Is Paris Burning?
By kmaher Posted in Archived — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I, like Al Gore, believe that global warming is the biggest threat civilized man has ever faced. Worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Che T-shirts combined.
I don't know why, or whether, Al Gore actually believes this. But here's my take on it: Global warming hysteria could lead to a massive overreaction on the part of Big Government, and Big Government Overreaction, as our forefathers could tell you, is just about the worst Worst Case Scenario you can imagine. I mean, when you talk about Big Government Overreaction, you're talking about Hitler, Stalin & Mao. Che, in my opinion, is grossly overrated.
But here's the deal, as Newsweek puts it: If you doubt man-made global warming, you're part of the problem. Well, I doubt man-made global warming. I also doubt that even if man-made global warming was real -- yes, I'm consciously avoiding the subjunctive "were"; it might be true! -- that there's anything we could do about it, as economist Robert Samuelson explains -- in Newsweek! -- except move to higher ground.
You might think that I don't think global warming is a big deal. You're right. I don't. Weather moves in cycles. I think we're at the high end of a cycle. I think that if we do absolutely nothing -- or better-worse yet, if every one of us goes out and buys a Hummer tomorrow and drives the hell out of it (I know that's unfair to Hummers; the H3 actually has a lower lifetime energy-use total than the Prius) -- that we'll soon tip over into the trough of the cycle. Five or 10 or 50 years from now, Newsweek's cover headline will be "Damn it's cold!"
I'm taking a while getting to the point, but I just think we all ought to lay our cards on the table. Knowwhatuhmean?
So while Newsweek was going to press, this guy was reverse-engineering NASA's temperature trends. He was reverse-engineering because the NASA dude principally involved -- one James Hansen, who makes news every time he claims the Bush Administration is trying to silence him -- won't release his data. Just as hockey-stick-guy wouldn't release his data. (This is a mortal sin in science-land. If you don't release your data, other people can't try to replicate your results. And if your results can't be replicated, you're basically selling cold fusion.)
And he found that NASA had a Y2K software bug. And that after the bug was fixed, we weren't as hot as we thought. 1998, previously advertised as the hottest year in the last millenia, was actually No. 2 to 1934. So it wasn't even the hottest year in the last century.
The conservative bloggers -- we move as a herd, you know -- have made a big deal about this. But I can see the global-warming-alarmist community saying, "So what? It's still pretty frickin' hot!"
But what really bothers me about this -- aside from the alarmists hiding their data -- is McIntyre's revelation, uncontested to my knowledge, that the United States, whose data I trust more than any other nation's, is averaging and adjusting temperature readings. That it's equating urban readings from 100 years ago with readings today from the same location. That it is, in other words, stacking the global warming deck with epidemiological imprecision.
If you don't know what I'm talking about here -- and really, why should you? -- suffice it to say that the U.S. government is manipulating its data and your emotions to the effect that you will agree to have your taxes raised by 50 percent over the next 10 years to address a problem that occurs naturally and is resistant to anthropogenic solution.
OK, maybe that was still a little cryptic. Let me put it this way: Man-made global warming is a hoax that could cost you 10 percent of your income over the next 50 years, if you live that long. Is it a price you're ready to pay?
Cross-posted at Can't See the Center.
That sums up why I believe James Hansen is Scott Thomas Beauchamp with a PhD.
James Hansen - Scott Thomas Beauchamp with a PhD.
on the matter of higher education:
BS- Bull***t
MS - More of the same
PhD - Piled higher and Deeper
Yeah, yeah, I know degree-envy and all that (I've only a BS) and I don't really believe it (except in this case), but I like the joke.
People with political agendas in this country learned a long time ago how to manipulate public opinion with bogus statistics repeated often and loudly enough through major media outlets.
Perhaps the best example are radical feminists, but the AGW acolytes are catching up fast. Of course, if you doubted any of the feminists' statistics at the time they were being trumpeted by the media, you were tantamount to a "denier" -- which meant you might be sick. And the Left does a good job at making people who question their "numbers" or ask independent-minded questions look "sick" -- just ask Lawrence Summers. Or better yet, ask me: I was a male feminist at the time the stats. on Superbowl Sunday were released, and I absolutely *would not countenance* any denial of those "facts" either.
At about the same time a very large media mailing was sent by Dobisky Associates, FAIR's publicists, warning at-risk women: "Don't remain at home with him during the game." The idea that sports fans are prone to attack their wives or girlfriends on that climatic day persuaded many men as well: Rober Lipsyte of the New York Times would soon be referring to the "Abuse Bowl."
Friday January 28. Lenore Walker, a Denver psychologist and author of "The Battered Woman", appeared on 'Good Morning America' claiming to have compiled a ten-year report showing a sharp increase in violent incidents against women on Super Bowl Sundays. Here, again, a representative from FAIR, Laura Flanders, was present to lend credibility to the claim.
Saturday, January 29. A story in the Boston Globe written by Lynda Gorov reported that women's shelters and hotlines are "flooded with more calls from victims [on Super Bowl Sunday] than on any other day of the year." Miss Gorov cited "one study of women's shelters out West" that "showed a 40 per cent climb in calls, a pattern advocates said is repeated nationwide, including Massachusetts."
Read the rest of the article and look at some of the very real similarities between AGW and other misleading "movements" of the Left from the recent past. It's not a scientific question any longer: It's a political movement, it's an advocacy movement, a cause celebre for Hollywood, and the latest secular religion.
Between the "movement" that has sprung up (or been built up, depending on how you look at it) around AGW and the movement to make people watching the Superbowl look like proto-batterers is that the latter was amenable to an exposition of the facts and the truth, whereas AGW is resistant to those expositions.
If the temperature goes up, it must be global warming. If the temperature drops in certain areas, that too must be the result of the unpredictable effects of global warming. If the temperature stays the same, it has to be that global warming is influencing the natural fluctuations in the climate. The politicians who are trying to milk this movement for everything it's worth know that very well: it's a conjecture that's impossible to refute, one that has moved from the realm of science into the realm of competing narratives. And in that domain, the only thing that matters is emotion.
This wasn't an accident: Al Gore did that on purpose.
was that NASA began to rewrite their database, making unannounced corrections, after the bug was discovered.
Kinda like hiding the results of votes by the House of Representatives. or...
But much like the surge in Iraq, the corrections don't really change the argument. It's still hot, there is still CO2, and mankind is still the greatest danger to humanity.
It is just another avenue for the left to grab power. I wonder how our guys for the GOP nomination stand? It will matter to me.
"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."
John Paul Jones (letter to M. Le Ray de Chaumont,16 Nov.1778)
from level 0 to level 6 would be in order. Joe Barton just might have the rocks to call for it, if anyone would back him.
James Hansen - Scott THomas Beauchamp with a PhD.
Socrates already wrote the second half of this diary...a big deal about nothing, that's sure has gotten everyone excited. What is this about Y2K? Who made that part up?
Here's Michael Mann's hockey-stick data, which by the way has been independently verified by at least 8 separate studies including a major one National Academy of Sciences (another group to put on your hit list).
On your 4th paragraph, think a little deeper. What causes weather (I think you mean climate) to move in cycles? And which of these mechanisms are present today? Climate doesn't just change cause it wants to.
50% tax increases! Wow, that is scary - who's suggesting that one?
These conspiracy ridden global warming diaries are getting more alarmist by the hour. How about taking a collective deep breath...it's getting to be a little like Kos around here.
I'd really like to hear Al Gore try to explain to his audience without having them fall asleep what the
Multitaper spectral analysis which provides an optimally low-variance, high-resolution spectral estimate.
Of the Mann & Lees Taper Method.
Before he goes and starts calling it the Most Frightening Story He's Ever Told!
If something happened seen as critical of GW science, and it wasn't blogged about 4 times, reaching #1 recommended 3 times on RS, would GW be true?
Do people not realize that this is the exact same story you've already seen multiple times, the exact same data fix? I'm just wondering what other kind of story would be so lasting, I don't even think Clinton in a blouse would do the trick.
The OP does jump straight to the government conspiracy aspect though, so I guess there is some evolution.
-jb
Would the New York Times talk about it? They have a lot more money than RedState does, and they talk about it incessantly.
It's a much bigger story for the Times than a Clinton Blouse was.
They have more than 10 pages of articles about Global Warming. Don't you think they're a little obsessed?
I'm not saying there are overly many blogs about global warming. I'm saying there are overly many blogs about this one single incident. It's the difference between the NYT having four straight days of front page stories on immigration, and the NYT having four straight days of front page stories about one immigrant.
I'm just not sure that people realize that these four blogs (so far!) have been about this same temperature correction.
-jb
I'm saying there are overly many blogs about this one single incident. It's the difference between the NYT having four straight days of front page stories on immigration, and the NYT having four straight days of front page stories about one immigrant.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
This IS the point. When the left bangs the drum, it's 47 front page stories on an issue that can be properly summarized in a few paragraphs.
I think people recommend this stuff so much because it seems to fall on deaf ears...
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
Technically that's not true. This blog simply includes that temperature correction as a line item in a series of points. The fact that others have mentioned it shouldn't preclude it's inclusion in future topics. I'm usually one of the first to spit on blue interlopers in this red state, but I do actually, somewhat, see what it is you are saying, a little.
However, does it really matter? It doesn't speak to any broader point, especially when considering the sheer number of different blogs that appear on ANY given topic. Right? I mean, did you do a name for name comparison of the recommenders? Some have favorite authors. There are any number of books on George Washington, however I prefer Richard Brookhiser's superb offering.
Frankly, and this is heresy no matter what color your state, I find the topic of global warming surpassingly dull ... I know. I must hate earth. Or truth. I must hate something right? Anyway, it does mean I do have a rare, small bit of sympathy for what you are saying.
But really what does it matter how many recommended blogs there are on the topic? What conclusion can you draw from that fact? None as far I am concerned.
...
And anyway, Newsweek started it.
is to make money off the global warming craze like any other craze. There really is nothing else I can think to do. So I buy stock in Monsanto (ethanol) and Chinese solar power companies. Of course, I still by oil companies, because they will always make money and be underrated at times, like tobacco companies.
I agree that in the end global warming hysteria will waste trillions of dollars and stunt the growth of us all. But we do not have a too much of a choice. The less educated will always outnumber the educated, and the over educated will always manipulate the uneducated.
In a world that is so far from perfect, imperfect left town on the last bus, I will try to do the best for my own while dealing with many who have no clue.
Molon Labe!