.....
Basically it is between the Fuck it, let's do nothing! and the Let's try our best to do something! groups.
The U.S. of A can be a very strange place sometimes.
29 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
For example, the Arctic Assessment proclaimed that Arctic air temperature trends provide an early and strong indication that global warming is causing polar ice caps and glaciers to melt. However, current research suggests that coastal stations in Greenland are instead experiencing a cooling trend, and average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet have decreased at the rate of 4°F per decade since measurements began in 1987.
Standard deniers tactic. Use one single specific location to use debunk a governmental panels conclusion that the entire arctic is warming. The cooling over Greenland is universally agreed by any meteorologist to have been caused by a multi-decadal positive NAO index. I know this for a fact because I am an amateur meteorologist. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Moreover, the maximum air temperature reported for the 20th century was in 1938, when it was nearly 0.4°F warmer than in 2000. The Russian study concludes that actual temperature measurements do not show the increased warming predicted by computer climate models.
For example, in Alaska, the onset of a warming in 1976-1977 ended the multi-decade cold trend in the mid-20th century and simply returned temperatures to those experienced in the early 20th century. Sharp, substantial fluctuations are typical of the historic pattern of natural climate variability extending back several centuries. And, as expected in response to natural variability, Alaskan ecosystems have responded rapidly and visibly to this recent warmth. By contrast, if the recent warmth were human-induced by constant additions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, responses in the Arctic region would be expected to be gradual and modest when viewed within any short time period.
NASA disagrees. They say warming has occurred at 1.2C per decade in the arctic overall. The acknowledge regional variation and mention Greenland specifically as a place for cooling.
I will certainly admit the Polar Bear population is not under immediate threat from global warming because I have found no compelling evidence. But don't try convincing me the arctic is cooling using a few scant and insignificant observations.
30 - Cannonshop
Happy to, Jordan. It's a political issue because it's being used as a shilleleagh to drive a political agenda, mostly focused on punishing the industrialized west. The most obvious example of this, is the Kyoto Protocols, which were predicated on falsified evidence (If you input random numbers into Mann's hockeystick graph, you end up with the same graph you get using the observational data.)
It's not science because the whole thing is based on cooked books where evidence is cherry-picked to provide a result (as seen in the link I posted in #26) as opposed to following the scientific method (When the experiment fails to confirm, or even denies, your model, the model, not the evidence, is wrong.)
Remember the "Y2K Bug" panic a few years ago, Jordan? The Global Warming Panic works much the same way-it's a method to sell a product to the gullible. There was no Y2K bug, but thousands of networks and computer systems were "Fixed" to solve it because of the dire, frightening predictions of the promoters.
Same thing here. Doomsday Scenarios are always in style as a fallback when traditional pressure methods fail, and it's a good way to strong-arm grants for research.
Let me give you a basic example:
Which study do you think the Dept. of Interior is more likely to fund...
1)How Global Climate Change is impacting the life cycle of the three-striped chipferret of the North Woods.
2)Studying the lifecycle of the three striped chipferret of the North Woods.
The first one ties the three-striped chipferret's lifecycle to a "Global Problem", the second one is just a standard observational nature study. Since studying the three-striped chipferret's what we would call a "basic science" study (that is, it has no commercial value), grants come from foundations or the government. A government official bombarded by "Global Warming" hucksterism is a lot more likely to fund the first study (even over science that may have more immediate results improving conditions or solving real problems) than he is the second study (which would tend to be a low-priority study unless there's suddenly a market for chipferret fur gloves or something.)
The down-side is, now that we have a study to "Observe the impact of Global Climate Change/Warming on three striped chipferrets", do you suppose the PhD who's running the study might have a vested interest in making sure that Global Climate change/Warming continues to be "a critical issue" that requires all sorts of studies and political backing?
Sure he does. It's one of those fun things-once you've (ab)used a false pretense to get funding, you have to keep it going, and defend it vigourously.
Jordan, here's the thing: in 1000CE (about a thousand years ago-a drop in the ocean compared to the age of the planet as best we can determine) they were growing french grapes in scotland for wine, "Greenland" was wheat country, the "Desert" southwest was wet and lush and good ground for corn (even had a nice civilization down there). The climate cooled. Greenland got a nice thick ice-cap, scotland turned cold and nasty, and the Anasazi collapsed, leaving us some really nifty cliff-house pueblos and artifacts. (When the climate cools, it gets drier, less rain...)
Move up to the period of the 1950's to 1980's and Climate scientists were predicting a global cooling trend and new ice-age. This was current until the 1980's. Oddly enough, they were using the same exact culprits.
We've only been able to reliably measure microclimates with instruments for about three hundered years. We've only had Sattelites with instruments and radios since the 1950s, about fifty years or thereabouts, and only been able to compile the data in one place for analysis for about twenty years. Evidence says the climate changes-has changed, likely will change. Humans or not, but saying "Humans are destroying the Climate" fits a political and social view and provides a back-door method of imposing central controls now that National Socialism and Communism have both been disproven as viable systems.
Politicians LIKE power, and so, it's moved from being hypothetical to Proven in their minds because it works as an excuse to gather MORE.
31 - Jordan Richardson
So essentially, global warming is a tool to be used by politicians to grab power? And the scientists are in on the ruse?
32 - Dr Dreadful
Jordan, here's the thing: in 1000CE (about a thousand years ago-a drop in the ocean compared to the age of the planet as best we can determine) they were growing french grapes in scotland for wine, "Greenland" was wheat country, the "Desert" southwest was wet and lush and good ground for corn (even had a nice civilization down there). The climate cooled.
No, Cannon. Available data suggests that the 'medieval warm period' was localized to parts of the northern hemisphere (the fact that there's a lot more land there might have been a factor). The planet as a whole does not seem to have been warmer during that time.
Move up to the period of the 1950's to 1980's and Climate scientists were predicting a global cooling trend and new ice-age.
The 'new ice age' scare resulted from some newspapers picking up on a couple of research papers, sniffing a good story, and blowing their findings out of proportion. There was never a consensus on the scale that there is today with warming, nor anything like the level of concern.
The temperature data from the ocean probes is intriguing, and shouldn't be discounted if for no other reason than that the mass of the oceans is greater by several orders of magnitude than that of the atmosphere. But trumpeting it, without any connectivity, as evidence for the absence of warming is just the sort of cherry-picking you're accusing the other side of.
33 - Clavos
So essentially, global warming is a tool to be used by politicians to grab power?
Partly. It also serves to ensure a bountiful supply of grant funds for the "scientists," not to mention a golden opportunity for all the pointy-headed "intellectuals" like St. Al Gore to tell all the rest of us how we should lead our lives.
Not for nothing does Dan Miller call it "The Church of Global Warming."
34 - Cannonshop
Doc, the difference is thus-I believe the climate's going to change, that it is changing, and that it's prone to change regardless of human input or effort. History says it changes, geology says it's going to change. We're in a fluid environment. Proportionally, the crust of the earth is about the thickness of that skin you get on a hot cup of homemade cocoa. The atmosphere is even thinner than that, and the forces that govern both are far out of the scale of human capability to alter in any significant way except on a local level. (Los Angeles, for instance, areas contained in 'bowls' with relatively stable climatic conditions and reduced exchange rates with the climate as a whole).
So far, climate models have failed to hit their marks in spite of increased carbon emissions from the industrialization of China and India surpassing many Western Nations, notably without the environmental provisions common in such western industrialized nations as the U.S. and Canada. (which can be marked, among other ways, by China's influence on the availability and price of Petroleum-the increased demand has increased the price).
Now, when most of your models rely on increasing water temperature (which most of them do), and the test-data says the water isn't increasing in temperature, is the test data wrong, or is the model wrong?
The Earth is under a G2 VARIABLE star, in a wobbly orbit, influenced by a wide variety of sources including a rather large moon, it has an active, liquid core kneaded by those gravitational forces, an active crust, active volcanism that releases green house gasses in huge amounts including water-vapour, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate ash, and other fun chemicals into the atmosphere on a daily basis in quantities even the coal-age couldn't produce.
Basic mechanics says the Climate is GOING to change, human efforts or not. People generally fear change, Doc, and the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) community uses that fear of change to assure them that if they just do the right things, the climate will be static and nice to them, and won't change.
And THAT is why it is political.
35 - Deano
Yes, we dare not listen to "scientists" with their crazy radical mixed-up ideas like gathering factual data to prove or disprove scientific theories and testable hypotheses....
Those wacky numbskulls might "invent" something like weather satellites or toothpaste or interferon...
After all everyone knows that Global Warming is just another nefarious, "agin-the laws o' Gawd" plot, like the Large Hadron Collider or evolution.
**** 'em all. Pointy-headed nerds...now where'd I leave my remote?
36 - Kwaayesnama
INTELLECT SHOULD COUNT FOR SOMETHING
What scares me is that the GOP has chosen two morons to save this nation.
We have a man at the top of the ticket that was in the bottom of his class intellectually.
And the person that is 1/2 a breath away from the presidency flunked out of 5 colleges before she received her diploma from the University of Idaho. But what else is new we elected a moron to lead the United States Of America and look where it brought us.
37 - Daniel Miller
Doc, I very much enjoyed your article on another thread. Do you see any parallels in the Man made Global Warming stuff?
Just curious.
Dan(Miller)
38 - Cannonshop
Well, Deano, that's a very nice screed, and it completely misses the point.
AGAIN.
You're arguing the Authority Figure Knows Best when you should be looking at the Science. The Science doesn't support the Hucksterism, but the Hucksterism can be printed on the back of a 3x5 and works really well as a political weapon.
(of course, since it's a weapon on your side, I can understand it if you insist the Emperor's clothing is lovely...)
39 - Dr Dreadful
People generally fear change, Doc, and the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) community uses that fear of change to assure them that if they just do the right things, the climate will be static and nice to them, and won't change.
I question this, Cannon. As a motive it seems flimsy and self-defeating. Besides which, much of the literature and reporting I've read and watched makes a point of reminding us that warming is already happening and will continue even if we act now.
I tend to pay more attention to scientists, especially on this issue, than I do to those with a political agenda.
40 - Jordan Richardson
What about the notion of taking care of the planet for the sake of taking care of the planet, Global Warming Cult or not? Or is that also a political notion?
41 - Dr Dreadful
Dan, thanks. As I touched on in my response to Cannonshop, there are some similarities, with some oversimplification and distortion on both sides.
The most significant point that strikes me is that there are some weighing in on the debate who tend to confuse the motives of the scientific community with those of political think tanks.
42 - Cannonshop
#40 That notion becomes political the moment you have to ask "okay, How?".
Nobody wants to live in a cesspool of pollution, Jordan, but the fact is, only people with economic slack can afford to be concerned about their environment. It isn't the super-rich who have old cars they can't fix parked on the lawn in front of an unpainted trailer, it's not the very wealthy that have to drive whatever rattletrap they can afford a long distance to work because they can't afford to live closer.
Compare pricing for Hybrid automobiles to non-hybrids. The question is "can and will", but that's not the only question out there that has to be answered before you're "Taking care of the Planet" and not "Keeping the riff raff in their place."
It isn't as easy as it looks, balancing out the equation, and it sure as hell can't be printed on a playing card. (also, just because a thing is organic, doesn't mean it isn't a pollutant. Rabbits are organic, ask the Aussies about Rabbits. Tigersnake venom is also organic, does that mean you want it on your skin?)
There's a big difference between conservation, and Environmentalism (capital "E" environmentalism, the movement in other words).
43 - Jordan Richardson
Nobody wants to live in a cesspool of pollution, Jordan, but the fact is, only people with economic slack can afford to be concerned about their environment.
Nonsense. It's actually cheaper to live in ways that are more efficient and environmentally friendly. There's an old moniker floating around the Progressive Community (don't ask me what the fuck that is, by the way): "Simply living so that others may simply live."
Living with sustainability in mind costs very little, in fact, and helps more in the long run than any gimmickry will. You don't have to drive a hybrid to take care of the environment. We certainly don't drive a hybrid, but we do make choices that are better for our world. Driving less helps, for instance, as does (yes, Obama) properly inflating and maintaining your car's tire pressure and fluid levels. Recycling is free, too, as is taking some time to pick up some trash on the street or doing other simple things like planting trees and using food products and clothing that is made in North America or made locally.
One doesn't need to go organic, drive a hybrid, and switch to solar power in order to make a difference. The political bullshit has told that lie, both from the left and the right. Instead, I challenge people to simplify their lifestyles and ignore the bullshit. It's easy, cheap, and smart.
44 - Jordan Richardson
And by "we," I mean my wife and I. Although Cannonshop and I might make a cute couple tooling down the road in a Prius.
;)
45 - Dr Dreadful
It's no use denying it, Jordan. Cannonshop lives in Washington, you live in Vancouver. I can read between the lines.
;-)
46 - Jordan Richardson
*renews passport*
47 - Daniel Miller
Now we know (not that we weren't previously aware of it) that human affairs are to some extent cyclical, and have no precipitating proximate cause. Senator Obama said so:
Query whether there might also be a comparable cyclical nature to things in nature, global warming and cooling, for example.Dan(Miller)
48 - Dr Dreadful
I wonder if I could get federal funding for a study of the correlation between the pace of warming and the amount of hot air being emitted on the campaign trail.
49 - Jordan Richardson
Dan, are you suggest that a big shift in white women is causing global warming?
50 - Cannonshop
"There's an old moniker floating around the Progressive Community (don't ask me what the fuck that is, by the way): "Simply living so that others may simply live.""
There are very few "Progressives" out there that walk that walk, Jordan, especially compared to the numbers of them that say that-but mean it for others, not themselves. I know, I live in a state FILLED with them, and have only met a handfull that actually practice what they wish to compel others to do.
I don't think you would believe the number of plastic water-bottles I've picked up in places where there are no 'water bottle trees', the number of times I've collected trash left by people who talk a good line about recycling while they leave a trail behind them in the woods made of litter and trash Marked with words like "Organic" and "Green", that aren't.
There's another old saying, "Leave it better than you found it", or "Pack out what you pack in". The times I've gone out scouting for sign, I've found all sorts of shit left behind by city people with all the right bumper stickers to prove they're "Real" progressives who "care" about "Mother Nature".
That MAY have some influence on my point of view.
51 - Dr Dreadful
Did you see them drop it, Cannon?
52 - Cannonshop
#48
Based on expansion by volume, and energy output, if there WAS a correlation, it would indicate that the globe MUST be cooling-or we would surpass Venus in temperature.
53 - Jordan Richardson
There's no question about that, Cannonshop. My wife and I have "adopted" our street and you wouldn't believe the shit that we pick up from people passing through. But that doesn't mean that people shouldn't try to act behind the adages. People that fake it are worse than people that never try, no doubt.
54 - Cannonshop
#51 Sometimes Have. I remember scaring the hell out of some mountain bikers who seemed to think the cascades were their personal trash-pit.
55 - Cannonshop
Jordan, I think I've told you before-I have a great respect for anyone that upholds their views through action rather than mere endorsement. I just wish that the louder endorsers maybe would make some effort to live up to the standards they want to lay on someone else.
I kind of count it as the difference between a "Real" conservationist, and some jackass with a cause.
I can't stand the jackass-with-a-Cause. Just no tolerance for that.
56 - Jordan Richardson
Agreed.
57 - Deano
You're arguing the Authority Figure Knows Best when you should be looking at the Science.
First Cannon, I AM looking at the science - at the collective encompassing view of the science, not at one specific instance around just the ocean temperature study. Second, nowhere in my admittedly overwrought little screed do I come down on one side or the other on Global Warming, so you are basically pigeon-holing me based on your own interpretation, not on anything that has been written.
And being condecending to boot.
No, what actually got me irritated was not the usual blind repetition of GOP talking points but that psuedo-insult that was implicit in the quotation marks around the word scientist in Clavo's remarks.
The vast majority of scientists I've been exposed to are intellectually interested in the questions, not in the politics. For years they have been presenting their data in all the myrid ways and having it collectively ignored or dismissed with easy, airy gestures, just like you do in your comments. Being scientists they go back, resume their research, refine their questions and thinking and then present a new set of data supported by their facts and theories - with a little more detail, more theory, more depth - only to be dismissed yet again. So around the fourth go-around or so, they start to tune in on it politically...since the powers that be (Dems and GOP) have been collectively ignoring the conclusions for more than 10 years.
And you wonder what makes it political? It has ALWAYS been political, it's just been safely tucked away as a non-issue until recently. Now that it is an issue, wonder-of-wonders, here come the various interests each extolling their own specific spin on the data. The anti-global warming side wages a PR and media war (mainly because the collective consensus of scientific data and studies do NOT support their conclusions) while the extreme elements of the environmental movement hijack and exaggerate the facts around global warming, citing extreme worst-case scenarios based on spurious or highly limited knowledge as factual events. Both sides are spinning the issue to suit their own agenda.
Given that you guys are the same intellectual powerhouses currently blindly extolling the virtues of the Alaska Hockey-Mom/Moose-killing Governer as presidential material based on her stellar TWO EFFING YEARS as governer of a fraking state with a population smaller then my city, you will pardon me if I prefer to draw my own stance on global climatology from sources that actually study the science behind the issue and not inane Internet commenters... honestly you guys just don't have the street cred.
58 - Cannonshop
#45 Doc, you know, you almost owed me a keyboard and a screen for that, and breathing coffee isn't healthy!
(though I wouldn't pick a Prius, I can't fix one of those, and I belong to the "Reuse, Repair, and Recycle" school of thought where the devaluing curve of automobile ownership is concerned.)
Besides, My wife and His wife might have objections.
59 - Daniel Miller
Doc, re Comment #48. It's worth a try. Sillier grants have been made. I would hope that if you do secure such a grant, you might consider outsourcing it; Somalia would be a wise choice. You are rather more useful doing what you are now doing (:>).
Jordan, re Comment #49 -- it is a definite possibility. Or perhaps the converse is true. It seems to be a valid basis for a Federal Grant. Of course, the Global Warming caused by the hot air coming out of Washington, D.C. would never be deserving of a Federal grant, because we all know that it is confined to within the Beltway. Or, maybe not. We need to have a rigorous scientific investigation, by the best and brightest, to resolve these highly important issues.
Dan(Miller)
60 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
Let's count the number of times cannon and RJ are wrong.
1) Wrong about Greenland cooling having any bearing on global temperature. (see my post 29)
2) Wrong about global temperatures in the arctic being the same as in the first half of the 20th century. (see my post 29)
3) Wrong about warming being similar to warming in past centuries. There has not been a warming this warm, or as fast, in any other period this millennium.
4)
the atmosphere is even thinner than that, and the forces that govern both are far out of the scale of human capability to alter in any significant way except on a local level. (Los Angeles, for instance, areas contained in 'bowls' with relatively stable climatic conditions and reduced exchange rates with the climate as a whole).
Wrong. We have drastically changed the composition of the atmosphere. This is an undisputed fact. CO2 has risen from about 250ppm to 400ppm in the lower atmosphere as a whole. Don't tell me humans are not able to change the atmosphere because "it's too big." Look around you. We have drastically changed every corner of this globe.. but not the atmosphere you say. HAHA.
5) We release about 27 gigatons of CO2 per year. The atmosphere contains 3 teratons. Simple math tells me that we would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 1% a year at this rate, which is about what has been observed (hypothesis confirmed).
6) It is warmer now globally than at any point in the medieval warm period. YOU ARE WRONG about that too. You can describe wheat fields in Greenland all you want, but not one scientist, denier or not, in the world will say it was warmer globally then than it is now.
Put it all together and Cannon and RJ are completely unreliable. CO2 has risen by 70% in the past century. Average global temperature is warmer now than at any point this millennium. These are indisputable facts. Put the two together.
I'm actually predicting a global cooling trend or at least enough cooling to cancel out global warming temporarily for the next 10 or 20 years. This is due to some meteorological factors which are not taken into account in climate models.
61 - Dave Nalle
What really shocks me Dave, is that I would have thought that as a Libertarian or Liberty Republican, you would have gone with what the people of Alaska want rather than what the state wants.
Governing by polls is just irrational mob rule.
As for hunting wolves, as I understand it the rationale is that they are overpopulated and exceed the capacity of their food supply, causing them to move into populous areas looking for food. It's the same reason we distribute birth control to hundreds of thousands of coyotes here in Texas (also dropped from planes).
And don't try to get to me with the evilness of hunting from a plane. I'm not opposed to hunting in any reasonable form.
Dave
62 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
From a political perspective, complaining about the deaths of wolves or polar bears is not going to get you anywhere.
63 - Clavos
Deano,
If some of the the scientists weren't attributing practically every phenomenon in the world to global warming, THEY might have more "street cred." Some so-called "experts" and politicians even attempted to pin the 2004 Indonesian tsunami on global warming! A tsunami, as everyone knows, is the result of an undersea earthquake.
Kerry Emanuel of MIT insists that GW will result in bigger, stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but Colorado's William Gray, and former Directors of the National Hurricane center Max Mayfield and Neil Frank, as well as prominent hurricane expert Chris Landsea, all disagree with him.
There is plenty of dissension among the scientific ranks; some of the scientists have steadfastly refused to jump on the bandwagon, including the well-respected Roy W. Spencer, who, in his well-written and authoritative book, Climate Confusion, which calls into question much of the research on a variety of points, including lack of peer review (A characteristic of the (in)famous IPCC Report).
From the totally discredited and risible Mann "Hockey Stick" graph, to the hysterical and unfounded claims in Gore's film (10 ft. increases in sea levels, when the most pessimistic scientists talk of inches), and even Paul Ehrlich's 1988 bomb, The Population Bomb (which was totally erroneous, but not about GW, which hadn't been invented yet), there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the "scientific consensus" that most, if not all, of GW is anthropogenic.
64 - Cindy D
Dave,
????
Governing by polls is just irrational mob rule.
Polls?
Dave! The people of Alaska voted against this! Sarah Palin went out of her way to do whatever the fuck she feels like despite what THE PEOPLE OF ALASKA wanted.
What polls are you talking about?
I am talking about how the people voted.
Please, just don't bother replying unless you research it.
65 - Cindy D
As for hunting wolves, as I understand it the rationale is that they are overpopulated and exceed the capacity of their food supply, causing them to move into populous areas looking for food.
The way you understand it Dave, is the way Palin and friends wants it to be understood. Which is why I did the research and posted the link to what scientists say. Palin is a fucking liar and has hidden scientific though from her populace before.
I don't give a fuck what a fucking hillbilly like Palin supposes.
Lastly, if you think buckshotting animals from a plane for no fucking sensible reason is REASONABLE. Then you deserve to live in the septic tank of a country that people with beliefs similar to yours has created.
66 - Deano
Skeptical I have no problem with. Testing and disputing hypotheses, validity of data etc. are all part of the scientific methodology. I would expect that significant changes to the current understanding of global climatology are and will be developed from the studies and scrutiny that is resulting around global warming.
What I find irritating and annoying is when I see casual, shallow and smugly dismissive commentary on the subject that smacks more of partisan demagogery then scientific reason.
67 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
If some of the the scientists weren't attributing practically every phenomenon in the world to global warming, THEY might have more "street cred." Some so-called "experts" and politicians even attempted to pin the 2004 Indonesian tsunami on global warming! A tsunami, as everyone knows, is the result of an undersea earthquake.
This does not disprove AGW.
Kerry Emanuel of MIT insists that GW will result in bigger, stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but Colorado's William Gray, and former Directors of the National Hurricane center Max Mayfield and Neil Frank, as well as prominent hurricane expert Chris Landsea, all disagree with him.
As far as my limited reading goes, the effect of global warming on hurricanes is unknown. This does not have anything to do with AGW.
There is plenty of dissension among the scientific ranks; some of the scientists have steadfastly refused to jump on the bandwagon, including the well-respected Roy W. Spencer, who, in his well-written and authoritative book, Climate Confusion, which calls into question much of the research on a variety of points, including lack of peer review
Have you read the book? Could you cite an example? As far as I know the Mann graph has been extensively peer reviewed and is largely agreed with.
From the totally discredited and risible Mann "Hockey Stick" graph
The Mann graph is not discredited or risible. Although many question Mann's original methodology from his 1988 paper, almost all estimates of past climate look general similar to the graph he described.
to the hysterical and unfounded claims in Gore's film (10 ft. increases in sea levels, when the most pessimistic scientists talk of inches), and even Paul Ehrlich's 1988 bomb, The Population Bomb (which was totally erroneous, but not about GW, which hadn't been invented yet
As far as a scientific debate about AGW, neither of these people have any relevance.
there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the "scientific consensus" that most, if not all, of GW is anthropogenic.
Did I miss them?
68 - Jordan Richardson
I don't think I've ever heard a scientist say that a tsunami was caused by global warming. I have heard that the frequency and strength of our storms could be a result of it, however.
As far as I'm concerned, the science here is pretty sensible. As human beings, we can't keep leaving a footprint on the planet in the way that we are and not expect that we have some impact on how things are playing out. Our actions relating to nature impact people the world over and we need to be more mindful of that without getting more political about it.
I have to wonder how differently the global warming science would have gone over in the United States had it not been presented by a famous Democrat with a documentary and touted as a Dem vs. Rep thing. Would the sceptism have been as strong had the news escaped via a presentation by a bunch of credible scientists and not somebody affiliated so closely with a particular political agenda? Would people be striving so hard to oppose it?
When I've encountered those that deny global warming, I find that they usually have a reason to deny it that goes beyond actually wanting to protect the earth. They usually want to preserve a way of life or perhaps be continually comfortable. They usually fear or dislike change. While these are indeed generalizations, when I compare a scientist whose work in the field is second to none with a "scientist" from an oil company whose work is designed to discredit the real science, I can't help but question the underlying motivation more than the science. Global warming isn't going to go over well with oil tycoons and the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd, is it?
On the other side, what exactly is it that people think those who "believe in" global warming have to gain? What's the prize? Votes? What about in countries where there is a virtual political consensus regarding global warming? What's to gain then? Global warming is not an American issue, regardless of what some may believe. So there is a sense in the world that while those in the U.S. are using this issue to fuck around after votes and grants and whatever the hell else, the world is declining in its health. And it shouldn't be.
We have overcrowding, pollution, war, starvation, economic strife, etc. and we're arguing about potential causes. Tell you what, guys. HELP first, talk later.
69 - Clavos
Have you read the book? Could you cite an example? As far as I know the Mann graph has been extensively peer reviewed and is largely agreed with.
Only for you, PETI, because this is going to require me to actually type in an excerpt from Spencer's book, rather than simply do a copy-and-paste (and I'm a two-finger typist), but here goes. I bought the book a couple of weeks ago, and have read all but a few pages at this point. Re Mann's hockey stick, Spencer writes:
Here's another reference on the hockey stick graph, from Technology Review, published by MIT:
Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. It goes into much greater detail (very convincingly). Use the link.
You say, in reference to Mann's graph:
almost all estimates of past climate look general similar to the graph he described.
True. So does any random data plugged into his computer model.
70 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
Thanks a bunch Clavos, I'm reading away right now :).
71 - RJ Elliott
There is no consensus. That's an Al Gore lie:
72 - RJ Elliott
Recycling is a waste of time:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
73 - Dr Dreadful
More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming.
And how many of those scientists are climate scientists, RJ?
Try again.
74 - handyguy
It continues to amaze me that both sides of this argument are so utterly convinced that they are 100% right and those who differ are 100% fucked. And it divides almost exclusively along ideological lines.
Hmmm, could that just possibly mean there is inconclusive evidence on both sides? Not nearly as much fun that way, I guess.
75 - Franco
drewweber,
OK, so you’re a bird freak. I solute you, I like um too, especially birds of prey.
To most American citizens the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and many other environmental laws are a noble effort to save species from extinction, and to protect the environment from reckless destruction by man.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was drafted to protect threatened and endangered species and to provide this protection while implementing trun around recover habitat programs for such species. The ESA has been successful in recovering my species as you point out in your opinion piece. And once they have made habitat recovery they are carefully delisted from the ESA and then monitored.
That is the heart of the ESA. And I think that is a fair assumption of how you see it.
However, I can not help but see your naivete in what is really going on.
While you pull on our heart strings with all the benefits of species recover that has taken place, the very heart of the ESA recovery programs are being relentlessly attacked, not by Palin, but by radical environmental NGO;s all the time.
Radical environmental NGO’s want a species once listed as threatened or endangered to be locked up for all time and they come out of their skin whenever the USFWS delists a species after successful in recover has been secured. The Internet has decades of this information if you are truly interested.
Case in point:
Animal Rights Coalition Sues the USFWS Over Wolf Delisting.
On April 28, 2008 a coalition of 12 animal rights groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government in an attempt to have the northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf placed back on the endangered list.
The northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf was officially removed from the federal endangered species list on Friday, March 28, 2008 after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) determined that federal recovery efforts have been successful and the animals no longer belong on the endangered list.
Shortly after the Endangered Species Act (ESA) delisting took place, the coalition announced that it would be filing a lawsuit.
The coalition, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, among others, is challenging the USFWS decision to remove the wolf from the federal list of endangered species.
If successful, this lawsuit brought by anti-hunters will make it virtually impossible to remove recovered wildlife populations from the federal endangered list. Obstructing delistings will also prevent states from resuming control of healthy wildlife populations.
-----------------------------
Now all that sounds like this coalition of 12 animal rights groups are willing to go to all the trouble and huge expense to file a lawsuit against the federal government, they must have good reason and must be noble or why else would they spend the time and money.
I will touch on this so called nobility a few paragraphs down, but first let me ask you the following questions.
Have you ever personally worked with anyone involved with the USFWS and Endangered Species Act (ESA) at the professional level in dealing with licenses and permits and their varied regualtions for dealing with endangered species? Do you have any ideal what is going on inside the USFWS and their handling of the ESA?
I can tell you that I have on all accounts, and for years, as I hold working licenses from both the USFWS and the UN to conduct international trade in some endangered species in recovery work. I am on a first name basic with most of the key personnel at USFWS and the ESA.
The authority of species protection all starts at the United Nations (UN) under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This authority then trickles down to world governments who have signed up and engage them within their governmental environmental policies.
In the case of the US and our ESA, that authority falls on USFWS whose legal responsibility it is to enforces it by law in the US. I know this law from cover to cover as I have to if I want to stay out of jail.
At the UN there are three (3) levels of classification for endangered species under CITES in which the USFWS subscribe to. In addition, the USFWS has two (2) additional classifications as well, namely, “Threatened” and “Endangered”.
Between the three (3) UN and the two (2) USFWS classifications, what ever combination of clarification a species is given determines it ranking for protection.
The most forceful protection comes from a combination of and UN class I, in combination with a USFWS class of “Endangered”. This means that if you or I disturb this species in it is natural habitat for any reason we will be fined $250.000.00 or face imprisonment for 10 years, of both.
The weakest classification would be a UN class III in combination with a USFWS class of “Threatened”. This you can still disturb in it natural habitat, take in home, sell it, grow it, or eat it but the USFWS is monitoring its habitat.
All the other varies combination levels of protections requires special permits from the UN and or the USFWS. I have both and have maintained them in good standing for over 12 years.
For decades since the ESA went into effect in 1973 it has been under mountains of legal pressures from radical special interest environmental NGO’s who are forcing “their agenda” into the ESA and upon all Americans and it is going on unchecked by the American public.
Both greed and private property rights are at the main corners stones in this battle and has crippled community and business interest who have all been thrown under the bus. Why, money talks.
Today the USFWS and the ESA has morphed into an out of control monster due to Bill Clinton’s signing into law granting environmental NGO”s the full right to sue to USFWS / ESA over anything at any time for any reason. The Clinton bill states that regardless of the out come of the case, the US government would have to pay all attorneys for all NGO’s participation in the case even it they loose the case.
Radials environmental NGO’s quickly put this money power angle to work and have turned the state against its own citizen’s rights.
So much for the noble efforts of the radical NGO’s
Since Clinton signed this law, the radical NGO’s have set up in house legal teams who can attack in a formation of a coolition of multibpe NGO’s as sighted about in there attact of USFWS over the Rocky mountain gray wolf. This so intangles the ESA in the courts on a full time bases that it morphs it into their agenda and these legal teams get paid big bucks whether they win their cases or not. The cases have become both so frivolous and radical that the ESA not longer belongs to ether the people of the US or the authorities in government running it. Palin sees that. You could not be a governor of the state of Alaska with all of it’s many species of animals and plants and not know this fully.
The species are being used as a means to get hold of both citizen’s private property, and lock up larger and lager section of state land from public use or utility.
These negative effects have caused the USFWS to suffered under a never ending mountain of aggressive and radical environmental NGO legal attract machines that consumes the USFWS entire yearly budgets within the first 4-6 months of each fiscal year. This leaves the USFWS with little else in which to creatively serve the interest of the American people and the integrity of the ESA itself.
This has lead to internal conflicts within USFWS that have made them fare less open and effective in addressing individual, community, and public needs on issues that require attention.
These are the results of being hijacked by radical interests and why the USFWS is not able or even willing to serve the greater needs of communities and business.
1. The USFWS lacks both the means and the time to serve the public by being under the endless onslaught of radical NGO’s
.
2. The USFWS knows that the general public neither has the means or the time either to deal with them while they are under such a never ending onslaught of attacks from radical NGO’s.
3. The USFWS knows that the general public and or business who files cases (who all have to pay their own legal fees) will also cause the USFW to be attacked by the NGO’s over the cases filed by the general public and or business, and the USFW wants to avoid that at all costs so the public and business are shoved aside.
As if this was not bad enough, today there are many ex-NGO radical environmentalists working for the USFWS. I have friends at USFWS and I also have enemies. It is a house divided against it self. Truly an utter nightmare working with them if you are in the general public and or a business. It’s not the way government is supposed to work yet who the hell can reel it back in. Only those with the means to sue garner any serious attention.
The general public has lost their constitutional rights at the hands of radical environmental NGO’s. The ACLU is not one bit interested in assisting the public on environmental issues relating to Constitutional rights. Environmentalism is like a sacred cow over and above the US Constitution that remains too politically correct to challenge.
It has become an out of control authoritarian monster that out of its own survival has had to cast off public and business interests. This is not new and is out there on the Internet if you were truly interested.
Following are comments made by a public citizen who sued for his Constitutional rights and his attorney who sued USFW for taking his property using the Endangered Species Act to do it. The cast took four (4) years in the courts to win.
"This is a major victory for all those fighting for their property rights taken by the Endangered Species Act, This settlement shows that if you stand up for your constitutional rights, you can win." said Nancie G. Marzulla, president, Defenders of Property Rights, a legal foundation based in Washington, D.C.
Here is what the man who’s property were taken away by the USFWS .
"I am elated that it is finally over, but am still disheartened that it took four years and a lawsuit to get the government to obey the Constitution."
Here is a review of just this one case.
Now you want to talk about the - ESA - Polar Bears " and Palin - and try and stir our hearts and minds using a radically hijacked ESA to put the poo hoo on Palin.
You don’t even know which end is up!
Let me start by prefacing that if any politician knew of the dysfunctional workings of the hijacked USFW / Endangered Species Act, it would surly be a governor from the state of Alaska with all of its diversified wildlife and plants.
Palin would be the very best thing in helping us common citizens gaining back control of a hijacked government. Responsable citizesn like Shara Palin who live, work, and enjoy the wilderness as she clearly done are more caring and responsalble then most people.
Not only is she smart, and a breath of fresh air in wanting to sweep out hijackers of government, she is savvy to their hijack games.
Now since you make this play on the ESA to put it to Palin, I have some more questions for you.
The same hijacked game that Obama played in spades with his close accocate Bill Ayers and his Chicago Annenberg Challenge in school reform in the 1990s with Obama served in heading up the board with Ayers until it was closed down failing to raising the required school educational standards to a minimum that the charter grant funds that Bill Ayers had secured required.
Bill Ayers first cash outlay of said funds went to the New Communits of America headed by one of Bill Ayers old SDA buddies who works in Chicago.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a hijacked radial group pushing funds into unfrindly Amerian activisim.
What was Obama doing as head of the board of the failed charter shcool Chicago Annenberg Challenge?
Why is Obama today calling for more money for charter school grants.
Obama is on record claiming he dose not know Bill Ayers when the FACTS show otherwise.
Obama launched his political career from the home of Bill Ayers.
Obama needs to explain his ties to William Ayers
Obama needs to explain why his efforts at leading the board of Bill Ayers Chicago Annenberg Challenge failed and were forced to close.