Why I Am Right On Climate

50 Comments / 56 Comments

1. @ Laura:

   BINGO !!! 😉

2. THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR OUR HUMAN RACE AND LIFE ON EARTH

   (Birds on Escalator to Extinction)
   But not in a general sense of the human race and nature, but the human race and nature in the “death agony” of the capitalist system.

   *The study is important, but as is the way of proper scientists has to be critiqued. This is the way of science. We have a new study, a new information, but that information itself needs critique and this is normal in science. However, it is not endless critique either, there comes a point when we can say we have arrived at a conclusion, or as Hegel would say the moment of a truth being established based on that science. So it is not an endless scepticism process with never reaching a truth, which was the position taken by Tucker Carlson, who talks with a loud voice but has little knowledge onthis subject, with the promonent publicist Joseph Romm. Romm totally destroyed him in the video I saw. One way or another, whether it proves global warming or the opposite, science has the potential to win this argument.

   https://www.apnews.com/a4465873dd1f44c1b07bf315caef2493

3. Western political elites are making life difficult for ordinary folks all in the name of the fake climate crisis. These same political elites don’t apply their draconian rules for themselves. The “Climate change” hysteria is just another scam the “progressives” are using to fundamentally transform America into a socialist third world shit hole.

4. adamdalgliesh Said:

   Since Dr. Michaels retired from his university position in 2007 and began to work for advocacy groups funded by the oil, gas and electric companies, he has been criticized by other scientists for having conflicts of interest, and for allegedly distorting global warming data.

   A- I never use or advocate use of Wikipedia as a credible reference source nor do any serious researchers. Because they are highly biased and not always accurate.

   B- I will accept your criticisms of the sources I have shown if you apply the same standards to those whose opinions you favor and apparently accept. What is the difference between accepting funds from governments with a built-in agenda and business interests aligned to renewable energy than the cases you have supplied indicating self-interest bias or questionable professional qualifications?

   If you accept flawed models as a base then all subsequent conclusions will also be flawed. No one I supplied and others similar don’t deny there is some warming of the earth…..The question is A- Is it man made B -Natural ? D– Projections for the future based on different models all (un proven and unreliable most based on a lot of conjecture where no hard evidence exists,(lot of biased extrapolation) E- There is no doubt that Climate Change is a big business and I do believe it is a pseudoscience codified into a pseudo-religion by most of those who have bought into the scam.

5. @ yamit82:

   Michaels has said that he does not contest the basic scientific principles behind greenhouse warming and acknowledges that the global mean temperature has increased in recent decades.[7] He is quoted as being skeptical of global warming,[citation needed][8] and is described by Michael E. Mann as a “prominent climate change contrarian.”[9] He contends that the changes will be minor, not catastrophic, and may even be beneficial.[10]

   He has written extensive editorials on this topic for the mass media, and for think tanks and their publications such as Regulation. He stated in 2000:[10]

   [S]cientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (C) [in 50 years]

   All this has to do with basic physics, which isn’t real hard to understand. It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming. In other words, the first changes produce the most warming, and subsequent ones produce a bit less, and so on. But we also assume carbon dioxide continues to go into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate. In other words, the increase from year-to-year isn’t constant, but itself is increasing. The effect of increasing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the fact that more and more carbon dioxide produces less and less warming compels our climate projections for the future warming to be pretty much a straight line. Translation: Once human beings start to warm the climate, they do so at a constant rate.[11]

   This from the Wikipedia biography of Dr. Michaels.

   Michaels does not deny that global warming is happening and real. What he does deny is that it is likely to have catastrophic effects on human communities. He also estimates the rate of global warming is slower than the conclusions of most experts.

   Since Dr. Michaels retired from his university position in 2007 and began to work for advocacy groups funded by the oil, gas and electric companies, he has been criticized by other scientists for having conflicts of interest, and for allegedly distorting global warming data.

6. Ivar Giaever’s only academic degree is in mechanical engineering, not any field related to climate studies. As far as I have been able to learn, his only employer for any length of time has been General Electric corporation. As far as I have been able to find out, he has never held a full-time university position, except for one year, and he has not published articles about climate in scientific journals.

7. @ yamit82:

   Ivar Giaever – Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
   Posted on 12 July 2012 by dana1981

   We often see scientists from non-climate fields who believe they have sufficient expertise to understand climate science despite having done minimal research on the subject; William Happer, Fritz Vahrenholt, and Bob Carter, for example. As he admits in his own words, Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever fits this mould perfectly:

   “I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don’t think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so – half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned. And I’m going to try to explain to you why that was the case.”

   That quote comes from a presentation Giaever gave to the 62nd Meeting of Nobel Laureates in 2012, for some unknown reason on the subject of climate change. As Giaever notes at the beginning of his talk, he has become more famous for his contrarian views on global warming than for his Nobel Prize, which have made him something of a darling to the climate contrarian movement and climate denial enablers.

   In this post we will examine the claims made by Giaever in his talk, and show that his contrarian climate opinions come from a position of extreme ignorance on the subject, as Giaever admits. Giaever personifies the classic stereotype of the physicist who thinks he understands all scientific fields of study:

   xkcd physicistsCartoon from xkcd which describes the behavior of Ivar Giaever to a ‘T’

   Accuracy of the Surface Temperature Record

   In his talk, Giaever spent a lot of time criticizing Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri (IPCC chairman) for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for – according to Giaever – ‘making the global surface temperature record famous’ (Figure 1).

   surface temp record

   Figure 1: Various global surface and lower troposphere temperature data sets.

   Giaever proceeded to question the accuracy of the surface temperature record, ultimately asking:

   “How can you measure the average temperature of the Earth? I don’t think that’s possible.”

   Unfortunately this simply displays an ignorance regarding the surface temperature record, whose accuracy has been confirmed time and time again, and which is also consistent with lower troposphere temperature measurements, as illustrated in Figure 1.

   Glenn Tramblyn has answered Giaever’s question in great detail in his four part series Of Averages & Anomalies, and Kevin C also had an excellent and detailed post on recent temperature measurements in The GLOBAL global warming signal. The answers to these questions are out there for those who are willing to spend more than a few hours on Google searches, and it is not constructive to give presentations on subjects without first doing such basic research. We are again left wondering why Giaever was asked to give a presentation to Nobel Laureates on a subject on which he has no expertise and has not done even the most basic research.

   The Significance of the Observed Global Warming

   Giaever also disputed the significance of the measured 0.8°C average global surface warming over the past 130 years, comparing it to a human fever and the temperature at which he had to maintain tissue for cell growth during his own biophysical experiments, also showing the following slide:

   Giaever small temp change slide

   Giaever does not seem to know how to put the observed 0.8°C global surface temperature change in proper context. It may sound small in comparison to the absolute global temperature in Kelvin, or in comparison to changes in human body temperatures, but it is a very large change in global surface temperature, especially over a period as brief as 130 years (Figure 2).

   holocene temps

   Figure 2: Eight records of local temperature variability on multi-centennial scales throughout the course of the Holocene, and an average of these (thick dark line) over the past 12,000 years, plotted with respect to the mid 20th century average temperature. The global average temperature in 2004 is also indicated. (Source)

   In addition to this rapid surface warming, the global oceans have also been accumulating heat at an incredible rate – the equivalent of more than two Hiroshima “Little Boy” atomic bomb detonations per second, every second over a the past half century. Presumably a physicist of Giaever’s stature would appreciate the magnitude of this global energy accumulation.

   As a physicist, Giaever should also understand that seemingly small objects and quantities can have large effects, but instead he seems to rely on incorrect “common sense” perceptions which are based on ignorance of the subject at hand.

   CO2 vs. Water Vapor

   As another example of this behavior, Giaever proceeds to demonstrate that he also does not understand the role of the greenhouse effect in climate change.

   “Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO2. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don’t see the CO2.”

   Needless to say, the second sentence above represents a very bizarre argument. Giaever is either arguing that CO2 is a visible gas (it is not) and the fact that you can’t see it means there is too little in the atmosphere to have a significant warming effect, or that only visible gases can warm the planet, or some other similarly misinformed assertion.

   That clouds are visible to the human eye and CO2 isn’t simply is not relevant to the greenhouse effect and global warming. It’s also worth noting that like CO2, water vapor is not visible – clouds are condensed water droplets, not water vapor.

   Additionally, water vapor does not drive climate change. There is a lot of it in the atmosphere, so it is the largest single contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, water vapor cannot initiate a warming event. Unlike external forcings such as CO2, which can be added to the atmosphere through various processes (like fossil fuel combustion), the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. Water vapor is brought into the atmosphere via evaporation – the rate depends on the temperature of the ocean and air. If extra water is added to the atmosphere, it condenses and falls as rain or snow within a week or two. As Lacis et al. (2010) showed, as summarized by NASA (emphasis added):

   “Because carbon dioxide accounts for 80% of the non-condensing GHG forcing in the current climate atmosphere, atmospheric carbon dioxide therefore qualifies as the principal control knob that governs the temperature of Earth.”

   Climate Myth Whack-a-Mole

   Giaever continues ticking off the most common climate myths, going from arguing that it may not even be warming, to claiming the warming is insignificant, to asserting the warming is caused by water vapor, and ultimately that the warming is indeed caused by human influences:

   “Is it possible that all the paved roads and cut down forests are the cause of “global warming”, not CO2? But nobody talks about that.”

   Climate scientists do of course investigate and discuss the effects of deforestation and urban influences. The 2007 IPCC report discusses the influences of deforestation on climate in great detail, for example here and here, and devotes a section to policies aimed at reducing deforestation here. The United Nations has also implemented the Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) to address the effects of deforestation on climate change. In short, by claiming that nobody has considered the effects of deforestation on climate, Giaever once again demonstrates that he simply has not done his homework.

   The IPCC report also discusses the influences of urban heat islands and land use effects here and here, for example. Giaever then claims that one person has talked about these effects – US Secretary of Energy and fellow Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, who suggested paining roofs white to offset some warming, though he does not discuss Chu in a very flattering light.

   “[Chu has] been bought by the global warming people, and he’s now helping Obama trying to make green energy in the United States.”

   In the presentation in question, Chu described the potential effects of the white roof proposal as follows:

   “Making roads and roofs a paler color could have the equivalent effect of taking every car in the world off the road for 11 years”

   Chu discusses white roofs as a geoengineering possibility in response to greenhouse gas-caused climate change, as a way to offset a small portion of the global warming our fossil fuel combustion and associated carbon emissions are causing.

   Failure to do Homework Earns a Failing Grade

   At this point we’re 9 minutes into Giaever’s 32-minute presentation, and he begins comparing climate science to religion. Yet based on his arguments in those first 9 minutes, it’s clear that Giaever has not done even the most basic climate research, so how can he possibly make such a radical determination?

   While Giaever is certainly a highly accomplished physicist, that does not automatically make him a climate expert as well. As Giaever himself has admitted, he has spent very little time researching the subject, and it shows. He simply bounces from one climate myth to the next, demonstrating a lack of understanding of Climate Science 101, and then insults the entire scientific field by comparing it to a religion, bringing life to the xkcd cartoon at the top of this post.

   Memo to climate contrarians – expertise comes from actually researching a subject. There is a reason why scientists who have researched climate change in the most depth are also the most likely to be convinced that global warming is human-caused (Figure 3).

   Figure 3: Distribution of the number of researchers convinced by the evidence of anthropogenic climate change (green) and unconvinced by the evidence (red) with a given number of total climate publications (Anderegg 2010).

   In his talk, Giaever complained that he had become famous for his climate contrarianism, which he claimed indicated that dissenting opinions on the subject are not welcome. On the contrary, Giaever has been criticized for repeating long-debunked climate myths which he could have easily learned about through a little bit of research – by perusing the Skeptical Science database, for example, where we have debunked all of his Googled climate misconceptions.

   Instead, Giaever has used his position of scientific authority as a Nobel Laureate to misinform people about a subject on which he has not even done the most basic research. That is not how a good scientist should behave, and that is why Giaever has rightfully and deservedly been criticized. Giaever finishes his talk by proclaiming

   “Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely.”

   The problem is that Giaever has not done his homework, which is why he gets the wrong answer, and his presentation deserves a failing grade. Ironically, Giaever defines “pseudoscience” as only seeking evidence to confirm one’s desired hypothesis, which is precisely how Giaever himself has behaved with respect to climate science.

   Listening to Giaever’s opinions on climate science is equivalent to giving your dentist a pamphlet on heart surgery and asking him to crack your chest open. While climate science has a basis in phyiscs (and many other scientific fields of study), it is an entirely different subject, whose basics Giaever could undoubtedly grasp if he were willing to put the time in to do his homework.

   But individual scientists (even Nobel Laureates) suffer from cognitive biases like anyone else. That’s why we don’t rely on indvidual scientists or individual papers to draw conclusions about climate change. The only way to get an accurate picture is through the work of many scientists, peer reviewed and scrutinized over decades and tested against multiple lines of evidence. Giaever demonstrates how far cognitive bias – reinforced by a few hours of Googling – can lead anyone to the wrong conclusions, and also proves that no individual’s opinion, regardless of his credentials, can replace the full body of climate science evidence.

   Note: for climate-related talks at the same conference made by Nobel Laureates who have actually researched the topics in their presentations, see these videos of Paul Crutzen and Mario Molina.

8. @ yamit82:
   People used to talk about the weather, to avoid arguments about religion and politics. Nowadays, Democrats can’t seem to talk about the weather without blaming President Trump for it.

9. @ yamit82: This from the biography of Patrick Moore in Wikipedia:

   Patrick Moore (born 1947) is a businessman, industry lobbyist, consultant and member of business think tanks and peak bodies. . . He is the third generation of a British Columbian family with a long history in forestry and fishing. His father, W. D. Moore, was the president of the B.C. Truck Loggers Association and past president of the Pacific Logging Congress.[…13] . . .In 1986, after leaving Greenpeace over differences in policy, Moore established a family salmon farming business, Quatsino Seafarms, at his home in Winter Harbour. . . . In this year he was also elected president of the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association.[citation needed. . . . In 1991, he joined the board of the Forest Alliance of BC, an initiative of the CEOs of the major forest companies in British Columbia. . ). In 2006, Moore became co-chair (with Christine Todd Whitman) of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which promotes increased use of nuclear energy. In 2010, Moore was recruited to represent the Indonesian logging firm Asia Pulp & Paper(APP), a multi-national accused by activist groups of widespread and illegal rainforest clearance practices, although this is strongly disputed by Moore.[35]. . . Moore is supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a national organization of pro-nuclear industries and in 2009 he chaired their Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.[46]… Moore has earned his living since the early 1990s primarily by consulting for, and publicly speaking for, a wide variety of corporations and lobby groups such as the Nuclear Energy Institute.[46] A Columbia Journalism Review editorial criticizes the press for uncritically printing “pro-nuclear songs” such as Moore’s, citing his role as a paid spokesperson of the nuclear industry.[64][65]

   Moore’s family ties to the fishing industry and the logging industry, his own salmon fishing business, and his work as a paid consultant and spokesman for a variety of industries that could be damaged by the findings about global warming, such as the logging industry, means that his opinions on these subjects should be taken with a grain of salt. Obviously he will be defensive about industries in which his father and himself have been deeply involved.

   As as far as I can find out, Dr. Moore has never written and published any article about climate change in a scientific journal not connected with private industry. He never held a faculty position at any college or university.

10. @ yamit82:

    Weather is Weather everybody talks about the weather but nobody seems able to control it 😛

11. @ adamdalgliesh:

    Trump is right!!!

    Cato’s Patrick Michaels assesses current state of climate debate

12. @ adamdalgliesh:

    “Climate Change is a Scam!” Dr. Patrick Moore, PHD in Ecology and founder of Greenpeace, dissected the scam that is modern “climate change”.

13. adamdalgliesh Said:

    They also said there is no doubt humans are contributing to global warming.

    No scientific proof…. Assumptions mostly based on filling in explanations because they can’t find or accept any other.

    Nobel Laureate in Physics; “Global Warming is Pseudoscience”

14. U.S. impacts of climate change are intensifying, federal report says
    Doyle RiceUpdated 5:57 p.m. ET Nov. 23, 2018
    A new climate report, Volume II of the National Climate Assessment, says that the affects of global warming are intensifying and getting costlier. USA TODAY

    A massive report issued by the Trump administration on Friday emphasizes the dire threat that human-caused global warming poses to the United States and its citizens.

    “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” researchers say in the report, officially Volume II of the National Climate Assessment. (Volume I was released last year.)

    The 1,600-page report details the climate and economic impacts U.S. residents will see if drastic action is not taken to address climate change.

    “The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,” the researchers say.

    The last few years have smashed records for damaging weather in the United States, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. In a worst-case scenario, the researchers say, climate change could deliver a 10 percent hit to the nation’s GDP by the end of the century.

    Climate change threatens the health and well-being of the American people by causing increasing extreme weather, changes to air quality, the spread of new diseases by insects and pests and changes to the availability of food and water, the researchers say.

    Report co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University said it shows the dangerous weather that scientists said will happen in the United States is already happening.

    This is the fourth National Climate Assessment. It was mandated by Congress in the late 1980s and is prepared every four years by the nation’s top scientists from 13 agencies. It’s meant as a reference for the president, Congress and the public.

    What makes the report different from previous versions is that it focuses on the United States, then goes more local and granular.

    Mary Battles, left, and Shenike Bishop rest in a bus stop damaged by Hurricane Michael on Oct. 20, 2018 in Panama City, Florida. Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle on October 10, as a category 4 storm causing massive damage and claiming about 30 lives.
    Last SlideNext Slide
    The report frequently contradicts President Donald Trump, who took to Twitter on Wednesday night to again express his doubts about climate change, using the especially cold Thanksgiving forecast as an example.

    “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?” the president tweeted.

    But weather isn’t climate, the researchers say. They say cold snaps can occur even as the planet warms overall.

    “Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity,” they write. “Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase.”

    This summary from USAToday, also not a hard core leftist publication.

    If one witness describes how a murder was committed and who committed it, we need to be careful about taking his word. He might be biased, covering up his own involvement, etc. But if 500 witnesses say that they saw the crime occur, and they also agree on the essentials if not all details, then we need to take their observations seriously. (e.g., the Lincoln assassination). There are hundreds of scientific”witnesses ” to global warming.

15. Latest comprehensive National Climate Assessment gives dire climate change warning
    As many as 9,300 more people could die each year because of extreme heat or cold related to climate change by the end of this century, the Trump administration said Friday in releasing a massive new report on the controversial issue.

    The range of disease-spreading mosquitoes and ticks will expand, as will extreme weather events — all of which will bring additional mental health problems such as depression and even suicidal tendencies, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, made up of 13 federal agencies, said in the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

    All told, the health problems and other damage and mitigation costs will total hundreds of billions of dollars in drag on the U.S. economy by the end of this century, the experts said.

    They also said there is no doubt humans are contributing to global warming.

    “Both human and natural factors influence Earth’s climate, but the long-term global warming trend observed over the past century can only be explained by the effect that human activities have had on the climate,” the assessment concluded.

    How much warming depends on what steps are taken. If the world can achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, warming could be limited to 2 degrees centigrade. But without those limits, global temperatures could rise 5 degrees or more by the end of this century, compared to where they were before industrialization.

    While the report acknowledges some uncertainty about the extent of warming and its damages, the conclusions are mostly grim. The analysts said there may be some aspects of the economy that would benefit from a modest warming, but said the rates and pace the country is looking at are likely to be catastrophic overall.

    The report breaks down the various ways that the environment is changing and how each region in the U.S. is being affected by the radical ecosystem shifts. In concluded that weather is becoming more extreme on the coasts as the oceans warm.

    Americans most at risk of feeling the impact are already vulnerable populations, such as children, elderly, the poor and some minority communities. The report said they may struggle to adapt to climate-related threats.

    “While Americans are responding in ways that can bolster resilience and improve livelihoods, neither global efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change nor regional efforts to adapt to the impacts currently approach the scales needed to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades,” the report reads.

    Among the scariest warnings are the increased mortality estimates because of extreme heat. Under even the lowest scenario, the experts predicted 3,900 more deaths per year by the end of the century, and at the top end it could be as many as 9,300 more deaths.

    In Atlanta, that means 349 more people each year would die.

    But the experts said if everyone can learn to adapt to weather as if they were in Dallas, those rates could be cut in half.

    The report’s dire warning comes as the Trump administration continues to question the validity of climate change.

    President Trump this week pointed to record-low temperatures that had been expected in some parts of the country on Thanksgiving.

    “Brutal and extended cold blast could shatter all records — whatever happened to global warming?” he wondered on Twitter.

    Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

    This from the Washington Times, also not a leftist rag sheet.

16. Federal climate change report paints grim picture for Midwest
    Tony Briscoe
    Illinois soybean farmer
    Rising temperatures in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in U.S. agricultural productivity, with extreme heat wilting crops and posing a threat to livestock, according to a sweeping federal report on climate change released Friday.

    Midwest farmers will be increasingly challenged by warmer, wetter and more humid conditions from climate change, which also will lead to greater incidence of crop disease and more pests and will diminish the quality of stored grain. During the growing season, temperatures are projected to climb more in the Midwest than in any other region of the U.S., the report says.

    Without technological advances in agriculture, the onslaught of high-rainfall events and higher temperatures could reduce the Midwest agricultural economy to levels last seen during the economic downturn for farmers in the 1980s.

    Overall, yields from major U.S crops are expected to fall, the reports says. To adapt to the rising temperatures, substantial investments will be required, which will in turn will hurt farmers’ bottom lines.

    These are some of the findings of the report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 1,600-page report — vetted by 13 government agencies and written collectively with the help of 300 scientists — is perhaps the most authoritative and comprehensive statement on the risks of climate change, which has contributed to extreme weather that has cost the U.S. nearly $400 billion since 2015, the authors found.

    According to the report, the threat to Midwestern agriculture is just one potential blow to the region.

    READ MORE: Major Trump administration climate report says damages are ‘intensifying across the country’ »

    Scientists say human activity is changing the planet’s climate faster than at any point time in modern civilization, heralding costly and, in some cases, life-threatening consequences in every region of the country. Though the monstrous 2017 hurricane season and wildfires in California in recent years may be some of the most visceral images of the devastation a changing climate can wreak, the subtle effects from increasingly unpredictable water availability, more frequent heavy rainfall and hotter weather in the Midwest are just as important, according to Jim Angel, Illinois’ state climatologist, who contributed to Friday’s report.

    “Some of those things don’t grab headlines as much but are still significant,” Angel said. “We kind of got a taste of that in 2012 with the big drought that shook not only U.S. markets but world markets. Those kind of things should be a big concern by midcentury.”

    Illinois, a leading producer of soybeans and hogs, ranks third among the states in exported agricultural commodities, with $8.2 billion worth of goods shipped to other countries. The state has become 1.2 degrees warmer and 10 to 15 percent wetter in the past century. Angel said farmers are trying to adapt by increasing drainage and planting cover crops that will protect against heavier rainfall and runoff that can cause soil erosion.

    “The question is can they adapt fast enough,” Angel said.

    We’ve already set in motion some pretty substantial changes. — Richard Moss, adjunct professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland

    Meanwhile, William Hohenstein, director of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s climate change program, said the federal government is helping farmers track drought conditions.

    “We are working to advance the … drought forecasting,” Hohenstein said. “USDA is also partnering with seed companies to develop new cultivars of crops that are more resilient to drought. To help improve soil health and conserve water, we are providing guidance through our Midwest Regional Climate Hub on conservation practices.”

    The reports cites other impacts climate change could have on the Midwest.

    READ MORE: Baseball fans dodging more cold snaps, heavy rainfall as climate patterns change »

    Warmer air also can hold more moisture, leading to more frequent and severe storms, which would overwhelm aging stormwater systems across the region. Scientists estimate the annual cost of retrofitting urban stormwater systems will exceed $500 million for the Midwest by the end of the century.

    Higher temperatures also are expected to lead to diminished air quality. Without policymakers taking steps to mitigate the issue, hotter weather, which is more conducive to smog creation, could result in as many as 550 premature deaths per year by 2050, according to the report.

    Brian Urbaszewski, director of the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, said he fears that warming will extend the seasons in which we could see unhealthy levels of ozone. People with asthma and others who struggle with respiratory diseases, he said, will be the most vulnerable.

    “This reinforces the need to cut down and get rid off of pollutants that form ozone,” Urbaszewski said. “The problem with global warming is that it makes it harder.”

    Climate change, once a benign area of research, has become a polarizing and politicized issue in recent years, at times pitting scientists against politicians.

    Friday’s report, the fourth National Climate Assessment, is the latest in a line of federal research into climate change. Mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990, it seeks to assess the environmental, economic, and health and safety consequences of climate change. It builds on a 2017 report in which federal scientists found “it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

    The conclusions of Friday’s study directly contradict the views of President Donald Trump, an outspoken skeptic of climate change who has vowed to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, a global pact that aims to reduce greenhouse gases. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted about an incoming cold snap on the East Coast, saying: “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”

    Under Trump, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scrubbed references to climate change from its website.

    READ MORE: Lake Michigan is warming. A new report says that could mean trouble for game fish. »

    Environmental advocates and journalists questioned whether the Trump administration’s apparent distrust of climate science influenced the decision for NOAA to release the report the day after Thanksgiving, a day when newsrooms are thin and public interest is likely distracted by Black Friday deals. NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen acknowledged the report was out “earlier than expected” but referred questions pertaining to the timing of its release and White House tampering to Mike Kuperberg, executive director for the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

    “This report has not been altered or revised in any way to reflect with political considerations,” Allen said.

    Kuperberg coud not be reached for comment.

    Perhaps more consequential than the timing was the Trump administration’s decision to dissolve a federal advisory panel that sought to translate these national and regional findings to the state and local levels. The defunct panel, chaired by Richard Moss, an adjunct professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland, was revived earlier this year when it received funding from the state of New York, Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the American Meteorological Society to complete its project. Their report will be released early next year.

    Moss, a Deerfield native, argues that the information will be all-important to cities and states, which he said will be key to slowing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also needing to design their communities to become resilient to the climate changes.

    “It shows we can’t waste any more time,” Moss said. “We have to be reducing emissions to avoid the worst impacts in the future and then we have to get ready for what we can no longer avoid. Because we’ve already set in motion some pretty substantial changes.”

    tbriscoe@chicagotribune.com

    Twitter @_tonybriscoe

    This is from the Chicago Tribune, which is not a leftist rag sheet.

17. Climate change will shrink US economy and kill thousands, government report warns

    (CNN) — A new US government report delivers a dire warning about climate change and its devastating impacts, saying the economy could lose hundreds of billions of dollars — or, in the worst-case scenario, more than 10% of its GDP — by the end of the century.

    David Easterling, director of the Technical Support Unit at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, emphasized that there was “no external interference in the report’s development.” He added that the climate change the Earth is experiencing is unlike any other.
    “The global average temperature is much higher and is rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced, and this warming trend can only be explained by human activities,” Easterling said.
    Coming from the US Global Change Research Program, a team of 13 federal agencies, the Fourth National Climate Assessment was put together with the help of 1,000 people, including 300 leading scientists, roughly half from outside the government.
    It’s the second of two volumes. The first, released in November 2017, concluded that there is “no convincing alternative explanation” for the changing climate other than “human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases.”. . .
    Climate change is not disproved by the extreme weather of one day or a week; it’s demonstrated by long-term trends. Humans are living with the warmest temperatures in modern history. Even if the best-case scenario were to happen and greenhouse gas emissions were to drop to nothing, the world is on track to warm 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.
    As of now, not a single G20 country is meeting climate targets, research shows.
    Without significant reductions in greenhouse emissions, the annual average global temperature could increase 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) or more by the end of this century, compared with preindustrial temperatures, the report says.
    The costs of climate change could reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually, according to the report. The Southeast alone will probably lose over a half a billion labor hours by 2100 due to extreme heat.
    Farmers will face extremely tough times. The quality and quantity of their crops will decline across the country due to higher temperatures, drought and flooding. In parts of the Midwest, farms will be able to produce less than 75% of the corn they produce today, and the southern part of the region could lose more than 25% of its soybean yield.
    Heat stress could cause average dairy production to fall between 0.60% and 1.35% over the next 12 years — having already cost the industry $1.2 billion from heat stress in 2010.
    The health hazards from wildfires can linger
    When it comes to shellfish there will be a $230 million loss by the end of the century due to ocean acidification, which is already killing off shellfish and corals. Red tides, or algae bloom that deplete oxygen in the water and can kill sea life — like those that triggered a state of emergency in Florida in August — will become more frequent.
    Higher temperatures will also kill more people, the report says. The Midwest alone, which is predicted to have the largest increase in extreme temperature, will see an additional 2,000 premature deaths per year by 2090.
    There will be more mosquito- and tickborne diseases like Zika, dengue and chikungunya. West Nile cases are expected to more than double by 2050 due to increasing temperatures.

    No one’s health is immune from climate change, the report concludes. People will be exposed to more foodborne and waterborne diseases. Particularly vulnerable to higher temperatures in the summer, children, the elderly, the poor and communities of color will be at a much greater risk for illness and death.
    Wildfire seasons — already longer and more destructive than before — could burn up to six times more forest area annually by 2050 in parts of the United States. Burned areas in Southwestern California alone could double by 2050.
    Dependable and safe water for the Hawaii, the Caribbean and others are threatened by these rising temperatures.
    How climate change will affect your health
    Along the US coasts, public infrastructure and $1 trillion in national wealth held in real estate are threatened by rising sea levels, flooding and storm surges.
    Energy systems will be taxed, meaning more blackouts and power failures, and the potential loss in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of the century, the report said.
    The number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit will multiply; Chicago, where these days are rare, could start to resemble Phoenix or Las Vegas, with up to two months worth of these scorching-hot days.
    Sea levels have already gone up 7 to 8 inches since 1900. Almost half that rise has been since 1993, a rate of rise greater than during any century in the past 2,800 years. Some countries are already seeing land underwater.
    By midcentury, it’s likely that the Arctic will lose all sea ice in late summer, and that could lead to more permafrost thaw, according to the report. As the permafrost thaws, more carbon dioxide and methane would be released, amplifying human-induced warming, “possibly significantly.”
    The report was created to inform policy-makers and makes no specific recommendations on how to remedy the problem. However, it suggests that if the United States immediately reduced its fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, it could save thousands of lives and generate billions of dollars in benefits for the country.
    As global temperatures rise, so will mental health issues, study says. . .

    A report from the UN in October urged all governments to take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avoid disaster from climate change. That report predicted that the Earth will reach the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by as early as 2030. It also suggested the world faces a risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people. . .

    These are extracts from CNN ‘s summary of the government’s climate study. Yes, CNN aeded its article with a lot of leftist propaganda, which needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But those parts of the article which summarize the specific findings of the report, not journalistic chatter, should be taken seriously.

18. @ adamdalgliesh:

    Not true I supplied several clips showing you are wrong in your assumptions apparently you did not view,,,,, 2nd try and this is only one example of thousands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnq412qXwzM

19. @ yamit82: Documentation? Large numbers of credentialed climate scientists have signed petitions that climate change, global warming is a hoax? Their names? Their credentials? Have they actually conducted published, peer-reviewed studies of climate-related data? How many? NOAA, NASA and USDA leftist cultists and journalists? Come now. The government agencies that affirm global warming and think it will continue provide documentation to back up their conclusions. The deniers do not. They are fueled by emotion alone.

20. Federal climate change report paints grim picture for Midwest
    Tony Briscoe
    Illinois soybean farmer
    Rising temperatures in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in U.S. agricultural productivity, with extreme heat wilting crops and posing a threat to livestock, according to a sweeping federal report on climate change released Friday.

    Midwest farmers will be increasingly challenged by warmer, wetter and more humid conditions from climate change, which also will lead to greater incidence of crop disease and more pests and will diminish the quality of stored grain. During the growing season, temperatures are projected to climb more in the Midwest than in any other region of the U.S., the report says.

    Without technological advances in agriculture, the onslaught of high-rainfall events and higher temperatures could reduce the Midwest agricultural economy to levels last seen during the economic downturn for farmers in the 1980s.

    Overall, yields from major U.S crops are expected to fall, the reports says. To adapt to the rising temperatures, substantial investments will be required, which will in turn will hurt farmers’ bottom lines.

    These are some of the findings of the report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 1,600-page report — vetted by 13 government agencies and written collectively with the help of 300 scientists — is perhaps the most authoritative and comprehensive statement on the risks of climate change, which has contributed to extreme weather that has cost the U.S. nearly $400 billion since 2015, the authors found.

    According to the report, the threat to Midwestern agriculture is just one potential blow to the region.

    READ MORE: Major Trump administration climate report says damages are ‘intensifying across the country’ »

    Scientists say human activity is changing the planet’s climate faster than at any point time in modern civilization, heralding costly and, in some cases, life-threatening consequences in every region of the country. Though the monstrous 2017 hurricane season and wildfires in California in recent years may be some of the most visceral images of the devastation a changing climate can wreak, the subtle effects from increasingly unpredictable water availability, more frequent heavy rainfall and hotter weather in the Midwest are just as important, according to Jim Angel, Illinois’ state climatologist, who contributed to Friday’s report.

    “Some of those things don’t grab headlines as much but are still significant,” Angel said. “We kind of got a taste of that in 2012 with the big drought that shook not only U.S. markets but world markets. Those kind of things should be a big concern by midcentury.”

    Illinois, a leading producer of soybeans and hogs, ranks third among the states in exported agricultural commodities, with $8.2 billion worth of goods shipped to other countries. The state has become 1.2 degrees warmer and 10 to 15 percent wetter in the past century. Angel said farmers are trying to adapt by increasing drainage and planting cover crops that will protect against heavier rainfall and runoff that can cause soil erosion.

    “The question is can they adapt fast enough,” Angel said.

    We’ve already set in motion some pretty substantial changes. — Richard Moss, adjunct professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland

    Meanwhile, William Hohenstein, director of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s climate change program, said the federal government is helping farmers track drought conditions.

    “We are working to advance the … drought forecasting,” Hohenstein said. “USDA is also partnering with seed companies to develop new cultivars of crops that are more resilient to drought. To help improve soil health and conserve water, we are providing guidance through our Midwest Regional Climate Hub on conservation practices.”

    The reports cites other impacts climate change could have on the Midwest.

    READ MORE: Baseball fans dodging more cold snaps, heavy rainfall as climate patterns change »

    Warmer air also can hold more moisture, leading to more frequent and severe storms, which would overwhelm aging stormwater systems across the region. Scientists estimate the annual cost of retrofitting urban stormwater systems will exceed $500 million for the Midwest by the end of the century.

    Higher temperatures also are expected to lead to diminished air quality. Without policymakers taking steps to mitigate the issue, hotter weather, which is more conducive to smog creation, could result in as many as 550 premature deaths per year by 2050, according to the report.

    Brian Urbaszewski, director of the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, said he fears that warming will extend the seasons in which we could see unhealthy levels of ozone. People with asthma and others who struggle with respiratory diseases, he said, will be the most vulnerable.

    “This reinforces the need to cut down and get rid off of pollutants that form ozone,” Urbaszewski said. “The problem with global warming is that it makes it harder.”

    Climate change, once a benign area of research, has become a polarizing and politicized issue in recent years, at times pitting scientists against politicians.

    Friday’s report, the fourth National Climate Assessment, is the latest in a line of federal research into climate change. Mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990, it seeks to assess the environmental, economic, and health and safety consequences of climate change. It builds on a 2017 report in which federal scientists found “it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

    The conclusions of Friday’s study directly contradict the views of President Donald Trump, an outspoken skeptic of climate change who has vowed to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, a global pact that aims to reduce greenhouse gases. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted about an incoming cold snap on the East Coast, saying: “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”

    Under Trump, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scrubbed references to climate change from its website.

    READ MORE: Lake Michigan is warming. A new report says that could mean trouble for game fish. »

    Environmental advocates and journalists questioned whether the Trump administration’s apparent distrust of climate science influenced the decision for NOAA to release the report the day after Thanksgiving, a day when newsrooms are thin and public interest is likely distracted by Black Friday deals. NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen acknowledged the report was out “earlier than expected” but referred questions pertaining to the timing of its release and White House tampering to Mike Kuperberg, executive director for the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

    “This report has not been altered or revised in any way to reflect with political considerations,” Allen said.

    Kuperberg coud not be reached for comment.

    Perhaps more consequential than the timing was the Trump administration’s decision to dissolve a federal advisory panel that sought to translate these national and regional findings to the state and local levels. The defunct panel, chaired by Richard Moss, an adjunct professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland, was revived earlier this year when it received funding from the state of New York, Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the American Meteorological Society to complete its project. Their report will be released early next year.

    Moss, a Deerfield native, argues that the information will be all-important to cities and states, which he said will be key to slowing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also needing to design their communities to become resilient to the climate changes.

    “It shows we can’t waste any more time,” Moss said. “We have to be reducing emissions to avoid the worst impacts in the future and then we have to get ready for what we can no longer avoid. Because we’ve already set in motion some pretty substantial changes.”

    tbriscoe@chicagotribune.com

    Twitter @_tonybriscoe

    All of these scientists and and bureaucrats leftist conspirators? Not plausible. THE USDA a leftist organization? The national weather service? That’s crazy.

    Many people believe in flying saucers. I can’t prove they are wrong. “Against stupidity, even the gods wage war in vain.”

21. @ adamdalgliesh:

    Total Bull shit!!! There are many if not most serious climatologists who oppose and or question the dire predictions of the cult of global warming adopted by most journalists (all on the political left) and politicians again mostly those on the left.

22. @ Felix Quigley: Thanks, Felix, for bringing this important interview with a climate scientist to our attention. Also, for pointing out that the climate change deniers are nearly all journalists or politicians, not scientists, and that their reasons for denying climate change are political and economic, not scientific.

23. Scientists predict the coming ice age

    In 1975, Newsweek Predicted A New Ice Age. We’re Still Living with the Consequences.

    Bundle Up: Scientists Predict ‘Mini Ice Age’ Will Hit Earth in Five Years

    In the modern world, most people are very used to hearing scientists prophesying of the dangers of man-made climate change, often referred to as global warming, as trapped carbon dioxide in our atmosphere causes the planet’s temperature to rise, and the polar ice to melt at an alarming rate.

    Now, though, scientists led by Valentina Zharkova at Northumbria University are arguing that we might be about to see the reverse occurring – instead of heating up, starting in 2021, the world is going to enter a period of cooling that’s being described as a “mini ice age”.
    All climate change deniers needed was one article to cast doubt on the science of global warming.

24. @ Felix Quigley:

    Re: BB supporting ISIS??? If True remember the enemy of my enemy is my friend if only temp. Remember FDR allied with Fascist Stalin against socialist Hitler… He allowed Russia to bleed some 20 million for the cause and saved hundreds of thousands of Americans. I call that smart and BB is not dumb. Now it seems Trump has called Putin’s bluff https://www.debka.com/usaf-takes-control-of-syrian-skies-unidentified-air-strike-on-iranian-target/

25. I have read with considerable interest the huge variety of results stemming from studies of different shades of reliability. The erudition of the posters and their tireless searching out of studies amazes me.

    I myself, not being either a scientist nor an expert computer researcher have no opinions of the on the studies ( I believe Al Gore was weak-minded— and I recall that embarrassing Y2000 massive global scare) except to say that there are some which are flawed to show the results that the funds donors lean towards. Other funds are given for declared specific purposes, therefore the institutions deliver accordingly.

    I’ve always believed from my own instincts, that there are more trees today than before civilisation was organised to fight fires effectively. And as we see in California it’s anything but perfect. I felt, that forest fires in antiquity, nearly all caused by lightning strikes, raged unabated perhaps for months until lack of trees or a rainstorm would eventually douse them. So I’m very surprised to read that there were twice as many trees then as now.

    But I feel that the main “problem” is getting enough breathable air to perpetuate the human race. Oxygen is mentioned only by implication and the main source not at all.,

    Nothing about climate change ether pro or con, should change this unending source,which are the oceans of the world. They would have to be heated to a degree which would eliminate all oceanic plant life…….and if that occurred, humanity would already have died out thousands of years before .

    I know that my post is not dealing with the content of the article but all of the posters have done that more than sufficiently. I feel my contribution is, sort-of, a part of it.

26. The Truth About Climate Change

27. The Great Global Warming Swindle – Full Documentary HD

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ

28. Climate Change Hysteria Debunked by Top Expert IPCC Climatologist – Dr. Patrick Michaels

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnq412qXwzM

29. @ Felix Quigley:

    The truth about global warming

30. @ Bear Klein:
    Thank you, Bear for posting Yakir’s study; and thank you, Hugo, for the “0.45°C” note. Felix, I would thank you too, but I had too much trouble following what you said.

    The upshot of this all, is that the issue is political and not scientific; and that the political debate is every day more insane.

    Is global warming the reason so many on the Left have become implacable hotheads? I dare say not; but the “heat” they generate is far more a danger to the planet than a 0.0045°C average temporary increase per year in the temperature outside.

    The brown squirrels in the tree outside my window seem to be growing a thicker coat than usual this year — a prediction of a long, cold winter where I live. I trust those squirrels much more than I would ever trust Al Gore.

31. Forests are considered one of the best means of offsetting global climate change, because they tie up large amounts of carbon. In other words, they have a large biomass compared to other types of plant cover and, since they tend to be long-lived, they keep that carbon tied up for a long time in a process called “carbon sequestration.”

    But forests interact with the climate in all sorts of ways – not just through their uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their color changes the amount of radiation absorbed by the Earth’s surface; and together with evapotranspiration – the movement of water up through the roots to the leaves and out through pores in the leaves – provides the trees with ways of adjusting their internal temperature.

    Yakir and his group found that some trees, if they act together on a sufficiently large scale, can also promote cloud formation. So trees not only adapt to a climate, they shape their climate – and ours – as well.

    “But not all forests are equal when it comes to cooling the planet, and it has not always been clear where new forests can do the most good in the shortest amount of time,” said Yakir.

    The team based its findings on a unique trove of data on the complex relationship between a semi-arid forest, on the one hand, and the atmosphere and climate on the other – 16 years of recorded information from a station in the Yatir planted forest on the edge of the Negev Desert.
    This station, managed by staff scientist Dr. Eyal Rotenberg and supported by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, tracks the flow of carbon, water, heat and other factors through the ecosystem and climate of a semi-arid forest site. Over the years, Yakir and his group have discovered how such forests maintain an “energy budget” that includes mechanisms for both heating and cooling.

    Forests, for example, can cool the ground beneath them, but the dark-colored leaves also trap the sun’s radiation and release it as heat. They need water, but they also evaporate cooling water into air.

    The Weizmann studies have shown that a semi-arid forest like Yatir can absorb more carbon than had been previously thought, but it can also take a long time to pay back in cooling, in part because the dark canopy produces more heat than the reflective, light-colored, sandy soil.

    The main reason for this phenomenon, said Yakir, is that trees are excellent “water miners.”

    Trees that thrive in semi-arid regions tend to have deep roots. On a large scale, millions of trees reaching down into the Earth to pull up more water and evaporate it through their leaves should make the surface measurably cooler. Cooler surface temperatures trigger a chain of events that ultimately enhances both precipitation and carbon uptake ? and this far outweighs any warming effect associated with the dark color of the leaves. In addition, the researchers point out that properly managed forests could provide wood, food and a livelihood to the people living in these regions.

    DR. GIL YOSEF, then a research student in Yakir’s group, wondered if the different factors operating in a small semi-arid forest would play out in the same way on a larger scale. He took, as examples, two regions with similarly low rainfall: the Sahel, a large region bordering the Sahara, and a large semi-arid tract of northern Australia. The question he asked was: “Would the climate be affected if ‘Yatir-like’ forests were planted extensively in these regions?” Yosef and Yakir turned to a group at the University of Miami, Florida, led by Prof. Roni Avissar and Dr. Robert Walko, who had devised a sophisticated climate model that enabled the group to run simulations and compare them with the real data for a 15-year period in the recent past. In their simulations, the group added to the model an imaginary forest of trees similar to the existing ones in Yatir: These were appropriate for the climate, with the right sort of leaves and root systems, the right full-grown height and density, and planted over most of these large regions.

    On the basis of the model, Yosef estimated that large-scale afforestation in these areas alone could create a carbon sink that would be equivalent to around 10% of the global biospheric carbon uptake, and help cool our overheated planet within around six years.

    “Six years is no time at all,” said Yakir, “so the result was a bit surprising. But the model is quite robust. A large-scale afforestation effort in these semi-arid regions could have a larger climatic pay-off than planting trees in high-latitude regions like Scandinavia, and it could be implemented in a reasonably short time,” he added.

    https://www.jpost.com/GreenIsrael/People-And-The-Environment/Weizmann-Institute-research-Large-semi-arid-forests-could-cool-the-planet-540316

32. Weizmann Institute research: Large semi-arid forests could cool the planet
    Planting the ‘right kind’ of forests could have a measurably positive influence on the climate and help offset global warming.

    Planting the “right kinds” of forests extensively in areas that have mostly been neglected in forestation efforts; semi-arid regions in Africa and Australia; could have a measurably positive influence on the climate and help offset a significant portion of human-induced global warming.

    This was discovered recently by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers led by Prof. Dan Yakir of the earth and planetary sciences department who used an Israeli forest as a model. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

    https://www.jpost.com/GreenIsrael/People-And-The-Environment/Weizmann-Institute-research-Large-semi-arid-forests-could-cool-the-planet-540316

33. Climate change should be a scientific debate and not a political debate.

    Here is what NASA says on the subject (link below to an extensive article)

    The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

    https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

34. As the coldest Thanksgiving in 150 years hits the Northeast with “Siberian” temperatures, this November 2018, you shouldn’t be asking these questions.

    It would be an interesting hypothesis to study whether the heating up of city pavements and concrete blocks affect the overall temperature. They don’t. And it is no justification to maintain a monitoring station next to an air-conditioning exhaust.

    Once you go up in any urban hilly area you’ll notice the temperatures decline. And then 50, 150, 1’000 meters up the atmosphere, there is no discernable effect. Will the heating up urban area affect the temperatures in the Sahara desert, the North Pole, in the Alps or on the Canary Islands? Forget it, be humble, man’s effect on the great nature out there is miniscule. Cities affect the global atmosphere no more than the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Wisconsin can cause a sandstorm in the Gobi desert.

    We don’t need to hypothesize. We know that in the last 100 years, temperatures increased by 0.45 degree centigrade. Less than one half of one degree, over 100 years. You cannot even measure that 100 year difference on an analogue thermometer… That works out for a nothing per year. Anybody who tells you he can feel the change must be a brainwashed lunatic.

    As Nobel Laureate in Physics; Professor Ivar Giaever said. “Global Warming is Pseudoscience”.

    Perhaps, you drive down the elevator from home to your car park garage, then to work, and again up an elevator. Heating and isolation at office and home has become so good, people don’t even put on 3-piece suits anymore. Comparing your life as a grown up, to when you played in the snow outside as a child, makes you believe the winters became warm.

    That 0.45 degree centigrade change, over 100 years in total, for 90% took place before WWII, i.e. before the great industrialization really took hold. Think about that. During the last decade, we had a light decline. What the climate alarmists call ‘a pause’. That is why they talk about change, and have dropped the obviously misleading global warming term.

    Unwisely, people live closer to the beach fronts, to woodlands and to former redirected and rezoned riverbeds. As a result, they experience nature events more often. But hurricanes, flooding and calamities did not increase.

    Why did Obama’s NOAA manipulate figures, falsify records and delete observations? Why did researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia conspire to defraud? Because huge interests are involved and the public is gullible.

35. Adam has referred to the danger that left fascist types will be left alone to argue against fascists like Trump on Global Warming…that is the great danger. There is left fascism, it is historical too, but also those who have fought them totally. But many are totally ignorant of that history and worse do not want to learn.

    Similarly it was left to left antisemites if not fascists to point out that Netanyahu along with Obama actually was aiding ISIS at the border.

    Exactly the same thing. There is a huge crisis in leadership everywhere we look. And very hard to fill.

    By the way the leadership in universities in America and Europe is not Stalinist. That question (history of the period from 1922 on is not even posed) and that claim made above is itself ignorant.

    Just google “is ice increasing in antarctica” or click https://www.google.es/search?client=opera&q=is+ice+increasing+in+antarctica&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

    There is little conflict and no doubt at all. It is losing ice and this is critical for the world.

    “IN BRIEF

    In 2015 a study was published claiming that East Antarctica is in fact gaining mass, contrary to the majority of studies conducted thus far.

    The research, while sound, sparked controversy and was quickly picked up by climate change deniers and conservative news outlets.

    Most studies show that, overall, the glaciers on the planet are shrinking in a warming climate. In fact, early data show that the loss of ice in 2016 could overshadow any gains that may have happened or will happen.”

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-to-believe-in-antarctica-rsquo-s-great-ice-debate/

    I will now quote a lengthy piece from this longish and complicated article. Secondly a reference in this article on how difficult it is to have a discussion with the fascist inclined Breitbart

    1.

    “There is no doubt that the 2015 study, led by Jay Zwally, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, flew in the face of previous research and even assertions made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Zwally’s study remains the only one to firmly conclude that Antarctica is growing. “That in itself doesn’t mean something is wrong” with the result, says Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at Bristol, who co-authored the recent paper led by Martin-Español. Nevertheless, Bamber and many others agree the dominant consensus should still prevail—and that might be especially true in a field as highly politicized as climate change.

    Zwally’s results spread like wildfire across many conservative news outlets—including Fox News, Breitbart News and The Daily Express—which hailed it as another sign that the dangers of climate change have been exaggerated. Although climate scientists often see such news stories, they still worry about the dangers these might cause in today’s political climate. That is why Theodore Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, decided to take matters into his own hands. He had just boarded a flight to attend a meeting of the American Polar Society when he overheard a neighboring passenger claim that Antarctica was gaining mass. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s it—we have to say something because it’s not,’” he recalls.

    So Scambos and his Goddard colleague Christopher Shuman wrote a rebuttal to Zwally’s paper. Using NASA and European Space Agency satellites, the 2015 study had measured the changing height of the ice sheet and determined that East Antarctica was ballooning upward by roughly 1.59 centimeters a year (at least from 1992 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2008). Although many agree East Antarctica is rising, Scambos and Shuman think the rate is much lower—and that the discrepancy arose from Zwally’s technique. The satellites in his study fire lasers toward Earth. The beams reflect back at the satellite, allowing scientists to calculate the surface ice’s height. But this technique is not perfect, and the beams require careful calibration using a flat, unchanging “reference surface.” For this, most scientists use well-understood regions on the ice sheet itself. But Zwally and his team used stretches of the Southern Ocean that are exposed between cracks in the ice, and Scambos worries that these pools are not as still as they seem. He argues that such surfaces can easily form a new layer of ice or even frost flowers—rare (and gorgeous) ice crystals that grow upward from the sea. This would make the reference surface move, an effect that could interfere with the data.” (end quote)

    This is very normal in science. A paper is published. The methodology is explained. That opens up the door to challenge.

    And in fact the above study by Zwally and his team was challenged. In making these measurements using lasers from a satellite the convention was to use certain established spots which did not change. Zwally did not do that.

    So therefore those who wanted to correct Zwally had to come up with an alternative which they did, which relied as I understand it on the effects of gravity. Small mass less gravity. Large more, but all the time working with very precise instruments. And they found a way to do this in instrumentation already there and available.

    One final little thing on this you will note from this how RELUCTANT this man was to get involved in political debate

    2.

    This brings us back to Breitbart and to this jungle of ignorami who Ted Belman editor of Israpundit and shown in the articles he earlier provided is involved with.

    “Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is that the debate has sparked conversation about how to handle such controversial studies. “By and large, the primary responsibility of the scientists is to present what they believe to be the most reliable and accurate science,” Bamber says. “How the media interprets that can often be out of [scientists’] control…. Having said that, I think we also have a responsibility to ensure that we communicate the messages in a clear and unambiguous way.” (end two quotes from SA)

    Now let me turn to what sparked my attention yesterday. Yes Breitbart…baby of Trump…or is it the other way round? I went to https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/22/donald-trump-mocks-global-warming-alarmists-with-record-cold-temperatures/

    “Donald Trump Mocks Global Warming Alarmists with Record Cold Temperatures” is the heading. It demeans the debate, demeans Trump who argues like a secondary school kid, and demeans Breitbart seriously.

    Then after no analysis at all by Breitbart staff, and this is normal, the commenters take over. First comment is

    “Global warming is as much of a hoax as Trump-Russia collusion.” Note “HOAX” they say.

    Second is interesting to me in that the left as they call it is introduced…Martin Sherman please note this is the outstanding theme on Breitbart.

    “Amazing how many Leftists will buy into Global Warming as true science but will scream at you if you tell them biologists only recognize 2 genders.”

    It continues endlessly like this. Comment after comment and there is not a scientist to come on and argue what are lies.

    So the stage is set, the doors are firmly closed as is evidenced by the level of abuse if a dissenting view even guarded is chanced. The abuse is horrific against such a person.

    So science, and scientific truth, has a very big problem as regards this movement, Breitbart and Infowars, that surrounds Trump. An intelligent man like Roger Stone will see this but will be powerless as he will have waited too long. I do not relax my view on this because I know for a fact that Alex Jones still retains relations with the terrible enemy of the Jewish Homeland David Icke.

    But this scum on Breitbart does have their more polite counterparts on Israpundit, as I have made clear. I have made my views clear and do NOT expect any change whatsoever.

36. @ adamdalgliesh:
    Adam,

    Hugo is correct. I am a natural scientist, and I know the culture he is talking about. “Climate change” is politics, not science.

    If you don’t believe us, go to New Hampshire with a sandwich sign on you, saying,

    “BEWARE GLOBAL WARMING!”

    You will be laughed out of the state, if not assaulted with an icicle.

37. The US NOAA deleted low observations as being ‘outliers’ , and did not remove stations that were close to generators or air conditioner exhausts established nearby.

    Another illogical argument. Of course the proliferation of facilities such as “generators or air conditione exhausts” in places where they were not located earlier is one of the many putative causes of global warming. It would thus actually skew the results if NOAA “remove[ed] stations that were close to generators or air conditioner exhausts established nearby” if these structures were not in existence in the vicinity of these stations when measurements were made at them in previous decades. If NOAA had done that, it would mean that they were attempting to hide the impact of increasing urbanization and heat-generating objects on global temperatures. NOAA was right not to engage in such a cover-up, and the deniers are wrong to argue that they should have measured temperatures only in the rapidly shrinking rural areas.

38. @ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer: Hugo, it is not plausible that so many natural scientists would be leftist conspirators. Political scientists and historians, maybe. But natural scientists are just not that political. Equally implausible is the claim that government agencies such as NASA and the Federal weather bureau (what is its name?) are staffed by leftist conspirators. Yet they have published data supporting the climate change theory, and have publicly endorsed the theory.

    I find it difficult to understand how scientists are going to benefit financially by making false claims of climate change. On the other hand, numerous corporations and businesses benefit financially, at least in the short run, by climate change denial, since it enables them to avoid installing expensive antipollution technologies, or switching to less profitable energy sources, and giving up the very large profits that they make from existing energy sources.

    There are also internal inconsistencies in your arguments.

    For example , you say that

    Traditional manual measurements and weather stations do exist for over a century. But rural locations have been overrun by encroaching cities, and temperatures around houses and paved roads are bound to be higher, even when global climate is unchanged.

    However, a central element in the climate change theory is that is precisely the fact that the earth is being “overrun by encroaching cities . . .houses and paved roads,” and the related shrinkage of forested areas and vegetation, that are causing climate change in the first place. I don’t see how it is possible that “global climate” could be “unchanged” when these dramatic expansions of heat generating structures are taking place.

    I agree with you about a great many things, Hugo. But I disagree with you about this.

39. @ Felix Quigley:Thanks, Felix, for your support on this important issue. I also appreciate your kind words about me personally. Best wishes, Adam.

40. No. 97% of the scientists never agreed to the IPCC study, they were just listed there, and the list included dissenters

    The university mafia does include overwhelming 97% group consensus on global warming. Just as the 193 UN members condemn Israel with only two dissenting votes. It doesn’t mean much.

    In the case of western universities, they are known for an irrational hysterical Weltanschauung, and a Stalinist culture. They have an enormous financial incentive to publish what is expected from them. They are paid for research that proves global warming. Any contrarian will see his career ruined.

    A series of Climategate scandals have uncovered serious fraud in academia over the years, with scientists lying and manipulating numbers in order to dress up results. Luckily this has been uncovered in Email trails, and it is clear why it has happened.

    Many leading scientists including Nobel Prize winners have disproved the global warming theory.

    If anything, carbon dioxide over the decades is a natural feedstock that supports further greening of the planet. This can be observed from satellite images.

    There has been no increase in temperature. Period. People claiming they feel the temperature has become warmer are insane. Because upward swings in temperature, where they occur are in fractions of one degree. But in fact during recent decades, just as huge volumes of carbon dioxide was produced, the temperature actually minimally cooled. Overall, temperature was stable.

    Nobody can honestly monitor temperature changes for the last hundred years. Meteorological balloons and satellite measurements only exists a couple of decades back, thus historic measures of the ocean or troposphere do not exist for that long.

    Traditional manual measurements and weather stations do exist for over a century. But rural locations have been overrun by encroaching cities, and temperatures around houses and paved roads are bound to be higher, even when global climate is unchanged.

    Government agency have been dishonest. The US NOAA deleted low observations as being ‘outliers’ , and did not remove stations that were close to generators or air conditioner exhausts established nearby.

    The argument of let’s weigh the cost of controlling carbon dioxide against the poverty costs of enforcing, is foolish. Yes, the costs of ‘climate control’ are onerous, but they are not needed anyhow.

    There have been phenomena of receding Gletschers in the mountains. But this is more than offset elsewhere such as by an increasing ice layer in the South Pole. Local weather constantly change, that’s normal, but overall the climate is stable. Icebergs do collapse at the edges, yet they also grow on other sides. The “Northern Passage” is still frozen during winter. The polar bear population is growing fast.

41. @ Ted Belman: Ted, another relevant point is thatseveral of the articles about climate change that you have published in the past few years have declared climate change to be a “hoax,” and denied that it is happening at all. As a result, it is not accrate to say that this is “not the point” of the debate on this issue. In general, most of the opponents of taking measures to remedy the possible ill-effects of this trend have claimed that it is a hoax, something that isn’t happening at all. Hence, disputing and discrediting climate change denial is very much to the point.

    Conservatives are making a big mistake with their inaccurate “hoax” claims. They will end up being dismissed as looney conspiracy theorists, and their very reasonable concerns about many other issues ( such as immigration, terrorism, etc.) may then also be dismissed by the public as kooky. That would be terrible if it happens.

42. Adam what I am trying to say is that leadership as always is lagging way behind events. Look back to the situation in Germany and Poland and the majority of Jews had to remain because the leadership to organize them was not there, despite some individual type efforts. This has always been the case.

    The leadership of the Jews is in a terrible position today also.

    Netanyahu supporting ISIS at the border because the Israelis took all in who were fighting Assad. This was also kowtowing to the ISIS lover Obama.

    And if there is an election then we will have to consider calling for a critical vote for Netanyahu the rest are so terrible.

    Those things Adam mentions are not possible within the confines of this blind and cruel system.

    You are more likely to get Fascism in America. Trump prepares it around this Breitbart. And we have proved McCain and Shumer types ARE fascist.

    How can THEY shape up to provide any solutions?

    Europe is a cartel and moving into Fascism and Antisemitism.

    And there is Netanyahu supporting ISIS.

    Jews are delusional in the extreme as they were in the 1930s, wishing to be a guide to the nations, because if Global Warming is correct there will be NO nations because there will be no life.

    As dead as the dodo that is where earthly life is heading.

    Some will find an answer in scripture. But remember there will be no scripture if there are no homo sapiens to read.

43. This is the makings of a fascist movement that has developed in Breitbart around Trump. But it is matched from the other side of the Democrats doing away with parliamentary democracy in not recognizing Trump as President. Just see the comments which I was reading this morning on this thread based on seem taunt that the empty headed Trump made,,,a totally useless and unbecoming taunt which said nothing at all…Read these comments and the arrogance coming from these people must resemble the arrogance of the Nazis and their cruel arrogance towards Jews. At the moment they support Jews, they say, but you can easily visualize a slight switch and they will be lethal…the url is https://www.israpundit.org/why-i-am-right-on-climate/comment-page-1/#comment-63356000200656

    The fact that Israpundit has lined up with this danger to Jews is very telling. Not much more to say on this.

    The Jewish people now need the revolutionary youth, that is people who will be determined to keep the nation and culture close to their hearts, but are prepared to question everything, the only person who has spoken on this here out of many readers is Adam and he deserves credit.

    The situation is dire. Trump was correct to pull out of the globalist Paris dealing, because Globalism is a trap, but Trump too and others will be overthrown to save our only earth.

44. @ Ted Belman: Ted, there are very few credentialed climate scientists who believe that human activity is not contributing at all to the current world warming trend. Opinions do vary about how much damage this “contribution” is likely to do in both the short and long terms. As to the “proposed remedy,” there isn’t any one proposed remedy but many. Among them are enhanced filtration systems for the burning of fossil fuels, and use of a wide variety of possible alternative fuels: alternative remed: solar, more efficient batteries for electric vehicles, wind, geothermal, ocean currents, hydrogen (probably the most promising in my view). Another proposed remedy is increased use of rail transit for both passengers and freight, plus much faster, modernized trains and new train technology–including hydroplaning and underground vacuum technology. Each of these proposed remedies has aits own separate set of costs and benefits, and each requires its own feasibility study.
    Each of these possible remedies should be both studied and publicly debated.

45. While I await an answer to the above from Ted Belman

    The Fraser Institute article has no date. That itself is weird. Sloppy inthe extreme.

    It mentions Financial Post and I had to go to there to find a date which is May 2015. We are now over three years later.

    The article seems to my own ordinary sensibility to be confusing to read. For reasons that I need eventually to investigate.

    The whole of this article on https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/putting-con-consensus-not-only-there-no-97-cent-consensus-among-climate-scientists-many deals with this claim of 97 per cent of scientists etcetera.

    Why is this so important anyway. What if it were 96 per cent. Or 59 per cent? Or 40 percent.

    It is the opinions of scientists.

    Why not go and get some facts into the situation.

    See this article I googled with little effort called “Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2017”, and there is a date at the top thanks a lot for that.
    https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4609

    For my information and anybody interested it says “Released on January 18, 2018”

    The Headline of the article which HAS an author says “Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2017”

    How clear, and interesting, I think to myself. And a good long period to look at as well.

    So then I get into the body of this article and of course I reach the conclusion that every word may be dead true or every word may be absolutely untrue, but the thing is there is clarity in method and writing, and I have the chance to research the claims. In other words it is not confusionist.

    Here is the sample from the article…

    “Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2017 were the second warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880, according to an analysis by NASA.

    Continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend, globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. That is second only to global temperatures in 2016. Last year was the third consecutive year in which temperatures were more than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) above late nineteenth-century levels.

    NASA’s temperature analyses incorporate surface temperature measurements from 6,300 weather stations, ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures, and temperature measurements from Antarctic research stations.

    These raw measurements are analyzed using an algorithm that considers the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban heating effects that could skew the conclusions. These calculations produce the global average temperature deviations from the baseline period of 1951 to 1980.

    The full 2017 surface temperature data set and the complete methodology used to make the temperature calculation are available at:http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

    GISS is a laboratory within the Earth Sciences Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The laboratory is affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science in New York.

    NASA uses the unique vantage point of space to better understand Earth as an interconnected system. The agency also uses airborne and ground-based monitoring, and develops new ways to observe and study Earth with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. NASA shares this knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.” (end quote)

    Not stuff about 97 per cent etcetera but basic information that is checkable.

    I have learned of the significance of this 1951 to 80 period. They explain this as their “baseline” to view the temps from. Well you have to chose some period. Maybe you do not agree with this particular period. You can say so and explain why. That is science.

    I know when they were writing, unlike this other lot Ted Belman quotes, so they are giving it from very beginning of 2018…THIS YEAR.

    And reckoning therefore from that “baseline period” they tell us all about, so that any person even a child at school would understand, we are up nearly a whole degree.

    That is a simple figure of measurement. A fact!

    The only thing to do is find out is it true or false. But the confusionists like Delingpole, and Belman, are not interested in that course of action. YOU SEE THEY HAVE ALREADY MADE UP THEIR MINDS and they could care less how the measurements are being taken.

    Bad Bad Bad. Dangerous people indeed!

46. Adam writes

    “The fact is that nearly all of the scientists from around the world who have studied climate-related data and published peer-reviewed articles on the subject have concluded that global warming is indeed occurring. They do disagree among themselves about how fast the warming trend is occurring and how much damage it is likely to inflict on humans. But even here, nearly all think it is likely to do some damage. Are all of these scientists leftist conspirators? Pictures of glaciers taken 30-50 years ago from mountain peaks around the world, compared to pictures takes in the last year or so,
    show that nearly all have receded, and that some have disappeared completely. All the pictures faked by leftist conspirators? The climate change deniers are nearly all journalists or politicians, not natural scientists, and few if any of them have any scientific expertise in climatology or meteorology.

    Their motives are obvious–they don’t want either private industry or the taxpayers to have to shoulder the probably high costs costs of switching to less climate-impacting energy sources, “cleaning up” existing fuels, etc. But that is not a good reason for denying reality.”

    Adam has not been answered, not even tried to be answered. This represents deep dishonesty.

    Ted Belman with the weight of editor behind him “answers”, and I seek to show that this folowing answer to Adam is extremely dishonest, writes

    “You miss the point entirely. The question is not whether the climate is changing but how much of that change is man responsible for. The second question is how much of a difference will the proposed remedy make? And finally is that amount of reduction worth the cost of the proposed remedy?

    The following study was published by a leading think tank in Canada and published by Canada’s National Post.

    Putting the ‘con’ in consensus; Not only is there no 97 per cent consensus among climate scientists, many misunderstand core issues”

    That is totally an argument on the level of deflection. It is deeply dishonest.

    The debate is raging over the initial issue, Is the world heating, because as I understand it the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere is/are creating a shield. The science on this is complex and at the same time simple as often happens in science.

    The debate IS raging over that.

    That IS the contribution of Adam here. That is where the reply of Ted Belman is a deflection.

    Let us establish is the earth heating up? You can BEGIN to do this by following the points Adam made above.Then having or not established that let us look for the reasons.

    Is Ted Belman seeking an answer to that? I am certain not.

    Why I am certain not? Because the articles supplied above are totally partisan. He has already made up his mind.

    There are two methods here, one is science (Adam) the other is anti science (Ted Belman editor of Israpundit)

47. @ adamdalgliesh:
    Mr. Arrhenius is known for his description of acid/base chemistry, and for discovering the temperature dependence of reaction rates. This was good science. I used to teach this stuff; but I was never over-thrilled with the mathematical aspects of chemistry. I certainly have never been concerned about the Swedish chemist’s views on climate change.

    What are my views on climate change? I live in Oregon, where we have occasionally had to deal with forest fires. This past month, we haven’t had any significant fires, but California has. Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown immediately blamed climate change, and immediately afterward blamed President Trump. If I might speak as a scientist, which I am, I will note that Gov. Brown was dead wrong: Climates do not cause forest fires. Lightning causes forest fires. Negligent campers cause forest fires. Faulty power lines cause forest fires. Forest fires start in every sort of climate.

    The problem in California, of course, was not who or what caused the fires, but why the California government was so slow to respond to them, why there were insufficient evacuation routes, and why no preventative action, such as tree thinning, was carried out to prevent one of them from overwhelming an entire city and causing probably hundreds of deaths. The climate didn’t cause these problems, and the climate cannot solve these problems; but Gov. Brown could have solved these problems and he didn’t; so he blamed President Trump. I call that politics, not science.

    So, climate change did not cause any forest fires. Right now, my sister in New Hampshire is facing record cold temperatures. Some have blamed such weather on “climate change”; but I notice they are not quite so quick to blame it on “global warming”. Did global warming cause icy roads in New Hampshire? Is there a “scientific concensus” on that? I don’t know. I’m too practical, to care about such things. All I can say is, “If Gov. Brown, Nobelist Al Gore or some other geat climate scientist, could have found a way to transfer the global warming of New Hampshire to Paradise, California, the residents of the latter place would have been spared much grief.

    Arrhenius predicted a temperature rise of a few degrees over a thousand years, then revised his estimate. What does this mean in practical terms? I once watched a public television special about the danger of melting polar ice caps and drowning polar bears, in which the television dude interviewed a Canadian Eskimo. The Eskimo said,

    “I would like global warming.”

    The shocked interviewer retorted, WHY??

    The Eskimo responded, “because it would be warm”.

    Having said all that, fear not. The latest “scientific concensus” is that we are entering an ice age:

    https://www.brecorder.com/2018/11/19/453491/nasa-warns-of-record-low-temperatures-as-mini-ice-age-to-hit-space/

48. May I suggest that readers who want to read the argumentswhich questions climate change go to this link
    https://www.israpundit.org/category/climate/

49. @ adamdalgliesh:
    You miss the point entirely. The question is not whether the climate is changing but how much of that change is man responsible for. The second question is how much of a difference will the proposed remedy make? And finally is that amount of reduction worth the cost of the proposed remedy?

    The following study was published by a leading think tank in Canada and published by Canada’s National Post.

    Putting the ‘con’ in consensus; Not only is there no 97 per cent consensus among climate scientists, many misunderstand core issues

50. The fact is that nearly all of the scientists from around the world who have studied climate-related data and published peer-reviewed articles on the subject have concluded that global warming is indeed occurring. They do disagree among themselves about how fast the warming trend is occurring and how much damage it is likely to inflict on humans. But even here, nearly all think it is likely to do some damage. Are all of these scientists leftist conspirators? Pictures of glaciers taken 30-50 years ago from mountain peaks around the world, compared to pictures takes in the last year or so,
    show that nearly all have receded, and that some have disappeared completely. All the pictures faked by leftist conspirators? The climate change deniers are nearly all journalists or politicians, not natural scientists, and few if any of them have any sceintific expertise in climatology or meteorology.

    Their motives are obvious–they don’t want either private industry or the taxpayers to have to shoulder the probably high costs costs of switching to less climate-impacting energy sources, “cleaning up” existing fuels, etc. But that is not a good reason for denying reality.