Global Warming

This is hilarious to the nth degree; From the Trail within the Washington Post:

"Palin Continues to Question Human Role in Global Warming By Juliet Eilperin

In an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric Tuesday night, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin continued to question humans' contribution to global warming.

Palin's repeated suggestion that humans may not be responsible for recent climate change ranks as one of her clearest policy differences with GOP presidential nominee John McCain, and contradicts the view of most scientists. While she emphasized her shared commitment to addressing global warming impacts in her interview with Couric, Palin emphasized the cyclical nature of the world's climate rather than the role greenhouse gas emissions play in driving climate change.

"What's your position on global warming?" Couric asked. "Do you believe it's man-made or not?"

"Well, we're the only Arctic state, of course, Alaska," the governor replied. "So we feel the impacts more than any other state, up there with the changes in climates. And certainly, it is apparent. We have erosion issues. And we have melting sea ice, of course. So, what I've done up there is form a sub-cabinet to focus solely on climate change. Understanding that it is real. And..."

Couric pressed the point. "Is it man-made, though in your view?"

But Palin framed her reply in terms of global warming's impacts, rather than its root causes. "You know there are -- there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts," she said. "I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate. Because the world's weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn't matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it's real; we need to do something about it"."

Now, the real pearls can be found in the comments section (from both sides, BTW); for example:

"...If in Palin's mind, Global Climate Change is not man-made (but in fact God-made), then how can man interfere with God. When Palin talked about the cyclical nature of the world, Couric should have asked her how long does she think this cyclical nature existed (in years)?

Then she would have saw Palin talk about the earth being 10,000 years old! That would have been classic!"

"...Don't try to con everyone into believing your hoax because the other guy might be religious.

Your environmental religion is no different than what you accuse Palin of. If you weren't so busy hugging your science professors book.....you would know he was lying to you".

"1) If Gov. Palin believes that man is not responsible for global warming, then why does she belief that man can do anything about it?

And/or:

2) If Gov. Palin believes that, according to her religion, that the Earth is only 5,000 years old, what cyclical patterns is she talking about? Not the last Ice Age, which ended 10,000 years ago. Not the climate changes (both warming and cooling) that occurred hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago".

Palin Continues to Question Human Role in Global Warming By Juliet Eilperin

Does she also question the human role in the dead of the bear behind her?? (to give an example of the many I've found)

This woman and her "boss" are the quintessence of stupidity.

What we have here are two different mindsets. On the one hand, a woman from alaska who thinks nothing of a dead bear, since the things are everywhere in that country and no small risk to communities - and they are expanding into human settlements as scavengers, so the risk is increasing. Its also little removed from frontier country thus the shooting of animals means little to them.

On the other hand we have the modern western view that any intereference in fluffy bears lives is an offence en par with serial killing. Here in comfortable WIltshire we don't get bears nosing through our rubbish. (We only have one poisonous snake - and its a shy little thing I've only seen in the wild once).

Cruelty for the sake of it I disagree with, but life and death is a natural part of our world. You see, if someone soots a bear because its dangerous to people around, I can understand it. If they shoot it to survive, for meat or furs, I can accept that. If its shot to advertise the shooters body parts, then I would have to say thats wrong. The fact there's a bearskin behind Ms Palin is inconsequential in my view, since I doubt the bear was killed to provide a backdrop in this pic, and she comes from a part of the world where they have a more practical view of these things.

In any case, however stupid her views about the enviroment might be, there's plenty of idiots spouting there opinions of it on tv these days, so I guess its only a matter of which idiot you want to believe.

Bears are frequently nuisance animals, in that they scavenge too close to human settlements and can often be a menace. Wolves, on the other hand and with few exceptions, generally shy away from human habitations.

The Airborne Hunting Act was passed by Congress in 1972 to prohibit shooting or harassing animals from aircraft -- but Palin has exploited a loophole in the law to once again permit the otherwise illegal and cruel practice of aerial sport hunting in Alaska.

In aerial sport hunting, wolves are chased by airplane to the point of exhaustion. Hunters spray shoot them with buckshot so that loss of blood contributes to the hunted wolf's exhaustion, pain, and eventual collapse. Then the plane lands and the hunter is able to approach the animal with ease and finish it off. Not only does the sport hunter take home a trophy kill, but Palin also awards the hunter with a $150 bounty on the left foreleg of every wolf killed.

California State Congressman George Miller recently introduced a new bill to stop the airborne hunting of wolves in Alaska (read about it here) which has gained support throughout the nation -- including support from Alaskan residents who oppose the cruelty of airborne sport hunting of wolves.

In August of this year, more than 70,000 Alaskans voted for a third time to stop private aerial hunting of wolves and bears, and to limit any such need for destroying nuisance animals to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel only.

-- Nephele

An IHT article about a "heretic"

Dyson, pre-eminent physicist, challenges consensus on climate change

For more than half a century, the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Princeton, New Jersey, on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, the United States' most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since he came "out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned," as Mr. Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors' letter boxes and Mr. Dyson's own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Mr. Dyson has discovered himself variously described as "a pompous twit," "a cesspool of misinformation" and, perhaps inevitably, "a mad scientist."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/27/hea...ience/dyson.php

Just a nightmare ?

Grand-Inquisitor Lorega : 'We have been experiencing a lot of bad weather lately, friends : rain, storm, hail, draughts. I will tell you who's fault that is : it is the work of evil and depraved Witches ! And you see one of them here, the accused Simplissima ! Now there are those who say that rain, storm, hail, they are all natural phenomena, and that, of course, one year is a little better than the other. I say to them : Beware ! Beware, because ignoring or condoning the evil doings of Witches is just as bad as Witchcraft itself ! We will find you out and punish you for your crimes. As to the accused standing before us here today : there can be no doubt whatsoever that she is a Witch. The proof ? We have plenty of witnesses here who can attest to the fact that on several occasions she has left the light on all night at her house ! Now, what can be the reason for that ? Except to invoke her demons and incubi ? I say she deserves nothing less than death !'

Hoi Polloi : ' Burn her ! At the stake ! Burn her !'

Grand-Inquisitor Lorega : 'Wait, friends ! Yes, we will burn her. But not at the stake. We will first bury her alive on the compost heap. Then, when she has decomposed sufficiently, we will turn her into bio-fuel, and then we will burn her. That is the environmentally friendly way to do it. But this is just the beginning, friends, there are millions of Witches more out there, who out of sheer evilness want to destroy our planet by causing bad weather. For our children 's sake, we cannot let that happen. We must hunt them down and smoke them out and put end to their wickedness. Our future and more important, that of our children is at stake !'

Hoi Polloi : 'To the compost heap with her !'

The consensus it's still not there especially after the leak of emails from East Anglia U. and GlacierGate.

Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

The debate over global warming has created predictable adversaries, pitting environmentalists against industry and coal-state Democrats against coastal liberals.

But it has also created tensions between two groups that might be expected to agree on the issue: climate scientists and meteorologists, especially those who serve as television weather forecasters.

Climatologists, who study weather patterns over time, almost universally endorse the view that the earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change. There is less of a consensus among meteorologists, who predict short-term weather patterns.

Joe Bastardi, for example, a senior forecaster and meteorologist with AccuWeather, maintains that it is more likely that the planet is cooling, and he distrusts the data put forward by climate scientists as evidence for rising global temperatures.

"Palin Continues to Question Human Role in Global Warming By Juliet Eilperin

 

In an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric Tuesday night, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin continued to question humans' contribution to global warming.

Palin's repeated suggestion that humans may not be responsible for recent climate change ranks as one of her clearest policy differences with GOP presidential nominee John McCain, and contradicts the view of most scientists.

Heaven forbid! Is this supposed to be controversial?

Many of us question the sanity of religious fundamentalists. On the other hand, not many people are willing to question the science behind some of the global warming dogma / hysteria.

Well, who knows? Maybe someone will dare to question humoral theory (that was scientific dogma for nearly two thousand years). But why contradict "the view of most scientists"?

guy also known as gaius

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/...ref=global-home

Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

"Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that

Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

The exaggerated climate hysteria was in part a fad related to wealth and comfort. That's when idle minds turn to hypochondria, like the anti-globalization riots before 2001. Then terrorism episodes snapped folks back into a more rational assessment of priorities, and maybe the current economic crises is doing the same for climate hysteria. Idle minds in comfortable 1st world enclaves become captivated with whatever sensational junk is being promoted by the media (desperate to increase audience) then feel they should be activists out of guilt for comfort rather than logic of the issue.

Other contributing factors are the switchover to a new hypochondria, that is flying anywhere near traces of volcanic dust. Absolutely childish how over cautious this was played out, when ash has never caused a flying fatality (I may be biased by being a glider pilot who has no fear of landing without engines). Also my month in Europe was the coldest spring I have ever experienced - cold rain almost every day. In fact brutal hail and a flood in the forum, which left me wheezing and spitting up blood for 10 days (pneumonia I assume, but I didn't let it slow me down).

The Time for Clear Answers Is Over

 

However, it seems all but impossible to provide conclusive proof in climate research. Scientific philosopher Silvio Funtovicz foresaw this dilemma as early as 1990. He described climate research as a "postnormal science." On account of its high complexity, he said it was subject to great uncertainty while, at the same time, harboring huge risks.