January 31, 2009
A Conclusion for All Evidence
The article quotes scientist after scientist declaring that "this means we must act quickly," but it seems to me a forced reaction to the new information:
Many damaging effects of climate change are already basically irreversible, researchers declared Monday, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000."People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.
Solomon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., is lead author of an international team's paper reporting irreversible damage from climate change, being published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
She defines "irreversible" as change that would remain for 1,000 years even if humans stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere immediately.
I take that to suggest that climate change (broadly speaking) is a long-term process to which no short-term contributions will have immediate effects. If that conclusion has an effect on policy, it ought to make our steps more measured, because irreversibility is not a threshold, in this case, but a degree. It's not no problem versus perpetual problem; the problem merely grows until it crosses an arbitrary line of really-bad-ness, and wreaking drastic changes to our short-term economy would cause immediate harm to the global community.
It doesn't much matter to a starving family whether the condition persists for 50 years or 1,000.
Every time I hear about this 'global' warming fantasy, a YouTube video of Al Gore going ka-ching comes to mind.
The earth was once a ball of molten hot cosmic dust particles that slowly cooled into what we have now. I don't hear anyone complaining about that irreversible climate change.
I wish I could remember the name of the the AMS guy who debunked global warming and explained how this 'irreversible sky is falling' hysteria came to be. It was all about keeping the fund money spigot open.
In the 60's, we were taught in science class all about the normal heat/cool cycles that occurred on a rather rhythmic basis every 30, 150 and 1500 years.
A few months ago, I read where some legislator wanted to place a one-time $125 emissions tax per cow for their contribution to reducing the ozone layer.
Phew! Pardon me, I just contributed $0.000000000000000000001 to the emissions tax.
Posted by: Roland at January 31, 2009 9:46 AMGlobal warming is a hoax.
20 years ago it was "global cooling".
Then we had algore's "global warming". Except that the planet seems to be getting colder.
So ... then came "climate change".
Now "irreversible climate change".
The only thing humans (and algore)should get credit for is continuing to rename cosmic phenomena.
It would figure that we won't be able to tell whether or not what we do now will affect the future climate for 1000 years. So I guess we'll just have to take their word for it. Anybody want to buy a bridge?
Posted by: bobc at January 31, 2009 5:27 PMWhy listen to the National Academy of Sciences when we have our carpenter.
Posted by: Phil at February 1, 2009 11:23 AMOh, don't take Justin's word for it, Phil. By no means.
Below are 650 scientists (not a carpenter among them) who are highly skeptical of AGW.
Add to that list the founder of the Weather Channel as well as Dr. William Gray, hurricane expert. Dr. Gray is predicting global cooling. See second link below. In terms of temperature trend, I sure hope he's wrong and Al Gore is correct.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080304113132.aspx
Global warming due to anthropogenic CO2 is a massive exaggeration of a miniscule effect of not more than 1 degree with a CO2 doubling, that is yet to be measured and is dwarfed by natural cycle variations anyway.
The lesson to be learned is to understand how ideological and/or financial interests were able to create a boogeyman (CO2) and hijack the noble cause of good-hearted environmentalists. The aiders and abetters were the folks like Maurice Strong (ex UN), Al Gore, and worst of all, Government funded "scientists" and a few prominent "professional" organizations milking the grant money stream. The MSM probably got succored in, as the topic is complex, but they then became conscious abetters.
One lesson, would be to require full transparency of data and methods (due diligence) before making catastrophic economic policy like cap and trade. Dr Hanson's NASA-GISS surface temperature raw data and methods are still not revealed, perhaps because virtually every adjustment makes warming worse and he can't explain it. Michael Mann's "Hockey stick" curve is a proven statistical fraud.
I suppose this lesson could have helped on the decision to go to war in Iraq, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage crisis, creation of unfathomably complex financial derivitives, and all the bailout funding bills that nobody reads.
Posted by: Garacka at April 13, 2009 10:51 PM