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To the 34% of American Adults Who Are "Worried a Great Deal" about "Global Warming"
Preface: A recent Gallup poll showed that 34% of American adults worried “a great deal” about “global warming”. This essay is written for that 34%.
Many well-intentioned people are desperately trying to stop climate change …
And yet they are proposing things that will put more C02 and methane into the air and otherwise do more harm than good.
Frack That
Many propose nuclear and fracking as a way to reduce carbon emissions.
In reality, scientists say that fracking pumps out a lot of methane … into both our drinking water and the environment.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas: 72 times more potent as a warming source than CO2.
As such, fracking actually increases – rather than decreases – global warming.
Are Nukes the Answer?
It turns out that nuclear is not a low-carbon source of energy … and funding nuclear crowds out the development of better sources of alternative energy.
Mark Jacobson – the head of Stanford University’s Atmosphere and Energy Program, who has written numerous books and hundreds of scientific papers on climate and energy, and testified before Congress numerous times on those issues – notes that nuclear puts out much more pollution (including much more CO2) than windpower, and 1.5% of all the nuclear plants built have melted down. More information here, here and here.
Jacobson also points out that it takes at least 11 years to permit and build a nuclear plant, whereas it takes less than half that time to fire up a wind or solar farm. Between the application for a nuclear plant and flipping the switch, power is provided by conventional energy sources … currently 55-65% coal.
Scam and Trade
One of the main solutions to climate change which has long been pushed by the powers that be – cap and trade – is a scam. Specifically:
- The economists who invented cap-and-trade say that it won’t work for global warming
- Many environmentalists say that carbon trading won’t effectively reduce carbon emissions
- Our bailout buddies over at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and the other Wall Street behemoths are buying heavily into carbon trading (see this, this, this, this, this and this).
As University of Maryland professor economics professor and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission Peter Morici writes:
Obama must ensure that the banks use the trillions of dollars in federal bailout assistance to renegotiate mortgages and make new loans to worthy homebuyers and businesses. Obama must make certain that banks do not continue to squander federal largess by padding executive bonuses, acquiring other banks and pursuing new high-return, high-risk lines of businesses in merger activity, carbon trading and complex derivatives. Industry leaders like Citigroup have announced plans to move in those directions. Many of these bankers enjoyed influence in and contributed generously to the Obama campaign. Now it remains to be seen if a President Obama can stand up to these same bankers and persuade or compel them to act responsibly.
In other words, the same companies that made billions off of derivatives and other scams and are now getting bailed out on your dime are going to make billions from carbon trading.
War: The Number One Source of Carbon
The U.S. military is the biggest producer of carbon on the planet.
Harvey Wasserman notes that fighting wars more than wipes out any reduction in carbon from the government’s proposed climate measures.
Writing in 2009 about the then-proposed escalation in the Afghanistan war, Wasserman said:
The war would also come with a carbon burst. How will the massive emissions created by 100,000-plus soldiers in wartime be counted in the 17% reduction rubric? Will the HumVees be converted to hybrids? What is the carbon impact of Predator bombs that destroy Afghan families and villages?
The continuance of fighting all over the Middle East and North Africa completely and thoroughly undermines the government’s claims that there is a global warming emergency and that reducing carbon output through cap and trade is needed to save the planet.
I can’t take anything the government says about carbon footprints seriously until the government ends the unnecessary wars … all over the globe.
So whatever you think of climate change, all people can agree that ending the wars is important. (War also destroys the economy.)
Anyone who supports “humanitarian war” by the U.S. is supporting throwing a lot of carbon into the air.
Dumb as a Mongoose In Hawaii
Many scientists suggest “geoengineering” the Earth’s climate. But that could actually worsen climate change. It could also increase the risk of drought.
Moreover, geoengineering would increase ocean acidification and decrease available sunlight for solar power.
And once we started, we could never stop.
Some of the geoengineering proposals are downright nuts. For example, “government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of ‘global warming.’ ” Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being studied and tested (and see this and this), involving such things as dumping barium, aluminum and other toxic metals into the atmosphere.
Remember, the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rats (which were eating the sugar cane used to make rum). It didn’t work out very well … mongeese are daylight-loving creatures while rats are nocturnal. So the mongeese trashed the native species in Hawaii, and never took care of the rats.
Similarly, the harm caused by many of these methods have not been thought through … and they could cause serious damage to our health and our ecosystems.
So – whatever you think about climate – you can obviously agree that we should approach climate change from the age-old axiom of “first, do no harm”, making sure that our “solutions” do not cause more damage than the problems.
So What’s the Answer?
If nuclear, fracking, cap and trade and geoengineering aren’t the answer, what is?
There are 3 main strategies which both climate activists and climate skeptics can agree on, because they have big upsides whether or not the Earth is warming:
(1) Reducing soot will quickly reduce melting of ice and snow. Reducing soot will be cheaper than the “decarbonation” which many policy-makers have proposed. And it would increase the health of millions of people worldwide
(2) Use specific smart combinations of solar, wind and geothermal energy
(3) Decentralize power generation and storage. That would empower people and communities, produce less carbon, prevent nuclear disasters like Fukushima, reduce the dangers of peak oil (and thus prevent future oil spills like we had in the Gulf), and have many other positive effects
We don’t need fascism to make this happen … We just need a sound plan.
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Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.
Ok, I am warned...and I finished your post...
The thing I want to ask is the title says 34% of American adults...
Does that mean the young americans know better?
If not, we have bigger (sustained) problem.
Global warming, it is something about bath-haus Barry, right?
certainly that's what the first dozen or so comments would make one think. again, whether or not (as george said) global warming is real, pollution, peak cheaply obtained fossil fuel, wars fought over fossil fuel, and nuclear power disasters are real. a transition needs to be made and much of it will be done by market forces. but it wouldn't hurt to have some basic research on wind, solar, batteries funded by governments rather than fighting endless wars over oil and gas while subsidizing nuclear power.
The geoengineering has been going on for well over a decade already. It's getting a bit ridiculous how people cannot recognize that the skies are saturated with so-called chemtrails - persistent "contrails" sprayed deliberately by drone tankers all over the world. Wake up! This is the most serious issue facing mankind. We're being sprayed like insects with aluminium and barium oxide particles used to control the weather and debilitate humanity. Aluminium exposure is a known precursor for alzheimer's disease. I'm beginning to wonder if the entire planet is not already so affected that people generally cannot recognize what a real cloud looks like.
Wow, an AGW thread thats been up for 20 hours and Flakzuki is nowhere to be seen. Maybe we've finnally seen the last of her
We're FlakMeister? She should be all over this like a shill on money.
In the end the clowns were supposed to take care of the rats, but they didn't expect to be boo'ed off stage and now since their exit, the rats have gone nuts in their own rat race.
Yours and George's three strategies are spot on. I would add eliminating street lighting and requiring electronic appliances on standby to draw no more than a milliwatt of power. All those little LEDs that light up your house at night add up to 50 nuclear power plants worth of energy. My set-top box consumes 45 watts when it is off!
The human race will be extinct by 2040.
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2014/04/human-extinction-by-2040.html
And a Big "thank you" to the comedy duo of Flackmeister & MeelionDollarBogus!
Thanks for the lulz, trolls!
See ya in the funny papers!
Are least spell it correctly dip shit...
The real funny guys are the one that use news clippings from 2007 to refute AGW like some guy tried here...
Flakmeister, was hasn't the globe warmed for over 17 years? Please, only use temperature data to support your rebuttal. Alien sightings have a much higher correlation to temperature than CO2.
If you only use the past 17 years the uncertainty in the fitted trend is too large to draw any conclusion. Temperature data is "noisy"...
If you are really interested I recommend reading this to understand thngs better:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-...
Also consider the following fitted trends GISTEMP
1970 to 1997: 0.146 +/- 0.067 C/decade (95% CL range)
1970 to 2014: 0.163 +/- 0.031 C/decade (95% CL range)
If the warming "stopped" why has the rate of warming increased from 0.146 to 0.163 C/decade if I add the last 17 years in?
===
By the way you do know that 1998 was was the strongest El Nino on record and 2011 was on of the strongest La Ninas on record? Only dishonest people would choose such a disrepresentative data set to make their point...
Finally, even with a weaker solar cycle, prevailing neutral-to-La Nina condition, the decade 2000-2010 was the hottest decade on record and by a significant margin. Moreover, 9 of the 10 warmest years have occured since 2001....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
ROFL Can you figure out why Tamino started using 1970? The guy has been shown to be a lying scoundrel time and again. Gee, did you wonder why he doesn't post observations vs climate models, the holy relic of AGW True Believers?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-obser...
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-models-global-Ts...
Actually Flakmeister I know a little bit about the climate issues, and even took the bait back in 1988.....then waited, and waited......where's greenhouse? You are using the same worn out talking points. Maybe you can explain if the surface temperature records are accurate, how it is the surface is warming faster than the troposphere? According to AGW "theory", the troposphere should be warming much faster than the surface. I've been waiting for 26 years for the ubiquitous "hot spot" to start.
Bet you thought I wasn't serious about the alien sightings and temperature correlation.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/do-aliens-cause-global-warming-the-d...
Let's try this again; there has been no global warming for 17 years. I asked you to provide data that showed otherwise. Instead you posted links to Tamino (aka Grant Foster) and Wikipedia.
I can provide the data from multiple sources that vary somewhat, and even include the inflated corrupted (cooling the past and warming the present) near surface temperature records, and there still will have been no global warming for 17 years. In fact, if you want to dig deeper, it can be said there has been no statistically significant warming for as long as 23+ years.
Here, try it yourself. When you get stuck, just ask for help
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/
http://climexp.knmi.nl/start.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
But first, answer the question about the basic tenet of AGW; the missing "hot spot". Then, if you want to have a discussion about global warming climate change climate chaos climate disruption weird weather or whatever the latest catch phrase is, go for it. OTOH, if you continue posting links to Tamino when you can't or don't want to see the game he plays with numbers (i.e. lying) then thanks but no thanks. BTW, notice there are no posts challenging him on his "analysis". Hmm, do you suppose maybe he deletes posts that put him in a bad light? Why yes, that's correct! So does John Cook.
Gollee, fwaynemartin, all that science, I don't understand. We're just musicians.
But I heard that scientist guy Michel Jarraud from that ocean meteorological world org thingy say just the other day "there is no pause". His buds said they read lotso other scientists works, like about 12,000 of them and then read like 150,000 comments and consider them before finalizing their little AR5 assignment.
Gadzooks, after all that he still thinks they need to keep studying it, but it sure doesn't sound like he thinks humanity best do nothing except for more research.
I had fun at WFT but I think picking the harmonized option didn't get us the hit parade record we've always wanted. Oh well, we'd like to write a song based on your knowledge of climate issues but since there isn't anything in your ZH bio, we're hoping you can inform us of the science papers of yours that the IPCC worked from and all the juicy comments of yours the IPCC considered. Or sumptin.
Hope you can help! TIA
we're off to do more research at beach resorts! (Max Webster)
MEAN BUSINESS,
You're a mindless drone. Do you make it a habit to believe everything politicians and their cronies tell you without checking it out first?
thing is we all are mindless drones... but your reply makes this all about me when it's clear I was making it all about the MOUNTAIN of evidence gather, improved on and refined over at least three decades. Your average musician or Joes like I am have other things to do, but I do manage to find some time to listen to what is said at AR5 press releases and I even find a few minutes to look at the declining arctic ice trend. That ice thing is very worrisome to me. Dr. Jarraud seems kinda worried too. And so do the authors that produce AR5, based on 12,000 scientific studies and 150,000 comments.
So again, since you're one of the 3% not in the consensus, where's your paper?
You want me to get on your airplane when 97% of the crew tell me it's dangerous? Who the fuck are you?
Consensus is not science.
Nonetheless, you mean the 97% consensus that doesn't exist? The phony paper where John Cook/Dana Nuticelli had their disciples cherry pick their results. The same John Cook that won't release the data used for their paper? The same John Cook that deletes posts from his blog challenging his lies and distortions?
The same John Cook, self-described cartoonist and web designer and neither a climatologist or scientist, let alone a mathematician, but has since removed from his 'About' page?
http://web.archive.org/web/20071213172906/www.skepticalscience.com/page....
The "filthy liar" John Cook?
http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/john-cook-is-a-filthy-liar/
Ah yes, the same John Cook 97.1% "pal reviewed" article that was soundly rebutted
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-...
Cooks ’97% consensus’ disproven by a new peer reviewed paper showing major math errors September 3, 2013UPDATE: While this paper (a rebuttal) has been accepted, another paper by Cook and Nuccitelli has been flat out rejected by the journal Earth System Dynamics. See update below. – Anthony
“0.3% climate consensus, not 97.1%”
Yes, the same John Cook and Dana Nuticelli (who takes money from "Big Oil" ROFL) that used Richard Tol's papers falsely and cherry picked their results?
https://twitter.com/RichardTol/status/337656856057106432
But hey, if you want to start a link war to the actual scientific climate research (no global climate models please), I'm all for it. You can start.
BTW, what do you think the consensus was on the faulty o-rings on the Challenger space shuttle? 97%? 98%?
fwaynemartin, It's disgraceful of you to bring up the Challenger disaster to try and make your point so start with this link, ASSHOLE:
RUSH music woke up astronauts, ASSHOLE
and make no mistake, this was totally inspired by Challenger. In FACT, RUSH were invited guests into 'Red Sector A' to observe STS1 Columbia and they have the pictures to prove it.. And here's the song RUSH wrote about it, released in 1982 on Signals as the final track on the album:
"and we enjoyed the music Bob (Crippen), thank ya! Ya we enjoyed it too, just wanted to share somethin' with ya"
SO ASSHOLE, there's my opening salvo in the link war, ASSHOLE.
don't see no anthonys on here but I do see WMO... YOU POS NOBODY
(Scientific Organizations That Hold the Position That Climate Change Has Been Caused by Human Action)
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I just demonstrated how there has been warming, sorry you are too thick to understand it...
Also Learn to clean up your white space...
I have already shown where Roys' crap has been debunked. Since he knows how dishonest his plots are he has not dared tried to publish them... That is a tell....
Why don't you explain exactly how you get 23 years of no warming, I am all ears. I think you are simply making shit up or don;t understand statistics, likely both...
Psst I picked 1970 so as to get ~30 year data set... changing it 1968 makes no diff...
Foster picked 1979 because that is the start of the satellite temperature data...
What plots are you talking about?
Are you saying the predictions made by IPCC were correct? Figures such as below can be found anywhere, and countless research papers indicate global climate models are horrible.
http://i.imgur.com/YE7xU6H.png
I will post the trend data when completed. And no, you did not post any data showing that warming has continued. Even Gavin Schmidt acknowledged the "pause". Tamino's pea under the cup may fool you, but even eyeballing the data you can see that warming has slowed and not increased since at least 2001.
Quit avoiding the question...
Why don;t you provide a proper link and citation for your plot? Eh? It was from an unofficial draft and was shown to be in error and was replaced...
I certainly have shown that the warming continues, 2000-2010 is the warmest decade and hte long term trend is even higher if you include the data from the last 17 years....
And if you think that the warming has stopped, explain the Ocean data, you know, the place where 97% of the heat ends up
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-not-slowing-its-speeding-...
-----
Foster picked 1979 because that is the start of the satellite temperature data...
Why don;t you ask him about it for yourself, you won;t because he will make you look like a fool, and you are too much of chickenshit...
----
Provide a credible link with the Schmidt quote... Go ahead...
Which plot? I can post dozens of peer reviewed papers showing climate models are erroneous. They cannot simulate clouds, oceans or a host of other climate metrics. I'm not chasing down every request when the source is right there in the picture. Find it yourself.
From 2007:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=497#comment-78146x
We have now surpassed that criteria. Years ago it was 10 years, then 15, then 17.....now it will require 20 years of no warming. Warming meaning as measured by near surface thermometers and satellite TLT as predicted by global climate models. Oh, and no, they didn't get oceans right either.
Gavin Schmidt et al just recently published a paper "explaining" the lack of warming. Translation: make it up as we go along
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/full/ngeo2105.html
Let's see if you can figure out why they are wrong, not to mention they are competing with at least 9 other excuses for why the globe hasn't warmed as predicted. Gavin's paper is #10 if you didn't figure that out.
http://i.imgur.com/LiSpayU.png
So what's your explanation?










OK, simply to clarify what I’ve heard from you.
(1) If 1998 is not exceeded in all global temperature indices by 2013, you’ll be worried about state of understanding
(2) In general, any year’s global temperature that is “on trend” should be exceeded within 5 years (when size of trend exceeds “weather noise”)
(3) Any ten-year period or more with no increasing trend in global average temperature is reason for worry about state of understandings
I am curious as to whether there are other simple variables that can be looked at unambiguously in terms of their behaviour over coming years that might allow for such explicit quantitative tests of understanding?
[Response: 1) yes, 2) probably, I'd need to do some checking, 3) No. There is no iron rule of climate that says that any ten year period must have a positive trend. The expectation of any particular time period depends on the forcings that are going on. If there is a big volcanic event, then the expectation is that there will be a cooling, if GHGs are increasing, then we expect a warming etc. The point of any comparison is to compare the modelled expectation with reality - right now, the modelled expectation is for trends in the range of 0.2 to 0.3 deg/decade and so that's the target. In any other period it depends on what the forcings are. - gavin]
Comment by Daniel Klein — 29 Dec 2007 @ 11:40