Sandy’s not-so-subtle reminder
Politicians don’t like to talk about it, but the majority of scientists say climate change requires action.
Presidential and congressional candidates have scarcely mentioned climate change this year. In one rare exception, Republican Mitt Romney, once an advocate for smarter energy policies, mocked President Obama for promising to “slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.”
November 1, 2012 - 12:08 AM
I am not suggesting any weather event is caused by man made global warming. BUT…
Science seems to think we are exacerbating the atmospheric problem and the entirety of evidence seems to indicate that if that is true, the cost to recover from the disasters will cost more than the mitigating efforts we should be working more fiercely on. On the chance that some pretty darn smart people are right, we should take more action and try to stem the tide if we can. This is not fun.
Climate change is natural to a great degree, but even so, forest fires are natural too, but we fight them when they encroach. Falling and breaking a bone is natural, but we don’t choose to leave it like that.
Vehicle and Power Plant emissions, factory farm effluents, fracking, business waste, deforestation, and other activities the world has engaged in to some true excess cannot help but have an impact on our air, water and soil. How that affects weather or climate or disasters remains to be seen but it is not a stretch to think they might freakin’ matter!
@#1 The ice age was “climate change”. Many scientists in the 1970′s were predicting that we were heading into a ice age again. Then came the global warming theme. Every time the winter months were extremely cold, the non-global warming folks would say-see we told you so. When the summer months were extremely hot, the global warming folks would say-see we told you so. Then the global warming folks decided to change the title to “climate change” to cover themselves. When you can prove (not speculate) that vehicles, power plant emissions, factory farm effluents, fracking, business waste, deforestation and other activities caused the ice age, we will then have a discussion. Oops, none of those things were going on before or during the ice age-oh well.
#2 I’m sure you’re aware, Jerome, aren’t you, that while there were some popular books and and magazines that predicted global cooling, there was very little support for the notion in the real actual scientific community. A study in 2008 showed that in fact just 10 percent of scientific papers about the future of the climate mentioned the possibility of cooling. In fact, most conjecture in the 1960 and 1970s focused on evidence of the start of global warming. I’m sure you’re also ware that climate science as we know it now didn’t actually exist back then.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
So now where did you get all your “facts” from?
Jerome, spend some time at this web site. Note it’s from the American Institute of Physics. Use Wikipedia to check on them. Very established science organization. Not partisan.
The one thing to take away from this Jerome is that the ice-age story wasn’t really predicted by the scientific COMMUNITY. As popular news magazines like Time and Newsweek, were looking to sell magazine and have some bold headline, they found the contrarians who were willing to offer a good doomsday quote. The point is, the reporting of the coming ice age was used to sell magazines. It wasn’t good science and it’s unfair of you to use that as an indication that global warming isn’t real. But you have to read the entire second link to get a comprehensive understanding of what was, and is, going on.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/public.htm
…A leader in stirring public anxiety was the respected climate expert Reid Bryson. Scarcely any popular article on climate in the 1970s lacked a Bryson quote or at least a mention of his ideas. His big worry was the increase in smoke and dust, not only from industry but also from lands laid waste by deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture. Already in the late 1960s, he had gone to the public to warn that such pollution was probably bringing on global cooling.(49) He explained that like the smoke from a huge volcanic eruption, the “human volcano” could cause disastrous shifts in weather patterns. His claims were forcefully stated and unequivocal, backed up by an argument that the droughts in Africa and India already showed how air pollution was halting the rain-bringing monsoons. (Three decades later scientists were still unsure about that, although they suspected that pollution had in fact contributed to the deadly African drought.) Journalists quoted Bryson’s warnings that the effects of human interference “are already showing up in rather drastic ways,” as Fortune magazine reported in 1974. We faced unprecedented dangers, the magazine declared, perhaps “a billion people starving.”(50)
Most climate experts thought Bryson went too far, at least as reported in the media. “There has been much hand-waving of late,” the respected climatologist William. Kellogg complained in 1971, “and the ‘prophets of doom’ have taken the spotlight of public attention. Virtually none of these people who speak of the ‘doom’ of our earthly environment are scientists…” He insisted that our planet had “a remarkably stable life-support system” and that “the natural sources of contamination… still far outweigh all of man’s contributions, taken on a global scale.” ….
Jerome, by the time we have irrefutable proof for our adding to the problem, it will be too late to do anything about it. That may well be fine by you. I am not so good with that approach.
How much of a scientist do you need to be to know that “vehicles, power plant emissions, factory farm effluents, fracking, business waste, deforestation and other activities” pollute and could be causing problems we do not fully understand? As I said, climate change is natural, but even a simple person knows the level of pollution has to be having some effect on something in our world. Do you have irrefutable proof it isn’t?
If you spend time doing a bunch of research on the internet, you will find as many true scientists doubting the climate change theories and there are supporting it. I will not one bore you with countless links to any sites which prove the contrary. Every time there is a major climate event (like hurricane Sandi) the alarmists come out in droves to promote their agenda. All of the climate change theories have changed this from the scientific spectrum to the political spectrum. Once this happened, it opens the door for Government to jump in to save us all from eminent doom.
I think man made global warming is a fraud, perpetuated by those with political agendas and those who grow rich from government grants.
@6 Fair enough Jerome. At least you have the good grace to put your viewpoint out there and make it clear your mind cannot be change irrespective of any facts.
I would toss some facts your way but I’d be wasting both our time. But please note, I tried to remove this from the political arena by pointing you to a site that deals only with the science.
#7 Where do these scientists get their funding from? Government grants for the most part. You cannot remove the political arena from this issue. Facts?? Facts you say.. You mention changing my mind based on facts, but there are no facts, only theories. Please note that I said that my perspective is based on “man made” climate change. The climate actually changes daily and has been doing so forever. To prove that the climate is changing due to the things humans are doing cannot be proven in any way shape or form. In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. They were:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
Politics as usual.
The only thing unusual about storm Sandy was the very rare confluence of two common weather events, a tropical storm with an extra tropical storm in the northeastern continental US.
Both hurricanes and cold fronts are common events in the Atlantic, but they rarely come together as storm Sandy did. This had nothing to do with global warming, man made or otherwise.
Climate change based on instrumental records cannot distinguish underlying natural causes of increases in storminess from man made effects. Increases in contemporary storminess are not be a reliable indicator of human induced climate change.
#6 Oh good golly, Jerome, after we point out convincingly that your first claim is an untrue talking point of right-wing deniers, you move on to another untrue talking point. Then in #8 you move on to yet another by disparaging “theories.” Do some homework.
BTW, (and to John R as well), I’m not one of those claiming that Sandy was proof of anything concerning climate change.
#10 tell me what statement I made that was untrue and how can you prove them to be untrue? ScottM said he was trying to link me to “FACTS” but nothing that science has come up with is actually facts. Making policies which raises the price of everything we need and spending billions of taxpayer dollars on theories is insane!
Science today has only captured a blip of earth’s history and to spend the extraordinary tax dollars, watch federal land grabs, and EPA regulations that have strangled our economy based on manipulated data that favored the global warming argument per the UEA leaked emails calls for draconian cuts and EPA roll-backs.
Besides, how many ice ages has the earth endured? It had to melt sometime…
@11 Jerome, I realize we’re talking about climate change but one must be accurate. You say, “Making policies which raises the price of everything we need and spending billions of taxpayer dollars on theories is insane!”
I would like to remind you about Germ Theory that says diseases are caused by germs. Spending taxpayer dollars on this particular theory has big payoffs in terms of health. So your general assertion spending money on theories is simply wrong. It may be right on climate change but people who study this field would, on the whole, disagree with you.
@#13 I truly do not believe that we should stop studying our climate and doing things to better our earth. I fully understand we must listen to those who have the wisdom and are not partisan. We really need to have a consensus of scientists who can show beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are harming our environment.
With that said, most of the media reports runs with anything they can to make it look like doom and gloom. Science is about verifiable and transparent experimental replication. Many of the scientists work in secrecy, use questionable data, reliance on nonscientific “studies” (including news releases), massaging research to produce a desired result, lack of objectivity and independence, heavy involvement of activist (i.e. nonscientific) groups or of people whose interests are pecuniary, and wild conclusions. By keeping the global warming-climate change theme going, they keep getting government grants and keep their jobs.
Seems like conflict of interest to me. There has got to be a better way to fund scientific research without the conflict of interest.
I get crazed when I see that one too Scott. In the realm of science, when they say “theory” they mean “the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another“, or they mean “a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena“. They do not mean “an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances” or “an unproved assumption “.
Science knows it does not have all the answers, but scientific theory is not the same as “guessing” or “assuming”. It just isn’t.
What will turn out to actually be “insane”, is waiting until it is too late to do anything. We are not that far away from that tipping point by some measures and as our economic situation can inform you, the tipping point means it is all much harder from there.
Stop treating this as a political issue, a simple issue or something you think you just know. Being a “flat earther” back in the day was not dangerous. This is. You cannot claim to care about the debt and other issues we are leaving on our children and grandchildren and be credible dismissing our impact on the earth.
Here is the link to “theory” since it needs to be explained.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory
Ok sandy, I have a theory that all Chevy Volts will catch on fire eventually. Should the government spend billions of dollars researching this and then putting unrealistic regulations on GM which would cause mass unemployment and layoffs until we can truly find out all of the facts?
I cannot help you. I tried, but I clearly cannot.
I have tried to help you as well. Be objective if you can. You clearly cannot stand it when someone calls you on your views.
IM(H)O the entire global warming….sorry, climate change “debate” is a misnomer.
It is undeniable that billions of humans for thousands of years affect the earth. The questions are, to what degree & what to do.
IM(not so H)O the left/progressive POV is to, as they do in all such “debate” claim a faux superior knowledge and exploit it for political purposes.
From an excuse for more & greater government control to knee-jerk political rhetoric toward that end (where others still can influence the direction of our government-citizen relations).
In my observation there is no topic in which the left will not claim to know what’s right (correct) & therefore have the “right”, obligation to tell us all what to do (the “thinking” be done & the conclusions determined).
All things considered, that was truly hilarious.
There is a study that finds the average annual income of a Chevy Volt owner is $170K!
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/mar/11/0311f-fp3-subsidizing-wealthy-car-buyers/
Yet they still get the government subsidy for the purchase of a Volt!
Only in America!
I suspect their second car is a gas guzzling BMW SUV!
What a bunch of tree hugging environmental whackos!
The hug the trees because they can’t see the forest due to the trees!
I suspect they own Chevy Volts not because of the car per se but are people who have enough income to purchase something to help their cause.
Especially when it came with a $7500 tax break on a car that cost anywhere from $59-$80K to build (depending on where you read) at a price tag of $41K.