Tag: global warming

I’m still digging out from 3 feet’s worth of RFK Jr’s ‘anemic winter’ …

…so people will understand that I’m about as interested as David Freddoso in being overly nice in pointing out his past bloviating. My back isn’t actually killing me, right now, but that’s only because I was being very, very careful about removing all that anemic winter from the car.  I’m going to be forty in a couple of months; I don’t bounce back from straining myself over anemic winters like I used to.

Three observations about our marvelous new technological paradigm:

  1. Everything in print gets recorded these days. Everything.
  2. Nothing ever goes away. Ever.
  3. The only thing that people are patient about when it comes to online matters is in waiting for just the right moment to demonstrate that someone is an idiot.

I would join David in suggesting that RFK Jr get out of the weather prediction/doomsaying business, only I can’t for the life of me think of anything else that he’d be any less incompetent at.  Ditch digging?  He could learn that on the job.

Moe Lane

PS: Just to reinforce the scorn: the plural of anecdote is not data; I am not obligated to accept your religious beliefs as being scientifically valid; and this is why political dynasties are a bad idea.

Enjoy your morning.

Crossposted to RedState.

IPCC science settles in transit. #rsrh

Oh, my aching head. Via Drudge:

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

Well, maybe there was still actual science going on…

…one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Or not.

Moe Lane

PS: Here’s a little secret about scientific consensus, folks: it assumes – it has to assume – that trusted users are not lying. Nobody can check everything, all the time, so eventually you have to rely on people not abusing the fact that they’re going to have their word taken on their results.

It generally works, too. You have to remember that.  Most scientists play be the rules, which is why we continue to see scientific and technological advances.  But when they don’t play by the rules, you get scandals like this.

So we may get up to two feet’s worth of global warming…

…by the time this is all over.  Having shoveled out the walk several times already, I’ve come to the conclusion that snow is a royal, if not epic, pain in the ass.  And lower back.  And shoulders.  Which meant that I was probably doing it wrong.

Also: having another Ice Age would really and truly suck.  But I knew that from reading Fallen Angels (watch that one never get made into a Hollywood movie)…

10 to 16 inches of snow?

God help us all: nobody in Dizzy City is capable of dealing with the concept of frozen sky-water piling up to levels like that.  And may I note that there’s something sad about the fact that a person from NJ can mock anybody about their reaction to bad weather?

Also, this much snow seems a bit much, given that it isn’t even officially winter yet.  Is Al Gore flying back from Copenhagen via Dulles?

Warmingists shiver in Copenhagen.

No, really: those poor folks are stuck with bundling up and marching against global warming in what has become stereotypically freezing weather.  Although some of them have found a way to keep warm via physical activity:

Hundreds of youths dressed in black threw bricks and smashed windows as at least 30,000 people demonstrated in the centre of the city as world leaders debate global warming.

The rioters, whose faces were covered, went on the rampage in the heart of the city, prompting swift arrests as some 50 policemen in riot gear intervened.

The cops are probably swearing that Al Gore’s not there yet: if he was, the rioters would be snowed in right now, which would probably cut down on the property damage a little.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, yes, yes: they’re claiming it’s ‘climate change’ instead of ‘global warming’ these days.  I’m not all that interested in the theo-linguistic gymnastics that believers have to go through to not have to address the fact that it’s almost 2010 now and still no sign yet that Soylent Green is people.

Crosspsoted to RedState.

If you are an industrialist who contributed to Democrats… [UPDATED]

…here is your reward:

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.

And by ‘reward’ I mean of course ‘betrayal.’  The intention here is to use the EPA to impose by executive fiat what the Senate has sensibly refused to do by legislative action: use the Clean Air Act to shut down businesses that they don’t like.  And, given that the dislike is based on religious grounds – and much, much, much worse; the people with the religious objections don’t see themselves as being religious – forget about trying to compromise.  The ‘compromise’ is that the industrialists don’t go to jail, a monastery, or the gibbet*.

In short: elections have consequences.  Here, have some.

Moe Lane

(H/T: AoSHQ)

*Obviously, being burned at the stake isn’t really carbon-neutral.

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE]: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) summed up my reaction to this pretty nicely:

“With double-digit unemployment and over 3.5 million jobs already lost this year, the administration inexplicably continues to push for a job-killing national energy tax—either through legislation or regulation.”

*One* tree.

They hung absolutely critical long-term policy positions on the results of one freaking tree.

At the forefront of those who found suspicious the graphs based on tree rings from the Yamal peninsula in Siberia was [Canadian statistician Steve] McIntyre himself, not least because for years the CRU refused to disclose the data used to construct them. This breached a basic rule of scientific procedure. But last summer the Royal Society insisted on the rule being obeyed, and two months ago Briffa accordingly published on his website some of the data McIntyre had been after.

This was startling enough, as McIntyre demonstrated in an explosive series of posts on his Climate Audit blog, because it showed that the CRU studies were based on cherry-picking hundreds of Siberian samples only to leave those that showed the picture that was wanted. Other studies based on similar data had clearly shown the Medieval Warm Period as hotter than today. Indeed only the evidence from one tree, YADO61, seemed to show a “hockey stick” pattern, and it was this, in light of the extraordinary reverence given to the CRU’s studies, which led McIntyre to dub it “the most influential tree in the world”.

Via Protein Wisdom. At this point, I have to start wondering whether I should be showing these people the same reluctant respect that I would any really successful grifter. Except, of course, that regular devotees of the Spanish Prisoner con are not attempting to rewrite the tax code to keep taking my money.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The non-AGW non-snows of Kilimanjaro.

Oops.

Professor Sinninghe Damste’s research, as discussed on the site of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (DOSR) — a governmental body — shows that the icecap of Kilimanjaro was not the result of cold air but of large amounts of precipitation which fell at the beginning of the Holocene period, about 11,000 years ago.

The melting and freezing of moisture on top of Kilimanjaro appears to be part of  “a natural process of dry and wet periods.” The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”

Guess that Al Gore’s going to come up with a new talking point – HA! I kid, I kid. He’ll ignore it completely, of course. Doesn’t fit the religious orthodoxy.  It’s too good an iconic image for proselytizing efforts.  Can’t confuse the faithful, no?

[pause]

Eppur e’ meno umido.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Al Gore might as well be walking on the sun*.

Another entry in the Democratic party’s War on Science:

Mr. Gore apparently thinks that we live on the surface of Sol; as Ed Morrissey notes, this temperature range is more accurate for stellar cores than for terrestrial ones.  Ed also notes that this is unlikely to destroy Gore’s credibility, which is a conclusion that I reluctantly share.  If his acolytes have swallowed everything else that the man says, they’ll swallow this, too…

Moe Lane

*Surprisingly apropos.

Crossposted to RedState.