One of the many reasons that John Huntsman should not be the Republican nominee:
Huntsman says he opposes cap-and-trade proposals because “this isn’t the moment,” but he buys the climate change argument because “90% of the scientists” say it’s happening.
Leave aside that the climate is always changing, I have no idea where he comes up with that number, or why he thinks that science is a democracy. And cap and tax is OK in general, just not now?
Sheesh.
Huntsman said:
Much of this discussion happened before the bottom fell out of the economy, and until it comes back, this isn’t the moment.
That’s an odd argument, since the recession resulted in a sharp drop in CO2 emissions, making the emissions targets that Huntsman set as governor of Utah easier to achieve.
It seems more likely that the reason this isn’t the moment is that the GOP primary electorate has pivoted sharply against candidates who support action on CO2 emissions.
It’s not just the “GOP primary electorate” Jim. Here’s Brad Plumer in tnr. And Jonah.
I don’t see the point you’re trying to make Rand. You would put more stock in the opinion of an expert over a layman? Surely you accept that government economic policies change with changing economic circumstances?
You would put more stock in the opinion of an expert over a layman?
Yes, though I don’t know what that has to do with the topic at hand, or science.
Surely you accept that government economic policies change with changing economic circumstances?
Of course I accept that. What I don’t accept is that cap’n’tax was a good policy under any economic circumstance. He’s figured out that it’s politically unpopular, so he’s using changing circumstance as an excuse.
According to Benny Peiser “[snip] I do not think anyone is questioning that we are in a period of global warming. Neither do I doubt that the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/naomi-oreskes-consensus-on-global-warming.htm
Rand, you do accept that the economic conditions are not as robust as they were when cap-and-trade was proposed?
Why should I care what Benny Peiser says? Again, science is not a democracy.
Rand, you do accept that the economic conditions are not as robust as they were when cap-and-trade was proposed?
Of course I do. That just means that it’s an even worse idea now, not that it was a good one then.
It sounds like you’re one of those people who, upon receiving a diagnosis you don’t find to your liking, takes heart in the knowledge that you can always seek another opinion, and if conventional medicine doesn’t give you the diagnosis that you want, heck, there’s always unconventional medicine.
But someone taking that approach isn’t in search of reality, they’re looking for a justification to believe what they want to believe.
No, I sound like someone who doesn’t take medical advice from quacks, particularly when the cure is worse than the disease. Much of “climate science” is junk science.
Jim and Andrew are just incredulous to the thought that you wouldn’t agree with what 90%! of scientist had to say was truuhhaa :/
2/3rds of all scientists think God exists. I guess that’s true too! =D
Benny Peiser is a skeptic. Andrew W is taking that comment out of context to make it look like Benny is a warmener. He isn’t. Benny showed that Naomi Oreskes can’ t do web searches properly when he looked at the study she did about peer reviewed papers on climate change.
The skeptical science website is run by a cartoonist, which explains where Andrew W is getting his misinformation from.
“Benny Peiser is a skeptic.”
He is, that was the point, you’re confused.
The fact that when you run Mann’s method with the entire dendrochronology archive inserted upside-down and time-reversed and still get a hockeystick (flat past, exponential present) is a fatal problem.
Papers revolving around Mann’s method are still the entire limb claiming that there wasn’t a significan LIA – and thus none of the current warming can possibly have anything to do with any rebound.
“2/3rds of all scientists think God exists. ”
Are those opinions supposed to be personal, or are they based on scientific findings? I ask because I wasn’t aware that anyone was doing scientific research on the existence of God.
Andrew, are you really unfamiliar with the fallacy of “argument from authority”? Which is what Huntsman was doing?
I repeat. Why should I care what Benny Peiser thinks?
Given the problems with dendrochronology it should never have been used, So now people do other reconstructions without it… and still get the anomalous warming other the last 60 years.
Former “alarmist” scientist says Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) based in false science
As wiki puts it: “There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.”
What’s the reasoning behind your position: You disagree with authority so best to assume it’s wrong?
“Why should I care what Benny Peiser thinks?” I doubt you care what anyone who disagrees with you thinks.
newrouter, Evans has been a AGW skeptic as far back as I could find.
“Evans has been a AGW skeptic”
so when the facts don’t match your religious belief stick with the religion. allan ackbar!!11!!
“allan ackbar!!11!!”
Who’s Allan Ackbar, and so what if he’s 11?
“Evans has been a AGW skeptic”
Don’t take my word for it, go look for yourself.
“Don’t take my word for it, go look for yourself.”
you’re a gaia idiot
“you’re a gaia idiot”
I’ve said nothing other than to argue that I think John Huntsman’s position is reasonable, but then you probably think he’s a “gaia idiot”.
It’s 57 degrees in the middle of May right now. Virginia’s not exactly in Canada. Where is this great Glowball Warmenating that was supposed to dry up all the plants and drown all the brown children living in mud huts? I’ve got my heater on. (Not that I’m complaining. After living in Florida most of my life I say to the coming Ice Age: Bring. It. On.)
I’ve said nothing other than to argue that I think John Huntsman’s position is reasonable, but then you probably think he’s a “gaia idiot”.
Well, I have no idea whether or not he’s an idiot of any variety, but he clearly understands nothing about either science, or economics.
Which was the point of the post…
“I’ve said nothing other than to argue that I think John Huntsman’s position is reasonable, but then you probably think he’s a “gaia idiot”.”
no a useless politician without any firm positions. at this point in agw debate huntsman is a gaia idiot.
That is why re-branded AGW to “climate change.” See, “climate change” can make it warmer or cooler. That doesn’t make the theory un-falsifiable…nor conflate it with “the weather.” It just doesn’t — the debate is ovah!
Andrew, I have no problems with the satellite-observed warming.
But the crucial element of Mann’s discrediting is not “Oh, well, I guess we don’t have good records for then.” It is: Mann’s method was the sole evidence that the distribution between “natural warming” and “anthropogenic warming” when describing the current warming is “100% anthropogenic”.
The historians had a pretty good list of fossilized&direct crop-records and similar material from Greenland-Morroco-Iran-Yakutsk that was the core of their labeling things like “Roman Climate Optimum” and “Medieval Warm Period”.
That was all basically dumped because “Ok, we have a ‘real temperature record’, with nice tight error bars!”
Call me when Egypt is managing five wheat growing seasons per year for hundreds-of-years-on-end. Not when it’s becoming too cold to manage three.
Andrew W Says:
““allan ackbar!!11!!”
Who’s Allan Ackbar, and so what if he’s 11?”
That was funny.
One wonders if Drew will now google eleventy to educate himself? Although I fully suspect after he educates himself, he’ll rush back to lecture everyone else on what he just learned.
I interpret Huntsman’s “this is not the moment” statement as a way of straddling the fence and trying to attract voters from both sides.
Crashed and burned of course……these days a lot of voters are fed up with facade, duplicity, dissembling from any politician.
People want, and can handle, straight talk. They want it pretty badly, I believe.
Andrea,
Virginia is wet this May. Wet spring/summers tend to be cool one and dry one tend to be hot ones.
Still, Anthro Global Warming as anything but a minor contribution is BS.
“Virginia is wet this May.”
It is??? I had no idea. I wondered why I kept getting all wet every time I stepped outside this week.
Bottom line: there is no evidence for anthropogenically induced global warming. There was warming, which has ceased for the last decade, and there was release of CO2 into the atmosphere, which has not.
Even the warming itself is questionable – what does the average of an intensive variable like temperature even mean?
Ascribing the short “warming” spell to that release was entirely post hoc, little more “science” than ascribing the end of a drought to ritual human sacrifice. And, that is precisely what the advocated policies to end the “threat” are: ritual human sacrifice.
The climate always changes. Human nature doesn’t.
Bart Says:
“Even the warming itself is questionable – what does the average of an intensive variable like temperature even mean?”
A question I and other’s have posed to warmists the world over and we get nothing in the way of a cogent answer.
Nor can they specify what ideal temperature they would be shooting for….or why they pick that one.
If Bart and Gregg are having trouble understanding a simple concepts like “average”, “mean” and “median”, there really is no hope for them.
“Nor can they specify what ideal temperature they would be shooting for….or why they pick that one.”
I think the concern is about change, perhaps more specifically, rate of change, from the current climate system that people and other life are adapted to.
Andrew W Says:
“If Bart and Gregg are having trouble understanding a simple concepts like “average”, “mean” and “median”, there really is no hope for them.”
Not only do we understand it, but we understand how one arrives at it. And we know you have not. (you = AGW/warmists) You can only arrive at a mean of your measurements. You do not take enough measurements, of the right kind, and the ones you have made were outrageously cooked: sometimes purposefully sometimes accidentally. And some were simply thrown out. A lot of AGW/warmist measurements suck.
“I think the concern is about change, perhaps more specifically, rate of change, from the current climate system that people and other life are adapted to.”
No, the concern is that even where there’s some agreement on *A* change there’s huge disagreement as to what causes it. Warmists are cargo culters.
Added to which the AGW warmists lied about concensus, wrote in other peoples’ names as signators, and accused the “deniers” of being Nazi’s. All very scientific eh, squire? Certainly going to bring sensible people on your side…..
Since the warmists characterize the rate of change unscientifically by cooking some and throwing out other data, everything they say is now taken with an ocean of salt. This seems to be a mental block you have:
AGW warmists now have a hugely bad reputation to overcome before they are believed again – or even listened to – by right-thinking people.
And after all of that, warmists want us to transfer $trillions on that dodgy basis.
THAT is the problem.
No, Andrew, they are pointing out that temperature is a measure of intensity, not an absolute measure such as position. And, since water is a pretty big deal on the planet, for everything from glaciers to drinking water to water vapor in the air, temperature is also kind of a big deal.
If half of the planet is at -40 Celsius, and the other half is at +41 Celsius, the “average” of those two is about 0.5 Celsius. Well, at -40, water is, on average, in a rather useless form, and -40C is rather inhospitable. At +41 Celsius, water is vital, but usually hard to come by, as such temperatures are usually associated with arid desert environments. At 0.5 Celsius, water is in liquid form, but crops would have a hard time growing. Of course, 0.5 C is also the “average” between -20 and +21, or -10 and +11, so what does an “average global temperature” really mean? Not much.
Further, 50 degrees fahrenheit is not “twice as warm” as 25 degrees fahrenheit, nor is 15 degrees celsius “three times as warm” as 5 degrees celsius (on a Kelvin scale, 15C is about 3% “warmer” than 5C).
So, aside from the ludicrous idea of taking an “average” temperature across a surface of nearly 197 million square miles, it’s equally ludicrous to think that the overall average temperature of the planet itself means anything whatsoever.
John B Says:
May 19th, 2011 at 6:07 am
“If half of the planet is at -40 Celsius, and the other half is at +41 Celsius, the “average” of those two is about 0.5 Celsius.”
Let’s try a simpler example. I have one isolated thermal reservoir at +41C, and another at -40C. I bring them together, and wait long enough for the overall temperature to reach equilibrium. What is that equilibrium temperature which reflects the total energy of the system, which remains the same both before and after the reservoirs are brought together?
There is not enough information to determine it. You need the masses of the contents and the specific heats to weight the components. The formula is
Tf = (m1*C1*T1 + m2*C2*T2)/(m1*C1+m2*C2)
So, a physically meaningful measure has to be a weighted average. How do you determine the weights? It turns out, the calculations being made are rather arbitrary.
Anyway, major fail, Andrew. If you do not understand the importance of the question, then you do not understand enough to be commenting.
Looks like Andrew got his ass schooled.
People here are making two mutually exclusive claims, Gregg argues that there can be no such thing as an global average temperature, Bart, correctly, argues that it is more a case of having adequate quantity and quality data and being able to correctly weight it.
At that point it’s a question of who to believe, and investigating the veracity of sources used. The argument in Bart’s link swings on a graph from Nat Geo Nov 1976 from a study by M.I Budyko of the USSR and James K Angell of the US. It would have been nice if they could have found something a little more authoritative.
It then attempts to build a mountain out of some minor US adjustments, not because they find specific fault with the adjustments, but because they don’t like them.
It does the same with the NZ temperature record, claiming “the temperature adjustments do not make sense” well the adjustments to the raw data wouldn’t make sense to anyone too stupid to take into account station site changes that happened during the sample period. Since that article was last updated NIWA have been through their adjustment process and explained all the whys to their NZ critics, who’ve now gone silent (on the adjustments issue at least).
Further down on Bart’s link we get the sub heading “Global Warming is Not Global” with the claim that “warming has only been occurring in the Northern Hemisphere”
Under which is a graph showing warming in the Northern and Southern hemispheres with the tropics as unchanged, the warming in the northern Hemisphere is more substantial, but that’s as expected, the higher oceanic/land ratio of the Southern hemisphere moderates the temperature rise there.
The article then goes on about a 60 year cycle, which, having followed the links, is based on crap. The authors of the article apparently are unable to go to the literature to find out the IPCC explanation for the decline in temperature in the first half of the last century, though it’s easy enough to find.
We then get this: “The linear warming trend shown when accounting for the cycle is actually about 0.3-0.4 degrees per century as shown by the blue line on the figure below based on the trend in the peaks of the 60-year cycle.”
You just have to look at the graph to see the manipulation of data that’s being done here, who but a nut would construct a trend line based of outlying data points?
Bart “the calculations being made are rather arbitrary.” How can you say that when you offer out such tripe?
Try reading the IPCC reports, or even just this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm
A link regarding the NZ data:
http://hot-topic.co.nz/fools-gold-cranks-cant-count/
Andrew W Says:
May 19th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
“…Bart, correctly, argues that it is more a case of having adequate quantity and quality data and being able to correctly weight it.”
Hmmm…
“If Bart and Gregg are having trouble understanding a simple concepts like “average”, “mean” and “median”, there really is no hope for them.”
Ah… Yoda says, “had an epiphany, did you, emmm?”
“The argument in Bart’s link swings on a graph from Nat Geo Nov 1976 from a study by M.I Budyko of the USSR and James K Angell of the US. It would have been nice if they could have found something a little more authoritative.”
Try to be specific. There are many graphs at the link. Mostly, they are from GISS, Hadley, and NOAA.
I provided the link because it discusses how the data are weighted. Your link does not. It just blathers that a bunch of incestuous groups got the same result, therefore it is a valid measurement (and, it conveniently supplies charts for which the lines are so wide that you can’t really see any difference between the data sets even if there were any of significance).
But, a measurement of what? Gregg is right – there can be no globally averaged temperature without proper weighting, and the weighting done is completely arbitrary – it’s just an areal average which takes no accounting of the differences in local heat capacity. So, as to the physical significance of this measure, whether it is done consistently or not, there still remains the question of what, precisely, does it represent?
This is the reason that people like Roger Pielke, Sr. have been so keen on questioning the use of surface temperature as a metric for changing climate. He advocates using ocean heat content. And, since the advanced ARGO system came online for measuring this variable, it has been completely flat.
“You just have to look at the graph to see the manipulation of data that’s being done here, who but a nut would construct a trend line based of outlying data points?”
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Try to be a little more coherent.
“A link regarding the NZ data:”
Looks like you missed the part at the bottom where he does an Emily Litella.
I agree that measurement of the total of the tropospheric and hydro-spheric heat content is the way to go, the question remains though, if you think there’s room to doubt the measurements of tropospheric temperature trend, the trend for the total tropospheric and hydro-spheric heat content is going to be far, far harder to pin down.
Renowden did goof it a bit, but the NIWA validation hasn’t been refuted.
“Renowden did goof it a bit…”
And, he did it in the most offensive manner possible. Like your “God” taunt on the other page. What gene defect is it that makes you climate religion freaks so obnoxiously neurotic?
And, why do you think such over-the-top rhetoric helps your cause?
“climate religion freaks so obnoxiously neurotic?”
Pot meet kettle.