Motus Mentis

10 Comments

1. Horace Jeffery Hodges says

   Global warming, obviously, is also raising the freezing point of water, as ought to have been expected since the warming is global!

   Jeffery Hodges

   * * *

   Posted October 25, 2013 at 4:21 pm | Permalink
2. the one eyed man says

   Care to know why?

   http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/09/17/stronger-winds-explain-puzzling-growth-of-sea-ice-in-antarctica/

   This recalls a similarly deceptive meme a few months ago, which noted that the median temperature of the Earth has been relatively flat for the past sixteen years. What’s up with that? Global warming hoaxsters suckering the public to get their hands on more research grants?

   Global warming does not mean that every year is warmer than the last. The global temperature rises in a stair step fashion, and not a linear one. There is a long term, secular trend of higher temperatures, within which exist smaller cycles typically lasting a dozen or so years. 1997 was an unusually warm year due to El Nino, so naturally global warming deniers picked that as their starting point. Because 2012 was the warmest year on record, it’s likely that we are the next stair step higher.

   The global warming deniers fail to note that over this period, the top fifty meters of the oceans’ surfaces have risen in temperature every year without fail. Because the oceans act as an enormous heat sink, their continual increases in temperature sharply reduce their ability to mitigate global warming.

   H. :L. Mencken wrote that “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” What we have here are non-scientists who spread half-truths which are seemingly intuitive — more ice in the Antarctic, a pause in median temperatures — yet which are easily debunked by those who actually study this stuff for a living. In other words: shills who spread misinformation in an attempt to deceive and advance agenda which are based in ideology and not in actual fact.

   The reason why many conservatives deny global warming is that the only entities which could effectively stop it are governments. Because it is a bedrock principle that governments don’t exist to fix problems, it is easier to deny that the problem exists than to accept its reality and then look or a solution. Hence you have the never-ending promulgation of memes which are clear, simple, and completely wrong.

   Posted October 25, 2013 at 7:23 pm | Permalink
3. Malcolm says

   I guess those winds explain the 60% increase in sea ice in the Arctic this year, too.

   “If the warming continues, at some point the trend will reverse.”

   Yeah, well, maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. Pete, face it: the models are simply not modeling, despite recent, desperate handwaving about the oceans (nobody seemed to have much to say about that when they were glibly predicting an ice-free Arctic by now). We’re already out well past your “smaller-cycle” dodge.

   We could get into a linking contest about this: your suggestion that all the facts and expert opinion are on your side, with nothing but flakes and crackpots and ignorant “deniers” on the other (what a revealingly nasty, vindictive term that is, with its noxious whiff of Nazi sympathy), is arrogant nonsense, and insulting besides. But I’m not going to bother. Readers of this blog have the wherewithal to locate their own sources, and make up their own minds. (The website linked in this post is an excellent source of informed and rigorous commentary.)

   They may also read the arguments on both sides and remain agnostic, a perfectly reasonable response that, to people like you on the Left, is nevertheless considered to be an intolerable heresy, punishable by derision, mockery and social opprobrium.

   I’ll give you this: you’re damned right that some of us are leery of ceding sovereign power, and another generous measure of our dwindling liberty, to a global committee of self-appointed muckety-mucks in order to fix a “crisis” that may very well not be happening at all. (There seems to be no expansion of central power that you don’t approve of.) So: you and your side go right ahead and do what you can to take over the world — after all, we know all too well that your lot never wants a ‘crisis’ to go to waste, and are perfectly happy to make one up, if nothing suitable is ready to hand — and the rest of us will do our best to force you to proceed a little more circumspectly.

   Posted October 25, 2013 at 7:49 pm | Permalink
4. Malcolm says

   Again (I’ve said all of this before): given the transformative regime that global-warmist mandarins seek to impose on the world (and administer, once it’s imposed), and the vested interests that so many of them have in spreading panic, there’s a high bar. Those of us who don’t naturally leap at the opportunity to hand over the reins of power to these people can, at least, reasonably demand that all of these criteria be amply satisfied:

   1) That warming is indeed happening;

   2) That the predictive models upon which all of this doomsaying is based are actually reliable (a big ‘if’ there, and getting bigger with each passing year), so that we can have very high confidence that temperatures will increase as predicted if nothing is done;

   3) That whatever warming is happening (if it’s happening at all) is anthropogenic, and not just another of the many natural cycles of climate change that have occurred since the world began;

   4) That if the world’s surface does warm as predicted (which, so far, it doesn’t really seem to be), it would be such an unmitigated catastrophe that a massive, world-changing social and political intervention is warranted; and

   5) That such an intervention would even be effective.

   Given reasonable doubt about 1) and 2), the obvious evidence of prior cycles mentioned in 3), and the debatability of 4) and uncertainty of 5), I think it’s a bit thick to characterize anyone who isn’t driving around in a solar-powered car, wearing an Al Gore decoder ring, as some sort of Nazi caveman.

   Posted October 25, 2013 at 8:47 pm | Permalink
5. the one eyed man says

   The “facts and expert opinion” entirely support the fact that the Earth is warming. How do I know this? The experts — those who are trained in the field, spend their lives studying it, and publish their findings in peer-reviewed research — are unanimous in their conclusion that we are in a long term, and possibly irreversible, period of global warming, and are nearly unanimous in finding that its causes are anthropogenic.

   On the other side: people like TV weatherman Anthony Watts, who has no training in climate science, and whose opinions on the subject have no greater value than what he thinks about biology, molecular physics, or cardiology.

   I think I’ll go with the experts on this one.

   Cherry picking your data set — so you start with an unusually hot year as your baseline — to derive the conclusion you are seeking isn’t even pseudo-science, as that is unfair to pseudo scientists. Picking a random datum like Antarctic ice — which is most likely due to exogenous factors – and insisting that it outweighs the wealth of data which show rising sea levels, migration of animals, extreme weather patters, and so forth is like a sports reporter seizing on a game the Boston Red Sox lost last summer as proof positive that they will never make it into the World Series.

   When you have the scientific community on one side, and untrained ideologues on the other, the rational man will respect the findings of those who have expertise and experience in the subject, and not those who lack both but have a large axe to grind.

   Posted October 26, 2013 at 12:27 pm | Permalink
6. JK says

   How do I know this? The experts …

   Wha …?

   I thought the experts were all pollsters?

   Posted October 26, 2013 at 12:35 pm | Permalink
7. JK says

   On the other hand Malcolm, I do find myself conceding some to One-Eye, over the long haul I’d think even you’d agree that ever since the Ice Age the world indeed has been warming.

   Globally.

   Posted October 26, 2013 at 12:38 pm | Permalink
8. Malcolm says

   …are unanimous in their conclusion…

   This is simply not true.

   Cherry picking your data set — so you start with an unusually hot year as your baseline — to derive the conclusion you are seeking isn’t even pseudo-science, as that is unfair to pseudo scientists.

   No, the point isn’t the “unusually hot year”, it’s that the trend has been effectively flat since then.

   From Richard Lindzen, the ‘pseudo scientist’ who is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

   

   He comments:

   There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995. Why bother with the arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998? (Incidentally, the red fuzz represents the error ‘bars’.)

   As for “axes to grind”: entire careers, and access to tremendous concentrations of power and money, are at issue here, and it is in a great many people’s interest to fan the flames of hysteria. That alone should be enough to make, to use your term, “the rational man” — or at the very least, the wise one, which is not exactly the same thing — approach this topic with a healthy measure of skepticism and distrust. It always helps to ask the question: cui bono? Or, as they say, to “follow the money”.

   I want to be very clear also that I am not insisting that the Earth cannot possibly be in a long-term period of warming (although it does not seem to be warming over the last 17 years or so). The Earth has gotten warmer and colder throughout its history. I simply do not believe that all the criteria I outlined above have been conclusively satisfied (to put it mildly).

   You and I have very different feelings about expansion and centralization of government power, and about how much liberty and sovereignty we are willing to concede in exchange for various sorts of security, and so I am inclined to set the bar for radical intervention much, much higher than you are.

   Posted October 26, 2013 at 3:46 pm | Permalink
9. the one eyed man says

   There is a lone dissenter in the scientific community, and you have found him. Let’s just say that Lindzen has outlier views which are rejected by his colleagues as “intellectually dishonest” work which is “feeding upon an audience which wants to hear a certain message,” as the New York Times reports:

   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html?_r=0

   At least he has credibility as a researcher and can speak with a voice of authority. A blogger with no training in climate science except for being a TV weatherman does not.

   * * * *

   Your insinuation that scientists are promulgating phony research to gain “power and money” is scurrilous nonsense. If governments actually did something about global warming, whatever power or money they generate would not go to research scientists. Questioning the motives and integrity of those you disagree with is no substitute for actual facts.

   If you are serious about “following the money,” you might want to find out where Anthony Watt gets his. Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil have both spent many millions financing surrogates who deny global warming in an attempt to preclude regulation of their energy businesses, just as tobacco companies once supported surrogates so Tareyton smokers could fight instead of switch and schoolboys could tell you what L.S.M.F.T. stands for. (That would be Loose Straps Mean Floppy Tits.) There is no linkage between what scientists publish for peer review and the economic consequences of their findings, which would benefit corporations and investors, not guys in labs. However, there is a straight line between what ideologues promulgate and the desires of those who support them. Watts doesn’t reveal his funding sources, but “a healthy measure of skepticism and distrust” is called for, as the generous donations which energy companies have provided to gadflies and “think tanks” are not because they are governed by eleemosynary instincts.

   * * * *

   You also err by conflating the question of what, if anything, should be done about global warming with the question of whether or not it exists. I have never suggested what government should do, as I have no idea whether the proper response is watchful waiting, aggressive regulation, or something in between. In order to have an informed opinion, one needs to have an acute sense of costs and benefits, as well as the probable severity of climate change, to determine where the balance should be. I have no idea where the right spot on the dial falls. My point is simply that this is the discussion society should be having, and not whether the problem exists in the first place.

   Posted October 26, 2013 at 10:08 pm | Permalink
10. Malcolm says

    There is a lone dissenter in the scientific community, and you have found him.

    Lindzen is hardly a “lone dissenter”. Anyway, Einstein was once a lone dissenter. The consensus regarding AGW is certainly no firmer than the consensus that once existed regarding the luminiferous ether.

    You also err by conflating the question of what, if anything, should be done about global warming with the question of whether or not it exists.

    I’ve never done any such thing. Indeed, I have always taken great pains to distinguish between the two, most recently in my comment earlier in this thread.

    I have said repeatedly that it would be perfectly reasonable to imagine that the Earth might be warming; it has gone through cycles of warming and cooling since its origin. Whether it is in fact warming now is an empirical question of considerable complexity; it certainly isn’t warming over the past 17 years or so in the way that all those terrifying models have led us to expect it would. But sure, maybe this plateau will end, and the Earth will get hotter. Maybe it will get cooler. Nobody can predict with anything resembling certainty where temperatures will be in 50 or 100 years.

    I have no idea whether the proper response is watchful waiting, aggressive regulation, or something in between. In order to have an informed opinion, one needs to have an acute sense of costs and benefits, as well as the probable severity of climate change, to determine where the balance should be. I have no idea where the right spot on the dial falls. My point is simply that this is the discussion society should be having, and not whether the problem exists in the first place.

    Exactly right. I have no idea either. But the discussion you call for, which is exactly what I have tried to encourage as well, is emphatically NOT the “discussion” we’re having; there’s really no “discussion” at all. Instead, the response from the Cathedral is thundering, tendentious advocacy for the most drastic measures (which coincidentally enrich and empower exactly those people who are applying all the pressure) and the harshest imaginable opprobrium for skeptical, conservative, and dissenting voices. Some of us would prefer to go forward a little more circumspectly, and are constitutionally reluctant to embrace radical transformations of the world’s energy economy, and to make substantial concessions of national sovereignty and individual liberties to haughty bureaucrats in Geneva, just to prevent hypothetical, far-off crises that may or may not turn out to be problems at all. For that we are treated as heretics to be shunned and reviled. A great many even people consider us, with the sanguinary enthusiasm that has afflicted mobs throughout history, to be downright evil.

    So yes, a “discussion” would be fine. Treating us as modern-day Cathars is not.

    Posted October 26, 2013 at 11:34 pm | Permalink