Polar Bear Decision Reached
The Interior Department is listing the polar bear as a threatened species because of declining Arctic sea ice. Scientists have projected that up to two-thirds of polar bears could disappear by mid-century because of sea-ice losses.
—May 15, 2008
Saudis Rebuff Bush on Oil
With U.S. voters seething over gas prices, Congress is considering a grab bag of ideas: Withholding arms sales to Saudi Arabia until it ramps up production by one million barrels per day; opening up the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to anticollusion lawsuits in the U.S.; and tightening regulation of oil trading.
—Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2008
Ah, to be an elected official in America!
We use too little mass transit, consume too much energy, and one result is we’re helping destroy the planet. So the solution is…to threaten the Saudis and hope they give us more oil!
Forty years from now—most of you reading this will still be around to see it—the polar ice will be reduced to the point that polar bears as a species will be firmly heading towards extinction.
But gas prices right now are so high that in six months Congress might loses their jobs.
Guess who they’ll pander too?
Hint: the constituency that doesn’t vote.
Jeff Matthews
I Am Not Making This Up
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9 replies on “Throwing it All Away, Forever—But at Least They’ll Get Re-elected!”
Polar ice caps wont be gone in 40 years. Look at the forecast cooling over the next 10 years. (for real you can look it up), who knows what the forecast after that will turn out to be– see 70’s newsweek or time covers on the global COOLing
Re: polar bears and such
Brother you gotta’ be on drugs.
Jeff,
I live in Pittsburgh, PA, which had arguably the most extensive rail system of any city in the country. They have been tearing up the tracks for years and turning them into…..are you ready for this…..WALKING TRAILS!!! I would imagine 600 Billion (or a Trillion) taxpayer dollars could buy and maintain an awful lot of light rail systems at a reasonable fare, especially at 5 or 10 dollars a gallon. And maybe even reduce our dependency on foreign (and domestic) oil. The electricity to operate the system may even come from essentially unlimited geothermal sources by the time our children reach middle age.
One thing I have never understood is the hostility the term ‘global warming’ generates. “You gotta be on drugs” is about as intelligent a comment as we get on the other side.
Still, we do wish to keep the commentary here above the level of Yahoo Message Boards (it says so right on the front of the blog), so future commentary–pro OR con–will be limited to intelligent debate.
If you wouldn’t waste time reading it, don’t waste time writing it.
JM
The US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) reports about a 0.6C temperature increase in the lower 48 states since about 1940. There are two steps to reporting these historic temperature numbers. First, actual measurements are taken. Second, adjustments are made after the fact by scientists to the data. Would you like to guess how much of the 0.6C temperature rise is from actual measured temperature increases and how much is due to adjustments of various levels of arbitrariness?
Here it is, for the period from 1940 to present in the US:
Actual Measured Temperature Increase: 0.1C
Adjustments and Fudge Factors: 0.5C
Total Reported Warming: 0.6C
Yes, that is correct. Nearly all the reported warming in the USHCN data base, which is used for nearly all global warming studies and models, is from human-added fudge factors, guesstimates, and corrections.
I know what you are thinking – this is some weird skeptic’s urban legend. Well, actually it comes right from the NOAA web page which describes how they maintain the USHCN data set.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
The fact that global temperatures peaked in 1998, or the media hysteria over AGW stems almost entirely from a 23-yr warming trend from 1975-1998, or the fact that Antarctic ice sheets have been growing for decades, or the fact that the oceans in the Southern Hemisphere have been cooling for years, or that Greenland ice is probably growing according to Nat’l Geographic and researchers from Denmark and Norway.
Not to mention the huge ‘y2k’ error that was just found in the data that NOAA/NASA produced for their data sets which showed non-existent spikes in temperature, and were oh-so-quietly removed without so much as a press release.
As it turns out, according to the NASA GISS database, that 1998 was not even the hottest year of the last century. This is because many temperatures from recent decades that appeared to show substantial warming have been revised downwards.
Recently, the GISS admitted that McIntyre was correct, and has started to republish its data with the bug fixed. And the numbers are changing a lot. Before today, GISS would have said 1998 was the hottest year on record (Mann, remember, said with up to 99% certainty it was the hottest year in 1000 years) and that 2006 was the second hottest. Well, no more. Here are the new rankings for the 10 hottest years in the US, starting with #1:
1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939
Three of the top 10 are in the last decade. Four of the top ten are in the 1930’s, before either the IPCC or the GISS really think man had any discernible impact on temperatures.
1. We always need to have people of opposing opinions looking at a problem. Man-made global warming hawks expected to see a lot of warming after the year 2000, so they never questioned the numbers. It took folks with different hypotheses about climate to see the jump in the numbers for what it was – a programming error.
2. Climate scientists are going to have to get over their need to hold their adjustments, formulas, algorithms and software secret. It’s just not how science is done. James Hansen saying “trust me, the numbers are right, I don’t need to tell you how I got them” reminds me of the mathematician Fermat saying he had a proof of his last theorem, but it wouldn’t fit in the margin. How many man-hours of genius mathematicians was wasted because Fermat refused to show his proof (which was most likely wrong, given how the theorem was eventually proved).
I still have an open mind on the global warming debate. One thing we do know is that the world has, in the past been a lot warmer than at present and also a lot cooler. Whether we are resposible or not , I think it is in all our interests to consume less energy and also to produce energy in ways that are at less polluting. Even if the polar ice caps are doomed that does not mean we cannot decide to invest in technology that will keep our cities and our countrysides cleaner. We are currently shockingly energy profligate, my self included. I only recently found out that leaving the mobile phone charger in the wall keeps the meter running. Just taking that out the wall will not lower anyone’s standard of living.
Because Jeff, it generates in people the implicit guilt that comes from the realization that we, as carnal beings, are responsible for it; and that is not something that sits well with most, so as an immediate and irrational defense, sophomoric insults are levied. No one likes to face the fact that they could actually be responsible for the extinction of a species such as the polar bear, or any of the other gross improprieties that come along with global warming, so rather than to even consider ‘ratcheting-down’ our consumption of energy, or to focus on the fact that $1.50/g may NOT be in the best interests of our global community, or being forced to think about practical ways we can individually and collectively moderate petroleum demand, it is just easier to say rash and insulting things and try to rationalize it away.
I generally like the bog due to the sound reaserch of all the fact related to the argument. However, and you are not the only one to overlook this fact, the ice pack at the South Pole is LARGER THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN IN RECORDED HISTORY.
Unfortunate for the polar bears that they live on the wrong side of the plant? Yes.
Is the planet universally getting warmer? Maybe.
Is there anything we can REALLY do about it? Doubtful.
Would any politician (R or D) give a hoot about this issue if it didn’t impact thier job security? Certainly not.
Regardless, I beg you and the rest of the world to please stop using only the northern polar ice cap as the basis for claiming that global warming will cause the end of the world.
You guys can argue all day long about global warming, but I think its safe to say that we can’t continue to burn fossil fuels and pollute at our current rates forever and not expect any consequences. I live in the DC area and pretty regularly in the summer we have “code red” days where children and the elderly are encouraged to stay inside because its unhealthy OUTSIDE. Running for 45 minutes in these conditions is analogous to smoking 2 packs of cigs. My wife couldn’t eat fish when she was pregnant because we’ve managed to pollute the oceans with mercury. I bet people denied it all along until they couldn’t anymore when all this was happening too.