While ski seasons in Quebec and Colorado are being extended they have already had snow in South Africa. It is early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
Beam me up Scotty and set warp speed for someplace warm.
About Me
- JLS
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Those Bloomin C AGW alarmists wait with baited breath the arrival of the blooming of the cherry blossoms in the spring. They have been told by ‘experts’ that cherry trees are blooming earlier because of global warming. They are proof of global warming. But are they proof of manmade global warming? That assumption is implicit in the narrative put forward by alarmists but often remains unstated. Last year (2012) the cherry blossoms arrived in full bloom on March 20. This year they were projected to arrive around March 26th but instead chose to make their appearance on April 9, 2013. This is almost three weeks later than last year. If last year was proof of global warming can we conclude that this year is proof of global cooling? Here are some facts on the peak bloom of the cherry trees in Washington, D.C. Peeking at the data we learn that the peak peaked in 1998 and has been flat ever since. Another AGW canary dies in the coal mine.herries
AGW
alarmists wait with baited breath the arrival of the blooming of the
cherry blossoms in the spring. They have been told by ‘experts’ that
cherry trees are blooming earlier because of global warming. They are
proof of global warming. But are they proof of man made global warming?
That assumption is implicit in the narrative put forward by alarmists
but often remains unstated.
Last
year (2012) the cherry blossoms arrived in full bloom on March 20. This
year they were projected to arrive around March 26th but instead chose
to make their appearance on April 9, 2013. This is almost three weeks
later than last year.
If last year was proof of global warming can we conclude that this year is proof of global cooling?
Here are some facts on the peak bloom of the cherry trees in Washington, D.C.
Peeking at the data we learn that the peak peaked in 1998 and has been flat ever since.
Another AGW canary dies in the coal mine.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Mother Nature Gone Berserk
Or is it our perception of Mother Nature than has gone haywire?
It
seem as though the weather gods have gone berserk in recent years, as
nearly every day the headlines report unusual droughts, floods,
prolonged cold and snow, heat waves, or unusual weather events happening
somewhere around the globe.
The comment was made by Jennifer Francis.
Do you think she might subscribe to CAGW theory? What planet is she on?
When haven’t there been reports of ‘unusual’ weather in the headlines?
Show me a year when the weather was nothing but fluffy white clouds and
gentle summer rains
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" ~ George Santayana
As for weather history:
Those who cannot remember the past can be manipulated to think today’s weather is worse.
Humans invented writing to help us record and remember the past. Remember the 1970s cooling scare?
Newspapers are a wonderful source of old weather information.
Digitized newspaper archives
are an even more wonderful source of weather history that allow
everyone with a computer to do their own research on past weather. Below
are some compilations that remind us that low CO2 concentration in the
atmosphere didn’t stop Mother Nature from dropping a beating on homo
sapiens.
Remember this Jen? Or was that before your time?
Lest we forget.
With
modern tools such as Doppler Radar and Weather Satellites we can
receive advance warning of approaching storms and get ourselves, if not
our property, out of harm’s way.
Keeping records allows us to see that the weather is no worse now than it was in the past.
Take a chill pill, Jennifer. Nothing unusual is happening with the weather. We have seen it all before.
Well, This Is EMBARRASSing
Minnesota
has been having a heck of a cold and snowy winter in 2012-2013. The
summer heat of 2012 didn’t stick around. Did their heat trapping CO2
abandon them? How do warmists explain record cold and snow in a warming
world? CO2 is supposed to be a heat trapping gas that is slowly cooking
our future. Does CO2 only trap heat in the summer? How is that different
from saying summer is hot and winter is not? Perhaps there is a hole in
our CO2 blanket.
Embarrass, Minnesota embarrassed warmists by recording a record low for April 20th when the mercury could only muster the strength to reach -14F.
And where did the record cold come from - the rapidly warming Arctic? Some people will believe anything.
Mother Nature is trying to get it through our thick skulls that CO2 has nothing to do with temperature or climate change.
We owe CO2 an apology.
We need to stop all activities aimed at decreasing human emissions of CO2.
CO2 is green.
We need more of it not less. CO2 has been exhaled during the creation
of this post. No living thing was harmed. Some even liked it.
Earth Day April 22, 2013
Yahoo Canada
Small Sample but....no panic here
POLL
- Yes, it's an important day
- 25%
- No, it's a meaningless holiday
- 75%
20,555 votes
Yawn!
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Questioning Credentials
The
CAGW debate has sometimes been an emotionally charged exchange of views
between warmists and skeptics that has often been punctuated with the
use of logically invalid arguments. Ad hominems are a regular occurrence
as are attempts to misdirect attention away from the claims being made
to the character of the claimer(s).
Sometimes
a speaker’s credentials are impugned in an attempt to shut them up or
to convince others not to put much import in what they say because they
are not qualified
to speak on the matter. It is used to misdirect attention from the
claim under discussion to the education of the speaker. It is a
variation on the ‘who said’ argument.
Was
it Aquinas who advised: Ask not who made the claim ask if the claim is
true. If it were possible to resurrect him and bring Aquinas forward
into our age it is probable that he would like to add two corollaries to
his epithet. Ask not how many made the claim ask if the claim is true.
And finally, ask not who funded the claim ask if the claim is true. The
who, how many and who funded subjects are red herrings designed to draw
your attention away from whether the claim is true. To employ these
arguments as valid on a logic exam would attract a failing grade.
Who would use such invalid arguments? Why would they need them?
This
argument is particularly irksome to me as it implies that only experts
can have a correct opinion on the matter in question. Is it used because
the objector is feeling insecure about his ability to defend his
position?
The
argument against the ‘argument from credentials’ is to point out that
not everyone is a chicken and may not know how to lay an egg but as long
as one’s nose is in working order anyone can tell when one is rotten.
Just because a person does not possess a Phd degree does not disqualify her remarks as being without merit. Take the example of the African teenager
whose observation solved two problems at once. The solution had not
occurred to any Phds who have studied lions. The teen’s invention saves
the lions from being hunted and shot and it protected his family’s
livestock upon which they depend for their living. Your education does
not matter. It is your thoughts that matter and they must be taken at
their face value and not pre-judged based on who utters them. His
invention allows lions and humans to live together in harmony. What
could be better than that? No Phd required.
Freedom
of speech is not reserved to experts. It is available to all and all
comments on a topic are to be valued even if they turn out to be wrong.
People who go down dark alleys and find a dead end provide a useful
service to the rest of us. We don’t have to make the same mistake so our
time and efforts can be better directed elsewhere. Mistakes confer
knowledge that is useful to the tribe at large.
Neither
your education nor your years of experience in the field necessarily
qualify your opinions as inviolate. Anyone, including a Kenyan teenager,
can add to the sum total of human knowledge.
That
is one reason that freedom of speech is so valuable a human right. The
greater our population the larger the number of minds we have working on
our problems. Solutions can come from anywhere including the ‘Lion
Lights’ of an astute Kenyan, Richard Turere, 13.
An educated fool is still a fool. The possession of credentials doesn’t guarantee they come with common sense or with an accurate study.
Let
us keep the focus on the evidence. Let us hear and see what Mother
Nature is doing. After all, it is only her credentials that count.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Proof The Experts Do Not Know What They Are Talking About
Richard Feynman: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
According to the IPCC winters are supposed to be getting milder in a warming world and children won't know what snow is. And then along came 2012. In fact, four out of the last 5 winters have been doozies. Five straight in Germany.
When reality does not support their theory alarmists try to ‘snow’ us with a theory saving delusion that global warming puts more water vapor in the air and this leads to more snow.
Well,
global warming may put more water vapor in the air but it does not put
the cold into the air necessary to make the snow. CO2 is supposed to
trap the heat of the summer and warm the winters which, over time,
should result in less snow and more rain. This has not been the case.
If we are a warming world then why was snow cover at a record level in December 2012? As the world warms are we not supposed to see less snow and more rain in the winter? Why are 2012 winter temperatures so cold in a warming world?
The No trickzone web blog
has compiled a list of quotes when climate scientists were telling us
that winters will warm and snow will become a thing of the past.
Nature likes to prove that climate scientists do not understand her and that the science is not settled.
A Phd does not come with a direct line to the truth or a guarantee of infallibility.
Only Mother Nature possesses those credentials.
Lord Salisbury: "No
lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that
you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is
wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you
believe soldiers, nothing is safe."
Positive Feedback
Positive generally refers to something good and negative to something bad. However this is not always the case.
Man
made climate change via the burning of fossil fuels which adds CO2, an
alleged heat trapping GreenHouse Gas (GHG) to the atmosphere is said to
involve an example of positive feedback. Despite the word positive this
is generally seen to be a negative consequence since more CO2 means more
heat which means more water vapor through evaporation and since water
vapor is also a GreenHouse Gas (GHG) this means more heat etc. until we
cook human fricassee. Positive feedback is unusual in Nature and
fortunately for those whose palate does not crave baked human
celebrations can begin as scientists discover that human induced CO2
does not create a positive feedback but rather a negative one instead. So to stoke the confusion, where climate change is concerned positive is negative and negative is positive.
Apparently more warmth generates a positive response from clouds which generates a negative feedback for temperatures. Phew! We wipe our brow from the heat and for the escape!
Alarmists
postulate increasing humidity in the atmosphere as temperatures rise
which will further amplify the temperature increase. Reality does not agree.
However,
alarmists should not lose hope. There is a positive feedback in Nature
which they can cheer. One can only hope that they will see fit to join
us in celebrating the positive feedback that human ingenuity
has on our species and the planet. There does not seem to be a limit to
our wondrous ability to advance our knowledge of how reality functions
and to better our lot in life.
We
have access to technology today that the Kings of yore could not even
fathom. Alarmists are wrong. Humans are not fouling our nest. We are increasing the comforts available to all on our revered blue planet.
Can
you imagine a time in the past in which it would be fun to reside as a
colonist? A visit via books and pictures is enough to convince yours
truly that we live in the best of times. Contemplation of the changes
witnessed in my brief sojourn on this planet are enough to convince me
that my children and grandchildren have yet to see the best of times
during their residence on Earth. My eyes will close on wonders
heretofore not imagined and this is a cause for personal sadness. But in
each life death must cut short the trip into Human Ingenuity - The
Never Ending Story.
The Intolerance of Warmists
People who believe in CAGW do not like to be challenged. They are convinced that they have reality on their side and consider dissenters to be blind or shills of the oil industry.
Recent examples of this behaviour include tossing skeptic Christopher Monckton
out of CoP 18 and then right out of Qatar for his breach of etiquette
when he used the microphone of the absent Myanmar delegation to inform
the assembly at CoP18 that there has been no warming for 16 of the 18
years that they have been meeting to discuss global warming and climate
change. He further implored them to review the science before deciding
on a course of action.
Skeptic Marc Marano was invited to appear with warmist Bill Nye on the Piers Morgan show and CNN
was berated by other warmists for giving Morano a platform with which
to inform people that there was another opinion on the matter. Warmists
like to have a monopoly on the media spin.
Recently the BBC
in the UK was exposed for covering up a meeting in which they decided
not to give coverage to the skeptic side of the man made climate change
debate because the ‘science was settled’. They claimed the meeting
included top scientists but it turned out that of the 28
people involved only 3 were scientists and the rest were AGW advocates.
When you reserve the pitch for yourself you can claim to have won the
contest without playing the game. Is your case so weak that you need to
do this or is something else afoot?
What
are they afraid of? Why are they afraid that if people hear a contrary
opinion that people will stop believing in AGW? Is their case that weak?
They
see oil behind every objection. They question motives, credentials,
intelligence, funding and anything else they can think of that will
discredit anyone offering skepticism of their cherished agenda
of global resource control and wealth redistribution. Regardless of the
objection they attack the person or group because they regard
themselves as the consensus and possessors of the truth. Their arguments
are replete with logical fallacies like ad hominems and the
introduction of red herrings designed to divert attention away from the
veracity of the claims that they are making.
These tactics are dishonest and are not aimed at a dispassionate examination of their claims and theories.
Are they afraid of the truth? Can they not defend their position in public? What are they hiding?
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