Who the hell is Fonzie?

LT Nixon on April 4, 2008 at 9:01 AM

Young whipper-snappers.

The problem is, there has never been 2,000 scientists on the global warming bandwagon -only a small, vocal handful. This “hundreds” or “thousands” of scientists forming some kind of consensus has always been a myth. Just because that handful cherry-picked data from hundreds/thousands of scientists does not mean they all agree with the conclusions of those few alarmists.

They ended up with that number because of one scientist did an experiment off of another’s scientist work.. there’s two..
and so on and so forth.. working it up the tree, until there was an impressive sounding number, like two thousand scientist’s agree..

A PR move to push a scientist’s theory..

I believe that’s how it went.. I will dutifully take any correction though..

Steve Z on April 4, 2008 at 1:36 PM

wow, you said much better than I ever could hope to do..

errr.. more CO2.. more plants grow.. take that, Algore..

How can you be right and 2,000 scientists wrong?

The problem is, there has never been 2,000 scientists on the global warming bandwagon -only a small, vocal handful. This “hundreds” or “thousands” of scientists forming some kind of consensus has always been a myth. Just because that handful cherry-picked data from hundreds/thousands of scientists does not mean they all agree with the conclusions of those few alarmists.

Unfortunately a true scientific consensus takes years if not decades to form, and the a few rogues (in more than one sense of the word) always seem to use this lag to try to “control” the science to make a name for themselves. Anyone familiar with how scientific research progresses would have known there was no real scientific consensus because the had simply not been sufficient time to test the various hypothesis coming out with any real rigor. So while hundreds/thousands of scientists were saying, “we don’t know the answer yet”, the rogues were saying they had the answer. And the media and politicians just couldn’t resist the Chicken Little scenario. Who wants to lead with, “the sun rose today” when they could shout, “We’re dooooomed!”

Go Global warming!!

P.S. Please hurry Al.

I used to be a liberal, but started thinking after 911. Now when my lib friends ask me why I switched, I just say I got tired of being wrong all the time. No tanks in the streets after Bush’s second term, no global warming, etc. Add to this list, and let’s see how many things we can come up with.

Idea for a political cartoon. Al Gore tending a bonfire next to a gizmo marked “Official UN global temperature measuring station.” Al Gore with sheepish smile on his face saying, “Did I mention that I’m running a huge sale on carbon offsets?”

It’s all AL Gore’s fault. If he hadn’t invested so much in carbon credits.

Sensei Ern on April 4, 2008 at 8:59 AM

No, it’s the idiots’ fault who’ve generously paid to make him a rapid multi-, multi-millionnaire. Good for him. Capitalism is cool! Even if, in his case, unethical. But when it’s sanctioned with a Nobel, I give him a pass.

Ah, global cooling is coming. Yippee. I guess that means it’ll only be 114 degrees here in July, instead of the usual 115.

AZCoyote on April 4, 2008 at 9:29 AM

As a fellow Arizonan I second that “yippee!”

Do we really want to spend trillions of dollars trying to reduce the concentration of a harmless gas that might affect temperatures by a small fraction of a degree, or do we have better things to do with our money? Like, maybe, don’t worry about it and reap increased crop yields in the future?

Steve Z on April 4, 2008 at 1:36 PM

Nice summary and review of the real science! AMEN!!

And if we’ve got to fear something, I choose to fear politicians and bureaucrats who claim they can change the climate, influence the weather, or alter the orbit of planets with my money!!

We need to raise taxes and elect more Liberals to restore balance…

yada, yada, yada….

Maxx on April 4, 2008 at 1:16 PM

Thank you Maxx. I hope that Ed can update his post to include the info. you present on the Nasa data. I had heard it, here at HA probably, but forgot. But as you say, Mr.Scaife surely didn’t forget. He doesn’t want anyone to know.

Well said.

Ironman is right that very few processes in nature have positive feedback. A slight warming of the atmosphere (whatever its cause) would increase evaporation rates from the oceans, meaning more water vapor in the atmosphere, but also more clouds and rain. Although overcast skies at night tend to trap heat, overcast skies during daytime hours tend to reflect sunlight, and the net result is a slight cooling effect.

In addition, higher CO2 concentrations tend to increase plant growth rates (there are hundreds of experiments that show this), which increases the rate at which CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis. Even if man-made CO2 emissions are not reduced, the rate of CO2 removal by photosynthesis will eventually catch up to the man-made CO2 emission rate, and an equilibrium will be reached at a higher CO2 concentration than now. But increasing CO2 also increases crop yields–this would be a GOOD thing!

The heat-trapping effect of CO2 tends to be over-estimated. Infra-red radiation reflected from Earth is emitted over a wide range of wavelengths, and water vapor in the air absorbs (traps heat) at most of them. Carbon dioxide only absorbs infra-red over a narrow band of wavelengths, although very strongly, so that current concentrations of CO2 already absorb nearly all the infra-red radiation in the narrow band, and additional CO2 would not absorb much more. It’s analogous to painting a window black to prevent sunlight from getting through–once all the light is blocked, adding more black paint doesn’t absorb any more light, if it’s already completely blocked.

The major heat-trapping gas on Earth is not CO2, but water vapor. It absorbs infra-red over a much wider spectrum, and its concentration in the air is about 10 to 100 times that of CO2, depending on temperature and humidity. With 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by water, there will always be a huge supply of evaporation to replace water vapor lost by rain.

The best scientific estimates show that CO2 only accounts for about 0.03% of the “greenhouse effect”. Even if mankind could reduce the CO2 concentration by reducing emissions, the effect on temperatures would be minimal, probably within the measurement error of thermometers. Do we really want to spend trillions of dollars trying to reduce the concentration of a harmless gas that might affect temperatures by a small fraction of a degree, or do we have better things to do with our money? Like, maybe, don’t worry about it and reap increased crop yields in the future?

Here we have Mr. Scaife doing his part to gain a bit more job security. You see, if it would turn out that man-made global warming was all just a big “mistake” Mr. Scaife and his staff would no longer receive their paychecks. Undoubtedly, Mr. Scaife drives a very nice late model car, has a nice house and mortgage payments, so in his mind its perfectly justified to scare our children into sleepless nights for that all important paycheck.

Well, never mind that, let’s move on. What was GGWL # 9,437?

Regarding 2008, one of the coldest years in recent memory for many parts of the world, Mr. Scaife told the BBC:

What’s happened now is that La Nina has come along and depressed temperatures slightly but these changes are very small compared to the long-term climate change signal, and in a few years time we are confident that the current record temperature of 1998 will be beaten when the La Nina has ended.

Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK

Dear Mr. Scaife …. 1998 was TEN years ago ! Clearly your models which have predicted hotter and ever hotter years are not even in the ballpark for accuracy. But there is an even bigger problem than that ! THERE WAS NO RECORD SET IN 1998 FOR HIGH TEMPERATURE !! You, Mr. Scaife are either lying or incompetent or both. Which ever the case, you should be fired. If you are not aware that that fact, then why not? Its your job to know such things.

Here is the official NASA data Mr. Scaife, I suggest you review it. You will find its 1934 that holds the record for hottest year, NOT 1998. But of course the record only goes back to 1880, which is a relative “eye blink” in time compared to the age of the earth. Its also well known there were previous centuries much hotter than our current one. So exactly what do you have to support your extremist view that there is any kind of climate crisis, or even anything unusual about the current climate?

And just one question Mr. Scaife, assuming you are correct about “La Nina.” Isn’t it the sun that ultimately supplies the power to drive that effect….. or does “La Nina” somehow generate it’s own power? If we were to find that “La Nina” was ultimately powered by the sun’s energy, would it be reasonable to assume the sun has more influence on the planets’ temperature than say …… carbon dioxide?

Perhaps you will want to contact the BBC and retract your erroneous statement concerning “record year 1998” but I won’t hold my breath for that.

We need a government program to teach polar bears how to swim.

If you watch the debate closely, you’ll see that the global warming argument really hinges on two big points:
ironman on April 4, 2008 at 10:30 AM

You could have cut your post down to this:
1) you have to be really stupid
2) you have to be very stupid

“I guess we better start doing something about global warming before we all f*cking freeze to death.”