More Global Cooling/Warming/Change hoax.

[Doug S.]

Like all fanatics they cannot accept that the other side may have a point.

Seems to me we're all acting like fanatics around here.

You're right, there are two points of view here....but, do they have to be so far opposed?

I mean, is it impossible to admit that the weather patterns are changing a little, or does it have to be Armageddon to make that clear...and, if does have to be that severe, how much of the issue has to be of man's contribution and how much can be just plain ol' Mother Nature's fickle temperment?

Is it possible to admit that the nay-sayers might have a point, that man-kind might not be correct in their "short term" assessment? I mean, after all, the earth has been warming and cooling repeatedly for over 4 Billion years, according to science's best estimate, and yet we homo sapiens have been here for very little of that period.

Does it have to be ALL man's fault or NONE of man's fault for everyone to express an opinion?

I'm tired of an all black vs all white world, I see many hues, both with my eyes and with my intelligence. In the end, IMHO we're all right and we're all wrong here.....we've become as polarized as have the two prevailing political parties in the U.S.

IMHO what's happening is a natural phenomenon that is probably being accellerated by man's contributions. I don't believe we are COMPLETELY to blame, any more than I believe we humans could stop the phenomenon even if we wanted to. We might be able to slow it down a bit, but even if we were to eschew all petroleum based forms of energy production, the earth would still undergo periodic warming and cooling trends....always has, always will.

The BIG, $64M question, is have we contributed to the degree that we cannot stop the magnitude of the warming trend (IF there really IS one) before it manages to exceed mankind's ability to adapt? I don't think so, but we'll see.....we can adapt to the temperature changes, can we adapt to the loss of valuable resources that cannot survive at the temperature swings we're hearing be predicted, or will we have to "engineer" life forms, both animal and plant, in order to be able to continue to meet our most basic of needs.

THAT, my friends, is the $64M question!!!!!!

We humans can only hope we can do so....but, considering the level of serious scientific evidence that we have, IMHO it is unwise for us to believe that NONE of it is true.....any more than we can believe that ALL of it is true. We must, though, admit that even if only some of it must be true, then to react in such a fanatical/divisive manner as we are could well just be collective species suicide.....

....but, then, species have been appearing and disapparing from the face of earth for over 4 billion years, just what makes us humans believe we have the power to change things in that respect? Is it our time to disappear from this earth? If we were to change our ways, could we stop it? If we don't, how quickly will the "end" come?

Then, again, this all might just well be "....much ado about nothing"....maybe.......but if it isn't, shouldn't we at least do something? We're all worried about leaving our children with a destroyed economy, what if we leave them a destroyed planet?

Cheers!

Doug

 

[Jim Craik]

Doug, well said!

Another thing to keep in mind, perhaps global warming is a good thing.

I keep hearing that even with the glaciers melting, the oceans are not rising. This may well be due to the other thing that happens when it is warm, evaporation!

More evaporation means more rain, not nessisaraly a bad thing.

As David Letterman said...........

The number one reason global warming is good.......

Hot babes, loose clothes, nuff said!

 

[Bob Fechter]

Some good points, gentlemen. But, we aren't really discussing global warming anymore. The subject is now global change because it has gotten cooler, and it might get warmer next year.

No one knows, just as its hard to predict next week's weather.

The truly down side to all of this is the consequences of enforcing treaties like Kyoto, and we have no idea if they will contribute a whit, but we do know they will maim the Western industrial countries. You know China will do as they please, even Canada is this close to withdrawing..

 

[Bob Fechter]

Yet more proof that this isn't about climate, but about the worldwide redistribution of wealth. To counter, I would propose a climate court that would force the repayment of the untold trillions in aid the free world has given to third world countries.

United Nations climate envoys have proposed the creation of a global "climate court" that would be responsible for enforcing a sprawling set of rules requiring developed countries to cut emissions while compensating poorer countries in order to pay off a "historical climate debt."


Read more: U.N. Floats Global 'Climate Court' To Enforce Emissions Rules | Fox News

 

[Nick]

Yet more proof that this isn't about climate, but about the worldwide redistribution of wealth. To counter, I would propose a climate court that would force the repayment of the untold trillions in aid the free world has given to third world countries.

Bob,

I'm sure a lot of third world countries would welcome that if they could claim back the money the west have plundered and continue to plunder from their countries.

According to the World Bank, Third World countries collectively borrowed $1.935 trillion and repaid $2.237 trillion between 1972 and 1992.

The burden of debt repayment thwarts poverty alleviation efforts throughout the developing world. Much of this debt is from loans taken out decades ago by corrupt rulers, often supported by Western nations to further their own interests. In 1999, $128 million per day in debt repayments was transferred from the poorest nations to the richest.


This means that in 2008, the world’s poorest 48 countries still had debts totalling US$168 billion, and the 128 poorest together owed a dazzling total of US $3.7 trillion to multilateral bodies, individual countries, private companies, banks and individuals. Over the course of 2008 alone, the developing countries paid $602 billion towards servicing these debts. This year’s figures will be even higher, as the economic crisis has led developing countries to take up more loans. As a result, despite the aid rhetoric and the Millennium Development Goals, money keeps flowing from the Global South to the North instead of vice versa.

"MONEY KEEPS FLOWING FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH TO THE NORTH INSTEAD OF VICE VERSA"

 

[Jim Craik]

Nick,

You make a great point, but unfortunately, to a delusional paranoid, facts really have little to do with it.

Just as they, with a straigh face say those photos do not show a melting glacier. No matter how many facts, figures and photos you show them the will continue to repeate

Wealth redistribution...............
Wealth redistribution..............
Wealth redistribution.............

 

[Nick]

Nick,
Just as they, with a straigh face say those photos do not show a melting glacier. No matter how many facts, figures and photos you show them

Jim.

Having watched the last episode of the superb The Frozen Planet by Sir David Attenborough last Wednesday night, there is no doubt that you are right, many glaciers are receding.

Photographs of glaciers in South Georgia taken by Scott were compared with present day photographs.

Images from space and Sir David’s own first hand account of comparisons from when he first visited South Georgia in the early 80’s, all confirm that the glaciers are receding.

As to what is causing this that is a whole different debate as you have pointed out.

Unless of course Scott faked his pictures, NASA faked theirs and Sir David Attenborough widely considered a national treasure in Britain and face and voice of natural history programmes for more than 50 years, is lying

 

[Chris Martino]

When the Sun runs out of fuel, it will swell up to become a red giant star, expanding in size beyond the orbits of Mercury and Venus and Earth as well. Even if the Earth survives, the intense heat from the red sun will scorch Earth and make it completely impossible for life to survive.

But until then anything, as humans we throw at this planet will run it's course and it will be us who will pay the ultimate price in the end - our existence.

Chris

 

[Jeff Young]

No different than laws we already have in place in the US really. If your neighbor pollutes your property (like, arguably, the developed world has done to the undeveloped in many cases), you can sue for nuisance and recover the damage.

If an individual state allows too much industrialization and pollutes the air of a neighboring state, we have mechanisms to stop that or compensate the state receiving too much pollution.

So, while I agree with the last paragraph in that article that something like this court will NEVER come in into being, Faux News of course failed to explain the above -- that US is very familiar with these types of mechanisims and already has them in place internally.

Yet more proof that this isn't about climate, but about the worldwide redistribution of wealth. To counter, I would propose a climate court that would force the repayment of the untold trillions in aid the free world has given to third world countries.

United Nations climate envoys have proposed the creation of a global "climate court" that would be responsible for enforcing a sprawling set of rules requiring developed countries to cut emissions while compensating poorer countries in order to pay off a "historical climate debt."


Read more: U.N. Floats Global 'Climate Court' To Enforce Emissions Rules | Fox News

 

[Bob Fechter]

First of all, world debt is a deflection. The agenda is redistribution. On top of free money from the Climate Change hoax, the World Bank is working on debt forgiveness to add on to the money give away right now. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

Factsheet -- Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative

I'd like to see any kind of evidence that uS pollution has damaged third world countries. Again, as stated, our real polluters choose to ignore even the most basic, Seventies, forms of pollution control.

 

[Bob Fechter]

The Global Climate Cooling/Warming/Change Hoax perpetrators cannot explain the random weather changes of the past. They have all these computer models they are so proud of , but could they have predicted the random weather swings of the known past, long before man was industrialized? NO. They've had to "Jimmie" the data to get the results they want.

How do they explain the numerous times the dramatic temperature changes that witnessed glaciers plowing south and then receding north during the last million years? They can't.

All those wild weather changes were certainly not caused by man made GHGS, but Kyoto "science" has taken whatever caused those wild swings to be ignored and suddenly replaced by a new model blaming man.

History tells us that we most certainly will have another wild swing. The only thing that will save mankind is wealth. The greatest minds of that time will need tremendous resources to devise new ways of survival, and that doesn't come from economies that are being penalized for their productivity.

Once again, liberals are penalizing the producers and rewarding the non productive, again to the detriment of both.

 

[Jeff Young]

The above post is actually a pretty good example of how a lot of the "skeptics" I encounter (and there are problems with both sides no doubt) don't seem to have done any research or reading other than blurbs on Faux News, or links that get shared amongts the right wing nutjobosphere.

It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the proponents of human-caused global warming are saying.

Everyone admits and acknowledges that the Earth has had lengthy and dramatic weather cycles. At one point in time, it is likely the entire Earth was glaciated. What changed that? Greenhouse effect, from carbon and ash emissions from volcanoes. Lesson there actually......

But in tracking those ups and downs in the climate record, there is simply nothing like the dramatic increase in temperature over a short period of time as we have seen in the industrial age (1870ish on). The models do a fairly good job of predicting the weather cylces. Meaning that, when a model is used to create cycles over the last 100 million years or whatever, it does a very good job using the data and inputs we have. This is a good gut check for the model. It lines up with historical reality.

Where things start to go awry is using the models from 1870 or so forward. The issue is not really that the models predict the warming that we are seeing, it is that they DON'T. We were not supposed to - given the Earth's natural progression from cold periods to warm and back again -- see what we are seeing now. This is Mann's famous or infamous "hockey stick" depending on your point of view.

The ramp up of global temperatures since 1870 and in particular since the 70s has astonished most objective climate scientists. Further modeling, probably admittedly more speculative, suggests that it is carbon emissions and the resulting greenhouse effect that has caused or contributed to much of this "additional warming."

There is no guarantee that any of this is correct. It may be wrong. But as a layman, like everyone else on this board, when enough credible scientists are this concerned about an observed phenomenon coupled with models predicting potential dire consequences as a result, then yes, I take notice.

Is this about "liberals" or "conservatives" or "penalizing producers?" I think idiots on both sides have politicized the debate but the core science certainly isn't.

So basically Bob's entire post is wrong, other than the acknowledged basic fact that we have had (of course) cylces of cooling and warming in the past. These cycles were not random, and their causes are fairly well understood. The models in place do a pretty good job of, in retrospective, "predicting" what we see in the historical record.

Where things get off track is in the last 140 years where there is an unexplained increase in the rate of warming that we have not seen before in the historical data.

 

[Nick]

First of all, world debt is a deflection. The agenda is redistribution. On top of free money from the Climate Change hoax, the World Bank is working on debt forgiveness to add on to the money give away right now. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

Factsheet -- Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative

.

Bob,

"MONEY KEEPS FLOWING FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH TO THE NORTH INSTEAD OF VICE VERSA"

If more money flows back to us from poor countries than goes out that is wealth redistribution but the opposite way round than you claim.

The debt has been repaid many many times over.

Bob, you present a fact sheet on what they hope to achieve. The salient fact is as they state the "HIPC Initiative was launched in 1996". It is an imitative not fact, the reality is :-

2006

World Bank member nations approved $37 billion in debt relief for 17 countries at the end of March

2008

This means that in 2008, the world’s poorest 48 countries still had debts totalling US$168 billion, and the 128 poorest together owed a dazzling total of US $3.7 trillion to multilateral bodies.


"My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, andand, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am! "

 

[Bob Fechter]

Rather than relying on getting more and more of other people's money and expecting debt to be forgiven, why not try being productive? Why not experiment with capitalism?

The Third World will always be poor as long as they rely on the kindness of strangers.

 

[Bob Fechter]

And, as to Jeff's hockey stick theory, we've got twenty-thousand emails that tell us that is all bunk.

 

[Jeff Young]

My theory? No, it's not. It's a theory propounded by some of the leading climate scientists in the world, and then adopted by most of them. But it is a theory. Has holes, needs to be tested. Like all theories it's not perfect, and not all data agrees with it. Like all scientific debates, some of those involved (a very small minority) have done things with data they should not have, and acted petty and childish about the other side in a small number of e-mails.

No, 24,000 e-mails you haven't read don't "disprove" this theory. The theory of mine that it DOES prove is a stereotype -- older conservative white males with little formal education are far more likely to ignore the science and fall for the Fox News "it's a scam" schtick rather than reading about the actual science and debating that.

 

[Nick]

The Third World will always be poor as long as they rely on the kindness of strangers.

Bob,

Some people would argue that loan sharks are kind after all they help the poor don't they.

One of the fastest growing sectors in the UK at the moment in the middle income bracket, is payday loans.

Representative Example: Total Amount of Credit: £720; Representative APR: 1737%; Duration of Agreement: 28 days; Total Charge of Credit: £217.50; Total Amount Payable: £937.50

APR 1737%

The third world will always be poor while we continue to plunder their resources and take out more than we give.

You argument appears to be that the West is some sort of benevolent benefactor giving out free money to these countries.

First of all, world debt is a deflection. The agenda is redistribution. On top of free money from the Climate Change hoax, the World Bank is working on debt forgiveness to add on to the money give away right now. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

I argue this money has been repaid many times over and we are actually taking out more than we give. I provide the figures to prove this.

Bob,

"MONEY KEEPS FLOWING FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH TO THE NORTH INSTEAD OF VICE VERSA"

If more money flows back to us from poor countries than goes out that is wealth redistribution but the opposite way round than you claim.

2006

World Bank member nations approved $37 billion in debt relief for 17 countries at the end of March

2008

This means that in 2008, the world’s poorest 48 countries still had debts totalling US$168 billion, and the 128 poorest together owed a dazzling total of US $3.7 trillion to multilateral bodies.

"

So if this is true then surely MONEY KEEPS FLOWING FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH TO THE NORTH INSTEAD OF VICE VERSA" and the wealth redistribution is from the poor countries to the rich.

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

My theory? No, it's not. It's a theory propounded by some of the leading climate scientists in the world, and then adopted by most of them. But it is a theory. Has holes, needs to be tested. Like all theories it's not perfect, and not all data agrees with it. Like all scientific debates, some of those involved (a very small minority) have done things with data they should not have, and acted petty and childish about the other side in a small number of e-mails.

No, 24,000 e-mails you haven't read don't "disprove" this theory. The theory of mine that it DOES prove is a stereotype -- older conservative white males with little formal education are far more likely to ignore the science and fall for the Fox News "it's a scam" schtick rather than reading about the actual science and debating that.

A classic example of your pompous attitude Mr.Young. "older conservative white males with little formal education". You make these statements but know little or nothing about Bobs education or mine, formal or otherwise.

 

[Jeff Young]

I wasn't talking about you. I do actually know about Bob's formal education which was the reason for the comment. He's brough it up before.

Everything in that statement as it applies to Bob is 100% true. Or is the truth in your world just "pompous attitude?"

 

[Bob Fechter]

I wasn't talking about you. I do actually know about Bob's formal education which was the reason for the comment. He's brough it up before.

Everything in that statement as it applies to Bob is 100% true. Or is the truth in your world just "pompous attitude?"

The term, "educated fool" falls readily to hand when it comes Mr. Young.