Obama Says Climate Change Is Harming Americans' Health 304
HughPickens.com writes: The Washington Post reports on new comments from President Obama, who says global warming isn't just affecting the weather — it's harming Americans' health. He has announced steps government and businesses will take to better understand and deal with the problem. Obama said hazards of the changing climate include wildfires sending more pollution into the air, allergy seasons growing longer, and rising cases of insect-borne diseases. "We've got to do better in protecting our vulnerable families," said Obama. "You can't cordon yourself off from air."
Speaking at Howard University Medical School, Obama announced commitments from Google, Microsoft and others to help the nation's health system prepare for a warmer, more erratic climate. Google has promised to donate 10 million hours of advanced computing time on new tools, including risk maps and early warnings for things like wildfires and oil flares using the Google Earth Engine platform, the White House said. Google's camera cars that gather photos for its "Street View" function will start measuring methane emissions and natural gas leaks in some cities this year. Microsoft's research arm will develop a prototype for drones that can collect large quantities of mosquitoes, then digitally analyze their genes and pathogens. The goal is to create a system that could provide early warnings about infectious diseases that could break out if climate change worsens.
Speaking at Howard University Medical School, Obama announced commitments from Google, Microsoft and others to help the nation's health system prepare for a warmer, more erratic climate. Google has promised to donate 10 million hours of advanced computing time on new tools, including risk maps and early warnings for things like wildfires and oil flares using the Google Earth Engine platform, the White House said. Google's camera cars that gather photos for its "Street View" function will start measuring methane emissions and natural gas leaks in some cities this year. Microsoft's research arm will develop a prototype for drones that can collect large quantities of mosquitoes, then digitally analyze their genes and pathogens. The goal is to create a system that could provide early warnings about infectious diseases that could break out if climate change worsens.
wildfires? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wildfires? (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't mean it's not a reason for concern.
Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Insightful)
It means it's a made-up problem. "Climate change is causing wildfires" is a red-herring: a lot of wildlife depends on fires to survive. Some tree seeds don't grow if they're not set fire to first; and the growth and spread of various species of underbrush rely on underbrush clearing every few years, historically done by wildfires.
We have fewer wildfires now due to suppression efforts, which we've scaled back massively because we realized suppressing wildfires is a really fucking bad idea. Global Wargarbling isn't causing wildfires, isn't increasing the amount of wildfire pollution in the air, and isn't threatening people by mechanisms spawned from wildfires.
This kind of spouting makes the President sound dangerously uneducated. We're lead to question more things: what is this lengthening of the allergy season, and how is it different from living in the South? Are we only concerned about half of the United States?
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All politicians are anti-science (Score:2)
At least when the science doesn't unambiguously support the position they've taken to make their constituents happy.
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"He's no uneducated, he's just anti-science."
I can't help but to read this in a Cletus accent.
Possible Misinterpretation [Re:wildfires?] (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps another way to say what he did is that communities and their populations have gradually adapted to their local environment by either infrastructure, or by natural "filtering" whereby those who couldn't tolerate local conditions moved elsewhere.
What climate change is doing is changing these "familiar" conditions and creating situations that didn't exist or were rarer before per given spot.
It seems you interpreted his speech as claiming the total "mass" of climate-related problems is increasing. Rather, I interpret it as saying the kinds of problems are being shuffled around from their "usual" spot, catching more unprepared. The total number of cards is roughly the same, but the deck is being shuffled.
Those used to dry weather may now have more floods. Those used to wet weather may now have more droughts. Those used to warm weather may now have more cold days. Those used to cool weather may now have more sweltering days. Etc.
Re:wildfires? (Score:4, Informative)
California is experiencing the worst drought (ever, perhaps). It is so bad, they are starting to ration water consumption. Scientific studies indicate climate change is real (unless you live in the USA), so in all likelihood the severe drought is an effect of climate change. And dry land causes fires easily. Ergo Climate change -> drought -> wildfires.
How is that simple deduction a red-herring?
Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Insightful)
Empirically, we have fewer wildfires than historically; those we do have are less severe than historical wildfires. The worst wildfires come after a wet season, as there's more vegetative growth to dry out and catch fire. These are known.
Your argument is that some theoretical connection between dryness and fire exists, and so there must be more fires now because there's a drought. You're ignoring the real facts, including counts of wildfires and the severity of those wildfires, as well as wildfire behavior.
Someone also mentioned tree ring cores indicate a major drought every 500-ish years, so the current drought is probably the worst in about 500 years, but not necessarily the worst drought ever. 500 years is a long time, though.
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Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Interesting)
It means it's a made-up problem. "Climate change is causing wildfires" is a red-herring: a lot of wildlife depends on fires to survive. Some tree seeds don't grow if they're not set fire to first; and the growth and spread of various species of underbrush rely on underbrush clearing every few years, historically done by wildfires.
We have fewer wildfires now due to suppression efforts, which we've scaled back massively because we realized suppressing wildfires is a really fucking bad idea. Global Wargarbling isn't causing wildfires, isn't increasing the amount of wildfire pollution in the air, and isn't threatening people by mechanisms spawned from wildfires.
This kind of spouting makes the President sound dangerously uneducated. We're lead to question more things: what is this lengthening of the allergy season, and how is it different from living in the South? Are we only concerned about half of the United States?
Another interpretation is that particulates from wildfires were a major health hazard pre-20th century, but no one cared because there were a million major health hazards. Since then we've gained the ability to strike a proper balance between fire suppression and controlled burns for ecosystem management. But now climate change means dryer, less healthy forests that make fire suppression much more difficult. Thus wildfire pollution is becoming a larger problem than it has been for recent history.
Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't mean it's not a reason for concern.
It may be a concern, or it may not, but the burden of evidence is on those who advocate spending public money. We have had a lot of alarmism about climate change, and while it has generated short term concern, in the long run it has eroded public support as the alarmist predictions fail to materialize. Advocates of climate change action should stop the shrill rhetoric, and focus on rebuilding their credibility. AGW is a serious problem, in my opinion, but we are failing to address it because the issue has been hijacked by people with other agendas.
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It may be a concern, or it may not, but the burden of evidence is on those who advocate spending public money.
If climate change is causing damage, it will also require spending public money to fix and adapt, and probably more because it means there's less time to take the proper action. By that argument, the burden of evidence is on those who advocate nothing is happening.
Advocates of climate change action should stop the shrill rhetoric
Most of them are very reasonable, but the over-the-top vocal ones are the ones that make the press. That's how it always goes. Drama sells papers. On the other side, there's also a very vocal group (with other agendas) that claim the world isn't w
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If climate change is causing damage, it will also require spending public money to fix and adapt, and probably more because it means there's less time to take the proper action. By that argument, the burden of evidence is on those who advocate nothing is happening.
By that logic, I hereby demand that the Blorks from the stealth planet Snicklefritz are invading human minds from their transmission stations in the Oort Cloud. Only $really_exensive_solution will solve the problem, and only I and my select group of cohorts can implement it.
You have 6 months to provide evidence that I am wrong, or pay up.
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The difference is that there is well-documented evidence of climate change and its damage, and not of your made-up example.
Also note that the announced studies are to learn more about the exact damage. Thus, there is reason to believe there is a problem, but not enough is known, so the studies are trying to learn more.
To me this sounds like a pretty good investment of public money: useful science is done, and it is a defensive move against climate change. What's not to like here?
Re:wildfires? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true. None of the claimed very expensive fallouts of climate change have come to fruition. So they remain mere speculation. Even if you can prove global warming is occurring, you can't prove the damage. For all you know, the beneficial outcomes could outweigh the negatives. It's all speculation.
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Perhaps the problem is the hyperbolic overstatement of predictions by climate science denial leaders or even unscientific people on the alarmist side rather than the actual predictions of scientists. I find most of the actual scientific predictions to be on the conservative side.
Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Interesting)
LA resident here. We're in a middle of a drought that's worse than the great depression dust bowl. My house is basically surrounded by kindling right now. the risk from wildfires is extraordinarily high. there were really bad fires last summer and there was a steady drizzle of ash onto the entire city. I would say that climate change is threatening my health.
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Of note is that climate change doesn't cause wildfires, lightening does or more commonly people do.
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You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.
Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.
Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.
GIGO.
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Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Informative)
You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.
Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.
Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.
GIGO.
Do you have citations for that? I did a search for agw predictions california rainfall [google.com] and the first hit I got (and the only relevant one I saw) was an article about a 2005 paper predicting a very similar drought [thinkprogress.org].
It's only one paper and I have no idea whether it was widely accepted, but if you asked me a few years ago what AGW meant for California rainfall my very limited understanding would have lead me to say less rainfall.
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You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.
Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.
Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.
GIGO.
A recent study [scpr.org] by the University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found that while the amount of precipitation wasn't unusually low for a drought the intense heat was. That causes increased soil and plant evapotranspiration leaving the soil dryer making the the worst drought in the past 1,200 years. The intense heat is easier to connect to AGW.
Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Informative)
Because Climate Change stopped the controlled burns and built houses in wildfire prone areas.
And worse than the Dust Bowl? I'm afraid not. [livescience.com]
Most of California's problems are caused by California.
Rice fields in the desert (Score:5, Insightful)
"Most of California's problems are caused by California."
This. There are droughts, and periods with lots of rain. That's nature, and has diddly-squat to do with climate change.
As for the water problems: You do know that the Sacramento Valley is basically pretty arid, getting between 5 and 20 cm of rain per year. And yet, California has 2000 square kilometers of rice fields in this area, using 7 cubic kilometers of water per year for irrigation. Those are the back-of-the-envelope numbers I come up with based on the publicly available information. The almond groves are also reputed to use a whole lot of water, but I haven't run the number for them.
You can't solve the rainfall problems easily, but if you want to solve the water-availability problems, it's easy: let water be bought and soid like any other commodity. Raising rice in the desert while crying about a water shortage is just brain-dead stupid, and only possible because the cost of the water is kept artificially low by government regulations and subsidies.
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You would?
So, I gather you have some evidence that the current drought is caused by "climate change"?
Last I checked, this drought is a "500-year drou
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Last I checked, this drought is a "500-year drought"
How does one check such a thing ?
Re:wildfires? (Score:5, Informative)
Tree rings, for starters. There are species of trees that have lived that long, at least one of which happens to be in California [wikipedia.org] (look up the Bristlecone Pine - there are two verified trees that have lived well beyond 5,000 years and counting). It wouldn't be too much to take a core sample and do some checking. Relatively thin rings mean drought years, fat ones mean wet years.
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I don't dispute that there are regular droughts, but I'm wondering how that helps to find the cause of this particular one. I don't believe there's a 500-year clock mechanism somewhere that is responsible for triggering them.
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I don't dispute that there are regular droughts, but I'm wondering how that helps to find the cause of this particular one. I don't believe there's a 500-year clock mechanism somewhere that is responsible for triggering them.
You misunderstand what "500-year drought" means. The 500 years is a mean interval between such droughts, not a fixed value. It doesn't mean there's some mechanism that causes a drought every 500 years, or even about every 500 years.
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Re:wildfires? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, we do have records going back to 1500 and even earlier. They're called "tree rings". The North American Drought Atlas [columbia.edu] collected tree ring data from across the US to understand tree growth patterns over the last 200 years. See, when there's a big drought, trees don't grow much and their rings are close together. When it's a good year the tree grows a lot and rings are farther apart.
So yes, there's a historical record, and yes, this drought is really really bad. Also, this drought isn't over yet so we don't know how bad it will continue to be. The drought to-date is a 500 year drought, but by the time it ends, it could be a 2000 year drought!
Obama's point is that the effects of climate change are being felt right now and are directly impacting human health. So while a warmer period (a couple degrees) doesn't necessarily hurt health wildfires caused by drought caused by climate change does.
This point is extraordinarily relevant because it ties into the current EPA coal court case going on. The case states that EPA exceeded its mandate. EPA is supposed to regulate pollutants that harm people's health. The coal people argue that even if climate change is real and may have an impact in hundreds of years, CO2 emissions are not harming people's health today and so fall out of the EPA mandate. Obama is saying otherwise.
-Andrew
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LA resident here. We're in a middle of a drought that's worse than the great depression dust bowl. My house is basically surrounded by kindling right now. the risk from wildfires is extraordinarily high. there were really bad fires last summer and there was a steady drizzle of ash onto the entire city. I would say that climate change is threatening my health.
No, your stupid choice to live in a Hot area that has a history of water problems.
I live in Seattle, I am not surrounded by kindling, it's nice and green around here. I choose to live in a place that doesn't have a rich problem And by rich problem, I mean have a small portion of the population wasting most the water, either on lawns, pools or stupid products like Almonds that use a large amount of water and give a better profit then real food.
See I choose not to be a dumb fuck and live in a state that i
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Our chicks > your chicks.
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See I choose not to be a dumb fuck and live in a state that is going to fall in the ocean if it doesn't burn to death before then.
It's the wrong kind of fault for that.
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So I agree entirely with your sentiment, except I chuckled when you wrote that you live in Seattle.
What's funny about that is Seattle is also full of rich dumb people that make dumb decisions.
If you've done the Seattle underground history tour, you know that Seattle basically sunk into the sound long ago. The whole city history is replete with stories of stupid people that fought nature and lost.
Recently, the highway 99 project comes to mind :)
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Not to mention that if Rainier decides to blow its top, a good amount of the area around Seattle will be pretty fucked.
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See I choose not to be a dumb fuck and live in a state that is going to fall in the ocean if it doesn't burn to death before then. And because I choose better then you, I am going to make fun of you for your stupid fucking decision.
And the winner of the most insufferable little twat award goes to...
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LOL. You should learn a bit about the Geology in the area.
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Ok everybody, off to the Great NorthWest! We'll try to prioritize the first few million for you, but you'll have to handle the millions afterwards by yourselves.
Lot's of humans like to migrate. Thanks for the invitation!
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the risk from wildfires is extraordinarily high.
Drought lowers the severity of wildfires. Plenty of winter rain, means plenty of tall vegetation, which then dries out in the summer, and burns ferociously in the fall. The worst California wildfires have followed wet winters. The drought makes wildfires a year round concern, but the fires are less severe, and easier to control.
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I grew up in Southern CA.
It has three seasons...Winter, Rain and Mudslide season and Fire season.
Re:wildfires? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a solution for your CA home water issues.
Ready? Stop voting for Democrat environmentalists [wsj.com].
The science is in. If you divert millions of acre-feet of water to fulfill environmental regulations, you can't use that water for other stuff. If you stop building reservoirs and dams to store water while increasing water usage, you won't have enough water. If agriculture water prices [marginalrevolution.com] went up enough that the agribusinesses used 12.5% less water, then every residential and industrial user in CA could use 50% more water.
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The problem is agriculture. There is no other use of water in California that is anywhere close. Reducing agricultural usage by 1% would do much more than eliminating flush toilets entirely, and is a much more realistic and desirable goal. If agriculture used 12.5% less water, that would have a big impact. If California wants a 25% reduction in water use, though, agriculture is going to have to take a hit of about 25%.
The other problem is that WSJ opinions and editorials have fallen in line behind Mu
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Holy Fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there nothing these people won't blame on Climate Change?
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No. They were actually blaming the Syrian civil war on climate change.
The fact is, AGW is not the end of the world scenario leftists were hoping for, so they've had to invent reasons to scare the heck out of people just to have the crisis they need to pursue their social, cultural and political agendas.
Simple as that.
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Climate change certainly did contribute to triggering the Syrian civil war:
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
AGW won't cause a quick Roland Emmerich apocalypse, but there are definitely more interesting surprises in store if we do nothing...and you can blame them on whatever you want, it won't keep them from happening.
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http://whatreallyhappened.com/... [whatreallyhappened.com]
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Bingo. This is nothing more than an excuse to pony up more money for research on "Climate change" or "Global warming"...or whatever the heck they are calling it now. Naturally, the Environmentalists and research scientists love this. Beats getting a real job I suppose...but I digress.
These climate models that this is based on are complete rubbish. There are so many variables that you can make them reach any conclusion you want simply by changing the values you input. We can't even predict an accurate weathe
Re:Holy Fuck (Score:4, Insightful)
When I read this... My first thought was he is planning to use this to tax everyone based on healthcare... Which isn't a tax unless you talk to the Supreme Court, then and only then it is a tax for not having health care that the IRS watches... (so it is constitutional)
So if you aren't doing your part for environmentalism, will the IRS tax you on that as a healthcare risk someday?
Sounds crazy I know, but just crazy enough for someone to try.
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These climate models that this is based on are complete rubbish. There are so many variables that you can make them reach any conclusion you want simply by changing the values you input. We can't even predict an accurate weather forecast more than 10 days in the future. How could we possibly predict what the weather is going to be like in 100 years? Or 50 years? Or 1 year? Or even next month.
Climate != Weather.
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OH NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Life is dangerous! There are things out there that can kill you!
This is just one of Obama's (or any president for that matter, this sort of thing is hardly limited to him) attempts at pushing some sort of agenda. In this case, trying to get people to care about climate change.
Warning of the perils to the planet has gotten the president only so far; polls consistently show the public is skeptical that the steps Obama has taken to curb pollution are worth the cost to the economy. So Obama is aiming to put a spotlight on ways that climate change will have real impacts on the body, like more asthma attacks, allergic reactions, heat-related deaths and injuries from extreme weather.
If he can't scare you with tales of the oceans boiling off or Florida turning into (more of) a swamp, then he has to do something else. Think of the children!
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This is just one of Obama's (or any president for that matter, this sort of thing is hardly limited to him) attempts at pushing some sort of agenda.
Or any other person for that matter, this sort of thing is hardly limited to presidents.
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A politician? With an agenda? Doesn't our socialist Muslim Kenyan president know that politicians aren't supposed to try to accomplish anything?
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You can not pass laws making a multi-billion dollar industry illegal.
This is why we have the bastard that is ACA vs a nationalized system without the need for insurers.
Re:OH NO! (Score:4, Interesting)
A nationalized system isn't the paradise you think it is. Just wait until you end up on a two year waiting list because your system is nationalized and there's no incentive for them to do any better, and you have no other options.
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You could always choose another insurer, you could choose to pay out of pocket.. you at least have some options. In a nationalized system that's rationing care, you have no options. I'll take having a choice to not having a choice, thanks.
Besides which, I don't know what kind of crap insurance you have, but I don't tend to have problems with claims. I can see a specialist within weeks whereas my not-so-far-away neighbors in Canada wait years depending on the specialist. I don't want that. You shouldn't
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Paying out of pocket is right out because of how fucking expensive it is in the US to get health care.
Its expensive *because* people dont pay out of pocket.
With insurance the cost of a broken leg and an emergency room visit is $63000, while the cost for the same without insurance is only $1300.
The problem with the collectivist vision is and always will be tragedy of the commons.
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I purpose a new EULA for all newborns. They must acknowledge that being born will be hazardous to their health. I just haven't worked out the recourse if they refuse to acknowledge it. I'm pretty sure they can't go back where they came from.
...and yet most men spend their entire adult lives trying to do just that.
(wait for it...)
Over exaggeration = fodder to the climate deniers. (Score:4, Insightful)
I know Obama is trying to call people to action, and is pulling the "Think of the children" routine. However...
Making it a health risk is pushing it. And the climate deniers will point out to these dangers as proof the Climate Change is an invention of the liberals as a means to scare the nation so they can take away our rights.
Yea it sounds stupid to me too... But for climate change, you should keep your expectations on a reasonable prediction, because if it doesn't hold true, then they are going to get you.
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For anything you should keep it reasonable (Score:2)
Because if you start exaggerating and making shit up, it makes people listen to you less. The whole "boy who cried wolf" thing. If you keep saying doom is coming and it never comes, well then people are going to quit listening to you even if you are right one time.
Also it leads people to question your legit, non-exaggerated points. I mean after all, if the problem you are talking about really is so bad, why the need to make shit up? Is it really so bad if you have to exaggerate what you say? If you exaggera
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"If you like your allergies, you can keep your allergies."
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There's a moving picture going on and this conversation is focusing on 1 frame.
The EPA is currently wrapped up in litigation over their legal authority to regulate CO2 emissions. One of the current arguments being put forward by the coal industry lobby is that even if AGW is real, it isn't having any immediate and measurable impact on the health of Americans. If there's no health concerns, then there's no reason fro the EPA to regulate.
So the President goes out and makes a statement, backed up by multiple r
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This may be the most relevant post in the thread. It all makes sense if you look at it this way.
Not that politicians have to make sense...
Mosquitos (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder if some day we will look back at "global warming" the same way.
Re:Mosquitos (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice to have a president with priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice to have a president with priorities towards the well being of the citizens of our country, current and future.
allergies (Score:5, Insightful)
First thought: Global warming is making allergies and asthma worse, yeah, because there's... more things growing...
Ok wait, how is that a bad thing, again?
(I have severe allergies and asthma. But I live in a time where medication for these conditions has never been more effective or had fewer side-effects. One pill in the morning, carry medications for emergencies, and I'm good. I'm not in a position to complain that the growing season is longer.)
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Yeah, well, Obama's smoking habit is statistically more likely to have impacted his daughter's asthma (his example) than global warming ever will.
I guess there's no good having a boogeyman if you can't blame everything you've ever seen as a problem on it...
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Yeah, well, Obama's smoking habit is statistically more likely to have impacted his daughter's asthma (his example) than global warming ever will.
And smoking habit is George Bush's fault.
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It's too bad James Hansen's original doomsday scenario -- the earth as an arctic wasteland -- didn't come to pass, then.
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Adaptation versus Mitigation (Score:2)
I have to applaud the focus on adaptation over mitigation. These changes are happening or likely, now what can we do to adapt. The other response of trying to drastically cut CO2 emissions to avoid or reduce climate change lacks two of the most important pieces of information required to evaluate it. How much does our reduction of CO2 emission mitigate future change, and what is the reduced cost of adaptation? Without knowing those two pieces, the decision to reduce CO2 emissions to 'save future dollars' is
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I have to applaud the focus on adaptation over mitigation.
It seems to me like an uncontrollable compulsion to clap is some sort of psychological or physiological problem...
I know someone is going to jump in and claim we DO know the impact of increasing/reducing our CO2 emissions in the future. I say that the current research papers confirm the opposite, even the IPCC's latest paper.
We know that it will cause systems to be more chaotic, which will require more costly adaptation. That's reason enough for mitigation.
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How much does our reduction of CO2 emission mitigate future change, and what is the reduced cost of adaptation? Without knowing those two pieces, the decision to reduce CO2 emissions to 'save future dollars' is a blind guess, and there are a lot of much, much better reasons to reduce dependency on oil from places like the ME.
That not knowing what the future effects of increased CO2 goes both ways. It could be that they will be worse than what we currently think they will be as easily as it could be they won't be as bad. One fundamental principle of risk management is the less you know about what a risk entails the more value their is in avoiding that risk. Yes, it might cost a lot of money to mitigate future climate change but not mitigating could cost more than any amount of money can cure.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance.
Unless the energy imbalance is zer
Straw Man Avoidance (Score:2)
The late jazz critic Whitney Balliet wrote, "All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting."
With that in mind, perhaps the AGW alarmists would be willing to confront popular criticisms of their ideology, as opposed to making the usual straw man arguments.
"Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren’t. [thefederalist.com]" would be a good starting place.
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But of course, if you dismiss climate models, there is *no evidence at all* for global warming. Just say it a religious or political movement and be done with it.
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You don't need a model to see there's global warming. You can do that simply by making observations.
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Not that graph again....
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201... [hotwhopper.com]
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"Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Arenâ(TM)t." would be a good starting place.
It's not a good starting place. Change is expensive. If climate change is real but the models aren't accurate, that's more frightening, not reassuring: because it means that more changes are coming, but we don't even know what they will be. That messes up the spreadsheets something fierce.
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The late jazz critic Whitney Balliet wrote, "All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting."
With that in mind, perhaps the AGW alarmists would be willing to confront popular criticisms of their ideology, as opposed to making the usual straw man arguments.
"Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren’t. [thefederalist.com]" would be a good starting place.
That graph by Roy Spencer has a huge problem in that all of the traces he shows of climate model runs and the HADCRUT and UAH temperature series all start from the same zero point in 1983. In order to achieve that Spencer had to shift all of the graphed lines up or down so they all lined up at 0 in 1983. That is not a valid scientific technique and makes the whole graph bogus.
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You're not helping your side when you assert that the various models don't agree with each other or reality at any point since 1983.
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Stress? (Score:2)
Not as much as he has (Score:3, Insightful)
He has hurt almost everyone in America far far worse than any environmental changes.
Bull$h!t! (Score:3)
They couldn't get "Man made global warming" to stick with the junk science exposed on it. Then they thought they could fool people by changing it to just "Global warming", now they are calling it "climate change" It's all pushed by the same junk science and the same ultra rich that want your money by making you pay carbon credits/taxes to their "carbon credit bank". They are all just sounding gongs.... Hello Al Gore! We have your number mister criminal!
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Why should China care about California's citizens ? If you want them to make rapid change, you need to offer something in return.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Panic ensues. Among the bureaucrats, that is. It is beginning to look like carbon emissions and the resulting temperature rise are becoming uncoupled from economic activity. GNP is going up while emissions remain flat. Natural gas is replacing coal. The Chinese are getting fed up with smog in Beijing. Gas consumption is flat while people drive more and Big Oil can't keep the prices propped up. Etc, etc. And the big government looters have missed the bus. It has all been done by the free market. So the justi