Climate and the Fate of Humanity
Dec 28th, 2009 | By Doug Casey | Category: Featured, Politics, Technology
L: [Phone rings. It’s Doug Casey, whose gravelly, "Lobo, let’s talk!" always makes me smile.] Hi Doug! What’s on your mind?
Doug: Global warming. People like my fanatical neighbors here in Aspen seem perfectly willing to undo centuries of progress because they are completely delusional about global warming. The People’s Republic of Aspen is an epicenter of political correctness.
L: Don’t hold back, Doug, tell me what you really think.
Doug: [Chuckles] Global warming is the most prominent form of mass hysteria raging across the world today. Kids in school these days are almost afraid to breathe, because it will “increase their carbon footprint.” It’s quite amazing, the way carbon, the element all life is based on, has replaced plutonium as the enemy-element. It’s as if the chattering classes are making war on the periodic table of the elements.
Meanwhile, they’ve been changing the cry from “global warming” to “climate change” because there’s so little evidence there’s actually any warming going on. I believe that as little as a decade from now, global warming will be recognized as one of the greatest swindles in world history. It has so little scientific basis, it can only rationally be considered a political scam.
L: If that’s true, will the scam ever be revealed? There was a silly movie – I believe it was called “The Day After Tomorrow” – in which global warming caused the world to suddenly freeze over. If people are willing to think that’s possible, and the only thing certain is that things will change, and any change can be blamed on people, perhaps the con job can be maintained indefinitely. It could become a perpetual guilt trip aimed at the population, just as useful as the one certain churches used for centuries to control people.
Doug: Yes. I think Roseanne Rosannadanna of Saturday Night Live said it best: If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s always something.
There’s a professional class of hysterics in the world. They are the same type of people who were walking around in the Middle Ages in sack-cloth, throwing ashes on themselves, saying that the world was going to come to an end.
The world will come to an end, of course, maybe even before the sun dies in about five billion years. But these people have no perspective at all. They don’t realize that the earth is just an insignificant ball of dirt, in a nothing/nowhere star system, in a nothing/nowhere galaxy – of which there are billions, each containing billions and billions of stars. And that’s just in this universe. There’s reason to believe that there’s an almost infinite number of universes like ours, with new ones being created virtually every second.
And these people are worried about changes in the biosphere of this one, tiny little planet. To me, it makes no sense.
But dropping from the sublime, cosmic scale down to the local level, it’s still completely ridiculous.
L: Okay, let’s talk about that. What are the facts? How ridiculous is fear of climate change?
Doug: Contrary to the blatantly untrue statements these people make about the science being “settled,” if the science indicates anything at all, it indicates that anthropogenic global warming is not significant. Remember, the question is not so much whether there is any warming – which is another question – but whether human activity is a major, or even significant, contributing factor to global warming.
Of course men can have an effect on the planet. We have wiped out numerous species that we know about, just in historic times, like the dodo, the passenger pigeon. And we almost did in the North American bison. Of course we have an impact, and people do make mistakes. It’s unfortunate. And because of the butterfly effect (because of quantum effects, tiny changes can have huge consequences, such as a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world resulting in a hurricane on the other side), humans could have a big effect on climate change – but so could everything else. The point is that there are other factors that have orders of magnitude greater impacts on the earth’s climate, things that are tens, hundreds, and thousands of times more important to the climate than anything mankind can do – perhaps even including a major nuclear war.
Fear is being used by the political class as an excuse to accumulate more power and self-importance – and collect a lot more taxes to support their agenda. Instead of being stampeded into the dark fantasy, we should focus on increasing our wealth and our knowledge. Eventually, mankind’s fate will depend on our technological advancement. Nature teaches us – not that many environmentalists listen – that we need to colonize the rest of the solar system, and beyond. Mankind must diversify, so all our eggs aren’t in one planetary basket.
But as an aside, I have to say I’m not sure I care if mankind is going to survive – I’m not sure why anyone should care, since most of us aren’t going to live more than three score and ten years anyway. Perhaps the world ends when we end… Mankind’s future seems beyond any individual’s concern, at least beyond the lifespan of your immediate friends and family. Too much worrying about things beyond your control can turn you into a busybody.
L: You’re speaking as one with no children. Having children, I have a different view on that.
Doug: How about your great-great-grandchildren, whom you’ll probably never meet?
L: I’m not so sure about that. Life is already longer than it has ever been in history, and medical technology keeps advancing. And that’s not even getting into nanotechnology. I believe my generation may live for centuries, aside from violent death and acute, fatal illnesses.
Doug: Well, I’m sympathetic to that view. But the morality of caring for one’s posterity is a philosophical issue we can perhaps discuss another day. For now, I’ll say that I don’t like to think of myself as a survival machine for my genes – so I don’t give a damn what happens to my genes. I have my own plans. The consideration I would have for my children, if I did have any, would be reserved for those who earned it as individuals, not just because they’re my children.
L: I recall your Roman attitude about that, but that’s also a conversation for another day. Back to global warming… it’s been a while since I’ve researched this, but I seem to recall that the latest actual science is that there has, in fact, been some warming recorded in the Northern Hemisphere over the 20th century, but there’s insufficient data on the Southern Hemisphere, and the warming has been less than the global-warming models predicted.
Doug: Well, as I understand it, for the last five years or so, it’s been getting cooler, not warmer, and that’s entirely apart from the fact that back in the 1970s, all the magazines were showing pictures of glaciers toppling over the buildings of New York, because we were going into a new ice age. Even measuring the temperature is problematical, since many historical sites that were once isolated are now surrounded by civilization. It’s impossible to cover all the bases in a brief conversation like this, because there have been volumes and volumes and volumes written on this.
But look, the climate on this planet has been changing since Day One. When the solar system was formed, our best guess is about 4.2 billion years ago, things were very, very cold – as cold as deep space. Then, after the sun ignited, things got very, very hot. And, in essence, things have been cooling ever since.
Remember, there have been numerous ice ages, starting with a first period of glaciation thought to have occurred about 2.3 billion years ago, during the early Proterozoic eon, after the appearance of oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere. There was one that lasted over 200 million years, from about 850 to 630 million years ago, called the Cryogenian period, in which the ice caps may have met at the earth’s equator, covering the planet completely. Geologists actually define the earth as being in an interglacial period of the most recent ice age (the Quaternary glaciation), which started about 2.6 million years ago, during the late Pliocene. Ice sheets have advanced and retreated every 40,000 to 100,000 years or so, with the last glacial period, which covered North America and Europe with glaciers thousands of feet thick, having ended only about 10,000 years ago. So it’s no surprise that the climate has been generally warming since then.
So, the climate has gotten hotter, then cooler, hotter, cooler… And for the last 10,000 years or so, it’s gotten warmer. That’s the fact of the matter – and generally, warmer is better. The whole of the earth’s existence is marked by changes in climate. It happens naturally.
L: Why?
Doug: There are lots of reasons. One is cosmic rays, which is to say, radiation coming from billions of stars, light-years away. Cosmic rays have a huge impact on cloud formation. And cloud formation has a huge impact on the climate.
A second reason is changes in the ocean and its currents. The ocean has vastly greater mass than the atmosphere, so it’s a far greater heat-sink, and its currents have a major influence on climate.
Another is volcanism. Just in historic times we’ve seen major climate impact from volcanism. For example, there was Mt. Tambora, the most powerful volcanic eruption in history, which happened in April of 1815, killing thousands of people directly and tens of thousands indirectly through starvation. The eruption altered global climate so dramatically, 1816 became known as The Year Without a Summer, as crops and livestock around the planet were wiped out. Just one of these big eruptions, by the way, can dump more toxic pollutants into the atmosphere than man has created in the entire industrial age.
L: I happen to have been kicking rocks recently in a caldera in Idaho that was the location of the last eruption of the Yellowstone hot spot, before it blew the current Yellowstone caldera into existence. By way of comparison, Mt. St. Helens blew 0.7 cubic kilometers of rock into the air, covering half of Washington with four inches of ash. The eruption that created the caldera I was standing on blew about 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock into the air. Such an eruption, today, I was told, would kill everything as far away as Chicago.
Doug: Right, and imagine all the gases that would go with that. Sulfur compounds and the like – you want to talk about ecological disasters! And these ninnies are bicycling and recycling to save the planet from our puny little smoke-stacks. When something like the potential volcano under Long Valley caldera at Mammoth Lake in California or the Yellowstone caldera blows – and that could be two years from now, or two thousand years from now, nobody knows – it’s anticipated that these will be among the largest volcanic eruptions ever. And that’s just picking two in North America.
L: I remember a park ranger in Yellowstone telling my family that, in geological terms, the next Yellowstone eruption is overdue.
Doug: Yes, and there are other situations like that. Consider the near statistical certainty of the earth encountering a piece of space debris large enough to have an impact on the earth’s climate. The last one we know of was the Tunguska event in 1908, which is thought to have been caused by a meteor only a few tens of meters across and still leveled almost a thousand square miles of trees.
Worse than sticking their heads in the sand about this, these people are trying to stop science from progressing, ruining everyone’s lives in the here and now in the process. They think they are saving the planet, but in the end, the planet’s fate is out of our hands, and their obstruction could keep people from getting off this planet while they can.
But we haven’t talked about the main thing – and really, ultimately, the only climate change variable that really matters – which is the sun. Relative to the sun, everything else is totally trivial. Which, much as deluded believers in the omnipotence of the state might not believe, is beyond the power of human governments to regulate. To me, this is really the proof that the whole climate change thing is just a scam perpetrated by the ill-informed and ill-intentioned on the ignorant and the credulous.
L: What, specifically, does the sun do that swamps other effects?
Doug: The sun has a number of cycles it goes through, the sunspot cycle, for example, that have a huge impact on the earth’s climate. The sun is essentially all that keeps the earth from being an iceball a few degrees above absolute zero, so any change in it has major consequences for the earth.
The climate change people forget that within this pattern of warming and cooling, modern man only really came on the scene in the warming period after the last period of glaciation ended 10,000 years ago, and civilization has only been around for less than 5,000 years – which has generally been a period of global warming. Interestingly enough, the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire coincide with a period of global cooling, resulting in what’s commonly called the Dark Ages. And then we had the medieval warm period – when wine was grown in England and crops in Greenland – that ended with the Renaissance. Fortunately, technology had enough momentum by then that we kept advancing through the Little Ice Age, which ended only about 150 years ago. Things have been warming up since then.
Global warming hysterics generally have limited scientific knowledge, and of geology and meteorology in particular. Their belief is not science; it’s more akin to religion. The main epicenter of hysteria is not the scientific community but seems to be Hollywood. The charge is being led by actors and celebrities given free access to the pulpit by the talking heads on the various entertainment media – and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think news shows are primarily entertainment. Through the intellectual lightweights that populate most of our classrooms, their ideas spread to our kids, and they filter up from the kids to their parents, who end up feeling guilty about something they don’t understand.
One of the worst things about all this is that it may in the future discredit science itself in the eyes of the common man. When it becomes clear to everyone that the whole global-warming scare is as silly as the tin-foil hats of the 1970s, people could mistakenly think that science itself is silly, because of all these people claiming science proves that anthropogenic global warming is real.
L: Well, maybe. But people don’t believe the sun revolves around the Earth anymore either. Lots of “scientific” notions change without damaging science itself.
Doug: True enough. But unfortunately, anthropogenic global warming has become the scientific issue. And worse, today most funding for science comes through government. That means that you have to be known to be sympathetic to conclusions that are acceptable to the political classes. It’s a shameful thing, and many scientists will deny it, but a lot of today’s research is politically biased. They like to think they are unbiased, but they all know what’s more and what’s less likely to get funded – and what politically incorrect words at conferences and budget meetings can get funding cut. It’s only human for such opinions to have an effect – which is why scientists use double-blind experiments when the beliefs of the researchers themselves can sway the outcome of experiments.
If you don’t robotically accept and parrot the “fact” of anthropogenic global warming, you’re looked upon as the moral equivalent of a holocaust denier. I’ve heard members of the chattering class actually come out and say things like this.
L: But this is science. In spite of the peer pressure and such, shouldn’t the facts lead to correct conclusions?
Doug: They should, but science is no longer the province of individual researchers. A rich amateur could be, and often was, a scientist back in Ben Franklin’s day, simply because it amused him. That afforded a great degree of independence. Today it seems to take billions of dollars to study almost anything, and the state is the center of big money these days. The result is that science is no longer run by scientists; it’s run by politicians – or to be more precise, by bureaucratic administrators who dispense money according to their own agendas.
L: So, would you say that in this environment, the peer-review process has become counter-productive, and now, instead of assuring standards, it assures desired answers?
Doug: I believe the peer review process has probably been corrupted. People are afraid to say things, to consider hypotheses unbiased research might support, because it’s become such a politically charged atmosphere.
L: They could lose their funding.
Doug: Exactly. So anything and everything you listen to on this subject of climate change – including what I’m saying today – is something you should investigate and analyze for yourself. Draw your own independent conclusions. But if you draw the conclusion that anthropogenic global warming is a fraud, you may find yourself reluctant to say it in public, for fear of being hunted down as a heretic and ridiculed by the hoi polloi.
L: Perish the thought that they might come to the conclusion that a little global warming might be a good thing. Coasts might change a bit, but you’d have longer growing seasons and more food for everyone…
Doug: Right. And – gasp! – people might not need to burn so much fossil fuel to keep warm in the winter, cutting back on pollution. Who knows? Look, no one can predict whether the earth will be cooler or hotter next year, let alone do anything to change it. If you’re afraid of global warming, turn off the lights when you leave the room – but don’t participate in the corruption of science, don’t scare our kids with unproven cataclysmic theories, and don’t try to ban economic energy sources that people living on this planet depend upon today. And don’t try to stop progress; it’s the only hope the earth has of seeing clean industry, short of exterminating mankind.
L: Well, I did ask you to tell us what you really think…
Doug: You know I would have anyway.
December 28, 2009
Clouds are caused by cosmic rays? So the little “clouds” coming out of the mouths of football players on TV right now are caused by cosmic rays? It has nothing to do with hot, moist air condensing out when it hits cold dry air?
And since there are gazillions of stars and planets out there, I should not be concerned about the one I live on and can’t escape from?
Fun, fellows, but you passed right by a very interesting subject, which is children. They come in two kinds: credits to you and pets. Teach, encourage, and help the achievers, and pat the Cocker Spaniels on the head casually until they move out eventually. Life is too short to waste our time and resources on those who are content with mediocrity.
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Bob, you slacker, have you no sense of cosmic guilt? Why not worry about all of them while you’re at it?
If we couple folks’ inability to understand science (nope, it’s not which side cheers loudest), with their inability to understand English, we are, as Ram Dass would say, here, now.
This piece is fantastic! I think Doug should call Linda more often.
I loved this article bravo!!
in response to
Clouds are caused by cosmic rays? So the little “clouds” coming out of the mouths of football players on TV right now are caused by cosmic rays? It has nothing to do with hot, moist air condensing out when it hits cold dry air?
the majority of the heat generated is radiation from starlight so yes the little clouds come from cosmic rays if there were no cosmic rays you would have no football players breathing hot moist air
off subject the only way gold is created naturally is in supernovae pretty neat
Well, thank you for that drivel. That’s a few minutes of my life I’ll never get back, although I have to admit I stopped reading about halfway down as the self-contradictions and nonsense just became too much.
In particular, quite early on,
“The world will come to an end, of course, maybe even before the sun dies in about five billion years. But these people have no perspective at all. They don’t realize that the earth is just an insignificant ball of dirt, in a nothing/nowhere star system, in a nothing/nowhere galaxy – of which there are billions, each containing billions and billions of stars. And that’s just in this universe. There’s reason to believe that there’s an almost infinite number of universes like ours, with new ones being created virtually every second.
And these people are worried about changes in the biosphere of this one, tiny little planet. To me, it makes no sense. But dropping from the sublime, cosmic scale down to the local level, it’s still completely ridiculous.”
That’s a very Star Trekky sort of observation, but I would remind you that are breathing the atmosphere of this one planet, and relying on foodstuffs from the same planet, being plants and animals that are heat sensitive and that have experienced massive die-offs in the past due to climate change. It’s very hypocritical to run a website advancing your own personal wealth by advertising and subscription, claiming to be ‘the investor’s guide to profit and freedom’ implying people want a better life for themselves, and then in the next breath saying you don’t care if you live or die or anyone else for that matter. Very hypocritical and self-contradictory world view there.
Love to know your views on peak oil and what will happen when oil runs out within a couple of decades — what will your ‘investing profits’ be worth to you then?
Other bits of it were the usual ratbag Republican smearing and oversimplification and disparagement of everything in order to make cheap shots that will appeal solely to stupid people who are easily lead — ‘declaring war on the periodic table’, what utter rot and garbage, it’s a bad stand-up comedian’s line at best, not deserving of being taken seriously. Greenhouse gases include CO2, CO, CH4 and possibly even H2O — all of which are comprised of elements, but not one single element, as everything around is us. Similar to the fact that CFCs and allied refrigerants break down the ozone layer and cause increased UV radiation of the planet, where production had to be stopped to avoid a catastrophe. Just because you failed primary school science and have to resort to publishing bogus ‘investors advice’ newsletters for a living and acting as a deliberate or inadvertent shill for big polluters, big oil and big coal doesn’t mean other people can’t have a good understanding of science. Good thing other people are making the decisions about controlling CFCs using sophisticated and validated scientific arguments instead of making bad stand-up jokes to a predominantly stupid audience.
The rest of the nonsense I couldn’t be bothered reading.
This is just classic American idiocy, to paraphrase Green Day.
By the way, don’t worry about censoring this comment out, I’m posting it on the international forum that linked to this one anyhow.
Flee! Flee the planet while you can!
ummm, only one small problem with that idea… no techonology to do it yet, and there won’t be for decades or centuries to come… besides, try living on Venus, I think it’s regularly 900F there on the surface, hot enough for ya? and the atmosphere is mainly — you guessed it, carbon dioxide, that ‘element from the periodic table’ (well OK, 2 of them stuck together) and the clouds are sulphuric acid. and the atmospheric pressure is 90 times Earth’s despite the planet being almost the same size. well, good luck moving there, matey, we’ll miss your intresting views when you were on this planet, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out…
perhaps you’d like to show some adult maturity in your posts to the world in future, not this insane and immature high school drivel that actually reveals quite a lot of psychopathy to me.
Well, I cant say much for the lack of care for the future or the imaginative possibilities (leaving the planet – yes, this ultimately will need to be done for the long term survival of the human species, but this is no where remotely possible in the foreseeable future), But I can say that Mr Casey is right in many of his statements.
First, given the comments of a couple responders above, the “argument of human caused global warming is over” opinion of the masses is indeed very strong. It is now considered gospel by the majority of the population (I have gotten into many a heated argument for even commenting that that “truth” may yet be open to debate). I know that it is indeed being presented in schools as an “act now or we will all die” situation. I can personally tell you that this may indeed indoctrinate the kids to your beliefs, but it, ultimately is dangerous for the kids. I went through such indoctrination in my school years (in west Denver). But then it was “we must all stop polluting or we will be buried under glaciers or starve from crop failures in the “human triggered ice age in the next couple decades”. Then they would send us home (with ultimately negative personal views of ourselves, as we we were all just dirty polluters that are destroying the planet) to be sure we made our parents aware of and act on this (with ‘home work” often being showing some kind of progress in action – reducing pollution – or support of the issue – papers, posters for or donations to the cause). What I really find surprising is that the school system was surprised that they later ended up with a bunch of damaged children that seemed to have no care of the future or themselves (seemed to have no view beyond the next few years and no real concern for how the dangerous actions they were taking today would affect them in the future). This should not really have been a surprise, as we were all brought up through the “Jeffco school system” believing that we really did not ultimately have a future (unless we fell completely into the cause and dedicated our lives to it that is). I am concerned that this is what is happening today in our schools but now in the guise of global warming instead of cooling. Time will tell.
Secondly. I do have a bachelor’s degree in science (major in Geology and minors in math, chemistry and physics). Looking over Mr. Caseys comments that are science oriented, I can find no real major fault. His comments on the scientific things seem valid (and I do indeed try to keep up somewhat on these issues).
The fact that cities have developed around many of the older temperature reading stations is true and this can have a big effect. A grass meadow will have cooler temperatures than asphalt pavement and cement. This has been called the “heat island effect” where cites become an island of hotter temperatures than the surrounding undeveloped land. If you get the chance to fly in a small plane (my ultralight is far too small to take such a violent and risky ride) you will notice this in the afternoon. The air over a developed city area is generally much rougher than the surrounding areas. This is from all the rapidly rising hot air bubbles (called “thermals” in the hang-gliding field) that are created by the air being heated by all of the parking lots, roof tops, etc of a city environment. It is now being noticed that there may even be a bit of increased rain fall in areas downwind of cities, as all of this rising hot air from the city landscape often carries moisture up with it to form clouds (and fall as rain a bit later when that heating lift is lost as the clouds drift away from that city).
We are indeed still in an age that geologist generally consider an interglacial era. The glaciers have been retreating since about 10,000 years ago. There have been many advance/ retreat cycles over the past hundreds of thousands of years and it is assumed that they will come back in the not to distant (geologically speaking) future.
The Earth has been substantially warmer (and cooler; the mini ice age Mr. Casey mentions was not an easy time for humanity) than now. About 900 years ago (if I recall correctly) was one of the warmest. Greenland got its name because, at that time, a good part of it was green and people were able to settle it and farm (and continue on to the discover the Americas – the Vikings, not Columbus, but this is still open for debate). When things eventually turned colder these settlements had to be abandoned (to remote to “ship in” their food and they could no longer grow it).
Cosmic rays effect clouds. Well, this is VERY new and not fully proven (at least the last I read of it). The theory does make a bit of sense and is directly tied into the sun cycles. The sun goes through roughly 11 year cycles of sunspot activity. More sunspots tend to mean a greater solar output (possibly warming things here a bit?). The sunspot activity has been in a fairly major period of activity until a couple years ago. Now it has fallen of a proverbial cliff. This does decrease solar output (but only by something like .2%) but the bigger effect my indeed be cosmic rays. The theory is that these high energy particles get stopped in our atmosphere where they make/ become active ions. these then act as a nucleation point for water droplets to form around (as in cloud droplets – kind of similar to jet trails forming on the tiny particles coming out of the engines). Less cosmic ray activity may mean fewer clouds (but not no clouds as there are plenty of other methods to start a cloud naturally). The thing is, the sun’s output protects us from much of these high energy cosmic rays. When the sun is active (lots of sunspots) fewer of these cosmic particles can make it through the “solar wind” to reach the earth. When the sun is in low activity (like now) we receive more cosmic rays and possibly get more clouds (which are a huge global coolant through ground shading but more so by reflecting light back into space).
Volcanoes are a far greater danger. VERY true, but these are on the side of cooling. A couple mid-sized eruptions (Pinatubo anyone?) can lop degrees of temperature of Earth’s average for a number of years. God forbid that Long Valley caldera or Yellowstone should erupt. That would put the whole Earth in a deep freeze that would result in complete failures of crops for years (and end human civilization – at least organized civilization). The last time such a volcano erupted (about 75,000 years ago in southern Asia I think) it nearly wiped humans off the globe. I remember some genetics researcher commenting on this weird “bottle neck” in human genetic variety that seemed to indicate that something happened about 75k years ago where only some few thousands of humans survived worldwide. I think the evidence of this massive eruption came later.
Asteroid impact can change the climate. Yep, absolutely (this is what likely did in the dinosaurs form their much warmer, much higher CO2 world). The effects are the same as the volcano (blocking sun, plant growth failure), just a different method of getting the dirt into the air.
Is global warming real? A few years ago I would have said “absolutely”. But then i moved from a deep dark mountain canyon to a hellish (that year anyway) open valley (just a couple hours drive west of Aspen, surprisingly) where the temperature rarely got much below 100 from late May into September. Lately I would say “NO”. We have had very cool temperatures the past couple years (lost my tomatoes to a hard – 21degree – frost September 20th this year – had 95 degree weather into early October when i moved here 9 years ago) and lots of cloud cover (just in time for me to finally get some solar equipment purchased and set up. Seemed like a great idea given the “endless sun and heat” we are supposed to have). Does this mean we should simply ignore the issue. No. I think it should be considered (but NOT made into a new religion). I think anything we can do to save energy and make our country more energy independent is worth while. The simple act of doing this (even simple things – like caulk and changing light bulbs) will cut the carbon foot print as well as a bonus, if that is your main concern. Unfortunately, this has become far to emotionally charged an issue to be civilly discussed with most people any more. It would seem that a lot of people out there need a lot more exposure to science and acceptance of other view points.
Sorry Mr. Casey, I don’t have the computer skill (or such high opinion of my opinion) to “post this to the international forum that linked to this one”.
Dear Sean:
Thank you for posting to an international forum which may include sensible readers. W&G NEVER censors anything except vile language, as witness passing along your nonsense.
Great grief, now we have to worry about the deleterious effects of our pets, the news says, and you threw in H2O?! Oh, dear, whatever will we do if water turns out to be bad for the sacred planet? Of course, if we all stop breathing and drinking water, in short order all save the elite will be dead (They never seem to give up things they insist are bad for the Baal of the hills), which does seem like a rather serious price to pay for the worst sort of claptrap junk science.
Just out of curiosity…could it be that your line of employment has an ox heavily engaged in “climate change,” or did you manage to become so illogical and irrational without monetary incentive?
I look forward to Doug, Linda and other’s rational and well thought out contributions to Whiskey and Gunpowder. Whether or not I always agree with them is immaterial- they help me formulate and refine my world view.
Unfortunately some people are threatened by any facts that do not fit their pet theories or opinions that are different than their own- and their response is generally to attack the person advancing those ideas.
For those of you who have something positive to contribute, please continue to help broaden my mind with your thoughts. For the “negative minds” who contribute, I learn from you too…
BTW, I am a Reserve Member who profits both financially and intellectually from many of your contributors. I would love a stool at the Whiskey Bar (even though I don’t drink anymore)
Keep up the good work Gary. Happy New Year to all.
Well, this got pretty feisty.
Sean’s perspective is certainly invigorating.
I welcome him and feel certain that he will contribute mountains to the high school drivel and psychopathy.
The reply by Sean (#8) sadly shows how brainwashed the GW “believers” are. I am a theoretical physicist (Ph.D.). I would like those (clearly NOT Sean because it’s religion for him !!) of an open and hoprfully trained mind to read a journal article by two very good German physicists (arXiv:0707.1161v4 [physics.ao-ph] 4 Mar 2009). It clearly shows that all this global warming nonsense is a pseudo-religion and NOT a science based upon ANY real understanding of Physics. There is not even a “greenhouse effect”. The early work done by Arrhenius (1896) used fatally flawed physics reasoning. He did not properly use the heat theory of Fourier (1824). Of course, even though the paper by Arrhenius was shown to use FALSE reasoning by his contemporaries, Callendar and Keeling, the modern protagonists of the so called mythical “greenhouse effect” then start propagating their “modern” version of this nonsensical theory.
For those of an educated physics background, the paper above puts a final “NONSENSE” label on the mindless garbage of Al Gore and his religious mob. It’s sad that the lack of a good education is so prevalent in a world that really needs folk that actually understand (even as little as we do) the world at large. This AGW period will be reviewed in later history as a period equivalent to other wacky “public religions” like Phlogiston and Caloric. It is unfortunate that the public microphone can be handed to complete dunderheads like Gore.
What a load of rubbish.
Anyone interested in real science explaining the basics of global warming/ climate change can start at these 2 sites:
http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://realclimate.org
And for the economics of climate change:
http://realclimateeconomics.org
My ox got gored and I do NOT own an ox!
I sure hope the gov’t doesn’t act against pet flatulence.
I don’t have a pet, either.
I don’t object to scepticism about AGW or GW at all. It’s the substance of the arguments that are at fault. The proposal to change planets was a particularly interesting one, rather than stabilising the one you have now.
What I do object to is a strange diatribe that the planet doesn’t matter at all, nor anything in it, and THAT’S why I write a getting rich in investing newsletter. Because nothing actually matters, least of all the planet and everything in it.
Conveniently buddhistic about the fate of the planet one second, infinitely self-interested and chasing wealth the next.
Other commenters have failed to see the irony in the original remarks, which is a bit scary in itself. And apparently all we will need to get through this is whisky and gunpowder, a nice dumbed down piece of nostalgic colonial Americana. Stops ya thinking.
Regarding some of the other comments, H2O or water VAPOUR in fact is a greenhouse gas. You know, water vapour, the stuff that is sublimated into the atmosphere in gaseous form. In other words, water vapour traps heat, more so than if there was no water vapour.
I’m not going to go into the question of whether, for instance, we should be in a relative ice age right now and in fact it’s still getting warmer — man’s activity is more than offsetting natural cooling effects. But I’m willing to leave the question of AGW open — I’m actually a scientist myself, and no, I’m not brainwashed, and no, I don’t make any money out of any carbon mitigation projects etc etc.
I say, let’s look at the research. Let’s look at it here, right now, on this forum, and paste in 20 million words on all the fors and againsts to prove it conclusively one way or he other here, now, once and for all. Then we can get back to work on that rocket to Venus.
PS is anyone here an ozone hole denier by any chance? pro-CFC? just wondering…
Here’s the first few of the 20 million words, a paper that attempts to refute the German theoretical physicists’ paper up there. I would point out the physicists are not climate scientists. Also, i would point out that critical theory and postmodernism tells us documents are really only claims to the truth, not absolute truth in itself.
On other words, for every paper a climate change sceptic puts forward, a climate change believer can put another equally rigourous looking paper forward. Until very recently, I was actually a climate change agnostic, I’m leaning more towards GW and possibly AGW these days.
Regardless, here’s the refutation intro and link. Follow the link, read the refutation, decide for yourself. It claims the Earth would be 33 deg C or K cooler if not for the blanketing atmosphere, which I think we would all agree would be pretty inhospitable for most of us anywhere on the planet.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxi.....4324v1.pdf
Proof of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect
Arthur P. Smith
American Physical Society, 1 Research Road, Ridge NY, 11961
A recently advanced argument against the atmospheric greenhouse effect is refuted. A planet without
an infrared absorbing atmosphere is mathematically constrained to have an average temperature
less than or equal to the effective radiating temperature. Observed parameters for Earth prove that
without infrared absorption by the atmosphere, the average temperature of Earth’s surface would
be at least 33 K lower than what is observed.
PACS numbers: 92.60.Vb,05.90.+m
I. INTRODUCTION
The results presented here are not new. However the form of presentation is designed to clearly and accurately respond to recent claims1 that a physics-based analysis can “falsify” the atmospheric greenhouse effect. In fact, the standard presentation in climatology textbooks2 is accurate in all material respects. The following explores in more detail certain points that seem to have been cause for confusion.
First presented are the definitions of basic terms and the relevant equations for the flow of energy. The situation for a planet with no infrared-absorbing atmosphere is then examined, and a constraint on average temperature is proved. Several specific models of planets with no infrared-absorbing atmospehere are then solved, including one presented by Gerlich and Tscheuschner1, and it is verified that all satisfy this constraint. A simple infrared-absorbing atmospheric layer is added to these models, and it is proved that the temperature constraint is easily violated, as is shown by the observational data for Earth.
I look forward to them too, but I am yet to see any.