Global warming? Yeah, right!
December 15th, 2008 by Republican By DefaultGlobal warming alarmists who want us to spend all of our hard earned money on yellow dim-bulbs (CFLs) and higher energy costs are a little red in the face. They’re not embarrassed at how ridiculous they sound, they’ve just been out in the cold weather too long.
Washington temperatures drop near record lows
The low temperature at Sea-Tac Airport dropped to 19 degrees at 4 a.m. today, breaking the old record of 20 for the date set in 1964.
Johnny Burg of the National Weather Service office in Seattle says Hoquiam tied its record low of 25, set in 1967.
Forecasters say previous cold spells will make records hard to break, but the lows expected this week might come close.
I’m still waiting for the last enviro-scare, the coming ice age. Or is it here already?
December 15th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I know no one’s mind is going to get changed here, but I think two things are worth pointing out…
1) “Global warming” is a somewhat misleading term. While the mean global temperature is rising, the overall effect is one of general drastic changes in climate and weather, thus the preferred term “global climate change”. A cold snap in no way disproves or calls into doubt that we are undergoing climate change. And whether or not it is caused by humans is completely orthogonal, though the scientific consensus on that can speak for itself.
2) And speaking of scientific consensus, the thing about there being a “coming ice age” consensus amongst climate scientists in the 70s is a myth. See [link deleted].
December 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Sorry, jamie, but your comment is just double-speak. Renaming the hysteria doesn’t change what it is. And there is no scientific consensus about anthropogenic global warming and the need to respond with drastic measures (like spending billions of dollars on it).
There is plenty of evidence that we are always in a warming and cooling cycle. There is little to no evidence that man has any measurable impact on that cycle. In addition, the data collected by so-called climate scientists is questionable because of their methods.
I deleted the link because it was to a PDF file without your indicating that it wasn’t ordinary Web content and because the site linked to required cookies. Two simple problems but they are annoyances to readers. If you can provide that content from another site I’ll look at it again and decide whether to allow the link.
However, I lived through the 70’s. Hardly a week went by that someone wasn’t quoting a scientist about the coming ice age. It was in our textbooks, newspapers, television programming and political speeches. Some so-called scientists may have backpedaled from their stand, but it doesn’t change the historical facts. I’ve heard the argument that there was no ’scientific consensus’ but it also amounts to nothing more than double-speak. Some of the same scientists who are screaming ‘global warming’ were screaming ‘coming ice age’ in the 70’s. What does that say of their credibility?
December 15th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
And one other thing. Either the earth is warming or it isn’t. Science must consider all relevant facts, not just the convenient ones. Record low temperatures is not consistent with global warming. If it were a freak occurrence it could be explained as an anomaly or a side-effect. However, there has been consistent failure in predictions about hurricanes and record high temperatures.
Again, credibility is the biggest issue here. These questionable so-called scientists are failing not only in their methods of gathering data, their analysis of that data, the extrapolation of that data outside of the measured data sets (both historically and in predictions of future/recent past events) but also in their claim of a consensus.
Also, if the claim is that there was no consensus in the 70’s because some scientists published papers that challenged the ‘consensus’ then there is no consensus today either. If you want to comment here you need to be consistent as well.
I don’t have time to debate this in comments. If anyone wants more info they can start with:
GlobalWarmingHoax.com
December 15th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Interesting, could you cite some examples of individual scientists that made these claims both in the 70s and today? If you can, we could then easily discredit their current statements and then consider the remaining voices out there and what those more ‘credible’ are saying.
Otherwise you are grouping all scientists together and claiming that science’s collective credibility is damaged by a false prediction of an ice age in the 70’s. If this is the case, you must also account for all other predictions and contributions the scientific community has made in order to establish the credibility of both the process and the various professions.
With a metaphor, you cannot discount the reliability of all Chevrolet vehicles based on the observation of a single vehicle failing. Though you could conclude a particular product line was poorly designed if say 8 out of 10 failed vehicles were of that make and model.
The scientific method is fundamentally based on repeatedly trying to disprove a hypothesis in order to arrive at a conclusion. I believe we are simply at too early of a stage in the process to truly substantiate any type of conclusion. That being said, the current “early” conclusion is based on three observations: measurable climate change IS happening, excess atmospheric CO2 accelerates the process, and humans have increased the net ration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Where science has yet to deliver, politics are happily taking over in the form of our current debate: is our human presence causing a significant impact, and if so what is a reasonable cost to expend on reducing this impact (if any).
December 15th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Yes, I do call the entire scientific community’s credibility into question because of a major flaw in the peer review process. It serves to squash dissenting views before they can be fully heard. Scientists who disagree with the global warming hoax have had to, in many cases, bypass the process just to raise questions about the validity of the view held by their so-called peers.
Your metaphor is flawed because it takes the failure of a significantly smaller portion of a model of vehicle for a design to be considered flawed. Very few Pinto’s exploded before they were considered flawed. So applying that metaphor to the (anthropogenic) global warming debate then record low temperatures would call the model’s design into question and probably be enough to consider it flawed.
The scientific method is not based on disproving a hypothesis but rather upon repeating it in a controlled environment. If that is successful it becomes a theory but not a fact.
We do not know that the climate is warming because we don’t have data covering a significant portion of the repeating cycle of warming and cooling that the earth seems to go through. Most of the available data is less than 50 years old and not all of it is considered reliable.
There is also a question about whether excess CO2 in the atmosphere actually causes warming. This is a hypothesis, not a theory or a fact. There is also data to suggest that rises in CO2 levels actually follows a rise in temperatures, rather than the other way around. And if the idea that CO2 causes warming turns out to be credible, there is still a question about whether man’s contribution is significant enough to have anything more than a negligible effect on overall climate temperatures.
Once again, I don’t have time to sit here and debate the global warming hoax with you. There’s plenty of evidence contradicting it available on the Internet so I don’t need to repeat it all. If you don’t like the site I cited above then just Google it. Start with ‘global warming hoax.’ That should lead to plenty of scientific evidence and plenty of actual debate about the issue rather than the squelching of debate with words like ‘denier’ and ‘consensus’ (which is an attempt to marginalize anyone who disagrees.)
December 26th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Why are you so nutty? You are debating and refuting science that is widely accepted.
December 26th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Goodbye, maggie. You are a troll.
December 28th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
For those of you concerned about me banning a second person from this site, here’s maggie’s response:
http://i.feedtacoma.com/chrism39/crazy-5-views/
This “strangely satisfied” her? I guess that’s what she was after the whole time. Maybe to her it’s a badge of honor to obnoxious and disruptive. Now I regret responding to her as if she was making serious comments when she was just trying to cause problems.
And maggie did try to post under another name. I didn’t allow it. But I guess that settles the issue maggie raised about herself in her post.
Some of the other comments on maggies blog post are pretty amazing. Some of them assume that they know how I have come to hold my beliefs. I’m pretty certain that I’ve never met these people and I know I that I haven’t made any public statements about how my beliefs were formed. So how could they possibly know? Are they ‘psychic’?
It’s amazing how in the same breath they can criticize someone for not checking the facts and also jump to unfounded conclusions. Does that qualify as hypocrisy?
And to anyone who lives in this area and suffered from the snowfall last week let me pose a few questions. How often is the weather forecast wrong about tomorrow or next week and yet we listen to these guys about the next century? Are we even able to change the weather on a global scale considering the impact of the sun’s radiation on a system as complex as Earth’s ecosphere? Should we be spending billions in tax dollars and billions more in the private sector caused by ‘green’ regulations when there is any question at all about whether we’re changing the weather? Are you going to let them redefine what they’re saying by calling it ‘global climate change’ so that they don’t have to face the embarrassment of the facts that piled up several inches in this area?
Isn’t it time you questioned ‘global warming’?