Redstate

With my luck, a cloud shall now come out of the East, and darkness will cover the land.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

late Aug-mid October generally is the busiest time of the season. After all, that is when we got Katrina, Rita, and Wilma last year.

However, by this date in 2005, we had already seen 10 named storms, four of which strengthened into hurricanes. This year we've seen 3 named storms of which none strengthened into hurricanes.

If global warming were actually the cause for increased hurricane activity, I think the graph should be pointing the other direction. Or did we all of a sudden hit a little cooling trend that decreased hurricane activity?

Global warming just makes no sense.

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

"Or did we all of a sudden hit a little cooling trend that decreased hurricane activity?"

There's an upcoming article in the Geophysics Letters journal that shows how the earth lost 20% of the heat energy that had been built up over the last 150 years to planetary radiation into the vaccuum of space over the last 3 years. Something to do with upper-atmospheric cloud formations...

Due in the same journal is a report of the new temperature-gauging equipment that's being used in the Antarctic providing data that is Significantly different on the historic temperatures of that continent than have been previously released. Basically, Antarctica has remained the same temperature for the last several thousand years...

I can't wait for it to come out.

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

There's an upcoming article in the Geophysics Letters journal that shows how the earth lost 20% of the heat energy that had been built up over the last 150 years to planetary radiation into the vaccuum of space over the last 3 years. Something to do with upper-atmospheric cloud formations...

I expect to find stuff like this. The very fact that the Earth has not frozen over, or boiled off the oceans in lo these many millions of years, ought to tell us that there are systems in place that keep the mean temperature within a fairly narrow band.

We simply do not understand the climate system well enough to model all the things that are going on. It ought to be obvious that there exists some mechanism — even if we haven't been around long enough to see it in action — that releases excess heat when necessary. I agree that until we do see it, it might make sense to chew our nails over Global Warming. But I'm glad to hear somebody went looking for such a system, because that was always going to be a better answer than still more human meddling. Just because we can detect that we might be hosing things up with our fossil fuel usage, it does not follow that we know the proper steps to counteract that. By this time (as appears to be happening) other systems may have come into play, and any reverse meddling we do will actually make things worse. The one thing that drives me nuts about the Global Warming proponents is their arrogance in assuming that we know where the 'undo' button is on the Earth's menu. They seem oblivious to the fact that the Earth has been through a lot of changes over the years, and it may well have automatic 'undo.'

But then, most of us suspect that the whole Global Warming thing is less about climate than it is about a bunch of self-appointed do-gooders whose mission in life is to tell everyone else what to do... for their own good. When they aren't telling us to ride mass transit instead of driving, these same people are telling us what to eat, how to breathe, when to stand up and when to sit down. They know everything; just ask them.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

You know I have often wondered about this. The whole controversy is really about a half a degree rise over 100 years? right? well, what kind of equipment was being used 100 years ago to measure the temperature around the world? what kind of baseline has been established? even 50 years ago?

I especially wonder what "margin of error" has been established for these things? I would think that it is quite possible that a half a degree over a 100 year span IS the margin of error. If you take that into account it could actually be getting colder.

I don't really know. I'm not a geophysicist, so when the journal Does come out and I get my copy, I probably won't understand Half of what is being discussed in it. But it Will make me feel good and smart and even make me Look smart with a copy of it on my desk...
Anyway, i found out about it on one Fox's local radio stations... WRTA1240...

"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself

Dunno what I was thinking - Hurricane Season ends on 11/30, so that's a lot more than 6 weeks. We're about halfway through it right now.

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

...the "overall trend" was itself a cyclical phenomenon? I believe everyone here understands that weather patterns are cyclical and that our hurricanes come from the Atlantic. We are not the ones who bombarded the public with the ominous prospect of Atlantic hurricanes as harbingers of Global Warming. We are just having fun watching you play Twister on your template as this hurricane season seems to be spinning you some serious contortions. Glad to see some flexibility on Anthropogenic Global Warming, though.

I for one look at the GW debate with a pretty open mind. I do think that we need to look further into this matter before we can make any sort of sound policy decisions.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people on both sides of this debate that wish to make political hay out of the matter.

Anyone who is saying definitively, one way or the other, that the recent hurricanes are or are not being affected by global warming are speaking with an agenda.

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." George Bernard Shaw

Nobody on the nonbeliever side wants to "make political hay out of the matter"... they want the issue to disappear. So, no, the people who wish to make political hay out of this are the enviros/anti-industrialization/anti-business types who would like to see draconian governmental regulations put in place.

You can't trust anybody on this subject, on either side. Everyone is grinding a political ax. Global Warming is the best excuse Statists have ever thought up for why they should be allowed to tell everybody else what to do. They are salivating at the prospect of having governmental force at their disposal to regulate everyone's life down to what time they can get up in the morning. That is why 'the right' appears so opposed to the idea. It's not the Global Warming per se, it's the obviously statist agenda of those promoting it.

As soon as we see "scientists" moving beyond here's what's happening into here are the policies we should adopt, we have left science behind and are into political proselytizing. At that point, the "science" has to be labeled "Caution: may contain bunk."

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

That first paragraph of yours is a pretty wild statement. So you think that there are a bunch of Leftist salivating over being able to control your life?

Do you oppose the laws that were implemented that combated acid rain, rather effectively I might add? How bout the laws that banned chloroflouracarbons? Were they part of the Statist agenda as well?

I completely agree with the 2nd statement. Scientists should stay out of politics if they wish the be considered worthwhile scientists.

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." George Bernard Shaw

is not a wise choice of example since that myth was debunked after a ludicrous government sponsored study costing $500 million. By the way banning CFC's hasn't had any affect on the ozone hole at all. Since it fluxuates back and forth naturally there has not been any real decline at all. Lately its been getting larger.

Though it was written back in the mid-90s Aaron Wildavsky's But Is It True? A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues has a very good synopsis of the results of that $500 million study of the effects of acid rain (chapter 9). As royalcon1 noted, the study essentially debunked the entire acid rain mythology, though its press coverage would never have given that fact away.

An interesting tidbit regarding that study comes from my personal observations of the process whereby the official and final executive summary of that $500 million study (the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program or NAPAP) was written. The head of the project, an eminent geochemist who probably should have known better than to get himself into such a position vis-à-vis Congress, wrote an elegant executive summary which very nicely summed up the results of the project. He started the project as a believer in the acid rain myth. However, he actually wrestled with the results of the study. In the end, he explained in gory detail how the data laid out in the 13 "State-of-the-Science" volumes that the project had published up to that point (1990) showed that continued emissions of sulfur dioxide and other acid rain-producing compounds posed little or no measurable threat to lakes, forests, or anything else for that matter in North America. What damage they could do had already been done. The lakes and forests that were not already 'acidified' would most likely never be so as a result of human actions. In short, the head of NAPAP concluded that acid rain was a complete non-issue.

In a stunningly political move, this executive director was sacked. A new director was carefully chosen. A new executive summary was written that better fit Congress' agenda for this $500 million study and that avoided the unfortunate problems raised by all that data Congress had paid to gather. However, the 13 volumes remain available as a testament to the accuracy of the initial (no longer available) summary, for all who are masochistic enough to wade through them.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. -G.K. Chesterton

This is a tongue-in-cheek question, yes?

"So you think that there are a bunch of Leftist salivating over being able to control your life?"

IF it isnt, then, well, yes, there are. Lets just pick out the most public:

Barabara Streisand
Al Gore
Arianna Huffington and Norman Lear

all pop to mind as leftists trying to tell us how to go without from their mansions and private jets. Then you can list pretty much every D legislator and many R ones as well.

As for all environmental laws, nobody is saying we should get rid of those. But you cant say there arent overreaching envirnmental laws.

I'm not very keen about CAFE standards, invasive species legislation, wetlands commissions who dont want their neighbor building on the "wetlands" nextdoor when they dont stop to think that their property was probably once wetlands itself.

I have a problem with uneducated legislators like ones in a local California town that heard that CO2 is causing global warming so they wanted to ban CO2 from their town...until someone explained the obvious problem with that.

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Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words...-Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes

of hot air, though? :)

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.