Here's a great Newsweek article by a professor of meteorology at MIT. He comments on the global warming hysteria fueled by people who have no idea what they're talking about...hello Sheryl Crow, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore and probably everyone in the EU.
For whatever reason, the link feature isn't working so you'll have to cut and past this address. It's worth it though.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/
They don't know what they're talking about, though they've done tons of research? Ooooookay.
ReplyDeleteAnd exactly what research have YOU done on this subject? Just curious.
My thanks to Marsha for her edifying post. . .
ReplyDeleteFor a better understanding of what James knows about global warming she could start with the 2-3 other posts that can be found on this blog. Additionally, I believe he has an article or two on the subject published elsewhere.
By the way, I would love to see some evidence of the "tons of research" Crow, Dicaprio, et al. have actually conducted. Could it be that they are opining based on what they have read or what someone else has told them?! And does that mean that James could be doing the same thing but reaching a different conclusion?! My goodness man has an intellect! But seriously, your point about research is irrelevant, misplaced, and skirting the limits of an ad hominem attack.
AND even my favorite lesbian-feminist-fallen-away-Catholic-Democrat Camille Paglia has come out against this hoary notion of global warning.
She writes:
"As a native of upstate New York, whose dramatic landscape was carved by the receding North American glacier 10,000 years ago, I have been contemplating the principle of climate change since I was a child. Niagara Falls, as well as the even bigger dry escarpment of Clark Reservation near Syracuse, is a memento left by the glacier. So is nearby Green Lakes State Park, with its mysteriously deep glacial pools. When I was 10, I lived with my family at the foot of a drumlin — a long, undulating hill of murrain formed by eddies of the ancient glacier melt.
I am a skeptic about what is currently called global warming. I have been highly suspicious for years about the political agenda that has slowly accrued around this issue. As a lapsed Catholic, I detest dogma in any area. Too many of my fellow Democrats seem peculiarly credulous at the moment, as if, having ground down organized religion into nonjudgmental, feel-good therapy, they are hungry for visions of apocalypse. From my perspective, virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved.
Climate change, keyed to solar cycles, is built into Earth’s system. Cooling and warming will go on forever. Slowly rising sea levels will at some point doubtless flood lower Manhattan and seaside houses everywhere from Cape Cod to Florida — as happened to Native American encampments on those very shores. Human habitation is always fragile and provisional. People will migrate for the hills, as they have always done."
Now Marsha, can YOU provide something of substance to this discussion.
Just curious. ;)
I'll be happy to, once I get home from work.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to get into the religious angle, if I may; that seems to be a favorite argument of many people who are convinced that global warming is just another liberal politics agenda & is antithetical to the Judeo-Christian teachings.
Which is, quite frankly, remarkably silly.
To clarify my first post, the "tons of research" comment was not in reference to entertainers like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sheryl Crow, but rather experts who hold views opposite those of James or the MiT researcher who wrote this article. What makes their views invalid?
ReplyDeleteI'll start with Paglia's quote; she writes nothing with which I'm unfamiliar - or, for that matter, with which I disagree. Shocked? LOL
My issues with this subject have less to do with the idea of global warming itself than it does with humankind's casual dismissal of the environment around us. It's absolute folly to claim that we can't do a damn thing to stop this. For the first time in millions of years of history, we ARE capable. So why don't we do something?
The answer is something far more complicated than one's political leanings, I gather.
i posted this info for you weirdos before. Read it and weep. Global warming IS a problem!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDelete1: Rank of 2005 as hottest year on record
(tied with 1998), according to NASA.
100%: Increase in intensity and duration
of hurricanes and tropical storms
since the 1970's, according to a 2005 MIT study.
100 Billion: Estimate of damage caused by
hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast in
2005 alone, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
2030 Year by which Glacier National Park will have no glaciers left, according to the U.S. Geological Survey predictions.
400,000: Square miles of Arctic sea ice that have melted
in the last 30 years (roughly the size of Texas), threatening polar bear habitats and further accelerating global warming worldwide, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
15-37%: Amount of plant and animal species that global warming could wipe out by 2050.
1: Rank of the United States as a global warming polluter
compared to other large nations.
6: Number of former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leaders who say the U.S. is not doing enough to fight global warming.
0: Number of bills passed by Congress to cut global
warming pollution.
Dave, I think James addressed those numbers adequately in a previous post.
ReplyDeleteMarsha, I am not sure that I fully understand the doctrinaire religious position against global warming [GW] that you describe, although I know that there are some out there (mostly in the religious right I imagine) that have some sort of scary eschatological support of GW; i.e., floods & natural disasters are supposed to accompany the second coming ergo GW is good. If you or anybody else can lay out the premise you mention I would love to get into it, but my speculation won’t do us any good in considering the ‘religious angle.’
“What makes their views invalid?”
Your point is well taken. And as far as those who are gravely worried are concerned, the roots of the global warming [GW] fears run deep and are likely to be around for a while. However, their position has the advantage of not being readily falsifiable in our lifetimes; only future humans, who will have the perspective of centuries, will know for certain whether the current warming trend is abnormal. The brightest scientific minds in the world disagree about what the data means. So when you say that we can stop it, the question becomes, “What is IT?”
The sanest course for us would be to gain what limited perspective we can (remembering the global cooling alarm of a generation ago) and to proceed CAUTIOUSLY. We are going through a scare with many causes, and we need to step back from it, take a long second look at the scientific evidence, and not do anything rash. Though the alarmists claim otherwise (hello Vice President Gore), the science concerning global warming is certainly not settled. It is possible that the case for anthropogenic warming will not hold up, and that the earth is behaving as it has for millennia, with natural climate swings that have little to do with human activity.
“Ones Political Leanings”
While I generally agree with you when you say that this is beyond politics, we must be realistic. Stewardship of the earth is a virtue, and I think this is one of those few areas where conservative religious types and progressives can generally agree--No one should wantonly waste and destroy nature. However, approaching the issue becomes difficult because some of those we mentioned want to use GW as a way to influence legislation i.e. it all comes down to power. If we rashly try and ‘solve’ an issue we cannot understand we are simply allowing a new clique to gain political power. Does this matter? Well, yes, because as the anti-GW religious types know, with that progressive political clique come a lot of other abhorrent social policies. So maybe they are onto something after all!
Thanks for the comments everyone. Jason’s referral to our previous posts on the matter should be taken seriously. To spend time debunking rehashed talking-points would be a waste of everyone’s time. I would just like to remind people that the issue at hand is not global warming, per se. Rather, it is understanding the causes of that warming. The point is that noted MIT professors and NASA scientists, among others, argue that we simply cannot be certain that the rising temperatures are directly tied to rising levels of CO2. We can be certain that temperatures have been rising since the end of the last ice age and that certain periods of temperature increases occurred before the industrial revolution. We should also take note that the instruments used by global warming advocates to “predict” the climate in X number of years are notoriously unreliable, unable even to predict with certainty the weather for next week. And contrary to the caterwauling from the global warming crowd, studies from the U.S National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded unambiguously that there is absolutely no evidence that shows an increase in erratic weather patterns across the planet. And it’s worth repeating that only thirty years ago, the “experts” were stoking the flames of hysteria over the arrival of a new ice age.
ReplyDeleteI will be the first to confess that I am not a climatologist. But in every post I’ve made on the subject of global warming I have relied, not on confused celebrities or reports from political entities, but on the perspectives of SCIENTISTS who can claim enormous authority on the question. My comments may periodically add some rhetorical flare to the argument but they shouldn’t distract us from the substance of the points being made.
In short, I add my voice to that of University of Colorado Professor Bill Gray, who considers Al Gore a “gross alarmist.” Simply put, I will not allow doctored-up photos of “frightened” polar bears, stranded on allegedly melting icebergs, to serve as the prime impetus to join the bandwagon in a faux cause that gives people a misplaced sense of purpose.