The Crikey Daily Mail’s hallowed Comments, Corrections, Clarifications and C*ck ups section is always jammed with heated arguments over climate science. In particular, there’s one regular commentator who manages to poke at this particular sore so effectively as to enrage and engage readers in a never ending tit for tat that, quite frankly, drives our production editor insane (we’re looking at you, Tamas Calderwood.)
So in the interests of creating a bit of breathing space in the email, and sharing the (not always informed) debate with Rooted readers, we’d like to present the CLIMATE CHANGE CAGE MATCH — a fight to the death.
There’s a robust discussion taking place on the Wilkins Ice Shelf (or what’s left of it) elsewhere on the blog, but the following debate will take place around the general consensus on climate change (yes, there are still a few out and proud sceptics who love to thrash it out and who are we to stop people from making fun of them?)
Picking up where we left off, here’s Tamas Calderwood from yesterday:
Stephen Morris (yesterday, comments) says that CO2 has recently increased to the “unprecedented” concentration of almost 0.0004 of our atmosphere and says this increase “almost exactly corresponds with the large temperature increases over the last 50-100 years”. First, CO2 has been more than 10x current levels in the past.
Second, what large temperature increases is he talking about? Once again, we’ve had zero warming in the past 10 years, less than 0.4C in the past thirty years and around 0.7C in the past hundred. The data are available to anyone with access to Google and the ability to type “temperature data”.
Ding ding ding! Play nice kids…
1,050 Comments
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kdkd #1000
There are 1001 sensible ways to reduce energy use and improve efficiency at the micro and macro level.
Ken Lambert’s 10 point plan is a positive contribution using real solutions and proven technologies to reduce fossil fuel use.
If you look at the numbers – CCS is BS. Geothermal is still experimental and not easy to scale up quickly. Solar-thermal has some potential but still small scale experimental.
China, Sweden, UK and several other nations are crash programming nuclear using our uranium.
Can you imagine a greater piece of international hyprocrisy than selling uranium to the rest of the world but banning the use of it in Australia, because it might hurt us. So we – the great treaty observers of the world – don’t care if it hurts others in poorly regulated third world countries.
Will report on the sea level controversy – my questions to some of the players are so far getting the silent treatment – just like Ben Sandilands and his GISS report follow-up.
Well we almost agree again. Especially as there are apparently these interesting set and forget nuclear reactors suitable for town size deployments that are meltdown and proliferation proof coming online. But there’s no single solution. The solution is to do everything we can to get off burning coal and oil and venting it into the atmosphere, as quickly as possible[1]. The 30 years of policy failure and deliberate actions of the fossil mafia have lost a major opportunity. Much the same as with the lack of preparations for peak oil [2]. There’s a slim chance we haven’t run out of time on either, but there’s no time left to pretend there’s any significant uncertainty about the underlying science.
But the urgency of the problem means strong leadership and a rapid cultural change required. There’s no point in saying “here’s the solution”. The Australian attitude to energy use is profligate, and that culture is the number one barrier to effective action.
[1] Yes CCS is a dud for conventional coal power plants. However, syngas production plus Peridotite rock to absorb the co2 may be useful.
[2] Here I have inside information in the oil industry about the conspiracy of silence within the exploration industry. No loony left greenie information sources shaping this knowledge.
kdkd #995. My point about appealing to authority is not that you have to argue everything from first principles, just that you can’t shut down the debate by saying that the “scientists” say so therefore there’s no point in rationally explaining something.
For example – the world has cooled since 2001 and this contradicts the climate change hypothesis.
Instead of arguing the logic many just say that these facts are insignificant, and besides, the mountains of climate-scare science act as some kind of trump-card against a fact that is inconsistent with the hypothesis.
Since Socrates and the Athenians we have learnt to question everything. But not anymore. We can’t question global warming.
That’s what makes it feel like a religion. Heretics are abused and treated as outcasts. The WORD (science) cannot be questioned.
It is also the reason why the global warming movement is on the brink of collapse. People are waking up to it – thus the terrible opinion poll numbers in Australia, US, UK etc.
Tamas
You’re confused. Appeal to inappropriate authority is the problem. Claiming that AGW is supported or otherwise because of the claims of (for example) a quantum physicist would clearly be an appeal to inappropraite authority.
“For example – the world has cooled since 2001 and this contradicts the climate change hypothesis.”
This claim of yours is demonstrably false, and I have done this in multiple ways.
The rest of your post is empty rhetoric based on these two initial false claims. So it’s fine to make your argument so long as you’re clear that it’s not rooted in an evidence based view.
kdkd #1440
“For example – the world has cooled since 2001 and this contradicts the climate change hypothesis.”
This claim of yours is demonstrably false, and I have done this in multiple ways.”
Perhaps kdkd you could give us a brief summary of all the ways you have proven this.
By all means include your karaoke charts.
Tamas,
I don’t think there’s the need to repeat myself again. The graph here shows that there is no trend towards cooling.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/05/no_global_warming_didnt_stop_i.php
Also remember that if you substitute other global temperature data for the GISS data, the evidence is exactly the same.
Like I said, argue your case, but please prefix “this view is not based on the available evidence” so that people know that you’re talking crap.
Ahh kdkd – so now we use the Gistemp land and ocean temperature data? That would be the temperature index run by James Hansen?
If you use the UAH satellite data – the most accurate atmospheric data set – there is a trend cooling of 0.1C since 2001.
Human produced atmospheric CO2 must warm the atmosphere before it warms the oceans. But the atmosphere has been cooling. So have the oceans according to Argo.
You can’t get around that fact buddy. The evidence is unequivocal. October was 0.28C above the 30 year mean. Where is this damn global warming when you need to impose your utopian ideals upon a world that clearly thinks the whole thing is a crock?
Tamas, we’ve been through this before and I anticipated your moronicity this time.
I said:
“Also remember that if you substitute other global temperature data for the GISS data, the evidence is exactly the same.”
That means (wait for it): THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GISS DATA AND THE UAH DATA. THE UAH DATA DOES NOT SHOW ANY SIGNIFICANT COOLING TREND SINCE 2001 NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU WILL IT TO.
So I’m sorry. You’re wrong. Your opinion is not based on fact, it is based on a delusional approach to data interpretation.
kdkd #1008
Here’s the ocean heat story from a ‘warmist’ source:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?a=67
When the Argo buoys (direct temperature measurements) don’t match the AGW script, the AGW boys go off and then *infer* warming oceans by the presence of sea level rise – nothing to do with the Argo buoys at all.
Not very convincing is it kdkd?
Ken,
Well, we get back to the original paper whose conclusion that you are trying to over-extend. Here’s the conclusion from the horses mouth:
“While the current study takes advantage of a globally consistent data source, a 4.5-year period of ocean cooling is not unexpected in terms of natural fluctuations. The problem of instrumental drift and bias is quite complicated, however, (Domingues et al. 2008; Gouretski and Koltermann 2007; Wijffels et al. 2008; Willis et al. 2004, 2008a) and it remains possible that the result of the present analysis is an artifact. ”
So you’re right, your argument is half arsed and unconvincing.
For more fun you can see the agenda of the Energy and Environment journal is suspect here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_and_Environment
“The journal takes a skeptical view towards climate change. Skeptics on the journal’s editorial staff include Boehmer-Christiansen herself and anthropologist Benny Peiser. Contributors considered as climate skeptics or contrarians, have included Sallie Baliunas, Robert M. Carter, Ian Castles, Bjorn Lomborg, Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Garth Paltridge, Roger Pielke Jr., Fred Singer, and Willie Soon.
When asked about the publication of these papers Boehmer-Christiansen replied, “I’m following my political agenda — a bit, anyway. But isn’t that the right of the editor?”"
So if that’s the strongest argument that a politicaly motivated scientific journal can make that there’s something suspect about AGW, then its pretty piss weak.
kdkd #1011
“Sallie Baliunas, Robert M. Carter, Ian Castles, Bjorn Lomborg, Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Garth Paltridge, Roger Pielke Jr., Fred Singer, and Willie Soon.”
In 50 years time our grandchildren will applaud them as heroes all for debunking the AGW religion.
When you talk of 4-5 year periods of ocean cooling – you must think about the mechanism. Where does the heat energy go in that 4-5 year period? It can’t be stored in the atmosphere (1/80th the capacity of the oceans) in any significant quantity. Some could go into melting ice – but only that portion at very high latitudes.
Maybe most of it re-radiates out to space and is lost forever – which means that we are possibly not measuring the F.re-radiation accurately enough.
Warmist explanations which claim 4-5 year periods of cooling are just natural variability and imply that the CO2 GHG absorbed heat energy is just tucked away waiting to get out and resume global warming; fails to cut it in energy balance terms.
Even you could understand that after my extensive attention to your thermodynamic education.
Ken,
Your list of “heroes” appears to include some people with rather partisan or otherwise suspect thinking skills. Remember you’re claiming AGW is some political conspiracy thing. However the majority of evidence shows that it stands only on scientific merits. You brought the conspiracy nutjob theory into this discussion. I maintain that AGW stands on scientific merits alone.
You’re also missing the two elephants in the room. Your first assumption is that the sea surface temperature is independent of the subsurface temperature (the buoys only go down 90 metres from memory). Secondly you’re assuming that the global coverage of the buoys is good enough to account for 100% of stored heat in the oceans.
You may also find this article’s abstract interesting: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-marine-120308-081105 Anny Cazenave, & William Llovel. (2010). Contemporary Sea Level Rise. Annual Review of Marine Science, 2(1).
” … We show that for the 1993–2007 time span, the sum of climate-related contributions (2.85 ± 0.35 mm year−1) is only slightly less than altimetry-based sea level rise (3.3 ± 0.4 mm year−1): 30% of the observed rate of rise is due to ocean thermal expansion and 55% results from land ice melt. Recent acceleration in glacier melting and ice mass loss from the ice sheets increases the latter contribution up to 80% for the past five years.We also review the main causes of regional variability in sea level trends: The dominant contribution results from nonuniform changes in ocean thermal expansion.”
Like I said, your evidence is piss weak, and the only way you can make it attempt to stand up to scrutiny is to closely associate yourself with the nut jobs and the rent seekers..
Kdkd #1014 – if you’re typing a blog entry on a web page and you have access to Google just a click away, why make basic errors “from memory”?
Just Google “Argo Buoy” and you can discover that the Argo buoys go down to 2 kilometers – not to 90m. Pretty easy huh?
So they cover a pretty substantial part of the ocean’s mass. Are you saying all the heat has snuck down below the 2km ocean level? Because this horrific warming isn’t above 2km in the oceans nor is it in the atmosphere.
So where is it? Where is this global warming??
The first law of thermodynamics states that a system receiving more energy than it releases will warm up (conservation of energy principle). The world has not warmed up but it is supposed to be blanketed by all this nasty CO2 that retains all that deadly heat energy. Except that, er, it’s not warming.
Tamas,
You’re still talking about a very small, disputed signal (one out of three papers detects a small and self-disputed cooling signal) in a very large complex system.
The global warming signal is significant, and easily detectable and easy to attribute to greenhouse gasses. However it is not detectable or directly attributable to greenouse gasses over very short time spans.
Unless you want to take a deluded approach to the data that is, in which case it tells you whatever the voices want it to tell you. Thats your MO, and you’re sticking to it.
kdkd #1014
“You’re also missing the two elephants in the room. Your first assumption is that the sea surface temperature is independent of the subsurface temperature (the buoys only go down 90 metres from memory). Secondly you’re assuming that the global coverage of the buoys is good enough to account for 100% of stored heat in the oceans.”
Wrong and Wrong again.
Tamas pointed out that the Argos go down 2km – not 90m kdkd. The ocean coverage with 3300 odd buoys is extensive. Have a look at the map – they are widely spread in all oceans.
Sea level rise is a product of warming in the past – having absorbed heat from what Tamas rightly shows is a global rise of about 0.7 degC in 130 years and 0.4 degC in 30 years (and falling); the oceans have warmed and expanded, and land ice has melted. There is significant thermal lag in the oceans – at least 10 years, and probably much more from what I have read. Sea levels are probably still rising from warming over the last 100+ years (or since the LIA at least).
The issue is one we have long debated – how much of the temperature rise is due to CO2 GHG and how much is due to direct and indirect Solar effects; and where is the whole energy balance at the present time. I have already shown that measurement error alone could swamp any positive forcing, due to the low LOSU of the major term; F.reflected.
The sub-1mm annual rise in sea levels for the last year around the huge coastline of Australia compared to 2-8mm annual rises in the preceding 16-19 years is very odd indeed. It seems unlikely that such a big drop would occur in so short a time, although the effects of past warming would have to peter out sometime and it is possible that the flat or cooling temps since the ENSO of 1998 have finally produced a result around the Australian coastline.
So your claim is that The Argo Buoy programme ought to be good enough to count for 100% of the heat stored in the ocean.
100%. It’s a perfect record?
And because it’s a perfect record, any short term variability shouldn’t be present and the warming signal should be monotonic?
Those are pretty big claims. Got any evidence to back it up?
Oh for goodness sake
a temperature rise of “0.4 degC in 30 years (and falling)”
Again, big claim, where’s your evidence?
Ken
So here’s your evidence for the absence of sea level rise http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/index.html (see figure towards bottom of the page). Certainly makes your case seem all the more convincing.
Oops, excuse my sarcasm.
So recently we have:
1. Making outlandinsh claims about the expected quality of data.
2. Continuing to lie that there is some significant short term cooling trend, and pretending that it contradicts the AGW theory.
3. Making outlandish claims about sea level rise.
Good job delusion boy and paranoia man. You’ll get those pesky varmit scientists yet!
kdkd #1020
The chart on the CSIRO website shows no error bars for the satellite altimetry (for clarity), and error bars for the tidal gauges of +/-5mm.
“Note that error bars have not been shown for the altimeter data (red curve) for clarity, but are about ±5 mm.”
So we are measuring 0.1 – 0.9mm or (3.1mm according to Church’s belief) with an error of +/-5mm.
This is about as useful as a third armpit!!
This is from your CSIRO web link:
“VACANCY – We are currently hiring a research scientist whose role will be to advance the science of the estimation of regional sea-level rise with a focus on (but not limited to) the South Pacific Ocean. Using analyses from global coupled models they will help design and run idealised climate simulations and help build Australia’s climate model. See CSIRO Careers web site for further information. Applications close on the 27th of November 2009.
PLEASE NOTE that the closing date for this position has been extended. There may have been some problems with our online recruitment system. If you have already submitted an application, and want to make sure that it has been received please contact Neil White.”
I might be able to stiffen them up a bit regarding producing non-conflicting data.
Do you think I should apply?
So again you’re demanding that data from noisy complex systems should be error free. Good work. Perhaps you should give them a laugh by applying for the job and handing in your manifesto.
The trend of rising sea level is pretty clear from the graph. I’m not really sure what you’re trying to claim. Exaggerating uncertainty and over extending your conclusions again I would imagine.
kdkd #1019, #1022
What it means is that Sea level could be rising annually +6mm or falling -4mm based on the tidal gauges.
How do you make public policy on that data?
To keep yourself up with Global Temps, CO2 , Sunspots and Solar Flux – add this to your favourites:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/widget/
It is showing +0.42 deg rise at September 2009.
And for followers of the Al Gore circus, check this out:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/gore-has-no-clue-a-few-million-degrees-here-and-there-and-pretty-soon-were-talking-about-real-temperature/
Must have got it from some movie he watched with his uncle as a kid…
ken #1023
Of course you have to ignore the long term trend and/or pretend it isn’t really there in order to claim that. The data suggest a long term rising trend, so your focusing on the point uncertainty is misleading.
#1024
wtf. a supremely uninteresting over-magnification of a simple error. This backs your position becuse of … oh yeah, because of your desperate clutching at straws.
kdkd #1025
Gore’s credentials to talk about degrees of temperature are far lower than yours to talk about bar heaters. Your errors were in the thousands, his are in the millions.
We all know Al Gore is a science midget, however his propaganda has influenced millions of people. So much so that the British High Court was involved in an action to decide if Gore’s stuff could be taught in schools as ’science’.
The British High Court concluded that much of Gore’s inconvenient truth was inaccurate exaggerated propaganda. Convenient lies if you like.
Yet here is Gore – still poncing around the world expecting to be met by political leaders and heads of state as if he is a sort of AGW Dalai Lama.
I recall that John Howard was criticised by the chattering kiddies in the Media and popular science community when he gave Gore the big ignore.
kdkd #1018
Neither Tamas nor I would claim that the Argo Bouys would give 100% coverage to the oceans. You falsely exaggerate my derire for ‘certainty’ to hide the obvious fact that 3300 sets of data from all over the oceans would be a pretty good sample size.
I would think that a pretty good esimate of the oceans heat content and temperature could be had from these specialist pieces of gear.
And as far as the number of dud readings – with a population of 3300 one would expect a proportion to malfunction and read wrong – but that portion would most likely be randomly distributed in its errors.
If the portion which read wrong are heavily biased to read ‘too cool’, then this sounds like a defect in the design of the instrument.
Calibration in test tanks and real life water columns in cold and warm conditions would have to be extensive and the results bulletproof before you sent 3000 plus instruments off around the planet.
That is why the Willis story seems hard to believe. How come all the dud instruments read “cool”. Would not chance cause a similar number to read “warm”? You should know the answer to that Mr Statistician?
Or am I overestimating the quality of the Gen X and Y scientists and designers these days?
Ken,
via the link you showed me:
“In climate discussions, the most common error is focusing on a single piece of the puzzle while ignoring the big picture. The ocean cooling meme commits this error twofold. Firstly, it scrutinises 6 years worth of data while ignoring the last 40 years of ocean warming. Secondly, it hangs its hat on one particular reconstruction that shows cooling, while other results and independent analyses indicate slight warming.”
I don’t take this argument of yours seriously, it’s an unwelcome distraction. It’s like you’re concentrating wholeheartedly on pissing at the base of a specific tree while ignoring the fact that you’re standing in a forest.
Ken:
Being gentlemanly as I am, I haven’t harped on your earlier howler that climate change is not a human rights or social justice issue. But it does show that your ability to see the big picture is fatally comprimised by your ideological stupidity.
So stfu about in passing errors, they’re of no relevance to the debate once they’re corrected. Oh you didn’t admit that your howeler was an error because you’re blinded by your rancid ideology. Oops.
And Gore’s exaggerations of certainty pale into insignificance compared to your exaggeration of doubt.
kdkd #1027
You can’t really argue with #1027 can you Mr Statistics? That is why you are switching the attack to my *earlier howler that climate change is not a human rights or social justice issue*.
What on earth are you talking about? I can’t recall using either term in recent posts; if at all?
While we are there – no it is a hard science issue and as you know; science is blind to the domestic arrangements of the human and animal worlds.
That is why kangaroos don’t know they are Australian and coral polyps don’t know we like looking at coral reefs.
By the way I heard that the Barrier Reef has only a 50/50 chance of surviving the coming temperature rise. I would have thought the polyps would naturally spread to cooler waters – somewhere toward Wollongong perhaps.
Barrier Reef scares are hardy annuals. A few years ago there was “catastrophic” bleaching – big warming. Then it cooled and we havn’t heard of it since.
Reminds me of the famous ‘crown of thorns starfish’ which was devastating the reef 30 years ago. Dr Robert Endean had regular spots in the media warning of impending doom from the plague. Zealots in wetsuits were scouring the reef collecting the thorny creatures and turning them into either Asian delicacies or rose fertiliser.
It eventally died down after about 10 years of devastation – when the good Dr finally accepted that the critters were naturally fading away – it appears that the Reef suffered natural cycles of these plagues which were controlled by a natural predator which the Asians had been plundering. We clamped down on border protection and the Reef was saved.
And as you know – those poor countries which increase their populations without going through an industrial revolution have suffered the greatest environmental damage from devastated landscapes and polluted waterways.
Ken. You need to re-read:
“In climate discussions, the most common error is focusing on a single piece of the puzzle while ignoring the big picture. The ocean cooling meme commits this error twofold. Firstly, it scrutinises 6 years worth of data while ignoring the last 40 years of ocean warming. Secondly, it hangs its hat on one particular reconstruction that shows cooling, while other results and independent analyses indicate slight warming.”
Given that you’re determined to argue your position, the things you argue about get of smaller and smaller scope, indicating that the amount of ground you’ve had to give is MASSIVE. Ding ding. Capatain paranoia and delusion boy flee back to their imaginary cave in the fairy dust car to try and think up some other spurious argument with which to deal with those pesky scientists.
Ken #1031
So AGW won’t kill the planet, but unchecked it will have a large adverse effect on civilisation. Perhaps you can’t tell the difference.
Paul Erlich on Late Night Live last night http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2747139.htm
“We have really serious problems of hunger [on the planet], but the people writing the blogs are mostly fat”
I suspect that delusion boy and captain paranoia are both suffering from climate obesity too.
kdkd #1034
Yeah …like the people making the soft Left’s favourite movies……viz….
…Michael Moore
kdkd #1032
“In climate discussions, the most common error is focusing on a single piece of the puzzle while ignoring the big picture. The ocean cooling meme commits this error twofold. Firstly, it scrutinises 6 years worth of data while ignoring the last 40 years of ocean warming. Secondly, it hangs its hat on one particular reconstruction that shows cooling, while other results and independent analyses indicate slight warming.”
We agree again…
One cooling + one slight warming = Flat temperatures in the oceans over the last 6 years or so.
so kdkd….where has all the heat gone from the +1.6 W/sq.m of positive heat up forcing according to the IPCC 2007?
The oceans are the main storage medium.
Ken #1036
I don’t know, why don’t you ask a real expert.
Oh yeay, you won’t because according to one of your central delusions they’re all part of a huge communist conspiracy to get you back in the stone age where you belong…
kdkd #1034: Add Paul Erlich to the list of wackos you love to quote. Here he is in 1968:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..”
Bwahahahahaha!!!! aaaahahahahahahahah!!!!!! Ohh… it’s just too good. You can’t make this stuff up.
Well, global warming is the latest made-up eco-scare but who listens to kooks like Erlich anymore? ah, yeah, sorry kdkd.
Tamas,
Yeah, environmentalists have a habit of overstating their case somewhat. On the other hand, he’s not really wrong, just in the wrong time scale. Nice to see you describing one of the most respected scientists of the last 50 years as a “whacko”. You clearly know how to destroy your credibility through overt display of ignorance.
I’ve been impressed with Dimitri Orlov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov). As he shows repeatedly, these kinds of projections tend to be correct but on a longer time scale than the original prediction.
And world hunger is a big problem. I guess you can’t tell the difference between it being a big problem, and not being a big problem for *you*. Good work delusion boy, you will make the universe revolve around you yet, take that Newton!
kdkd,
Erlich is “one of the most respected scientists of the last 50 years”??? Boy, science has bigger problems than I thought.
Erlich is a crank and a doomsayer. He has been proven wrong again and again.
On world hunger, you are wrong – as usual. Here is Indur Goklany in a recent letter to The Economist:
“Access to safe water, improved sanitation, crop yields and life expectancy has never been higher in the history of mankind. This is true for both the developing and developed worlds. Much of this has been enabled, directly or indirectly, by economic surpluses generated by the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse-gas generating activities such as fertilisers, pumping water for irrigation and using farm machinery. Crop yields are higher than ever partly because of higher concentrations of CO2, without which yields would be zero.
You then submitted that global warming is causing both droughts and floods. Regardless of whether this is the case, deaths from droughts have declined by 99.9% since the 1920s, and from floods by 99% since the 1930s. In fact, since the 1920s average annual deaths from all extreme-weather events have dropped by 95% while annual death rates, which factor in population growth, have been reduced by 99%.”
I might add that billions have been lifted out of poverty in the past 30 years and humanity is richer than ever. 4 billion people now have phones, up from only a billion just 15 years ago. More children go to school than ever before, literacy is at its highest levels ever. And so on and on and on.
The world just keeps getting better kdkd. I know you like being miserable and pessimistic, but ironically enough this good news will probably make you even more miserable. So everyone’s a winner.
Tamas,
Your scientific illiteracy goes well with your view that there’s nothing more important than a dollar view of economics.
Your figures there are unverifiable. I won’t take them seriously without sourcing.
Nice head in the sand job there anyway delusion boy.
Economics is the science of allocating scarce resources. Currency is the best measure of resource value. Therefore the “dollar view of economics” is pretty, ahh, mainstream.
What specific numbers do you think are dodgy? Let me know and I’ll find some links for you.
I know it’s tough for you kdkd. A more prosperous world doesn’t fit with your doomsday predictions. But… well… bad luck. Good luck for the rest of humanity though.
Find me the original sources about the steep decline in death from natural disasters.
The dollar view of economics is clearly useful, but it does have its limits. You appear to want to be able to (selectively) ignore science because you seem to think that the dismal science is more important and can anticipate potential problems more accurately. I’m afraid that just because you don’t believe in them, it doesn’t mean the laws of ecology go away.
kdkd & Tamas
I figure I am a couple of years older that you both, and when I was a callow student Dr Paul Ehrlich and Ralph Nader were campus heroes.
I well remember Dr Ehrlich when his sideburns were dark and his youthful intensity blew away all serious opposition to his doomsday predictions. There was a particular ABC Monday Conference where Dr Ehrlich was the star turn and his opposition was a certain Dr Colin Clarke (demographer RC with 10 kids I think). The kiddies (me amongst them) all laughed at Dr Clarke as a hopeless old fart, done like a dinner by the luminous Paul Ehrlich.
Well, time has proven the hopeless old fart to be in fact Dr Paul Ehrlich – still groping for credence amongst a new generation who don’t know the history.
I hope Dr Clarke is enjoying his rehab in a high place.
And speaking of fat film makers …add Al Gore to Michael Moore in the gluttony stakes.
I believe Al gets easily distracted by a passing plate of potato pancakes.
Tamas “1040
Tamas is right as usual about the vast improvement in world hunger and deaths from droughts and floods since the early 20th century.
I would suggest that the kdkd mindset is all about pessimism and the psychological need for the threat of ‘Gores and rumours of Gores’ to get attention. Comes from the need for attracting research grants and squealing the scariest story to keep a job in ‘climate science’.
Exaggerate threats grossly, scare people sh*tless, thousands become millions, what might happen in 2000 years will happen within 50 years et.. cetera..et.. cetera.
When a couple of interested late nighters (Tamas and myself) can expose the systematic errors, exaggerations and areas of serious doubt about AGW alarmist facts, it shows how really pathetic and derivative are the paid ’scientists’ who arrogantly and dupliciously claim that the debate is over.
When kdkd gets a bit older and wiser he will be able to do an “Ehrlich” on the Flannerys, Karolys, Gliksons and their mimics; in bedtime stories to his grandkids.
Tedious political drivel.
Elrich’s reputation as a scientist is at the top. A scientist does not a social commentator make.
Anyway you deluded right wing fascists have to go on the attack using irellevant issues as your focus, because your arguments dont’ stand on their merits…
kdkd – Check out the numbers on declining deaths from natural disasters produced by Indur Goklany who I quoted above:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/05/going-down-death-rates-due-to-extreme-weather-events/
Ken #1044. Well, I’m not exactly young anymore but I figured out your seniority when you mixed up your miles and kilometers of Earth’s radius. I’m a child of the metric system so I couldn’t possibly tell you distances in miles
Tamas #1047
This “paper” has no proper citation, merely a link to a page on the internet that isn’t there any more.
Meanwhile given the paragraph “Despite the recent spate of deadly extreme weather events – such as the 2003 European heat wave and the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the USA – aggregate mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather events are generally lower today than they used to be.” it seems that the argument is that there we are currently better at managing adverse circumstances than we have been in the past. But given the source of the data is impossible to find, and that the paragraph implies a developed world bias, and that the secondary source (wattsupwiththat) is known to have very poor scientific standards, I think you’re going to have to do a lot better in order to be even slightly convincing.
kdkd – so you are arguing that deaths from natural disasters have increased?
Here is a link to the article that actually works:
http://goklany.org/library/deaths%20death%20rates%20from%20extreme%20events%202007.pdf
Convinced?
Ken – very interesting stuff with these leaked emails from CRU. It’s going to take a while to digest and analyse them all but a lot of very interesting stuff is coming out and it appears to be genuine. I imagine Mann, Briffa and the rest of the gang are rather frightened right now.
I wonder if Crikey will pick up on it?
Tamas,
I meant what I said, and not what you claimed.
Your source appears to be from a right wing free-market ideologue think tank. Not as you claim a trustworthy impartial source. Find me something from a respectable institution like the WHO, or a respectable academic institution or give up.
The leaked emails are tedious and uninteresting. From what I’ve seen so far, if that’s all the mileage that the delusionals and rent seekers can get out of them, then their case is very weak indeed. Realclimate as always is the best place to read about it. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
AGW is a complicated story. For people with a desire to maintain the pretence that the scientific consensus is somehow corrupt there will always be little things that they can magnify to a degree much larger than their real importance.
However, in terms of providing a logical and rigorous argument, the best the delusionals can do is picking around the edges, repetition of lies, and exploitation of the scientific illiteracy of poor ideologically blind fools like Tamas and Ken.
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