SYNDICATED COLUMN: Give a Hoot, But We're Still Doomed
The Empty Gesture of Copenhagen
Our parents and grandparents fell down on the job.
"The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it." A concise summary of how the world sees this week's U.N. climate change conference, courtesy of the editorial board of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian.
The paper continued: "In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage," wrote the Guardian's editors. The implication is that time is short. And that there's still time.
Only two sides of the climate debate get covered by the media: corporate-backed pseudo-scientists who deny the greenhouse effect or claim that it's inconsequential, and liberal environmentalists pushing for the United States and other major air polluters to act to reduce carbon emissions.
Both sides of the "debate" are liars.
The energy company-financed stooges are barely worthy of contempt, much less serious rebuttal. Their claims have been addressed and thoroughly debunked, over and over, for decades. Cut from the same toxic cloth as those who collected paychecks from tobacco companies to testify that smoking was safe, they are to be pitied, reviled and, with a little luck, imprisoned after the revolution.
More problematic—and embodied by the Guardian quote above—is the Big Lie of climate change: the implication that there's still time to stave off environmental disaster.
"The clock has ticked down to zero," said Yvo de Boer, the United Nations climate chief. No. That happened years ago.
One interested party has been left out of the news from Copenhagen: scientists. "Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it's over," reported George Monblot in the Guardian from Copenhagen. "The years in which more than 2°C [above average temperatures at the start of the Industrial Revolution] of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we'll be lucky to get away with 4°C. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can."
Leading scientists like James Hansen say the maximum safe upper level for the concentration of CO2 particles in air is 350 parts per million. We're currently at 387. According to a study recently cited in Time magazine, we could ban automobiles and the internal combustion engine and abolish all industrial production, worldwide, and it would still take at least 900 years for CO2 levels to drop back below the 350 ppm tipping point.
Ocean levels will rise an average of at least six to 16 feet by 2100. Goodbye, lower Manhattan. Ciao, south Florida. The northern half of Antarctica's giant Wilkins ice shelf has begun breaking off; it will be gone within a few years. In the highest mountains in and around the Himalayas, millennia-old glaciers have vanished in the last decade, causing water shortages for hundreds of millions of people in the cities of China, Central and South Asia.
The greenhouse effect is a simple model. The math is straightforward and devastating: so much particulate has been pumped into the air since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, so much energy has built up in the closed system that is our atmosphere, that the damage is irreversible. Human-built technology has billowed more than 200 billion metric tons of carbon waste into the atmosphere; we continue to add another six or seven billion annually.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years," said Susan Solomon, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years."
The idyllic global climate that has prevailed for the last 10,000 years is going to change, is changing, and we won't be around long enough to know whether it will ever come back. "Human activities have reached a level that could damage the systems that keep Earth in the desirable Holocene state," wrote Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Environmental Institute in an article in the magazine Nature.
Catastrophe no longer looms. Catastrophe is upon us. For example, the polar ice cap is doomed. Summer ice will vanish entirely within 20 years; winter ice will be gone by 2085. Nothing can be done to stop it. It doesn't matter whether the U.S. and other countries reduce CO2 gas production by 30, 50 or 80 percent. The Amazon rainforest feeds the Amazon River, which by some accounts produces 20 percent of the world's fresh water; it has begin its death spiral. South Asian monsoons are shorter and arriving later. The American southwest will become a Dust Bowl.
The Greenland and northern Antarctic ice sheets are going, going, gone. Seas will rise between four and six meters above the levels cited above. It's been nice knowing you, Boston and San Francisco. Thousands of animal species, including polar bears, will live in zoos or not at all. After a certain point, plants themselves will become a net source of CO2—all part of the feedback loop that occurs when you mess things up as badly as we have. Giant storms will rage, famine will spread, drought will be ubiquitous. Or maybe we'll just choke to death. Whatever, at 6°C plus, the human race is outta here.
It is almost certainly too late to save ourselves. Like recycling and not littering, reducing CO2 output amounts to mere politeness. It's a nice gesture. But it won't make any difference.
Of course, the only sane action is to pretend otherwise and enact radical change that might/might have saved the earth. The human race is probably destined for extinction. But we might as well be courteous on the way out…and stop BSing about our chances.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the new graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is also the author of the Gen X manifesto "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids." His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
Our parents and grandparents fell down on the job.
"The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it." A concise summary of how the world sees this week's U.N. climate change conference, courtesy of the editorial board of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian.
The paper continued: "In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage," wrote the Guardian's editors. The implication is that time is short. And that there's still time.
Only two sides of the climate debate get covered by the media: corporate-backed pseudo-scientists who deny the greenhouse effect or claim that it's inconsequential, and liberal environmentalists pushing for the United States and other major air polluters to act to reduce carbon emissions.
Both sides of the "debate" are liars.
The energy company-financed stooges are barely worthy of contempt, much less serious rebuttal. Their claims have been addressed and thoroughly debunked, over and over, for decades. Cut from the same toxic cloth as those who collected paychecks from tobacco companies to testify that smoking was safe, they are to be pitied, reviled and, with a little luck, imprisoned after the revolution.
More problematic—and embodied by the Guardian quote above—is the Big Lie of climate change: the implication that there's still time to stave off environmental disaster.
"The clock has ticked down to zero," said Yvo de Boer, the United Nations climate chief. No. That happened years ago.
One interested party has been left out of the news from Copenhagen: scientists. "Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it's over," reported George Monblot in the Guardian from Copenhagen. "The years in which more than 2°C [above average temperatures at the start of the Industrial Revolution] of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we'll be lucky to get away with 4°C. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can."
Leading scientists like James Hansen say the maximum safe upper level for the concentration of CO2 particles in air is 350 parts per million. We're currently at 387. According to a study recently cited in Time magazine, we could ban automobiles and the internal combustion engine and abolish all industrial production, worldwide, and it would still take at least 900 years for CO2 levels to drop back below the 350 ppm tipping point.
Ocean levels will rise an average of at least six to 16 feet by 2100. Goodbye, lower Manhattan. Ciao, south Florida. The northern half of Antarctica's giant Wilkins ice shelf has begun breaking off; it will be gone within a few years. In the highest mountains in and around the Himalayas, millennia-old glaciers have vanished in the last decade, causing water shortages for hundreds of millions of people in the cities of China, Central and South Asia.
The greenhouse effect is a simple model. The math is straightforward and devastating: so much particulate has been pumped into the air since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, so much energy has built up in the closed system that is our atmosphere, that the damage is irreversible. Human-built technology has billowed more than 200 billion metric tons of carbon waste into the atmosphere; we continue to add another six or seven billion annually.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years," said Susan Solomon, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years."
The idyllic global climate that has prevailed for the last 10,000 years is going to change, is changing, and we won't be around long enough to know whether it will ever come back. "Human activities have reached a level that could damage the systems that keep Earth in the desirable Holocene state," wrote Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Environmental Institute in an article in the magazine Nature.
Catastrophe no longer looms. Catastrophe is upon us. For example, the polar ice cap is doomed. Summer ice will vanish entirely within 20 years; winter ice will be gone by 2085. Nothing can be done to stop it. It doesn't matter whether the U.S. and other countries reduce CO2 gas production by 30, 50 or 80 percent. The Amazon rainforest feeds the Amazon River, which by some accounts produces 20 percent of the world's fresh water; it has begin its death spiral. South Asian monsoons are shorter and arriving later. The American southwest will become a Dust Bowl.
The Greenland and northern Antarctic ice sheets are going, going, gone. Seas will rise between four and six meters above the levels cited above. It's been nice knowing you, Boston and San Francisco. Thousands of animal species, including polar bears, will live in zoos or not at all. After a certain point, plants themselves will become a net source of CO2—all part of the feedback loop that occurs when you mess things up as badly as we have. Giant storms will rage, famine will spread, drought will be ubiquitous. Or maybe we'll just choke to death. Whatever, at 6°C plus, the human race is outta here.
It is almost certainly too late to save ourselves. Like recycling and not littering, reducing CO2 output amounts to mere politeness. It's a nice gesture. But it won't make any difference.
Of course, the only sane action is to pretend otherwise and enact radical change that might/might have saved the earth. The human race is probably destined for extinction. But we might as well be courteous on the way out…and stop BSing about our chances.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the new graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is also the author of the Gen X manifesto "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids." His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
posted by Ted Rall at
8:09 PM
38 Comments:
Ted:
There are no more original movies on the end of the world. Everything's been covered, even vampires taking over the world, because there's always one left 'alive' at the end of the movie.
The only thing left for people who need fresh entertainment is for the world to actually experience a life-ending storm, something that cannot be reversed in time to save the human race. I look forward to skies so dark for so long, all plant life dies; marauding wild dog packs feasting on humans unable to find shelter; asshole despots continuing their genocide without missing a beat; looters looking extremely surprised as they break through one of my windows to find they're facing a double-barrel shotgun about to go off. Moo Hoo ha ha ha ha! Might as well enjoy it while the ammo lasts.
Or you know, we could look at the problem in a SANE way and figure out a quick, safe, scientific way to scrub carbon out of the air.
Awe come Ted. You don't give us engineers enough credit. All we really need is water and oxygen. Both of those are in sea water. Some nuclear power plants could provide us with fresh air and water and that is just today's technology. 18m. plenty of dams are higher than that! We can save ourselves with todays technology, and tomorrow we'll have even cooler stuff.
Man made climate exchange has been exposed as a fraud. 62 Mb of emails exposing the scam were released by a whistle blower. The hokey stick was a fraud, the tree rings were cherry picked and the warmers did everything they could to evade the UK's equivalent of FOIA, including deleting emails and data.
Here's a newsflash, the climate has been warming and cooling since day 1.
The day after Pearl Harbor Day I'm reminded of the fact that the US once had a national recycling program that ended the moment the war was over.
People have realised that we are beyond the point of no return. However we can keep the atmosphere under some control by geo-engineering. What that is, is spewing sulphur dioxide into the sir to make sure that the planet cools down. That should help keep temperatures down whilst we try and lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.
I don't think though, that its all "beyond saving" at this point. You've got your science wrong when you quote that Times magazine study that says that it'ld take a thousand years to bring the carbon count down to 350 ppm.
Do tell us when we overshot the carbon liit?
But yeah, we can artificially bring the temperature of the planet down for a limited time, wilst we try to get the carbon out of the air.
For now, there's no consensus about all the effects that a truly comprehensive carbon reduction scheme would produce. No guarantees either way. Rall seems to have made his judgment. Fair enough, but as exciting as it is to promote a secular "Second Coming" or scientific "2012" scenario, I'm not sure how much that helps people and the environment. "We're finished! (but maybe we can play pretend)" is not exactly an inspiring rallying cry.
Humans are probably not over, but human civilization (a far more delicate thing) may be. And certainly the human civilization we have is finished. Probably in short order. Which COULD be a good thing, if it means socialism, democracy, justice, and ecological responsibility. However, it could also mean a global police state where elites live in eco-bubbles while the rest of us stew and suffer in hell. The real lie in Copenhagen is that - a la "Second Coming" and "2012" fantasies - we're "all in the same boat." Hardly. A Harvard Man like Obama would never approve of that (as if his opinion mattered, even to himself). And THAT means we shouldn't get our "democratic-technocratic" hopes up, dreaming that "they" will act humanely or even charitably on our behalf.
As usual, the solution is revolution.
6 Degrees Hotter?
Ted are you in your senses? When is that going to happen? When can it happen? Who says its going to happen?
If anybody talks about that happening then they deserve a slap on the face because that's a death trap. Its the end. At 6 degrees its all over. And nobody who I've been looking at for the last six years says that that should happen.
Ted, Who says its going to hit 6 degrees?
That is a bit overblown. You think it is so easy to have >6 billion people dispersed over all land masses go extinct? Or is it not enough drama to point out what is really going to happen, i.e. floods, loss of arable land, mass migrations, famine, breakdown of entire ecosystems, collapse of nations? The extinction of humanity is nowhere on the horizon, not even a nuclear winter would have done that.
Andy, Y_S: I would like to see geo-engineering solve the problem, but so far it sounds like hubris to assume that we can do that so easily. I'd be very careful to blow the next chemical into the atmosphere without being extremely certain that it will not have undesirable side effects, and I do not know if the scale of the problem is not too large for such measures.
Anonymous #3: Sigh. Read the e-mails, will ya? There were basically only two borderline substantial things in there: Some researchers discussing that they would like to keep two publications they considered crap out of the IPCC report, which is legitimate if they are crap, but which they then did not do anyway. And one researcher choosing a unfortunate phrase ("trick") to discuss the best way of presenting data. That is it. Must be the lamest conspiracy ever. Perhaps you should think whether the imagined motive behind the hoax that you suspect is at all sensible and realistic. On the other hand, your motivation is patently obvious.
Hi Ted -- I often work designing ocean structures, docks, seawalls and beach protection, so I follow the Global Warming 'debate' pretty closely. I think you have a lot of the basic ideas down, but I must post a bit of a correction: the sea level rise you are talking about will definitely _not_ happen before 2100.
The numbers you are talking about will probably come to pass, barring things such as magical carbon cleanup technology etc. However, it's pretty certain those sea level rises you discuss will take at least a few hundred years to occur. The problem is, as mentioned, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years. Each year, the atmosphere retains just a smidgeon more heat energy than it did the year before. So what you are trying to say is, even with some modest Copenhagen-style reductions but no radical changes, by 2100 we will have already emitted enough carbon to "lock in" those 9 to 25 foot sea level rises, because ultimately the atmospheric carbon emitted by mankind before 2100 will be capable of retaining that much heat. But the heat necessary to melt the Arctic must still accumulate, little by little, over centuries. So you're right that it's "too late" -- by 2100, our emissions will have locked-in the conditions necessary for huge Arctic melt, barring some miraculous geo-engineering -- but the melt itself will still take several centuries, not just one.
Sorry to disappoint all the people waiting eagerly for Washington to do us all a favor and sink into the sea. Nobody here is likely to be alive to see that.
As much as everyone crys about global warming I say let it come. Why not. Here is an idea, go buy a house/shack on a mountain and wait. It will soon be prime beach front property! Then you can turn around and sell it for a fat profit! Or you can stay and defend it from all the "pirates" who come floating by.
We have the technology. Mix some fish DNA in a stem cell and give me gills! Got to think outside of the box!
So the world is coming to an end. When is it not? Super Volcanos, Meteros, Super-AIDS, Gays, the plastic things on the 6 pack of cans, Glen Beck, Nukes, etc. Something always has humanity on the brink of extinction.
So don't pay your taxes and take up swim lessons and get ready for the end!
On the other hand, (speaking of geo-engineering), RealClimate has a good article about exactly why geo-engineering schemes are at this time pure hubris and dangerous hubris at that. They're talking about sulfate aerosols, but these problems basically apply to any geo-engineering.
Geo-engineering: Why They Are Wrong:
The geo-engineering option that is being talked about here is the addition of SO2 to the stratosphere ... [which is basically why the earth cools after volcanoes]... Under business-as-usual scenarios, [we would need] the equivalent to one to two Pinatubo’s every year if this kind of geo-engineering was the only response. And of course, you couldn’t stop until CO2 levels came back down (hundreds, if not thousands of years later) without hugely disruptive and rapid temperature rises. As Deltoid neatly puts it: “What could possibly go wrong?”.
The answer is plenty. ... who would be responsible for any unanticipated or anticipated side effects and how much would that cost? and ... who decides when, where and how much this is used. ...Consider how difficult it is now to come up with an international agreement on reducing emissions and then ponder the additional issues involved if India or China are concerned that geo-engineering will cause a persistent failure of the monsoon? None of these issues are trivial or cheap to deal with, and yet few are being accounted for in most popular discussions...
The point is that a planet with increased CO2 and ever-increasing levels of sulphates in the stratosphere is not going to be the same as one without either. The problem is that we don’t know more than roughly what such a planet would be like. ... There would almost certainly be ‘unknown unknowns’ – things we don’t yet know that we don’t know. ... In order to proceed with such an intervention one would clearly need to rely absolutely on climate model simulations and have enormous confidence that they were correct (otherwise the danger of over-compensation is very real even if you decided to start off small). As with early attempts to steer hurricanes, the moment the planet did something unexpected, it is very likely the whole thing would be called off. It is precisely because climate modellers understand that climate models do not provide precise predictions that they have argued for a reduction in the forces driving climate change. The existence of a near-perfect climate model is therefore a sine qua non for responsible geo-engineering, but should such a model exist, it would likely alleviate the need for geo-engineering in the first place since we would know exactly what to prepare for and how to prevent it.
Holy shit! The world is ending! Guess I'd better buy that new Ted Rall graphic novel right away, or else I might not have time to read it!
If only there was a place to check in before all the "former deniers" are allowed in. That way the progressives could carry on and the regressives would have to wonder what they were duped for.
Nope. No matter how it happens the regressive statists authoritarians will never come around
Said Commisar Ted:
"they are to be [...], imprisoned after the revolution."
Why not executed, preferably with a single shot to the back of the head, Comrade Rall? Be bold! After all, if you're serious about "saving the planet" you shouldn't spare any efforts to lessen the human footprint on its resources.
I hate both sides of this argument: 1. the deniers, those who say there is no global warming and 2. Ted's side, those who say there is no hope of stopping global warming. Why don't we just stop the damn CO2 in case either 1 or 2 is wrong for pete sakes.
Oh, and of course, the mention of "CO² particles", shows how much actual information one might get from reading hysterical hacks at ZMag.
I just hope your blog is still around 20 years in the future, and both of us alive to see if summer ice will really be gone. What the heck, polar bears need a tan.
"Why anyone cares about Copenhagen is beyond me.?"
Here's why. Oh, the joys of being a panelist! Saving the planet is hard work.
~~~~~D-U-RRRRRAAAAMA~~~~~~~~
I'm with Albert on this one.....let's clean up our act for the sake of cleaning up our act, because we all ultimately KNOW that's the right thing to do.
With regard to Ted. Frankly, and with all due respect, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about any more than Michael Crighton, you're just the precise opposite of him. This really comes across as comical. Climate change is not the end of life on earth, and it's not even the end of humanity on earth. What it is, is a dramatic shift that's going to create social and economic havoc for humanity.
Ok, now that we've got that over with, we can stop panicking like nihilistic 12 year olds and make decisions about what we're going to ACTUALLY DO!!!!!!!!
Why don't we just stop the damn CO2 in case
Well we can't ban it, unless you plan on banning oceans.
Good thing someone people listen to actually said it. Carbon ppm measurements have been accelerating the last 2 years in the northern hemisphere . The tundras are already outgassing. The methane hydrate is on it's way too . I'm not a collapsitarian , I hope I and those with more degrees than me were wrong , though i don't think they are .
Some will survive, we got a lot of tech and we always find new ways to use it ,but predicting who & where is a fools game right now.
Mars is looking better though!
Ted,
I am afraid by you declaring that the situation is hopeless and it is useless and futile to do anything about it is that you are playing right in the hands of the oil comapnies and polluters who are saying there is no problem and there is no need to do anything about it.
The earth climate is extremely complex system with myriad of varibales and myriad of ways these variables interact with and affect each other to have exact computer model describing it and consequently an accurate prediction of exaclty what will happen to the earth climate.
Why just try to reduce pollution and save ourselves from repiratory ailments, cancers and birth defects etc etc ..and hopefully that will solve or delay the climate problem until an engineering solution is developed.
Come on Ted, what you're saying is way too close to suggesting everyone just gave up. And I don't mean anyone in Copenhagen, they're all plain nuts.
In your column you don't seem to be giving any credit to all the non-humans giving their lives in the fight all the time. Every one of them has made a choice. Do you think it's any easier for them to choose to fight than it's for me or you? Do you understand that life really is about life, and that it's really that simple, and that that's why the choice is so obvious to those who are not deranged? Having made the right and obvious choice to fight for life, those who fight don't go about "spurring" everyone into action by telling how it's too late. They make their choice clear by their own example. If your urge is to go about talking how it's too late, chances are that's your self telling you could be using your life to do something more effective. It's not too late, it's about ***king time! You'd better follow this one up with a war cry!
Aggie Dude!
Welcome back. And thanx for the best summary so far of dear Ted's attitude:
stop panicking like nihilistic 12 year olds
What can I say, I LoL'ed.
Judging from the responses on this page the vast majority of the respondednts here have been trying to follow the whole debate. Concerning the real situation on the climate, my guess is much of the population has got beyond the "State of Fear" (Crichton) phase; if only because the winter's are coming further and further away.
I'm not sure if the tundra melt/methane feedback loop has begun in an irreversible way.
Humpback whales gather in a big circle near a school of herring. One dives way down below the school. That one emits a scary, confusing "net of bubbles" that frightens the herrings into thinking the danger is coming from below. The herring school drifts upwards to escape--towards the waiting ring of whales.
Then one or more whales sound off loud noises that drive the herrings to crowd closer together into a tight defensive ball.
Then all the whales simultaneously open their huge mouths, scoop up the water in which the herrings are "hiding", and collectively feast on the small fry.
A similar dynamic is at work in Copenhagen.
Big Eaters know how the small fry think and act under threat: conform, follow the leaders, bunch up, don't think independently, make panic moves, react to every sound and sight until they are too tired and bewildered to make right choices.
If the small fry were to go against their instinct to crowd together and let the devil take outermost--
If the small fry sent brave scouts to report back that the "lower threat" was just a lot of air--(it's a climategate fraud, fellas)
If the upper scouts reported that a serious upper level threat was developing--(more liberty for the rich, iron-clad laws for the poor)
If the small fry drifted away secretly by groups of five, or signalled a "sudden scatter" event--(WTO walkout)
then the Big Eaters would have a hard time getting enough to satisfy their huge appetites.
Or if a fast-swimming specialty group of small fry risked their own lives to lure a pod of hungry Orcas--true killer whales--towards the waiting ring of humpbacks--then the humpbacks might have to break up their herring-herding combine to fight for their own lives.
It's a big ocean out there--and every whale has its own agenda.
The teeming schools of small fry now located in India and China are being eyed hungrily by both orcas and humpbacks.
So are the oil-rich salmon of Central Asia, northern Canada, and the mineral-rich krill-filled feeding grounds of Africa.
The small fry need a whole raft of new behaviors and defenses to survive.
They could develop poisonous spines that inflame the whales' narrow throats.
They could dwell in waters where Sargasso seas of plastic tangles foul the whales' balleens and discourage other predators.
If the small fry had high frequency fishy wifi and flashmobbed only when a good food source was found, then scattered again--even the Orcas would have a hard time hunting them down.
If the small fry mingled and fed with other species that do not taste good or upset the stomachs of the predators, they would be less of a target.
If the small fry learned to cluster near the blowholes of the whales and clog their air passages, the whales might think twice about nosing into the area.
If the small fry developed sharp little teeth and a piranha-like taste for whaleflesh--combined with their usual swarming behavior--hmm, what would that do to whale behavior? Sharp little currency-exchange taxing teeth. Maybe whales would get smaller and less hungry?
Anonymous #last:
Dear gods, only since reading up on the climate discussion do I really appreciate how huge the number of smug ignoramuses on the internet is.
Look, it's not rocket science. Leave out all the sophisticated computer models, leave out the fact that you cannot present a motive for a climate hoax that makes sense, leave out the fact that such a large-scale conspiracy would never work for so long in real life, leave out the fact that you are a conceited know-nothing while the researchers are highly qualified experts who have devoted their life and the best resources available to humanity to understanding the climate. Still, the following remains:
In the original atmosphere 4.5 billion years ago, there was much CO2 in atmosphere, presumably a two-digit number in percents. Plants and algae took most CO2 out of the atmosphere, oil & coal were formed. The last several hundred millions of years, while life evolves to the forms we have today, CO2 oscillates around 0.3% of the atmosphere. Now, we burn oil & coal, put CO2 back into the atmosphere that has not been there for eons, and it is not too long away that we will have doubled it. And you believe that has no effect on anything? Even if the rest of your worldview were not as lunatic and completely divorced from the reality of politics and human behavior as it is, this alone is too stupid to be taken seriously.
Ted:
You keep talking about this oncoming "revolution" as if it is going to be a good thing that is sympathetic to your aims.
Look around. If/when society collapses, the people with the ammunition and the gumption to revolt are probably going to do some kind of Jesus-based revolution. Maybe certain areas will simply be devoured by roving gangs of armed lunatics. Who knows.
The point is, the "revolution" is almost certainly going to suck. A lot. The revolutionaries aren't going to imprison corporate global warming apologists. They probably wont even know what that means.
Speaking of seafood: Not long ago, I consumed enough dire propaganda on the state of the worlds oceans to swear off seafood. Much though I loved the stuff, I couldn't bring myself to participate in the overfishing problem.
Years go by. Nothing changes. Nothing happens.
Now I eat seafood every chance I get. I know that the long result here is pure decadence. I am celebrating the death of the oceans with fried calamari.
I suspect that the more wealthy members of our society have reached this point with regards to climate.
We see the iceberg, we sound the alarm. The benefits of skirting the iceberg are so great that our journey would be improved even if the iceberg proved to be a mirage. But there behind the wheel is a committee of idiots, fully invested in the status quo and unconvinced that there is a wheel to steer, much less an iceberg to avoid.
Steve: I wholeheartedly agree. Americans in general have this glorified sense of what revolution is. I think it's because of the misconception that the United States emerged through a revolution. We even call it a revolution. It wasn't, it was a war of secession, engineered by elites in the new world in order to keep the social order exactly the same. It was about as meaningful as all those Scottish "independence" movements, just corrupt elites trying to get more for themselves.
Look, the reality is that revolutions are almost always followed by a period of terror, in which one faction prevails and promises to restore order. They do so through authoritarianism. This is how the Taliban did it. If it happened in the United States, it would be a group of Christian fundamentalists who would essentially create a similar theocratic-fascist society in which they maintain power, control and order with impunity and subjugate anybody that looks different from them with violence. Ted has a silly pipe dream at best, and at worst he's just spewing crap for other lefties to eat up with a silver spoon.
Anon 6:59 PM: I also agree with you. I eat seafood every chance I get. Not because I believe that the oceans are fine - they're really not - but because I believe humanity will kill them, and I'm going to eat as much tasty fish as possible before it all disappears. Maybe I can tell my grandchildren about King Salmon.....
Anon 12:19: You know about as much about climate change as Ted does. You two are just two extremes of a very serious issue about the quality of our environment: On one side, abandon all hope, on the other, deny anything.
If you look at the arguments of global warming deniers, they actually are extremely similar to Holocaust deniers: we need more research, the dissenters in the scientific community are being silenced, there's a sinister motive at work trying to keep the hoax alive...blah..blah...blah.
Just.....get a clue or shut up.
Wow Aggie, spoken like a true statist.
See we haven't had much of a debate on the topic because your fellow tyrants would not allow the other side access to the raw data to refute their claims. In-fact we now have emails proving they were destroying the raw data and evading FOIA requests.
So unbunch your pink panties. Act like a man and defend global warming (like the 3 cherry-picked tree rings you worship), or you can act like a petulant little child and scream Nazi like you leftists have been doing for years.
This has been a most useful lesson in public discourse. I have learned how dangerous the weapon of extended metaphor can be when wielded in an arena of earnest, literal-minded twitter-fed FaceSpacers who cannot read or interpret writing beyond the basic levels needed to convey a TV commercial.
Let me spell it out for you kiddos: I am (or was) on your side. The whales are a metaphor for global corporate megalops. The hapless herring and other small fry are individual world citizens. The media bubbles of 'climategate" are just air: a well-planned ruse intended to confuse and dismay ordinary people into thinking the problem is coming from the wrong direction. The real threat is the ring at the top of colluding industrialized governments whose leaked pre-agreement at Copenhagen shows their intention to force developing countries to abide by strict limits while all limits are removed from their own greedy selves.
The killer whales are the labor-rich, resource-poor nations of China and India who have the real power to challenge the US and UK. And are ready to eat anything, including small fry, that cannot get out of the way fast enough.
Now do you begin to get it? That you are, in your confused little herring ways, turning on the wrong target and attacking those who meant to support your position?
Now I am seriously rethinking whether it is at all possible to build any kind of a coalition with people so stupid as to turn friendly fire on their allies because they cannot read all the way to the end of a paragraph before they start attacking.
Maybe there is a survival strategy that I did not consider: sticking as close as possible to the hides of the megalops, doing little favors for them picking off parasites like pilot fish. Except that is the ignoble role of the police forces already and I doubt that I can qualify. You have to be either very smart or very dumb indeed to be a cop to the corps.
But there seems to be no reason to expect any brains at all among the true-believers of the Only Way whether they are Right, Left, right about most issues or left behind in schools. Even stupid people can maintain a civility of discourse if it serves any purpose. Obviously, that is not the case here.
Before you style me as an ignoramus, nincompoop or call other even more colorful names, maybe you should take a look in the mirror? Those are pearls that were your eyes? You have perhaps undergone a sea change?
One-Way Jonahs, either swallowed or spit out by whales, are all evangelists who know what is RIGHT and must preach it. They do not need to actually understand their opponents OR their friends: they attack everything that moves, blindly, like squids. Maybe all that seafood has put mercury in your blood so you can no longer think straight? Oh, well--you might as well eat them before they eat you.
Hint: the other parts of the original metaphor have hidden meanings too. Don't bother to look for them now. You won't find them. And I'm not taking any clues from you. All your lines end up with a mean, nasty-looking hook.
Humans have pulled the trigger but the forces now driving climate change are the positive feed backs of the earth's own self-regulating systems. This is what earth systems science or geophysiology is saying. Here are some videos that give a good overview of that perspective:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7Jt_Yzl1o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ghWG7msj8&NR=1
Anon 12/10 5:13
Yeah, some scientists got a bit unprofessional, but the deniers have been doing worse for years.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20091210/cm_uc_crjcox/op_4512252
Stupid POS. How 'bout not calling anyone else a girly man while you post as "Anonymous".
Thanks Russell, however he doesn't have a clue, and isn't going to get one any time soon. We all know who this 'anonymous' is, anyway. He's not worth acknowledging.
As for the metaphors, I got that it was a metaphor....I still don't think it was necessary. Just spit out what you want to say, there's no reason to be obtuse about it.
Yeah because Russell isn't anonymous at all.
Next, start correcting grammar.
Been there.... done that.
Let me know if you need more quotes deniers.
From: Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 08:44:19 -0700
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
From: Gary Funkhouser, Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700
I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. (...) I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have - they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian
Celebrating a sceptic death
From: Phil Jones, Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004
In an odd way this is cheering news !
From: Kevin Trenberth, before Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:01:24 -0600
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
From: Michael Mann Date: 27/10/2009, 16:54
Perhaps we'll do a simple update to the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new page--Gavin t? As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa '06 sensitivity test) in our original post! As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.
First of all, CO2 is a gas. "Particulates" are something else. CO2, methane and water vapor GASES are all warming agents.
Particulates in the air are cooling agents. That's why winters are harsh after major volcanic eruptions, or hypothetical nuclear wars.
This is important, basic science even laymen should understand. (That gas molecules may be referred to as "particles" in some other context is no refutation. We're not talking about modeling Brownian motion.)
People who live, or (more important) own property within six feet of sea level think this is the end of the world. People who need glacier melt for their water supply think this is the end of the world. For their little worlds, it is the end.
Mass migration is not the end of the world, unless the rest of the world is so misanthropic that it won't accommodate people who need to move.
If your investments depend on low-lying land or glacier-fed deserts, tough shit. The poor are always with us and it's your turn. How ya been treatin' the poor lately?
The biggest reason we are doomed is that no one really understands feedback loops.
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