What Do We Think About Climate Change

He told me. We aren't personal friends, or in regular contact, but he did mention that to me a while back. I don't blame him; you were getting out of line. For you to whine about my manners and insulting ways is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, my 'dear' Guillermo.

I'll admit: I went through a lot of your posts (not all), and couldn't find anything where you categorically denied there has been any long-term warming. But it's certainly the impression you give, with your blather about coming ice ages, stale temperatures, this, that and the other.

Why don't we go ahead and clear that one up? Here's your chance to straighten me out on what you really think. Do you believe there's a long-range warming trend, or not? If so, when did it start and what is the cause? Do you think it's peaked and ended? If so, why?

 

So what does a squabble between two film makers have to do with what scientists think? Sounds to me like both sides are posturing and acting childish, but neither one is a scientist.

 

The sad part here is that if Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh had appeared in An Inconvenient Truth instead of Al Gore, a lot of you guys would be slamming anyone who didn't believe in AGW.

Modern 'conservatives' are seriously bad about deciding what to believe based simply on who said it. William F Buckley Jr would probably be embarrassed to call himself a conservative these days.

You guys remember Bill Buckley, don't you? He's the one who said, “I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Had he been shooting for complete accuracy, he'd have said, "...trying to separate the Right from the kooks."

 

the right are the kooks

that would be like separating a red crayon from red

 

I don't agree with that. It's the same sort of black-and-white, lump-'em-all-together thinking that I deplore from the other side....

There are plenty of people out there with legitimate viewpoints that I would label as conservative or right-wing. I may not agree with them, but they aren't pulling it straight out of their arses.

I do feel the right as a whole has lost its way in the last few years, though. Instead of Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan, they have Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin. They've given their souls over to people who preach hate and intolerance.

I used to make a game out of tuning in Rush Limbaugh at the beginning of his show, and timing how many seconds it took him to say something insulting about liberals and/or Democrats. It never took long.

edit: I also used to marvel at the callers to Rush's show. I used to think, 'my God. Millions of listeners, and this yo-yo was the best you could come up with out of all the callers? What are the rest of them like?'

 

Troy, I'm somewhat surprised with Alan's 'scientific' behaviour here. As an example he scorned me for using the HadCRUT3v data instead of the unadjusted HadCRUT3 just to show he's an smart guy (which probably he is), but he should have known (or have taken the time to learn) that the HadCRUT3v data is perfectly usable for our purposes here and, as a matter of fact, is being widely used for global analysis as many scientist do, including Mann.

Being a scientist, as he says he is, I think he should have kept a more 'sceptic' position (or prudent if you prefer) when talking about matters he doesn't master, as this the extremely complex variability of climate. He knows well he has a lack of knowledge on this and has deliberately refused to read the scientific papers I posted not matching with his preconceived opinion, and has avoided once and again to answer the uncomfortable questions I posed to him, because he realized he was going to be caught in a trap (even our scatterbrained Boston realizes that and that's why he refuses to answer my simple questions). His posts only proved once and again his lack of knowledge, concentrating in fighting back on irrelevant details and refusing to see the whole picture, which the less we can say is not a very scientific position. In my opinion he is as much as a layman as I am on these matters, in spite of his higher formation in chemistry and statistics.

And yes, I believe there has been global warming since the coming out of the LIA and over that warming there is a 'random' walk and white noise (using Alan's words), which makes temperatures sometimes rise steeper than the subjacent warming and sometimes less or even descending, in more or less 60 years cicles, as it is quite apparent when we detrend the data (so not so random).

Determining the amount of subjacent warming caused by the coming out of the LIA is a most important matter to understand the temperatures behaviour but difficult to know with precision. If such subjacent warming is presently in the range of 0.44ºC per century, as it seems it is if we analyze the last 160 years of instrumental data, then the +/- 30 years warming-cooling semi-cycles are definitely nothing out of normality, as most of the solar phisicists and many other 'sceptic' scientists maintain, like the multi-cited here Syun-Ichi Akasofu, thus destroying all the 'warmists' CO2 main forcing theories.

Regards.

P.S.
Btw, Alan and I have also exchanged a couple of interesting personal mails.

 

We'd probably be better off if congress was selected by random lots, like jury duty. be compelled to serve your term, and you are out.

As you can see, I am a big fan of H.L. Mencken

--

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

--

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

--

And in response to AGW... (my response, Mencken's words)

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

and..

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

and...

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

 

It appears there has been a massive multi-page purge...

 

Thanks Jeff for that. The highjacking of this thread with political diatribes is totally annoying for those of us not interested at all in such matters.

 

I love it when someone on the left has the arrogance to suggest how the right has lost its way. Now that hutzpah! There is little difference how the right feels today about big government, taxes, spending, national defense, entititlement programs, or enviromental issues than they did in Goldwaters time. The difference is today we are not muzzled by a press dominated by the West Coast glitteratti and the East Coast liberal establishment. Btw, I'm not talking about the Republican party when I say the right. Both Bushes were good examples of a failed attempt to mingle and compromise. Compromise is only revered by the left when they need Republican votes to get one of their socialist entitlement programs through Congress, otherwise they have a **** you attitude best displayed by the soon to be back bencher Pelosi. Another favorite tactic of the left is too scream racism, blame big business, and imply the electorate is being misled when they are in trouble at the polls. Funny how when Obama became the "Accidental President" because of the Wall Street meltdown caused by liberal congressional directives and policies of the housing and banking industry, the electorate is all wise and knowing. Now this year when the libs are going to be handed their *** you can bet that that same electorate will be called ignorant, petulant and a host of other adjectives by the left and the lame stream media. Oh yeah, and their going to blame FOX news in a myopic and elitist assumption that people who vote against the left can't ferret out the truth and are being led like cattle. Much the same tactics have been used in the debate on AGW, but they are failing there also.

 

Gotta love when a leftist trys to dictate who the right should listen to.

 

Sorry Gil, you are correct, I'll try to restrain myself.

 

Me too. I hate to get tarred like oakum and not respond, but I will try.

 

I concur that some of the American politics may have got dragged into the forum...

But I think it is (at least the skeptics perspective) that AGW is "largely" a political issue, and less a scientific one.

As a scientist myself (physics) I wish we could all just stay in the empirical realm for what should be pure science, but the fact is.... It is just not possible.

So much of the topic is muddled by outside interests, poor science, governmental and economic interests and motivations by various social revolutionaries and others.

 

six billion people pumping pollutants into the air, no way could that have an adverse affect