The Logic Lifeline

A logical approach to sorting out world events. Where logic, opinion and speculation are combined to produce a reasoned, but entertaining reading experience. The unofficial hometown conservative blog of Woodridge, Il

Friday, June 02, 2006

NY Times story reveals major hole in Global Warming

I am sure they did not mean it, but there is an article in the NY Times that reveals such a large hole in the concept of global warming that you could drive a truck through it. The basic point to the article is that new research seems to reveal that the North Pole at one time was a tropical paradise with weather averaging 74 degrees year round. Here are the money paragraphs:

The findings, published today in three papers in the journal Nature, fill in a blank spot in scientists' understanding of climate history. And while they show that much remains to be learned about climate change, they suggest that scientists have greatly underestimated the power of heat-trapping gases to warm the Arctic.

Previous computer simulations, done without the benefit of seabed sampling, did not suggest an ancient Arctic that was nearly so warm, the authors said. So the simulations must have missed elements that lead to greater warming.

What a wealth of statements are packed into those two little paragraphs. First, we see that there is "much to learn about climate change". From listening to Al Gore, all the major mysteries of the global climate are an open book to modern scientists. So much so that:

- Global warming caused by man is dogmatically treated as a fact
- Demands are made to put our economy at risk ratifying KYOTO
- Politicians who do not go along with the global warming dogma are demonized
- Jobs at the Hurricane Center are threatened because they don't take a singularly bad hurricane season and attribute it to global warming
- Al Gore is practically wearing a sandwich sign saying "The End is Near"

Now what exactly is behind the theory of man-made global warming? Temperatures have risen slightly over the last few decades and computer simulation models "show" that it is due to elevated greenhouse gases and that things are going to get drastically worse. Computer simulation models. Now what exactly is a computer simulation model? It is supposed to be a complex program factoring in known elements and large amounts of data in order to predict a conclusion. If instead of the model only containing known elements, presumed elements are added your results are only as good as your presumption. In fact the second paragraph of the article clearly states that since presumed elements instead of known elements (from seabed sampling) were entered, the model gave a wrong conclusion.

So the bottom line is that 1) scientists have a lot to learn about climate change 2) their global warming simulation models are only valid if all known elements (without any critical elements missing) are used. Otherwise, it is simply Junk Science. There is the hole big enough to drive the truck through.

29 Comments:

  • At 6:06 PM, Blogger Merete said…

    So what if the researchers disagree on what happend back then thousands and thousands of years ago. So what?

    The fact is that we are polluting this earth and that is simply not in our own best interest.

    Even though it was burning hot on the Arctic waaaaay back, we live here NOW and we should treath Mother Earth with some more respect than what we are doing at the moment and in the last 100 years.

     
  • At 6:13 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    Merete, I agree in keeping pollution to a minimum in order to keep our air and water clean. However, I reject the notion that man is causing global warming. The point of the story is to show that the scientists were wrong until they entered the correct data into their model. With global warming, I do not believe they have the correct data in their model.

    Is Mother Earth a religious name? I have heard it from some environmentalists and been curious.

     
  • At 7:53 PM, Blogger HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace said…

    Mother Nature is a mythical personification of nature. Images of women representing "mother" earth, and mother nature, are timeless. Long before history was recorded, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Proto-Indo-European, and Iroquoian fertility religions in the millennia prior to the inception of patriarchial religions.

    Algonquin legend says that "[b]eneath the clouds [lives] the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and men" (Larousse 428). She is known as Nakomis, the Grandmother.

    Although not a scientific term, the term 'mother nature' has sometimes been used in science-related papers, of either global (rarely universal) unexplained phenomena or of life-related phenomena which acquire their energy either from photosynthesis or chemosynthesis with no apparent intelligent human assistance, because it is a more neutral term than the word God.

    The above is the definition from wikipedia, and as you can see has no significance to God what so ever.

     
  • At 10:00 AM, Blogger Malott said…

    I see the environmentalists as simply a Leftist movement against capitalism. If the global-warming (or cooling) phenomenon was resolved, they would simply find something else or some other data with which to attack.

    For me, I don't litter. I don't shoot hawks. I correctly dispose of the oil from my White garden tractor. I plan carefully so I use less gas. So they can shut up.

     
  • At 4:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Have you been to Brookfield Zoo lately? (a Chicago area zoo) I was there a few weeks ago for the first time in years, and I noticed as I walked around from one exhibit to the next that the obvious goal of the zoo management is to make us all feal guilty for being human. Virtually every exhibit had signs talking about man ruining the planet by causing global warming. Fortunately, most kids won't be indoctrinated by that garbage because they don't read the signs anyway. They just want to see the furry animals and hope to be present when the elephants poop.

     
  • At 4:03 AM, Blogger Merete said…

    Housewife4Palestine, thanks for the definition of Mother Earth. And you are so right when you state that this has nothing to do with religion. (Personally I am not religios). This is not a word only environmentalists use. At least in Norway Mother Earth is commond to use.

    And Malott, what an ignorant and far off comment when you say that "environmentalists are simply a Leftist movement against capitalism". What a lame excuse for ignoring the real problem! And yes, it costs money to change the path towards total annihilation we humans are on now, but that is not the main reason.

    The point is that we need to change our destructive behaviour - against mother nature as well as against humans and animals. Otherwise I am afraid that we all are doomed.

    And don't get me started on Zoo's. It's like going to visit people in prison. It really puzzles me why people bring their kids over there to watch these poor animals keept in captivity? Keeping endangered animals in zoos encourages inbreeding which changes the genetic makeup of an animal, making it different from its relatives in the wild. Wild animals are not suited to a life in captivity.
    No matter what angle you look at it - Zoo's just suck.

     
  • At 6:02 AM, Blogger LA Sunset said…

    Malott,

    I see the environmentalists as simply a Leftist movement against capitalism.

    Bingo. You see very clearly on that one.

     
  • At 6:05 AM, Blogger LA Sunset said…

    r2w,

    I noticed as I walked around from one exhibit to the next that the obvious goal of the zoo management is to make us all feal guilty for being human.

    Maybe next time you should make them feel guilty about caging up wild animals that would be happier in the natural environment? Sounds like they are hypocrites to me. But I guess the global warming crowd does not necessarily need to be a member of the PETA crowd.

     
  • At 2:26 PM, Blogger HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace said…

    Malott, you are very welcome and as to your opinion on the Environmental issues I also agree. It is not just the individual but our governments and one I happen to know that is considered the post polluted country in the world is America. I am laughing a bit sorry but since Mr. Bush has failed so much in protecting the environment that as far as counting him he is a no show.

     
  • At 9:23 AM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    housewife, I think you meant Merete instead of Malott. :)

    As for Bush's environmental failures, I find it humorous that according to this NY Post article:

    http://www.nypost.com/movies/66485.htm

    The chart in Al Gore's film shows that the environment got worse during the Clinton/Gore administration. The money quote is

    "He and his friends were in charge for eight years. His charts say global warming got worse in that time. The environment doesn't seem to care whether the president is a Texas oilman or the Man from Hope."

    Thanks for the info on Mother Earth. Even if it truly has no religious aspect to it, I think it sounds a little funny to use that term. Just my humble opinion.

    r2w, great comment on the zoo. Merete, you side-stepped the point he was making by going off on your detesting zoos. The point is the indoctrination students get today by massive doses of statements presented as fact even though they have not been proven.

    Global Warming is a theory at best and a religion or junk science at worst.

     
  • At 10:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You reject the notion that man is causing global warming. There were those who rejected the preposterous notion that the world was round too.

    I'm assuming most here haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth" and that many of these comments are based on hand-me-down anecdotes. If you want to address the issue of the film truthfully, you must first see it.

    All that aside, the assertion that global warming is nothing more than a theory is a lie. The temperature of the globe is rising. That is not up for debate. There are no reputable scientific studies that says the surface temperature of the earth has not risen over the last 300 years, and continues to rise.

    What people debate is what is causing this temperature increase.

    Some of you are arguing that it is nothing more than coincidence that the global surface temperature has been rising more dramatically since the rise of industrialism. Let's look at this from a personal level.

    Would you grab the manifold of a car that has been idling for 15 minutes? Why not? Have you ever touched the housing of a handheld powertool after you've been using it for a while? Ever walked in front of a home air conditioning unit's exhaust vent? Checked the coils on your refrigerator while it's running?

    These are just a few of many individual examples of how one person contributes to putting off more heat these days than when our forefathers were using manual woodplanes instead of powersanders, tilling fields with oxen instead of John Deere tractors. Now consider the larger scale items: factories and buses, jets and power plants, etc. Then add all the exhausts and pollutants our cars and factories and everything puts out. Is anyone in LA willing to say they haven't seen that murky haze over the city?

    Why any of you would want to ignore this is crazy. Don't you have children or grandchildren to consider?

    Environmentalists and green technology people are actually the ones driving modern technology these days. Hybrid cars. Alternative fuels. Greater efficiency. You get a tax break if you weatherize your house. Why do you think the Fed does that? To try and play this as an anti-capitalist thing is lazy and way off the mark. That's consumption politics and a whole different topic.

     
  • At 12:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    wwjk,

    I agree with you that the best criticism of a movie or book comes from those who have seen or read it, rather than guessing or taking other people's word for the content. I also agree that the issue with global warming is not whether it is happening, but what is causing it. And the evidence does not show that it is man. Claiming that heat-producing tools, appliances, and automobiles are responsible for heating up the atmosphere is like saying that we could raise the ocean's temperature by placing hundreds of cruise ships in strategic places and dumping gallons of boiling water into the sea. It just wouldn't be enough to do the trick. I believe, according to evidence and history, that global warming and cooling are natural cycles that take place on the earth. These cycles took place long before the world was industrialized.

     
  • At 2:27 PM, Blogger HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace said…

    Sunday, May 14, 2006
    The Bush record on the Environment
    A piece I did in records to Bush's Environment situation

    “As for the Bush administration, it has shown again and again that it will cater to industries that put America's health and natural heritage at risk; there is little doubt that more attempts to undermine environmental enforcement and weaken key programs will be made.” NRDC http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/default.asp

     
  • At 2:37 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    Don't you think before we proclaim man as the cause for the global temperature rising a few degrees and proclaim that this is the tip of the iceberg and that we are all doomed that we should first try to find out why 1) The earth's polar caps are shrinking 2) Likewise Mars' polar caps are shrinking.

    Is it as fundamentally simple that the sun is getting hotter and it does not matter what greenhouse reductions occur? I don't know of any man-made pollution on Mars except for a couple of land rovers and the Beagle II.

     
  • At 3:04 PM, Blogger HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace said…

    I can tell you exactly what is happening their no longer is a balance on the earth due to man destroying the earth for one like for example the destruction of the rain Forest. Then you have for the fist time in history over population and of course pollution. Lack of a better explanation there is no longer any balance on the earth otherwise we are simply destroying ourselves, period!

     
  • At 3:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    r2w,

    You are correct that the earth has cycles of heating and cooling. In order to look at what is happening over time, these temperatures are averaged and then placed on a timeline to graph the relative movement or stability of temperatures.

    What the scientific community has come to unanimous agreement on is that the overall temperature has been steadily on the rise over the last several hundred years, and has been showing a noticeable exponential increase. This exponential increase is a deviance from what had been a relatively stable temperature for thousands of years prior.

    It may just be a coincidence that this increase fits hand and glove with the rise of industrialism, but I think a little honest common sense look at the world in 1706 versus 2006 indicates that this is more than coincidence.

    I mentioned small home appliances to make a point on a personal level, to bring it to an understanding of what each one of us is capable of adding to the overall temperature. There are 6 billion people on the planet, but let's be really really conservative and say that only 2 billion of them use any of these heat generating devices on any given day. Add to that all the large scale industries. Ever been in a steel mill? It's damn hot in there, and there's thousands of them on the planet.

    So we've got 2 billion people adding heat and global industry adding heat.

    Then we get to particulate pollutants. Smoke that rises into the air and hangs there. We all know that hot air rises. That cigar smoke hangs in the room. That emissions from smokestacks go up and out and hang there. Particulates in the air reflect back light and hold in heat. Ever notice that it's colder on a clear night than a cloudy night? Clouds hold in the heat. So do particulate pollutants.

    It's pretty basic thermal dynamics and a bit of common sense.

    CFCs are no longer used because science showed us that they were damaging the atmosphere. CFCs were propellants, the stuff that made hairspray shoot out of the can. Something your mom or sister or aunt uses every day. One individual. Multiplied millions of times. From the surface of the earth to the atmosphere. 30 miles distance at a maximum.

    Humans have an impact, and it is not a small impact. 550 million gallons of wastewater is treated in Los Angeles every day. One city in one country.

     
  • At 3:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Mars versus Earth. Good comment AICS. Really relevant. A planet one tenth the mass of Earth, whose temperature is 14 degrees during the day and negative 100 degrees at night, every day, with a 100 times thinner atmosphere than Earth. And 51 million miles farther from the Sun than Earth. Great comparison AICS.

    That's a great idea to spend billions trying to make a comparison there. Talk about junk science.

     
  • At 3:42 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    wwjd, maybe if you throw in enough facts to make it look like you know what you are talking about it will allow you to successfully dodge answering the tough question:

    Both planets have shrinking polar caps: why?

    Coupled with the fact the sun is getting hotter we have a very valid argument that it is not man causing the warming:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

    Of course such a simple explanation does not allow the world to get together and talk about that nasty United States dooming the planet to destruction.

     
  • At 3:49 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    wwjk, sorry I called you wwjd. Anyway another point:

    You reject the notion that man is causing global warming. There were those who rejected the preposterous notion that the world was round too.

    You are equating man-made global warming to the earth being round. Based on what? I could just as easily state the same thing about my theory of Mars and the Sun.

    There are different situations here, too. For some crazy reason the church had determined the earth was flat. We are not talking about religious dogma here. If anything, the dogma is on the side of the man-made global warming crowd. They are hiding their eyes from the scientific facts of Mars and the Sun while at the same time accusing others of running from facts.

     
  • At 5:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    AICS, get off the Mars thing. You're looking really stupid and childish. Seriously. I don't mind letting a wingnut make a fool of themselves sometimes, but this is too much.

    Personally, I don't care why a planet 51 million miles away and a tenth of our size with no water or people on it has shrinking ice caps despite regular temperatures of negative 200 degrees. It has zero comparative relevance here.

    Back here on Earth, where we live, the misleadingly titled article you cite (written in 2004, a year before the hottest year on record, 2005) has some interesting pieces in it. I'm guessing maybe you didn't read the whole article before posting it.

    "Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures."

    ...Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.

    He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

    This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.


    David Bellamy, the man with the "poppycock" quote at the end of the article (and likely why you chose this article to cite) has been widely dismissed. He's even dismissed himself.

    The Sun is burning brighter. Humans are burning tons of fossil fuels. We're all in this together so stop being so damned defensive with whiny crap like this:

    Of course such a simple explanation [the Sun burning brighter] does not allow the world to get together and talk about that nasty United States dooming the planet to destruction.

    The US isn't mentioned once anywhere in this thread. This is a global issue. But since you bring it up, if the US doesn't start taking the lead on the energy efficiency, conversion and tech side of things, we'll have lost a major opportunity not unlike the space race. Europe and Asia are handing us our asses so far on the tech advancement side of all this.

    Before you continue trying to rake me about providing actual facts, you should get some straight yourself. The Sun burning brighter is not the same as the Sun burning hotter. Radiation and temperature are not the same thing.

    We may exist on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but you're sinking to new desperate lows with these posts.

     
  • At 8:13 PM, Blogger Merete said…

    Who would jezus kill is so right! His arguments are real,thanks for pulling that article and AICS's comments to pieces!

    The past twenty years have been full of natural disasters, but I don't even want to think about what horrors are waiting there for us the future!

    And you guys in the US must be preparing for the new hurricane season. How many more Katarina's or Rita's do you need before you see we must change our destructive behaviour? It actually has impact on our future. Our future and our childrens future. I sure as hell would like to know that they have a full life after I am gone.

     
  • At 10:34 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    AICS, get off the Mars thing. You're looking really stupid and childish.

    Getting desperate you need to resort to name calling now. Hmmm. Not having a good answer for two planets in the same solar system exhibiting the same behavior must cause quite a lot of anguish. Get off the 51 million miles. A child can understand that while that distance sounds great from a terrestrial standpoint, in space it is next to nothing. Sorry, name calling is no substitute for a logical point here.


    (written in 2004, a year before the hottest year on record, 2005)

    On record. How long have these records been kept? A couple hundred years compared to billions scientists claim? Do you know how silly that sounds?

    I'm guessing maybe you didn't read the whole article before posting it.

    You would be guessing wrong. There are two points that can be made about the mixture of the sun and greenhouse gases as the cause of global warming. First, if it truly caused by both, how much is caused by which? Wouldn't you think that deeper research into this is warranted BEFORE making measures more drastic than the economy can withstand? Second, it is a possibility that this scientist made sure the mixture was there to avoid risking losing any grants or funding to his research. This has been known to happen in the "scientific" community. God help you, your funding and your reputation if you come out with something the scientific community has determined is fact without proof. While I did not get to read the link of him reversing himself before I started writing this (Blogger will wipe my comments thus far if I click it), if he did reverse himself it is likely due to the "scientific" community applying pressure on him, his funding and his reputation.

    but you're sinking to new desperate lows with these posts

    Once again the attempt to replace a logical point with what is akin to name calling.

     
  • At 10:45 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    wwjk, unbelievable. You accuse me of not getting my facts straight. In both of the links you sent me, the reversal by David Bellamy were regarding GLACIERS, not global warming or the heat of the sun.

     
  • At 10:47 PM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    Merete, your pretty easy to convince when you already agree with wwjk. As for the hurricanes, what will you say if this hurricane season is more in the normal range? That global warming is retreating? Be careful about basing conclusions on a single year's data.

     
  • At 11:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    One of the interesting facets of this debate to me is the "anitcapitalist environmentalist" notion. I have to report that as I look around, the anticapitalists on my team are so few in numbers as to be insignificant. Want to see people who love capitalism and unabashedly further its aims and reap its rewards through the application of their talents in the marketplace? Visit the big cities of blue America and take a good look around. You'll find some of fiercest competitors and some of the most talented, driven, ambitious people our culture produces, people who have positioned and maintain themselves in the most competitive and lucrative positions available anywhere, people who clearly enjoy the fruits of their labor, people who make this country the king of the hill. Liberals tend to congregate in the toughest and most challenging and most rewarding arenas of capitalism on the planet. Liberals love capitalism and its fruits and tend to make out quite well under the system.

    Now, there can and should be a debate about how unfettered capitalism ought to be, but that is an entirely different matter. Entirely different.

    As to the hotly debated Mars/Earth dilemma, I'll contribute that the greenhouse effect is a characteristic of terrisrial bodies that have atmospheres. That Mars and Earth are both experiencing a greenhouse effect in and of itself says nothing about anything. My impression is that the hotter sun theory isn't embraced by many mainstream scientists, and to take a stand based on one published article popularized in the British press is pretty thin reed given the body of research in the field. I'll add that you cons seem to be really quick to embrace any "theory" that backs your favored policy positions. It looks like a lock-step deal from where I sit.

    Oh yeah, and you cons are wrong about everything else in this thread, too ;).

     
  • At 7:15 AM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    paw,

    One of the interesting facets of this debate to me is the "anitcapitalist environmentalist" notion. I have to report that as I look around, the anticapitalists on my team are so few in numbers as to be insignificant.

    The interesting thing about politics is that often you need to look out for the "insignificant" few. They are the ones that seem to successfully shape policy. Case in point 80% want our border enforced, yet our public policy has not enforced the border for quite a few years now.

    I'll add that you cons seem to be really quick to embrace any "theory" that backs your favored policy positions.

    You make a good point here, but the fact is that I feel the burden of proof should be on the global warming crowd BEFORE we enact something as drastic as KYOTO. The Mars story shows an obvious similarity that demands an explanation.

    As for being quick to embrace any theory to back a favored position, the libs sure jumped on the hurricanes from a SINGLE year last year as support for their favored position didn't they?

    Thanks for stopping by on what I assume is your monthly stroll in these parts.

     
  • At 10:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I see you've picked up some vocal new friends and critics. I hope you're enjoying yourself. You deserve good critics.

     
  • At 11:21 AM, Blogger All_I_Can_Stands said…

    paw, I am not quite sure how to take that one. :)

    Yes I am enjoying myself, though.

     
  • At 10:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Greets to the webmaster of this wonderful site! Keep up the good work. Thanks.
    »

     

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