Split from Aug FT meeting: Yet another Global Warming thread

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

So we keep trying to get people in office who will put the power of government subsidies, contracts, and dollars to making the energy-use changes for damage control, if it's too late for prevention. I think the problem is going to end up being potable water before it's "we're out of oil" - most folks don't realize how much water is needed to get and process oil and other "mined" energy sources (and any other kind of mining - and agri-biz-culture - for that matter). Many places on the planet are short already. Many more use water systems derived from glacial melt (southern California for example). Even more are using groundwater faster than it can recharge. Our society has had a century and a half run of "use everything up" - our time has just about run out. Pity our grandchildren.

[Doug]

Pity our grandchildren.

DOUG
Speaking of which: Because of the obesity rate in the U.S., the present generation of Americans is the first that will not outlive their parents.

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- U.S. life expectancy will fall dramatically in coming years because of obesity, a startling shift in a long-running trend toward longer lives, researchers contend in a report published Thursday.

By their calculations -- disputed by skeptics as shaky and overly dire -- within 50 years obesity likely will shorten the average life span of 77.6 years by at least two to five years. That's more than the impact of cancer or heart disease, said lead author S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This would reverse the mostly steady increase in American life expectancy that has occurred in the past two centuries and would have tremendous social and economic consequences that could even inadvertently help "save" Social Security...

See here.

[Dardedar]

We Fiddle as the Continent Turns to Dust



By Paul Sheehan
The Sydney Morning Herald

Monday 23 October 2006

The Roman emperor Nero is best remembered for having his mother and wife assassinated, murdering his second wife, indulging in orgies, concerts and sporting spectacles while persecuting Christians, and blaming them for the great fire of Rome during which, most infamously, he supposedly played the lyre from the balcony of his palace. Nero playing while Rome burned is myth. The rest is not.

I wonder what history will say about us when we are gone, off to that great absolute water frontage in the sky?

That we fiddled while Rome burned? That we were the wealthiest society in our history, worth more than $350,000 for every man, woman and child, with the biggest homes, the most cars, the highest debt, the lowest savings, the highest rates of obesity and excess weight, and the greatest amount of consumerism, gambling and drug consumption, while the landscape, the lifeblood of the nation, died around us, a disaster drowned out by the clamour of consumerism.

Harsh? We have elected a prime minister, four times, who has led Australia through an era of unbroken and unprecedented prosperity, yet appeared obdurately impervious to the greatest issue of our times. He promised to reduce the size and intrusiveness of government but instead increased federal taxes, including the GST, to a peacetime record of 25.7 per cent of gross domestic product, but did not use this unprecedented flow of funds to mobilise the nation against the greatest threat to its survival. Two great strokes of fortune marked his longevity as leader - the economic revolution in China, and an opposition dominated by the factional Frankensteins of the Labor Party and the post-Trotskyite ratbags of the Greens.

All the while, month after month, year after year, the implacable advance of Australia's collective environmental stupidity crept closer until it is now within striking distance of the coastal capitals. After 200 years of trying to turn this continent into another Europe, we are now in retreat, as the arid zones advance.

In this column in August last year, I wrote about a highly innovative grazing enterprise, Coombing Park, not far from Orange, run by George King, who inherited a badly eroded property and turned it into a showpiece, using holistic landcare techniques that are absent from most rural businesses. He had been forced to drop the stock level on Coombing Park to 40 per cent of peak capacity and was deeply worried for the future. As we flew over the western plains in his Cessna 182, he said: "Our politicians and bureaucrats are still illiterate about this environment. We're still treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. Droughts and water shortages are just symptoms."

Fifteen months later, what is happening on Coombing Park?

"We are going down to 20 per cent stocking rate, which is below our cost of production," King told me on Friday. "Our business cannot trade for many more years if we erode our equity each year. Even the best farmers are suffering now. The bush is dying. The towns, the landscape, the rivers are being killed by this climate change."

Note the term "climate change." Not "drought."

"What I am seeing is a compounding effect," he said. "As more country is stripped bare and dried out we expose more soil. This is releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. Organic carbon levels are falling, and the soil is losing its colour. There are more fires than ever because the dry summers are adding enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and creating more bare ground. So when we do get rain it will be much less effective...."

"I have no doubts this will all accelerate as time passes. Pretty soon we will be able to see the great deserts from the Great Dividing Range."

We are creating deserts out of farmland. And when the rains do come, heavy rain will bring problems, not just relief. An enormous amount of topsoil is sitting dry and exposed, vulnerable to run-off.

Does anyone in the Federal Government accept the scale of this disaster, or are we going to keep handing out multimillion-dollar Band-Aids to lost causes? For the past four years, this column has asked, in every possible way, when our popular culture is going to admit that the 200-year national project to turn Australia into another Europe has been a collective national delusion:

"Face the facts" (Sep 18, 2006), "A horror world of our making" (Oct 24, 2005), "The disgrace of Cubbie Station" (Aug 29, 2005), "A new way of seeing green" (Aug , 2005), "The collapse of the wide, brown land" (Feb 21, 2005), "Riding for a fall" (Jan 15, 2005), "Continent at risk" (Jan 10, 2005), "The natural disaster in our midst", (Jan 3, 2005), "The issue that reigns over them all" (Jul 4, 2004), "Nothing but a wasteland", (Jun 28, 2004), "Dwarfing every other issue" (May 17, 2004), "Two degrees between life and death" (Apr 26, 2004), "A nation hostage to the gum" (Jan 30, 2003), "A ravaged country on the way out" (Jan 23, 2003), "Fire and water will define us" (Dec 9, 2003), "The great water crisis", (Dec 7, 2002).

The "great water crisis" was four years - and 17 columns on the subject - ago. Tim Flannery's seminal warning "The Future Eaters" was published 12 years ago. The crisis has since quickened and broadened. It is affecting food prices. It should soon bite as deeply on the psyche as oil prices. And it is being compounded by global warming.

Yet most people still talk about the "drought." It is not a drought. It is climate change. We changed the landscape. We cut, stripped, gouged, channelled and laid it bare. And thus changed the climate. How can we solve a problem when we can't even name it, and thus still can't even face it?
***

LINK

[Doug]

We Fiddle as the Continent Turns to Dust

DOUG
Anyone read the sci-fi classic Dune?

DAR quoted:
Yet most people still talk about the "drought." It is not a drought. It is climate change. We changed the landscape. We cut, stripped, gouged, channelled and laid it bare. And thus changed the climate. How can we solve a problem when we can't even name it, and thus still can't even face it?
***

DOUG
Where my parents live, in my hometown of Edinburg, TX, there has been a drought for about a decade now. I think people have given up trying to keep their lawns green.

The city's official homepage has this:

During this stage, customers whose addresses end in odd numbers may water on odd-numbered date days, and customers with even numbered addresses can water on even-numbered date days. Watering is only permitted between 6 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. Watering is permitted; however, at any time if the following is used: hand-held water hose, a hand-held five gallon bucket, or a drip irrigation system is used.

The following uses of water are defined as “waste of water” and are prohibited at all times: allowing water to run off into a gutter, ditch, or drain; failure to repair a controllable leak; washing sidewalks, driveways, parking areas, tennis courts, or other paved areas except to eliminate fire hazards.

Fine for violation: $200.00.

About eight years ago, the city helped a private firm build a water park in the area. It went out of business and in the process wasted literally tons of water.

Thanks, good ol' boy network!

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

It took me a minute to realize the article was written by an Autrailian about Austrailia. It could just as easily be written about us. Actually, more easily, since our agricultural policies are taking land that was green and destroying it - commercial fertilizers (or how to unload munition chemical stocks after WWII) burning out the topsoil. West of the Mississippi, what was prairie is becoming desert. Due to climate change, what was forest is becoming prairie - and that is in turn changing to desert . Austrailia started with a sizeable chunk of desert in the first place.

As to the life expectancy - neither of my sons and none of my grandsons are overweight - and they are all active - so the odds of them living long enough to regret it is unfortunately good.

[Dardedar]

More humor and slop from the GW skeptics:

From Desmogblog

Deltoid's Tim Lambert Bursts Peiser's Bubble

Submitted by Richard Littlemore on Mon, 10/30/2006 - 16:16.

Deltoid blogger Tim Lambert has dealt a decisive (and entertaining) blow against Dr. Benny Peiser, the Liverpool John Moores University anthropologist who had tried to deny the accuracy of Naomi Oreskes' research on climate science in the peer-review literature.

Oreskes had reported in Science magazine that none of the 928 peer-reviewed articles she had found between 1993 and 2003 had disagreed with the consensus that human activity is causing climate change. Peiser took another look at the literature (or said he did) and reported that 34 papers denied or refuted the consensus.

Lambert looked at Peiser's reporting, demanded a list of the papers and finally established that Peiser could find only one such paper - not peer-reviewed - from the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists).

Bye bye Benny.

[Doug]

Lambert looked at Peiser's reporting, demanded a list of the papers and finally established that Peiser could find only one such paper - not peer-reviewed - from the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists).

DOUG
Blatant lies? This one has Republican written all over it.

[Dardedar]

From the October Scientific American:

Fiddling While the Planet Burns

Will the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers accept a challenge to learn the truth about the science of global climate change?

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

Another summer of record-breaking temperatures brought power failures, heat waves, droughts and tropical storms throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Only one place seemed to remain cool: the air-conditioned offices of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. As New York City wilted beneath them, they sat insouciant and comfortable, hurling editorials of stunning misdirection at their readers, continuing their irresponsible drumbeat that global warming is junk science.

Now I have nothing against the Wall Street Journal. It is an excellent paper, whose science column and news reporting have accurately and carefully carried the story of global climate change. Even the corporate advertisements that surround the editorial page tell of BP's commitments to renewable energy and General Electric's commitments to environmentally sound technologies. The editorial page sits in its own redoubt, separated from the reporters… and from the truth.

One recent editorial, "Hockey Stick Hokum" (published July 14, 2006), epitomizes the editorial approach of recent years. The climate change "hockey stick" is a graph first published in 1998 by Michael Mann et al. that attempted to reconstruct the mean surface temperature on the planet during the period A. D. 900 to the present, using multiple proxies, such as tree rings, to measure temperatures before formal instrumentation was in use. The conclusion of that study was that we are now in that interval's warmest range of temperatures, therefore adding support to the overwhelming evidence from other sources and models that man-made climate change is already well underway.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has for years railed against these scientific findings on climate change, even as the global consensus has reached nearly 100 percent of the scientific community, including the reports commissioned by the skeptical Bush White House. Thus, the hockey stick became the bête noire of the editorial page as well as of the dwindling "climate skeptic" community, and right-wing Congressional officials such as Representative Joe Barton of Texas, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, took up the attack.

In response to these growing political pressures, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences conducted a major independent scientific review and updating of the hockey stick data and analysis. While acknowledging a range of uncertainties, that report came down squarely on the side of the Mann study. The NRC noted that "presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900." It went on to say "the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium." They noted significant uncertainties that remain for global temperatures before 1600, but emphasized "surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page completely ignored this report. Instead, it cited a report commissioned by Congressman Barton from three statisticians with no background in climate science, who quibbled with aspects of Mann's methodology. Yet climate scientists quickly showed that addressing the criticisms has no practical effect on Mann's conclusions. Nonetheless, on this thoroughly flimsy and misleading basis, the editorial page declared that "there's no reason to believe that Mr. Mann, or his 'hockey stick' graph of global temperature changes, is right," called the research "dubious," and said that the climate science community "often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge." In other words, it hid the evidence and trashed climate science.

Reporters for the Wall Street Journal routinely distance themselves from the editorial page. Many of the paper's own reporters laugh or cringe at the anti-scientific posture of the editorials, and advise the rest of us simply not to read them. Nevertheless, the consequences of those editorials are significant. The Wall Street Journal is the most widely read business paper in the world. Its influence is extensive. Yet it gets a free pass on editorial irresponsibility.

As a neighbor to the paper at Columbia University, the Earth Institute has repeatedly invited the editorial team to meet with leading climate scientists. I've offered to organize such a meeting in any way that the editorial board would like. On many occasions, the news editors have eagerly accepted, but the editorial writers have remained safe in their splendid isolation.

Let me make the invitation once again. Many of the world's leading climate scientists are prepared to meet with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and to include in that meeting any climate-skeptic scientists that that the Journal editorial board would like to invite. The board owes it to the rest of us to make the effort to their own "open-minded search for scientific knowledge." If only for the sake of their own sweltering hometown, it's time they accept the invitation.

link

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Oh, so the WSJ editorial page is where Hogeye gets his "facts" on Mann. Too bad he doesn't read the science section. Oh well, we are fast approaching the point where nothing we can do will stop the massive destruction caused by the global warming positive feedback loop. It sort of feels like when you skid on black ice. Early in the skid, once you realize you are skidding, you might be able to steer out of it, but as you get closer and closer to slamming into that light post all you can do is watch it coming.

[LaWood]

Fellas,
this is a fascinating and truly good debate thus far
but I'm putting a major cramp in my wrist
muscles scannng back and forth over the
overflowing page.

Please use www.tinyurl.com This neat service
takes a long URL as posted above and
converts it to a short URL which does not
result in a HTML overflow error.
Thanks.

[Savonarola]

Please use www.tinyurl.com

Actually, don't. Instead, make the linked text itself short by using the tag.

For example,

Code: Select all

[url=http://www.example.com]LINK[/url]

yields:
LINK

[Dardedar]

What link could Lawood be talking about? Could he be using a browser that isn't showing our links nice and short or something?

[Hogeye]

In response to these growing political pressures, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences conducted a major independent scientific review and updating of the hockey stick data and analysis. While acknowledging a range of uncertainties, that report came down squarely on the side of the Mann study. The NRC noted that "presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900." It went on to say "the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium."

Note that this is a misleading spin on the NAS report. Both "supporting" quotes are taken out of context. The NAS report actually said (point 3): "It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries." That's 400 years, not 1000 nor 2000 years.

Let's look at point 4, one which is quoted out of context to make it appear to be a much stronger statement: "Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900." The GW alarmists like to skip that part about "less confidence," and avoid addressing the likelihood that the MWP was as warm or warmer than the late 20th century.

The bottom line according to the NSA report: "The committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. However, the substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion ..." This is hardly a ringing endorsement of Mann's hockey stick or Gores apocalytic predictions. The NSA merely finds Mann98 "plausible," meaning not obviously garbage.

Here's the Opening Statement so you can read it yourself rather than passively accepting the media spin.

[Savonarola]

What link could Lawood be talking about? Could he be using a browser that isn't showing our links nice and short or something?

Got me, but we can all try to remember to use the short link code anyway.

[Dardedar]

The NSA merely finds Mann98 "plausible,"

DAR
Somewhere way back in this thread is an article showing that we are just a wee step (perhaps years) from reaching the highest temp in a million years. Course that won't matter to some...

I listened to a debate recently and one fellow quoted one of the scientists chosen by above mentioned panel to represent them in the press conference which famously vindicated Mann. The scientist said their confidence in the 1,000 year claim was 2 out of 3. This is consistent with Mann's original paper which was tempered and mildly stated. GW skeptics and some press politicised and overblew it. But this is all very old news now and not at all relevant to the mountains of current evidence. yawn.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

You know, if they just spent as much time and energy dealing with the problem as denying it... sigh.

[Dardedar]

More good news:

Boxer pledges shift on global warming policy with new Senate role

SAMANTHA YOUNG
Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Sen. Barbara Boxer on Thursday promised major policy shifts on global warming, air quality and toxic-waste cleanup as she prepares to head the U.S. Senate's environmental committee.

"Time is running out, and we need to move forward on this," Boxer said of global warming during a conference call with reporters. "The states are beginning to take steps, and we need to take steps as well."

Boxer's elevation to chairwoman of the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee comes as the Democrats return to power in the Senate. It also marks a dramatic shift in ideology for the panel.

The California Democrat is one of the Senate's most liberal members and replaces one of the most conservative senators, Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Inhofe had blocked bills seeking to cut the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming, calling the issue "the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people."

Environmentalists were overjoyed at the change.

"That's like a tsunami hit the committee," said Karen Steuer, who heads government affairs at the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. "You can't find two members or people more ideologically different.

As chairman, Inhofe tried to overhaul the Endangered Species Act and supported the Bush administration's 2002 rules to roll back provisions in the Clean Air Act. He also promoted legislation that would have allowed the government to suspend air quality and water quality rules in response to Hurricane Katrina.

It's a record that earned Inhofe the lowest possible legislative score from the League of Conservation Voters. By comparison, Boxer, who has made the environment a signature issue since coming to the Senate in 1992, received a 93 percent rating.

Boxer said she intends to introduce legislation to curb greenhouse gases, strengthen environmental laws regarding public health and hold oversight hearings on federal plans to clean up Superfund sites across the country.

the rest
.
.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

We don't know what we can get passed a Bush veto (just because he only used it once - against stem cell research - when he had a rubberstamp congress doesn't mean he won't use it on everything coming across his desk with a Democratic congress). We do know what isn't going to come out of committee any more. For which all of us with grandchildren give thanks.

[Doug]

TPMmuckracker.com has this:

Update: Inhofe Tipped to UN "Brainwashing" by Former Limbaugh Producer
By Justin Rood - November 17, 2006, 12:35 PM

The U.N. conference on global warming in Nairobi was nothing more than a "brainwashing session," Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) declared yesterday. As we noted then, Inhofe -- a man of science -- wasn't basing that on firsthand knowledge, but on the word of his staff who attended the event.

Who was this expert staffer? Press accounts identify him as Marc Morano, who isn't a scientist but is Inhofe's press flack. Morano is also a former reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh show, according to an online biography of the gentleman.

See here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Inhofe is the one who called global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated" - thankfully this clown is being replaced by Barbara Boxer. The fact that this clown and his corporate owners haven't been zotted could be used a prima facie evidence that there is no god (at least not one who gives a rat's ass about the success of homo sap on this planet).