There is a new installment on the global warming seminar being taught by the estimable Coyote . . .4/19/2016 Denying the Climate Catastrophe: 5a. Arguments For Attributing Past Warming to Man | Coyote Blog
. . . and this one looks at the attribution of warming to man issue. Your humble correspondent took a flyer at this issue a few days ago, here: Don Boudreaux knows history, and sets an errant Global Alarmist straight. Notice in the Coyote analysis, which follows the global alarmist arguments, only the first ice core graph shows any temperature record prior to 1850. The real trick to believing global alarmism is to limit your data to measurements after 1850, and even more preferably, after 1950. If one addresses the global temperature issue during either the past 8,000 years, or and even longer time period, then the current state of the climate looks normal for an interglacial warm period.
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These People Know No History - Cafe Hayek
And no, the Global Alarmist have no grasp of history. Here's the letter: "Mr. Fred Lunt American College of Physicians Mr. Lunt: In your recent mass e-mail you announce that “[t]he American College of Physicians issues urgent call to action on Climate Change and its possible catastrophic health effects.” I wonder if the American College of Physicians is also issuing an urgent call to action on government-imposed restrictions on markets and their possible catastrophic health effects. Because history knows no force that rivals free markets at improving humans’ health, surely you and your organization’s caring physicians are also concerned that the health of ordinary men, women, and children will be put in grave jeopardy by efforts to halt climate change through government interventions that hamstring markets. Surely your members appreciate, for example, the enormous health benefits of inexpensive machine-washable underwear and the fact that these are the products of free markets. Surely your members appreciate also other health-promoting features of free markets – features such inexpensive indoor plumbing, inexpensive potable water, inexpensive household detergents and disinfectants, inexpensive dental-hygiene products, and, most importantly, salvation from the malnutrition and starvation that were routine before the industrial age. And I trust that your concerned members also take due account of the enormous benefits that inexpensive fossil fuels directly bestow on ordinary people – benefits such as affordable transportation that enables local pharmacies to be always fully stocked with life-saving drugs; affordable energy that keeps people’s homes and workplaces safely cool during summer and safely warm during winter; and affordable electricity that gives nearly everyone access not only to clean-burning electric light bulbs and kitchen ranges, but also ready on-line access to the latest legitimate medical advice and even to the latest paroxysms of mindless hysteria about the consequences of fossil-fuel use. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics and Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030" These physicians apparently didn't go to college. Don is correct about the facts that using carbon based fuels has improved the lives of humans. In addition to the economic argument there is a scientific argument as well. Remember the fear is that we have released so much carbon that the earths temperature is now higher than ever and will become too hot. Younger Dryas to Present Time Line Updated2 The longterm record of global climate does not confirm and alarmists fears. The graph of importance in this timeline is the "Air temperature (˚C) from Alley, R. B., 2004." Notice that the graph's horizontal axis is the time with the bottom right 0 being the present and the bottom left 18 being 18,000 years BP (before present). The vertical axis is negative temperature. Notice the last 800 years shows the average temperature was a fairly constant 32˚C, although it does kick up a small fraction of a degree at the end. During the current interglacial warm period this is the longest time the average temperature has been as low as 32˚C. Before that average temperature touched -32˚C in 1,200 BP, 4,800 BP, and between 8,200 and 8,400 when it even dropped a fraction below -32˚C. Essentially, -32˚C is the absolute minimum temperature for the current interglacial warm period. To repeat the temperature we are approximately at today is the coolest temper during the current interglacial warm period. On the other hand, average temperature has been at or above -30˚C 15 separate times, and above -29˚C on three separate occasions. The average temperature during the present interglacial warm period appears to be about -31˚C. We are now at or very near the low temperature for the current interglacial warm period. Another look at the graph shows us that after the end of the last ice age, the Earth warmed and had quite a consistent temperature band averaging at or near -30˚C. This seems to have ended just prior to 2,000 BP, when the temperature began a consistent decline to an average temperature now of approximately -32˚C. At no time in the last 10,000 years has the Earth's average temperature been below -30˚C for more than a few hundred years, until 2,000 BP when the temperature dropped below -30˚C and has stayed significantly below , and in fact is now hugging the -32˚C line. It appears that we are in an early cooling phase, perhaps the beginning cool down before the Earth enters its next glaciation period. The facts simply do not support the conclusion that we are now in some sort of untethered warming period driven by human activity, the Sun, or anything else. The evidence shows without doubt we are in one of the longest cool spell of the current interglacial warm period. So, what has caused the global alarmist fracas? To understand that you need to look to the 3 graphs in the bottom right hand section of the page, they are titled HadCRUT4 Temperature Anomaly (˚C). These graphs all show that the temperature from 1850 through 1900 was wavy but relatively stable, then in 1900-1910 something happens, and the temperature begins to rise dramatically, and continues to rise to the present. It appears the current crop of scientists have devoted their entire attention to a short period of time at the end of the current interglacial warm period, and have blown this temperature rise out of proportion. The reality is however even worse, these scientists do not believe the warming which began back in 1910 through about 1942 could have been caused by carbon. This is because they do not believe the amounts of carbon produced before the 1940-1950 period was sufficient to cause global warming. Understanding this requires we parse the graphs a bit more closely. From 1850 - 1900 the temperature was relatively stable, then there was a rapid temperature rise to about 1942, then the global average temperature declines slightly until 1978, and after there is a period of global average temperature warming through about 1996-1998, then the temperature again flattens, and looks to be again starting a decline. According to the global warming alarmist scientists, the only period of rising temperatures which could have been caused by human caused global warming was the period 1978 - 1998. Sea level rise is another place of serious concern for the global warming alarmist. The problem here like with temperature is the facts simply do not comport with the beliefs of the alarmist. There are two sea level graphs both are bottom left center of the page, one shows the longterm history of global sea levels, and the other shows mean seal level 1874-2014. The scales are different so the charts look different, but they both show the same thing. The global sea level graph show sea level 18,000 years BP to be very low, this is to be expected because of the huge amounts of ice trapped on land. After this melted from 18,000 years BP through 8,000 years BP the sea level rose dramatically. Since that time the sea levels have risen a small amount but comparatively little. While the graph showing mean sea level 1874-2014 appears to be a significant increase it is very small compared to the longer time period graph. Further, it is clear that any sea level rise before 1950 was not related to human caused global warming, but other natural causes. So, why would the mean sea level graph show such a consistent rise in sea level from 1874 through the present, and not an increase in sea level rise only after 1950 when human released carbon became sufficient for the alarmist to believe it would create catastrophic global warming? Don is correct, the economic arguments weigh heavily towards using carbon based fuels to improve human standards of living. That is reinforced because the science does not support the catastrophic human caused global warming theory proposed by the alarmist. Denying the Climate Catastrophe: 1. Introduction | Coyote Blog
. . . and Coyote is just the objective observer to do that. That is the introduction, the rest follow below. If you take the time to read, and understand this information, you will be more well informed than even most scientist. Denying the Climate Catastrophe: 2. Greenhouse Gas Theory | Coyote Blog Denying the Climate Catastrophe: 3. Feedbacks | Coyote Blog Denying the Climate Catastrophe: 4a. Actual Temperature Data | Coyote Blog Denying the Climate Catastrophe: 4b. Problems With The Surface Temperature Record | Coyote Blog I will watch for more and provide updated reports when available. Richard Lindzen: Global Warming And The Irrelevance Of Science | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)
Very good article, which I cannot recommend highly enough. White House: Climate will Wreck Your Health
. . . according to President Feckless ODither. If this were true one might expect Americans to be moving in droves from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt for its invigorating healthful cooler weather. But no. Americans are moving in droves from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. And yet every year we live longer, healthier, more productive lives. Perchance might our feckless, scurrilous, global alarmist President be wrong? Heaven forfend! Another Climate Alarmist Admits Real Motive Behind Warming Scare
. . . redistribute wealth. "Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer: “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015. So what is the goal of environmental policy? “We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer. For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.'" All that remains unspoken is the desire to bell the American economy with massive regulations and restrictions. Why? Thank American-style capitalism for this chart - AEI America is economically accelerating away from the other nations, even the wealthiest nations. Note that Sweden began to reform its welfare state just before its economic performance began improving in the 1990s. Sweden 'slimmest Nordic welfare state ' "'The generosity of the system has declined," said Gothenburg University politics professor Jonas Hinnfors. "Much of this already started changing in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s.' In the wake of a banking crisis in the early nineties, Stockholm scrapped housing subsidies, reformed the pension system and slashed the healthcare budget. A voucher-based system that allows publicly funded, privately managed free schools to compete with state schools was introduced, and has drawn attention from right-wing politicians elsewhere, including Britain's Conservative Party. In 2006, conservative Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's government accelerated the pace of reform, tightening the criteria for unemployment benefits and sick pay while lowering taxes. Income tax in Sweden is now lower than in France, Belgium and Denmark, and public spending as a share of GDP has declined from a record 71.0 percent in 1993 to 53.3 percent last year. Once the darling of progressives, Sweden has become a model for free-market-leaning thinkers including British weekly The Economist, which last year hailed the scaled-down Nordic model as "the next supermodel." "They offer a blueprint of how to reform the public sector, making the state far more efficient," it wrote." Tragically, this is one of the most useful lessons coming out of Europe today, yet neither other European countries nor America's left/progressives are willing to accept this received wisdom, and implement it. The real problem is the old progressive system allowed extensive graft and corruption, and politician find this invigorating, while the reformed system allows little room for graft and corruption. The other received wisdom coming from Europe is that the endemic political corruption, family structure, and business/employment relations of the southern European countries make them a model to avoid at all costs. They will likely return to a sub-first world economic status unless they change. As the article discusses, the budget bite which is affecting nearly all of Europe, and nearly all of the United States is serious, and demands political, economic, and welfare state reforms. Ultimately, I suspect that all will be forced to move to a blend of American and Swedish models. Here at the End of History we are finding that while we understand the macro level pillars of republican governance, free markets, and reformed religions, there is much to accomplish at the micro level implementing the three pillars with respect to each institution. So, applying the End of History received wisdom to education means determining whether vouchers, or some other mechanism works better than public schools, and whether those vouchers should be extended to all schools, or only secular schools, etc. Back to the subject at hand. America is accelerating away from the rest of the world economically. This is causing much consternation among the elite in many nations. Sweden has apparently found a way to maintain a safety net which is greater than that offered by America but also create greater economic growth. Global warming is a policy run amok, its underlying goals are venal. The idea that limiting economic growth, and per capita GDP will somehow be a benefit is wrong. We have seen that over time wealth limits population, and solves problems like pollution. This will continue to happen and improved the lives of all. Limiting economic growth in light of this is a human rights violation of the greatest magnitude. Both Sweden and America can learn much form each others economic models. Europe would do well to forget the punitive attempts to shackle America's economy, and instead take to heart the best options arriving from the American, and Swedish economic models. The Electric Vehicle Mileage Fraud Update: Singapore Figures It Out | Coyote Blog
. . . this is unsurprising. I like that Singapore realizes that many electric cars actual emissions are awful. It's almost like carbon, and pollution are not the real reasons to lobby for the electric car. It would seem the environmental movement is suffering an existential moment. I am old enough to remember the movement jumping from population bomb, to burning rivers, to whales, to acid rain, to ozone hole, to global warming, to climate change, to . . . But there does not appear to be a next step. I've seen population bomb floated again but it will have no traction in a period of demographic decline which is gripping Europe, China, Japan, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc. Even Africa's growth has slowed to a fraction of its prior glory. I do not know what is next, more whales? Over fishing? It may well be played out. That would be a nice change. Trouble In Smart Growth's Nirvana
"Recent developments in Portland and Oregon suggest that smart growth is having only a modest effect, while driving down housing affordability, increasing traffic congestion and losing popularity in neighborhoods." Hold on! Smart Growth is supposed to make housing affordable, not unaffordable, and all those billion dollar light rail projects are supposed to decrease traffic congestion. It's almost like it's some sort of bait and switch scheme. Hold on . . . Maddogswif is speaking to me sotto vocce . . . She says it is a bait and switch scheme. Mon Dieu! Who would have guessed? Government lying to the taxpayers, what's the world coming to? Answer: Expensive bullshit, that's what the world is coming to. "Despite the claims of the transit-media complex, Portland’s anti-highway policies are failing. The 2000 Census shows that transit’s work trip market share remains 20 percent below the 1980 Census rate, which preceded opening of the first light rail line. And, Portland’s highway congestion has become the worst of any metropolitan area of its size." Great, we are in reverse and accelerating! "The most destructive result has been Portland’s “green-lining” of housing opportunity by the urban growth boundary. According to the National Association of Homebuilders, Portland’s housing affordability declined at a far greater rate in the last decade than in any other major metropolitan area. At the same time, housing affordability improved in faster growing areas, such as Atlanta, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Raleigh-Durham." The verdict is in, Urban Planners are imbeciles. The whole Smart Growth thing is nothing but one of those Gorian secular religions, similar to the great gorical's Gaiastic Apocalyptic Global Warming religion. And Smart Growth comes with the same outcomes, the opposite of the prophecies. This is like a 3rd rate SciFi POC (piece of crap). Luckily, I live mid stream of the River Effluent, er, Portlandia, or ground zero as it is known by those remaining rational in the area. So Where Should People Live in the Future? Probably exactly where they want to live, because from what I can see, that's where they end up living. Sorry, time for a detour . . . "What was perhaps most intriguing was that the top ranked city for unhappiness is Portland, Oregon, the city that many planners hold up as Nirvana." Well, only for the Smart Growth Urban Planners, and people who believe the press tongue bathings, er, news. For us who live here, especially those of us who have lived here for a long time (1972 for me), this is OBVIOUS, TANGIBLE, AND PALPABLE. Loud enough? Terrible traffic, unaffordable housing, idiotic transit which mangles everything from roadways, to bicycle riders. Will Portland Streetcar ever find a way to prevent bike-rail crashes? - BikePortland.org "Twelve years after Portland Streetcar added its rails to city streets, it’s still a Portland rite of passage to crash your bike on its tracks — and it’s still a maddening problem for the handful of people trying to solve it. “'I just can’t believe that in a place like Amsterdam or any number of European cities where they have had girder rail — I can’t believe that somebody hasn’t figured this out,' Portland Streetcar consultant Carter MacNichol said in an interview Wednesday. 'But apparently they haven’t.'" Said the Portland Streetcar Consultant, excuse me, idiot. The Antiplanner is not as uninformed as this idiot Portland Streetcar Consultant, there is a fix: "There’s one good thing about the streetcar, at least if you are a Portland auto driver annoyed by the city’s aggressive cyclists. More than two-thirds of Portland cyclists surveyed in 2008 said they’ve crashed on the streetcar tracks. There’s an engineering fix–putting rubber flaps on the rails that are flexible enough for the streetcars to push out of the way but too stiff for bicycles to sink into. But Portland Streetcar doesn’t want to install them because it’s too expensive and they’d have to replace them every two or three years." Why is government so willing to hire know-nothing consultants, when a bit of perusing around the Internet would answer most of their questions? Yeah I know, they hire them because the politician want a cushy job once they fail out of "public service" and nothing is as cushy as a job which requires not one whit of knowledge, like Portland Streetcar Consultant! It's the old I'll scratch your back two step. The cure is simple, get rid of the streetcar, and light rail. I can already hear the shrieks from the transit Mafia. But as the Antiplanner observes, "[c]onsidering that the 2013 American Community Survey found that more than 18,000 workers living in the city of Portland bicycle to work while only 7,800 take some form of rail transit–including both streetcars and light rail–it seems like the city has its priorities exactly backwards. I hope officials from other cities who look to Portland as a model for transportation planning take the time to read these audits." So, rail transit in Portlandia, which carries about one half of all transit riders, only takes 7,800 workers each day? Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ! We spent billions on this crap, and it carries less than 8,000 people to work? Taxis would have been cheaper, and with those impossibly low ridership numbers the roadways wouldn't notice the increased carriage. Sorry for the detour, back to the question of where people want to live. Portlandia's Smart Growth Urban Planners know exactly where people want to live, in the city, in a high density environment. You know like rats in a packed maze. This was confirmed by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project's national survey assessing where people would like to live: "A new national survey by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project finds that nearly half (46%) of the public would rather live in a different type of community from the one they're living in now- a sentiment that is most prevalent among city dwellers. When asked about specific metropolitan areas where they would like to live, respondents rank Denver, San Diego and Seattle at the top of a list of 30 cities, and Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati at the bottom. Other survey findings include: • Americans are all over the map in their views about their ideal community type: 30% say they would most like to live in a small town, 25% in a suburb, 23% in a city and 21% in a rural area. • By a ratio of more than three-to-one, Americans prefer living where the pace of life is slow, not fast. A similarly lopsided majority prefer a place where neighbors know each other well to one where neighbors don't generally know each other's business." Ok, so the Portlandia Smart Growth Urban Planners lied, through their teeth. People want to live in lower density, with a slower pace, and where neighbors know each other. That pretty much redlines cities, where no one knows, or cares about the neighbors. Ironically, we have had a number of friends who became enamored with the Pearl District a trendy urban neighborhood in Portlandia. The ones who moved to the Pearl all followed the same pattern, point by point, it was like a comedy bit their behavior was so predictable. They would first become enamored, then they would watch the Pearl's housing prices, and notice the housing prices were going up, up, up. So, they would buy in, and instantly become wildly excited about The Pearl. They would throw 6 or more parties the first year, where before they might have thrown a single holiday party. The second year they would remain enthusiastic, but the parties would fall to perhaps three. The third year they might throw a holiday party, but no more. The fourth year we would meet them at someone elses party, and they would have moved back to the suburbs. They weren't talking about the Pearl. It was a comedy bit! Some did well with home prices, especially the early adopters, but the latecomers, I suspect got burned. While I asked softly about why, I could only get something along the lines of, "we missed our neighbors in [the suburbs]." Well, yes, and all the concrete, and hard surfaces of the city would get old, as would being trapped with only one car. Plus, we would only go to one party per couple, per year. Parking was a bitch, and I was not about to prostrate myself on the altar of Smart Growth. I suspect they found that with time fewer, and fewer people would trek down to parking hell to visit, which meant they were always doing the driving. If hell is other people, the city is surely hell. Leave it for the young to populate, and with experience, realize they don't like the city as much as they thought they would. Remember, Portlandia is a cautionary tale. |
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