How hot has it been across the U.S.?
Well, as CBS reports…
- 17 states have issued heat warnings and advisories
- Oklahoma City has seen 47 consecutive days of 90+ degree temperature with only a single day this month below 100
- Record temperatures in various cities and towns has seen the high temperature record tied or broken over 800 times
- Tallahassee, Florida: 105 degrees on June 15 – Record high
- Amarillo, Texas: 111 degrees on June 26 – Record high
- Borger, Texas: 112 degrees on June 26 – Record high
- Childress, Texas: 117 degrees on June 26 – Record high
- Gage, Oklahoma: 113 degrees on June 26 – Record high
- 29% of the U.S. is in drought and 12% is in exceptional drought – both are record highs
Tragic circumstances as the weather plays havoc with the lives of millions. So, what does Mary Fallin, Oklahoma’s Republican Governor, suggest people do?
Pray. Actually, she’s called for a statewide day of prayer.
“I think if we have a lot of people praying, it moves the heart of God.”
Is there anything wrong with people praying and asking for divine intervention at a time of crisis?
Definitely not if praying to one’s god helps comfort the soul and gives greater strength to deal with a difficult situation. In that case, it’s a positive. But if praying to one’s god is an excuse to sit on your ass and do nothing, then the practice is both dangerous and foolish.
In 2009, Mary Fallin, as a member of the United States Congress, voted against a global warming bill. Here was her rationale for doing so.
“Our state is a large producer of both oil and natural gas, and the restrictions this legislation places on the production and exploration of these resources will devastate our energy producers. That will not only destroy oil and gas related jobs, it will also lead to a reduction in tax revenue, which in turn will affect our ability to maintain and repair roads, bridges, schools and other public works and services.”
As a gubernatorial candidate in 2010, she said.
Protecting our nation should be a number one priority. Does leadership really think that our surveillance satellites should be aimed at polar ice caps and not terror cells, and that spies should be investigating global warming? Congress must adequately fund our intelligence operations. If we don’t, we may need to be more concerned about global warming in the U.S. caused by a nuclear attack in our own back yard.
She is on record as saying that climate legislation is completely unnecessary. Somehow, Fallin believes it makes much more sense to call for the citizens of her state to bow their heads, get down on their knees and pray to god to make it all go away even though climate science predicts the exact sort of extreme weather patterns which Oklahoma is currently experiencing.
Rest assured that while the ignorance displayed by Mary Fallin is astounding, it is secure and happy in the minds of Republican leadership everywhere.
.
Sort of like resorting to Homeopathy while the cancer marches on without real treatment based on science.
Someone please explain why God needs the prayers of many to have his heart moved. Could the benevolent being not figure it out on his own?
Murky, it’s for the same reason kids send Santa Claus a list of gifts they’d like to receive at Christmas. Without the reminders, there’s nothing.
This is a pretty good example of confusing perception with reality.
God is the science of our souls. Faith in the impossible, blind faith, the positive energy that moves us.
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” — Mark Twain,
Murky, God is the Father to the faithful. His heart moves as one who loves his children. Regardless, if you think God is real or not, or even those that endlessly mock us who do, we that believe, see God as Father, Creator. We see ourselves as his children, and when we gather together in prayer, sometimes we can move his heart. We might see him move in our favor, or we might not, but then he knows better then us what we need, and what we just want to control.
I find many people of faith simply want to control everyone around them, and think they can use God to achieve that.
Since the title to this blog is choosing God over Science, why do we have to choose? One thing science has never proven is how we have the ability to love. Science can not prove the spiritual side of mankind. That does not mean it does not exist. Science hasn’t found or can explain God. I have watched so many programs that try, and read books that do more to try and convince that to believe in a creator being of supernatural means that such a human is likely insane or brainwashed. Science doesn’t always prove much and often leaves too many unanswered questions. I like Science for many things, especially in learning about earth, and how the earth is a living planet. Science can teach us how to survive the extreme weather we are experiencing now with the global changes we see all over. I don’t see Science, and religion as separately exclusive to all things knowledgeable. It’s a sad fact though, that there are spiritual leaders that are teaching very differently today in what the Bible teaches man. Often I see more conjecture of their own unseen greediness, and closed mindedness. A few Preachers I see on tv for example, they preach differently. God is not so much about teaching us to love with unselfishness, and how to be good to each other, it’s suddenly about how we need to keep government out of the church, but place the church in government. A nation rebuilding based on theocracy. I can’t fathom a theocratic America. We are too diverse for a single faith nation, and frankly, too many people that claim ” purity through faith,” often act very much the opposite of the faith they profess. I mean, how many faithful politicians does it take to understand that religion is used as a source of esteem goodness, with the intent to lead the nation as such, and then do illegal things like order, and commit torture on our enemies, steal from the funds we give as a safety net for our retirement years, and so on. You know that list is forever long. It’s also a good reason why so many people once people of faith, turned away from the belief in God because of all the bad that happens, despite God. So I don’t blame unbelievers for how they feel. They often have good reason based on the failures of so many of us that have let people down. I can see how hard it is to trust people of faith when they prove things like Priests that rape children. A horror so profound that one wonders how does a God that exist allow this sort of evil to happen? I can only explain that people are inherently good and bad. We have potential to be either because of the human nature we are born into. The struggle between spirit and flesh. Why is there such a struggle? For people that believe in God, and to not believe there is an entity that is opposite of God. When for us there is a definite war between good and evil, and we all see it, everyday, but we just can’t put words to that fact. I fully understand why people have so many unanswered questions to this “reality ” people just can’t find it in them to except. I cant fault those that don’t see this as reality. So many things that I have seen that I should not have seen or experienced long before I became an adult. One reaches out for comfort, and when there is no one there, but somehow you find it within, just doesn’t come from no where. There are too many people that lack compassion, and pretend they have it, but it’s not up to them they say, to save the world. I just don’t believe that. We all fail in such a society. We have lessons to learn here. It’s not about dog eat dog, but we make it that way when somehow a majority that have little, look up to the lie of what riches can bring. We are no better then past dimensions of lost societies. Science can show us there were bodies of modernized people that made life sustainable through community effort. A few fat heads, an ignorant mass that think they have all they need through a higher power. Only to be willfully blind, as without knowledge of a changing planet that has wiped them all away.
As a choice christian, I am not dumb-ed down by religion. I am enhanced by spiritual knowledge. I’m not educated through many years of schooling, but my thirst for knowledge has led to a life filled with education.
So what happens when their prayers inevitably fall through? What will the excuse be then?
Honestly, who actually thinks that talking with an imaginary friend is going to lower national temperatures? Sounds a little psychotic to me, and I’m not even trying to be funny. If you bible-thumpers saw somebody speaking to themselves in public you’d probably grab your children and cross the street. But then you go home and do it every night lol. Come back to reality.
Praying to move God’s heart is questionable since we also pray, “thy will be done.” The Father knows what we need.
Tongues: “mansion gladness sacraments dining contend most boughs
bloom ensnaring instead Into Confessions species moments
tones minutest interrupt oil punishment recovery tempts
fair stomachs VERSIONS gratefully monk confessed cupboards
beck reads comforts Redeemer humane refusing kicking combine
carrying shipwreck mangled unteachable procuredst human
bears worldly occasioned fulfils destined unchanged liability
Wyoming around Jove reconcilement mercy summer year’s
Episcopal wages receptacle descent Wondrous NEGLIGENCE
Vanilla seasons detected occasioned lanthorn entrusted
discerneth Themselves drove strikes wishing agony literature
sermons disapproveth soil acceptable weakness talketh
millennium Desire spiritual pleasureableness challenges
endeavour lingering presidentship “
Funny… President Obama invokes the name of God often (and every former president regardless of party for that matter) . I bet I’d be hard pressed to find an instance of you referring to him as ignorant.
when GOD stops punishing and killing innocent babies and children in Africa and around the globe, maybe I will look closer at the “this is God’s plan” thing. all knowing all seeing ? do something for a change!
God’s foolishness is better than man’s wisdom.
It is beyond me why, in modern times, people still believe in such a thing as a God. Moreover, the same God that people believe in was the one that brought plagues, suffering, and other horrible things to the world because he is jealous and egocentric. It takes a special kind of mind to accept something so fictitious.
“Pride precedes a disaster, and an arrogant attitude precedes a fall.”
To say that prayer in itself is the wrong type of thinking it is an arrogant stance to take. I believe that most people that pray, don’t rely on prayer alone, but on the actions as well. So to say that everyone that prays is judging merely on their outward appearance it is dumb and arrogant in itself isn’t it? Take for example the floods in Tennesse or the Earthquake in Haiti, A lot of the relief effort was done by religious charities that prayed and acted.
In the words of Blaise Pascal:
…Let them at least learn what is the religion they attack, before attacking it. If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But since, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus,and finally, if it endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make Himself known to those who should seek Him sincerely, and that He has nevertheless so disguised them that He will only be perceived by those who seek Him with all their heart; what advantage can they obtain, when, in the negligence with which they make profession of being in search of the truth, they cry out that nothing reveals it to them; and since that darkness in which they are, and with which they upbraid the Church, establishes only one of the things which she affirms, without touching the other, and, very far from destroying, proves her doctrine?
In order to attack it, they should have protested that they had made every effort to seek Him everywhere, and even in that which the Church proposes for their instruction, but without satisfaction. If they talked in this manner, they would in truth be attacking one of her pretensions. But I hope here to show that no reasonable person can speak thus, and I venture even to say that no one has ever done so. We know well enough how those who are of this mind behave. They believe they have made great efforts for their instruction when they have spent a few hours in reading some book of Scripture and have questioned some priests on the truths of the faith. After that, they boast of having made vain search in books and among men. But, verily, I will tell them what I have often said, that this negligence is insufferable. We are not concerned with the trifling interests of some stranger, that we should treat it in this fashion; the matter concerns ourselves and our all.
The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent as to knowing what it is…
Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on this subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who do not beleive, I make a vast difference between those who strive with all their power to inform themselves and those who live without troubling or thinking about it.
…We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy.
There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as heroic as we like, that is the end which awaits the noblest life in the world. Let us reflect on this and then say whether it is not beyond doubt that there is no good in this life but in the hope of another; that we are happy only in proportion as we draw near to it; and that, as there are no more woes for those who have complete assurance of eternity, so there is no more happiness for those who have no insight into it.
Surely then it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is at least an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt; and thus the doubter who does not seek is altogether completely unhappy and completely wrong. And if besides this he is easy and content, professes to be so, and indeed boasts of it; if it is this state itself which is the subject of his joy and vanity, I have no words to describe so silly a creature.
How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the expectation of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting that we are in impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the following argument occurs to a reasonable man?
“I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.
“As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilations or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my future state.”
Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put him?
In truth, it is the glory of religion to have for enemies men so unreasonable; and their opposition to it is so little dangerous that it serves, on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith goes mainly to establish these two facts: the corruption of nature, and redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I contend that, if these men do not serve to prove the truth of the redemption by the holiness of their behaviour, they at least serve admirably to show the corruption of nature by sentiments so unnatural.
I think action is a result of prayer. For example, if you have a relationship that you want to mend, praying about it will help you focus on what needs to be done, but nothing is going to get fixed in the relationsihp until you do something.
Are you implying that high temperatures are evidence of global climate change? You seem to be, I want to make sure that you know the difference between weather and climate.
Janet,
“I find many people of faith simply want to control everyone around them, and think they can use God to achieve that.”
Yes, it is called being a pastor or preacher etc. I personally like to say “cult leader”.
All of the “science” is based on far too little data and driven by corporations that seek to profit on the “green” movement. All of the “facts” about record highs are based on a very small pool of data that we’ve collected over the last hundred or so years. The truth is we don’t know if this heat swing is natural or not, and there is absolutely no conclusive evidence that human actions have caused it or made it worse. It is all speculation and running an already flagging economy into the ground based on speculation that benefits corporations is just not a good choice.
Yet in other news, many states are experiencing incredibly cool summers. Yet again, climate trumps mans ability to control it and flips its fingers at those who think they can explain it.
As much as I disagree with their turning to god, I disagree with the scientists running around saying “The Sky Is Falling, The Sky is falling!”
There is as much faith involved in climate science right now as there is in the hands of these people. Belief is a funny thing. Even the people who understand believe will overlook it when it is their own.
Controlling CO2 will not result in an improvement in the climate. The best we can do by controlling CO2 is make more people miserable.
Ah, but there is more to the harm done by religion:
http://kalinbooks.com/atheism-religion/22-ways-religion-promotes-crime/
I find it a curious coincidence that God is dishing out all these natural disasters (tornado/flood/drought) on those Midwest and Southern states when up here in liberal, secular, gay marriage accepting Massachusetts, we get almost no natural disasters. When will people wake up and figure out that God hates Southern conservatives for not accepting all his children no matter their sexual orientation and also hates them for not joining together to take care of his planet.
…And when Republicans weren’t ignorant enough, God created Mario Piperni. I actually thought your jibe at Republicans was rather funny. But if you’re going to throw stones, be prepared to have a few hurled in your direction. I’ll stay out of the God argument entirely as it is rather senseless to argue for or against the existence and/or nature. People believe what they believe and I’m not interested in changing those beliefs.
But your argument in support of climate change is weak. You give examples of weather, not climate. While the two are related, they are different. Weather is day to day while climate is a pattern of weather observed over a period of years. Abnormally high temperatures can occur even during a period when the climate is cooling just as abnormally cold weather can be experienced during a period of warming. It’s only been a winter or two ago that those who would deny global warming were pointing to unusually cold weather as proof that global warming doesn’t exist.
Whether or not god exists or prayer does or does not work, a few days worth of cherry picked cities experiencing record high temperatures and a couple of regions experiencing drought conditions proves nothing in regards to climate change.
Plato once said “Wise man talk because the have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” Mary Fallin may well be as ignorant as you think she is, but those who live in glass houses…
@Janet: The post was not an attack on either religion or prayer. I clearly stated that there can be great benefit in praying in that it can help one deal with difficult times. My criticism was directed at those who use prayer as the sole means to deal with specific situations when there are concrete measures they can take to help alleviate or fix the situation at hand.
@Jon: Yes, I’m quite aware of the difference between weather and climate. I have written on that exact topic many times on these pages. My point was that climate change science predicts extremes in weather of the type the planet has experienced over the last decade. A week of high or low temperatures is not in any way proof that global warming is valid. My point was that for one to view climate change legislation as “unnecessary” and then turn around and ask people to pray for better weather is ludicrous. If Mary Fallin and other Deniers actually listened to what 98% of the world’s climatologists are saying and dealt with it accordingly, then I’d take no issue with her asking people to pray. But for her to sit there and ignore the science and turn to religion as an answer, well, that makes her an idiot.
Janet, I was raised among religious people – ‘religious’ myself as a young person. I put ‘religious’ in quotes to suggest that I never felt any unusual spirit and felt myself inadequate, knowing I was faking it and just trying too hard to pretend I was moved by some mystical force hoping if I tried hard enough it would become real. I was surrounded by seemingly quite sincere people but could never be sure they were any different than I.
Upon studying the matter I gradually, reluctantly, concluded that most churches are led by the very people you describe – those who gain dominion and advantage over others by pretending just like I was except much more cynically. Most even break the Commandments and rules or make their own to suit their own tastes. Among the hoi poloi – the ordinary people – in any religion there are lots of decent and sincere people and among leadership a few but much less. Most people want to be leaders in their churches for the same reasons they want to be on the school board or hold political office.
Religious meetings and testimonials have the effect of mass hallucination and only the most sincere and most dedicated would stay religious in a vacuum – on a desert island if you will.
A huge number compartmentalize, separating ‘sin’ from ethics especially in the world of business.
Amongst my family in the LDS Church I grew up in I’ve noticed a shift in family and friends, from testifying that ‘we believe’ (as in their thirteen ‘Articles of Faith’) or ‘I believe’ to ‘we KNOW’ or ‘I KNOW’. Of course this is patently untrue no matter how sincere, no matter how firmly believed, they are ALL speaking of the unknowable and they simply DO NOT know! Without realizing it they call it their ‘FAITH’ at other times, yet they like to affirm that they KNOW.
Without judgment, without including you personally, in any of these statements I’ve also observed that the Catholic Church especially – but many others too – treat poor people and unsophisticated, indigenous people wherever they go little better than slaves and instruments of their personal gain and power.
You say “We see ourselves as his children, and when we gather together in prayer, sometimes we can move his heart. We might see him move in our favor, or we might not, but then he knows better then us what we need, and what we just want to control.” and I have to wonder, “Then, why bother? Why not accept that you can’t know and leave Him or Her, or It to do what He/She/It will do?”
Two other important matters I’ve observed is that all over the world people have great faith and believe passionately in the religion of their parents and ancestors wherever they were ‘dropped’ by that ol’ stork and tend to judge and look down on all the ‘others’, sometimes almost gleefully using that xenophobia to their own material gain.
Meanwhile, all over the world decent, charitable and fair minded people become decent and honorable without any fear of divine retribution, whatsoever.
Almost daily I see examples of honorable behavior from atheists, agnostics or people of some strange, mysticism which everyone in the dominant religious culture rejects as ‘cultish’ wickedness and examples of violence, child rape, murder and aggressively warlike behavior from ‘good’ religious people, directly or indirectly, involving their own belief as ‘justification’.
I’ve found my own inner peace after years of mystery and it leaves me quite content to acknowledge that I don’t know and don’t need to know the unknowable.
@Mario — The problem with climate change science is that it predicts everything!
What observation can be made that will disprove the hypothesis?
This is the part of science that is being ignored by the consensus. We never prove our hypothesis in science, we fail disprove it. We wake up every day ready to have ANY hypothesis within our framework be wrong. I don’t expect the 3 Laws of thermo to evaporate, but if something happens that violates them, I am ready to revisit them and find out why.
What do the models predict and what part of the prediction is wrong? It is the wrong that we have to focus on NOT the right.
When scientists focus on how they have proved their hypothesis instead of their failure to disprove it, they are engaged in the same activity as the Faithful.
Other areas where this faith is largely present in science is any study that involves Epidemiology. 2nd Hand Smoke, Third Hand Smoke (and god help me there are people discussing 4th hand smoke), BPA, Salt, Car Seats, coffee, eggs, sugar, sugar substitutes, and 5,000 other substances have all been targeted by these harbingers of faithful science. All of them committing the same error as the climate scientists.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1229 has a decision calculator. This is directly related to climate change, but it is related. It has to do with using screening to diagnose disease and whether the benefit of finding the disease outweighs the downside of mistakenly finding a disease that isn’t there.
We can all pray, but if its not God’s will, then our prayers will not come true. However, if it does come true, then it betters our faith and he does answer prayers. You see? it all makes perfect sense.
@brad.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make but allow me to clarify my thoughts on this topic.
I’m not a climatologist so there is no way that I can come to any meaningful conclusion regarding raw climate data. I rely on the experts to do that in the same way that I am not a medical doctor and would not foolishly attempt to diagnose an illness based on MRIs and blood tests and whatever other tests I was asked to undergo. I let the doctors do that for me.
So I listen and I read and it becomes clear that there is a consensus among climatologists worldwide that global warming is real and that man is playing a lead role. And the consensus is real. It is not a 50-50 split or even a 70-30 split. It’s a 98-2 percent split. What am I to do with that bit of information? Am I to ignore the opinion of 98% of the world’s climate scientists as well as the opinion of every leading academy of science in the world and choose to be skeptical because of political ideology?
If one does choose to believe that global warming is a hoax, I ask them on what basis have they come to that conclusion. One side (the 98% side) have thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers they rely on to come to the conclusions they have. The other side (the 2% side) have no peer reviewed scientific papers to support their beliefs. Not one.
the 98-2 split is Made up by the people who do it.
They sent out a petition to 10,000 people. 3,000 people returned the petition. The survey then went through and filtered the people returning the petition. Of the 3,000 they deemed 79 Climate Scientists. Of the 79, 77 said global warming was real and man has something to do with it. Suddenly 97% consensus.
I am not a climate scientist either. I have to rely on external indicators to tell me if they know what they are doing. Can they predict what is going to happen 6 months from now (Check out he Met Office predictions for the UK, they have been wrong just about all the time using their models).
I do not believe that global warming is a hoax. I live in a place (Bremerton, WA) where there use to be a kilometer of ice. Global Warming is real. I live in a wonderful place because global warming is real. Does man have an effect on the enviroment? HELL YES. Is Carbon Dioxide the primary cause of global warming? This is the question. The answer here is complicated. Yes, carbon dioxide does play a role in the temperature we experience outside. Will temperature increase if we increase CO2? I have to say, “most likely”. How much? Well, we ain’t gonna measure right now with anything we have in our instrument arsenal.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2773 Check the temperature chart on this page. Mr. Briggs draws a horizontal line through the data. This horizontal line means that the statement “The average temperature has not gone up or down in the last 150 years” is still on the table.
When we limit climate science to just climate scientists we ignore the reality of climate science. It is an amalgam of disciplines. I am not an expert in climate science. I am however skilled at computer modeling. I have a background in thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and programming. I am not an expert an any of these disciplines. I cannot rest on someone else’s laurels though. If someone says, “I can predict where the body of the dead dog is!”, I expect them to make a prediction and then we will go to the place and see if it is true. If it isn’t, I expect the soothsayer to recognize that he was wrong! (WHICH NEVER happens)
@Mario — Check out the UK Met office predictions for the last 5 years as to the type of weather to expect for the upcoming winters. They have been wrong each time. They keep predicting warmer than normal weather and keep getting colder weather. You can say this is just weather and not climate, but climate is the integration of weather. Instead of recognizing that they can’t actually predict what is going to happen they adjust their prediction to say “Well climate change actually predicts this.” WHAT!
There are many more peer reviewed paper that support the other side. It is a matter of selection of the papers that let them twist the numbers. A recent website purports that 900+ papers support the other side. The answer to this was not to attack the argument of these papers. Instead they attacked the funding of these papers.
In science, we attack the argument NOT the funding. Funding can bias the the observer, but it is important to attack the argument. Find where the data got skewed. Find where the data was modified. That is where you attack the paper. You do not just leave it at “90% of these papers were funded by Big Oil”. No, you go and get the data and find out where the analysis is wrong and then get your paper published. The difference between the Big Oil Funded papers and Big Climate is that the Big Oil papers will let you have access to the data. (See climateGate for examples of data continuing to be protected by the harbingers of Temperature).
@Mario — Here is a different question. I have attempted to turn the conversation a little in the past and had miserable failures. Every time I attempt to get back to basics, people tell me that “Experts already know this!” Here are the questions.
What is Temperature?
What is Enthalpy?
If you are attempting to measure the energy balance, which one would you use? Why?
What zero points would you use for each? Why?
Why is zero important?
Edwin,
“Pride precedes a disaster, and an arrogant attitude precedes a fall.”
A very powerful statement, now please demonstrate for us that it actually works and perhaps how.
I could just as well say “Pride seldom precedes a disaster, and an arrogant attitude occasionally precedes a fall.” and I could add, “making dumb people who believe in a world of magic, state that ‘an arrogant attitude precedes a fall.’ without adequate evidence or facts to support their conclusion.”
Blaise Pascal was a powerful thinker and writer who didn’t need anything more than words and his own conclusions as evidence of the truth as he saw it. So what?
In fact Pascal uses elaborate, meaningless words to state what he believes – to verbalize his faith – much as superwookie does. In both cases they’ve woven a story meaning absolutely nothing – no facts, no figures, no evidence!
Of course I don’t mean to equate superwookie who spouts meaningless drivel with Pascal who did have his thoughts organized, at least!
dean says,
“…praying about it will help you focus on what needs to be done,”
dean, we who live in the world of reality have another one word description for that – ‘focus’.
Focus can be a useful discipline with any kind of prayer or other weird ritual – or without prayer.
Jon, One needn’t confuse climate and weather to notice that weather is a manifestation of
climate. You surely know that it’s consistency in weather which makes a statement about
climate change?
Re-read Mario’s post
So it’s hot in the summertime. Who would have ever expected that? I predict there will be lots of cold and snow this winter. I also predict the global warming hoax will be blamed for that too. Any supposedly unusual weather phenomenon is now paraded as just more “proof” of global warming, even though there is usually nothing at all unusual about it, if you have a long enough memory or do some basic research. The cult of global warming is the religion of liberals. So basically I agree that the religious are ignorant.
Omegageek, Apparently you don’t do YOUR research. This has been the warmest year on record for Earth’s oceans. “Nothing unusual about that”???? By definition – it is unusually hot.
By the way, Kudos for being one of the ignorant dolts who think they are smarter than 99% of the world’s climate scientists. What is your doctorate in??? Maybe you got it at Glen Beck University…
O M G, Omegageek,
Hearing what you wanna hear, seeing what you wanna see!
I’ll make it simple for you – tho you’ll still insist on being ‘right’, I’m sure.
It isn’t ‘hotter this summer like it’s always hotter in summer’! It’s record heat and numerous record hot days in numerous places! It isn’t ‘colder in the winter’ – it’s WETTER in the winter but it’s record snow depths and usually record moisture content and yes we still have winter – warmer, wetter, winters. There is a balancing – a give and take in climate and weather so that on a hotter planet there can still be some very cold places. In my lifetime I’ve seen plant species migrate northward, wildlife extinctions and pastures everywhere, out in the country which used to be wet wit little pools all winter which froze inrto skating ponds. Now there is much less water in these places and it never freezes hard enough to skate on!
I’m not sure you can understand this but I’ll try – warmer temps pull more moisture up into the clouds so we have record snows but NOT record cold. We also have record rains and record incidents of flooding – even in Pakistan and flooding and drought both in Texas and in Australia!
The polar ice caps are getting smaller and smaller soon to disappear completely for part of the summer and are very near the tipping point from which their smaller size and the lack of their solar reflective capabilities is going to lead to even more rapid temperature change. Enough of such changes to large masses of the earth’s surface is quite capable of changing the circulation, temperatures, motion and even the direction of the ocean currents which makes places like the British Isles, the west coast of Canada and the extreme southern tip of the African continent, fit for human habitation or at least, pleasant human habitation.
Brad Tittle is on here waxing all ‘wise’ about how the science isn’t complete apparently without a thought for how inconvenient it’s going to be when he can no longer demand real time evidence. By the time he can see his real time evidence, it will simply be too late for us to do anything but relocate, die off in large numbers and assume that the earth will take care of itself – which it likely will.
Yes Brad, you might be more familiar with some science than I but I don’t have to be a climate scientist or any other kind to realize that with an issue like climate we have to rely on prediction and modelling or we won’t be alive to act at all, when we can see real, live proof.
The worst problem is that all of our love of our materialistic, petroleum driven life style and all of our reverence for J-O-B-S and capitalism won’t mean a thing! We’ll likely be extinct too!
@ocLiberal — Why do you attack him. You could point to the data. You could discuss what temperature is. You could do many more things that act the way you are.
99% is a contrived number. There are large swaths of knowledgeable people who poke holes in the Climate Change debate. You say it is hotter. It is in some places. It is colder in others. The ocean temperature aren’t doing what they say they are supposed to do unless of course you use the modified version of what they said they were supposed to do.
Chances of a realist coming out of Glen Beck university are much higher than many of the other institutions in the country.
Once again — In science we look for the data that tell us we are wrong and fail to find it. Finding the data that support our hypothesis doesn’t do a damn bit of good except to make us feel all warm and fuzzy.
If your hypothesis is “The world is getting warmer”, you don’t look for record highs, you look for record lows. If record lows are being recorded, maybe you step back and say, “hmmm, maybe I don’t have the right twist on this. “
CORRECT Brad but the question raised concerned the highs!
You’re right, I should have pointed out that the lows ARE higher!
OK, Brad. I normally do not react that way. I usually treat others with respect for their opinions. Sorry to offend.
“Chances of a realist coming out of Glen Beck university are much higher than many of the other institutions in the country” is really funny- and I don’t think YOU even know why. There is no such place except in Glen Beck’s imagination. I don’t know what planet you just arrived from, but you do make me laugh.
“In science we look for the data that tell us we are wrong and fail to find it. Finding the data that support our hypothesis doesn’t do a damn bit of good except to make us feel all warm and fuzzy.” We who? What kind of a scientist are you? My guess is that you are in the religion business.
And finally, it isn’t just liberals who believe in the obvious real science of Climate Change. Those crazy liberals in China and Russia and Japan and almost every other country on the planet are aware of the effect of greenhouse gasses. Are you gonna call them all liberals? We are being fed a load of propaganda by oil companies and people like you choose to believe it.
Except for places like Seattle, where we have been experiencing very cool weather for the time of year.
Recent climatologist predicted that children wouldn’t know what snow was in as little as 10 years. 10 years later we had more snow than ever. The prediction was NO SNOW. The reality was LOTS OF SNOW.
There are planners around the world that wish these clowns could start predicting this years snowfall with something resembling accuracy. If they could, the planners could plan better. They could order enough grit for the roads. The can order plows ahead of time.
Instead, they make predictions that say we DON”T need to worry about cold weather and what do we get LOTs of cold weather.
We have multiple oscillations interacting with each other on this planet. PDO, ENSO, etc. We have a solar cycles. We have orbital cycles. The list is long. The effects of these large cycles trounce the effect of CO2. Hell, water vapor trounces the effect of CO2.
Focussing on CO2 is like believing that the reason the Challenger blew up is because of the size of a horses ass. (a horses ass may be related to the size of standard train tracks because the horses as dictated the size of a roman chariot. The size of the train track dictated the size of the Solid Rocket booster because the SRB were main in Utah and railroaded to Florida). There is a hint of truth in parts of the discussion (CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it does help keep us warmer). The reality of CO2 at higher concentrations isn’t so clear. Yes, more CO2 would trap more heat. The problem is that there isn’t any more heat to trap in the range that CO2 absorbs in. (There is a little left to absorb, but it is not much).
They talk about Venus being a potential end point for us. The problem with that analogy is that venus is not hot because it has too high a concentration of CO2, it is hot because it has too much CO2. If we had as much N2 and O2 as venus has CO2, the planets surface would be every bit as hot as venus.
@ocLiberal — Dude — I know there isn’t a Glen Beck University.
Do you understand falsifiability? This is the gold standard for science. Can you identify the observation that disproves your hypothesis. Once you know how to disprove your hypothesis, you can proceed to try and disprove it.
Gravity — If I throw the ball in the air and it doesn’t come down, I might need to revisit my definition of gravity.
If I throw the ball up with velocity X, it should take time Y to return to the earth. There are error bars associated with the velocity and the time. If the time falls outside the error bars repeatedly, I might need to revisit my hypothesis.
There are loads of scientists in China and Russia laughing their asses off at us in this debate. Because even though there are scientists there who believe in the ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) they have more skeptics than we do.
yeah, pray to god and he will make it nice and cool out side for you… please.. how naive are you people…
Ok, Brad,
Although you missed my point, I will say this:
If I am wrong (along with the vast majority of real scientists on the planet) about CO2, then we move on early to an energy system of the future and leave fossil fuels in the ground as much as possible, do what we can to avoid pumping CO2 into our tiny bubble of an atmosphere, and treat the planet with some respect for a change unnecessarily. If you are wrong, we have melting icecaps, flooding coastal regions, millions displaced, runaway heating of the planet and a likely reduction of our species on an apocalyptic scale.
On which side is it smart to err?
@ ocLiberal – AND you didn’t mention, in moving on early to an energy system of the future, we create new industries, new jobs new scientific disciplines, even cut down on the acid and Mercury in rainfall – Hell, maybe we dare enjoy long lived fishes again!
Brad, have you heard much lately about the air quality in places like Salt Lake City where the earth’s surface is shaped a little differently? Sound good to you?
I disagree with you about global climate change – more complex than ‘global warming’ – but my passion comes from the whole complex of ideas having to do with the arrogance of capitalism, religion and our divine right to everything we wish to chew up and spit out without any restraint and the myriad of ways we are degrading our environment.
Well said, Fred.
@ocLiberal — Sorry Oc, but that is not the way the cookie crumbles.
I side with the laws of thermo.
1. You can’t win.
2. You can’t break even.
3. You have to play.
Piece of paper can be really powerful. $$$ make it so that we don’t have to spend hours carrying what we made around to the people who might want to trade what they have for what we have. Pieces of paper can make the world more efficient.
When you start trading pieces of paper that represent a trace gas that we desperately need to make sure plants continue thrive and those pieces of paper represent a disincentive to making the life sustaining gas, I start to question whether or not you are improving efficiency or creating turmoil.
@Fred — The arrogance of capitalism? How about the arrogance of self absorbed individuals desperate to save the world? Theywant to save the world so much that they will create hob goblins to chase after.
There are real problems we can solve. CO2 isn’t a real problem. CO2 is a good indicator of having achieved the solution. If all of our processes only emitted CO2, we would be a long way to a cleaner planet.
Believe it or not plants like CO2.
If I can make all other emissions go away and double CO2 emissions, I will be damn proud.
Doubling CO2 emissions will not double CO2 currently in the atmosphere.
Brad, you are just like me, you become incoherent when you are drunk. Check back when you are sober, it is always a pleasure!
brad, apply some of the logic you might have or should have gained from your science background to this phrase – “…the arrogance of self absorbed individuals desperate to save the world? Theywant to save the world so much that they will create hob goblins to chase after.”
Let’s see, where have we heard that…?
Then tell me just how even a drunk or a child might think that would save the world…
ocLiberal is right, you become incoherent when you’re drunk (or maybe stoned, maybe tired…?)
There are factors other than science which flesh out the story of motivation and money and the push to deceive and any thoughtful logic would suggest that no evil soul with lots of cash is conspiring to fund a false perception of global warming and has succeeded in perverting the ethics and self esteem of the majority of climate scientists.
Then tell me it isn’t much easier to imagine the millions and the motivation to deceive the world in favor of milking our established energy industry, dry before we even consider a more sane or sustainable alternative alternative.
But don’t reply while you’re still drunk…
@Fred/ocLiberal —
They are desperate to be heroes. They are desperate for their information to be vital to the world.
There are lots of scientists — people who were part of the IPCC who do not agree with the summary statement of the IPCC. They are attempting constantly to get the discussion back on track. Your “heroes” though don’t want to participate. They don’t want anyone not in the club to review their methods or data.
The best you can do is call me names. You can’t talk about temperatures. You can’t talk about enthalpy. You can’t talk about charting techniques. You can’t talk about modeling techniques. You can’t talk about ways to make the world better. You are pretty damn good at insinuating that someone is drunk though.
Nice having the conversation. Yet another example of the extreme abilities of the left.
Two thumbs up.
..and you can’t speak to motivation, to your imagined negative energies that make imagined souls ‘want to help’ so much that it makes them evil – that it makes them create ‘problems because they want to help. Look at your own logic.
While you’re at it look at the post just before ocLiberal ‘insinuated’ that you were drunk.
You were in fact quite incoherent – maybe religiously speaking in tongues…
You insult every person who has any level of interest in making the world better – with LESS than ZERO knowledge of the hearts of such people – then because we’re a little ‘cute’ about pointing out how incoherent and babbling one of your posts was you start this big baby thing about our ‘name calling’!
Speaking for myself I’m not a scientist – I know Mario’s not and I suspect that ocLiberal isn’t either yet it’s OK for you to insist on defining the terms of our discussion and making it all about your narrowly defined terms.Outside those narrowly defined strictures – where you’re on wobbly ground you sling the mud as well as anyone we know
I get a very strong sense that you know less than you pretend and have NO answers on a human scale…
You feel safe in th eworld as you know it and resist not only change but any level of thinking outside the box.
Yet another example of the inabilities of the right to think beyond, ‘Hey, I’ve got mine, now you can go to hell!’
mario piperni says:
@Janet: The post was not an attack on either religion or prayer. I clearly stated that there can be great benefit in praying in that it can help one deal with difficult times. My criticism was directed at those who use prayer as the sole means to deal with specific situations when there are concrete measures they can take to help alleviate or fix the situation at hand.
Mario? I’m confused. I don’t think you attacked religion or prayer, either. I’m sorry I gave you that impression. I thought I was just sharing my opinions. I hope you don’t think I judge you that way.
I happen to uh, agree. That those who use prayer as the sole means to deal with specific situations, when they have the mind, and physical ability to work at fixing problems as well, seems rather lazy, and limited to many, I’m sure. The only time I would not agree, is if all else has been tried, and there is nothing left but to pray, and hope for the best. I find I usually do both together. Pray for strength, wisdom, help to fix the problem with intent to help solve a problem, whether it’s for myself, or others, or both.
We at peace, brother?
@Fred L,
Copy, paste my words. “We see ourselves as his children, and when we gather together in prayer, sometimes we can move his heart. We might see him move in our favor, or we might not, but then he knows better then us what we need, and what we just want to control.”
Copy, paste, your comments. and I have to wonder, “Then, why bother? Why not accept that you can’t know and leave Him or Her, or It to do what He/She/It will do?
In all your comment you basically share what you have seen a lot of what I too, have seen, but I did not grow up in a religious home. My home life was nothing like a family growing up in any kind of faith. What I did learn as a young child directly from my own Dad was what he believed in God as our Father, and that he loved me as his child. He took his family to a Baptist Church maybe all of 5 times. I only remember singing, and wanting to go for that reason. I was bored by the rest. Church, and religion was just not in our home after that. When I would ask why, the answer was, “not wanting to live like a hypocrite.” We lived very poor most of my childhood.
I bother, because that part of me that does know. I have a family relationship with God. God is my Father, and I am his child. I love him, because he showed me he lives, and loves me too. I respect him because he created all life. I’m a student, he is my teacher.
I agree, that many people of faith, regardless of what denomination, show themselves as poor judges of others that don’t share what they believe. I can’t say I don’t act the proper Christian to myself or to others at all times. I have failed plenty in my walk, but I have learned from my failings, and face that part of me, when I think I might be entering old grounds. I look at myself, because that is how I know, that people all around are struggling with life in some way or another. I’ve changed over the years. I don’t think some people understand that the faith one walks is a life long learning experience. Just because I don’t know what God’s intentions are when I pray, does not mean I don’t have faith in his wisdom. I believe in one’s authentic self in life’s walk of faith. I do judge other people at times. I see something that is wrong, I’m going to share that. What I don’t judge or have the right to judge is what people find peace within for themselves. You have peace within yourself without God, I am happy for you, but I find it interesting that you wonder why I can’t be like you.
I have many spirit friends, sister’s mostly, in other parts of the world as well as our country with diverse beliefs. Catholics, Methodist , Atheist’s, Agnostic’s, Native American’s traditional and not. Indian’s, Australian’s, and more. We have built our friendships around the fact that we had a common desire to meet people from other places, nations, arts, education, books, etc., and found out that we were sharing, praying, helping in times of loss, heart break, and in joyous moments as well. I have learned so much from my friends. Most on the internet, but some I have come to know in person. They are exactly as I knew them on the net before we met one on one. I think I’m very blessed that way in friendships.
What I try to convey in my comments here, is that I’m not interested in judging others that don’t see things as I do or share in my faith. In politics I judge, because politicians have this huge power to change people’s lives without caring or knowing the harm they can, and do inflict, by laws they create, they change, and only have intentions for average American’s to live by, why making a living off our labor, yet holding their own political life up to the highest bidder, willing to make life hard for everyone else. I believe in justice, our freedoms, and our Constitution.
I’ve learned that public school education in the history of our nation in our beginnings, and for hundreds of years before, and after are very far from the truth, and I have had many opportunities to learn from the very people that have lived our history through their ancestors, and up to current times. Not everyone is really free as we would like to think.
I adore my friends, and we do not judge each others beliefs. We accept each other. I never learned that in any church I ever attended, which were few, and far between, but I sure learned that people could back stab, gossip, and treat others with disrespect, fight and argue like children, and literally cause intentional harm because of jealousy. The only Pastor I ever felt honored to know, was the man that came to the hospital when I faced major surgery, and prayed the many hours I was under the knife. He didn’t judge my more liberal folks then me, (never once did they attend his church either.) I admired him because he worked a job outside of his preaching, and in hard labor, as in construction, from Monday to Saturday. He helped to pay for the cost of maintaining the church building, and the grounds, and gave tithes to the Church. He actually helped people in need, and paid taxes from his wages. I only know this because I flat out asked him when he came to Church early one week day service wearing his work cloths.
The fact is, I am judged by other Christians quite often, as I am judged by others of different political parties. Hearing that I am insignificant to the people that should be my brothers and sisters is not an easy thing for me to deal with. I have been rejected, many times by people that think I am not Christian because I don’t think in absolutes like they do. I have been rejected by family members, because I am not a Conservative, and by people I have never met just because I wear a cross sometimes. A few times I was ridiculed for having to use a wheelchair. There are people very hateful towards the disabled or fat, or both!
In my comment that you replied to, I explained why I understand how people can see Christians as hypocrites, and acting nothing like the faith that’s professed. There is certainly a very long history to prove them right. I don’t like to argue who is right, and who is wrong when it comes to the many religions of the world. I don’t see the sence in it. We have these fights in our faces daily enough through the wars we fight, and see other nations fighting each other over religion, race, money, weapons, etc.. As much as I don’t want a theocratic nation, I also don’t want a nation that will trample on my freedom to choose God. People in America can not come to terms with just allowing everyone to mind their own business in our choices. Do no harm to others, be good to each other, be a productive part of society as best one can, and in there somewhere we need to enjoy our lives, but we also need to see that there are people that can not help themselves, sick people, addictions, handicaps. Some can be productive, some may never be, but we all deserve to be treated humanely. How people come to the choices we make in life, even when we have no choice, that is our American right to pursue if not happiness, at least proper education, housing, meals, medical needs. Some people are just too stuck on controlling others to please themselves, and those whatever faith they choose, or are born into, think they have a right to control through divine desire. So we have agreement in what people with religion tend to show that is quite disturbing in actions, and in words. If the state of Texas can change their history books to teach the way it was back when, a bunch of lies to make history all wonderful, and patriotic they are going to be ignorant adults. As an example, didn’t most of us learn that Christopher Columbus was some wonderful guy who discovered our great country, but was a devious slave trader, a thief of Gold, and land, when the nation was fully populated by generous people that kept them from starving to death? So when adults repeat that learning, they look like uneducated fools with no heart for Native American’s, and in fact telling them to get over the fact their land was stolen, their language too, their children forced into orphanages, raped, murdered, and one by one tribes killed by diseased blankets offered to them in kindness. This is all part of our true history, but many will never believe it. This is why we so often deal with ignorance. Learned behavior is hard to break through, and we all have to be a part of changing that. So, as I end my rambling here, :), I am fine with your found peace within. You have made a choice for your life, and that is to be cherished as part of your right as an American. Some of my Christian friends won’t agree, that we are to teach the gospels, make people believe or wash our hands of them. I teach when I’m asked, I accept people’s choices, and I can still be a friend.
BTW, I like your name. The only Fred I ever knew was my late Grandpa, and your name reminds me how much I miss him…
Yep, I’m still talking. I share my pc with people that are looking for work, so it might be awhile when I can use it for more then an hour a night.
Ever see Sweden before and after photographs of snow and ice, then everything all melted and with a desert like atmosphere? Generations of people living there have never seen their homeland so barren and hot in the dead of winter.
All the oil spills, the loss of sea life, the endangered species, and lost forever species, the tons of plastic trash in the Pacific, and the whales, dolphins, turtles, sea birds, dead on the beaches from guts filled with human trash, and every other body of water or river and stream polluted thick with oil, or chemical plant waste and thousand of fish floating dead on top of the water? Over fished, and barren seas. Massive loss and continued destruction of forest tree’s that provide a major amount of our oxygen to the entire world. Earth quakes, tsunami’s and melted nuclear plants, Russia, America, and JAPAN. Millions now, of people with thyroid disease, including myself, and four other family members.
People really do have to get their heads out of the sand and face the fact that we really do have the potential to wipe out our own species because you can’t think beyond the normal everyday abuse of life on earth will ever change it. The planet has the natural cycles of climate change. What were those scars we seen on the rocks at the park in New York city? How long have the giant miles high of ancient ice, and packed snow been there? Now they are all melting away. Yes, naturally this occurs, but not at the speed we have forced it. It’s going so fast that when the floods won’t go down, and you blame the government for not making you prepared with houseboats already….
Surely, people in serious denial, can see that the way the world climate is changing at ever faster speeds every year, that mankind can perish without preparation for the worst yet to come? Hasn’t it been proven time and again that to wash your brain of science proven facts that the earth is a living planet, and can spit us out with a single disaster? It’s not politics, it’s not religion, it’s proven history, and science has tried desperately to educate the masses only trying to save us. We can’t all rush to the mountains with guns, living in the caves.
Can’t you who deny, at least think of the future of your kids, and not think in terms of money but what if there is not enough food, and water to get them through until the world is right again? It’s not about the sky is falling. Don’t be so ignorant to foolishness. Open up your mind to at least the possibility? Educate each other for preparations for hard times to come, just in case. Nothing wrong with thinking ahead, and better yet, slow down the process by taking better care of our planet. better safe then sorry, right?
@Janet: We weren’t ever not at peace (double negative intended). If more people of a religious persuasion were as balanced as you, we’d live in a much better world.
My thoughts on religion can be summed up as follows: I’m fine with whatever spiritual beliefs gives one peace and comfort. My concern begins and ends when one attempts to impose their specific beliefs on the masses.
“My concern begins and ends when one attempts to impose their specific beliefs on the masses.”
Oh, if only we could get politicians to think like that, Mario.
brad.title – Can you provide a link to this info?
Brad,
I wasn’t just being cheeky about drunken blogging. You ramble on about railroad tracks and blather about things which are completely impossible to verify. Tangents hinder communication. If you notice, I am not running on with 1500 word diatribes to make my point.
You sound like a conspiracy nut when you talk like this: “Your “heroes” though don’t want to participate. They don’t want anyone not in the club to review their methods or data.” I never told you who my heroes were, and we really don’t come here to release our peer reviewed theories. I freely admit that climate modelling is very inexact. Does that mean that we should ignore everything science is warning us about? Maybe in your world. If you want to join the likes of Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin and Exxon you have the right. Don’t think it will make you look smart while blogging on this sight. Try Free Republic.
As I said before, no intention to call names. Take care.
@ocLiberal — Actually, there are lots of things you should ignore from the scientists. A short list.
Salt — Salt is vital to the efficient operation of our bodies. There is a lower limit below which bad things start to happen. There is an upper limit above which bad things start to happen (if you drink sea water, you have a good chance of killing your self). In between is a wide area of acceptable intake. Most people get rid of excess salt without any problem. Yet we have a law in effect in NYC that makes it illegal to add salt. This does not mean that people who have issues with salt shouldn’t take steps. It means that for the most part, most of us can eat the salt we eat and not worry.
BPA — The dire consequence that might result from ingesting BPA in your food is enlarged breasts. Might being the operative word because the RR for this is like 1.2 which means that there is a good chance the person who got bigger breasts would have gotten them anyway. No one has died. Lots of people have benefitted from eating canned food that doesn’t taste like the can.
Second Hand Smoke — The EPA actually committed fraud on this one. They lowered the poison ratio to 0.1 in order to get a result that wasn’t completely irrelevant. Even at 0.1, the RR was only 1.2 (which is reported in the media as a 20% increased risk).
In short if there is a risk ratio reported (and they say 20% increased risk or something similar), you can ignore it as the ramblings of morons who have no oversight. This is unkind of me. What that report really means is that there is a group of scientists who pulled the one armed bandit, a poisson ratio 1 and they all jumped up and down that they had a result they could publish and might have a chance of getting published.
You are half right I do have two conspiracy theories.
1. The “Cover Your Ass” conspiracy theory. Do not write things down that can link you to wrong doing. Do not rock to the boat and cause your job to disappear.
2. The “Keep the Bread on the Table” conspiracy theory. Unless malfeasance is overt, don’t threaten your paycheck.
I don’t have any grand conspiracies. Just those two general principles of life. With physics, chemistry, or engineering (and several other disciplines), we can execute tests the help us be confident that our predictions are true. If I say a car gets 25mpg, you can fill the tank, see how far you go and do some simple math to see if my prediction is true. With things like epidemiology that gets really murky. I cannot stand up and say, “Second Hand Smoke has never hurt anyone”. I have had it hurt me momentarily (it caused an asthma attack). Looking at the statistics though, I can tell you that it ain’t as clear as it looks. Hidden in that statistic is the ugly truth of asthma. As second hand smoke exposure has decreased asthma rates have increased.
Perhaps you have heard the statistic 400,000 people die each year of Smoking Related Causes?
Using the same methodology, you can say that 200,000 people are saved each year by smoking. This is counter intuitive to most people. Prominent science advocates think I am nuts when I suggest this. Then I point them to http://www.numberwatch.co.uk and they start to reconsider. If you realize that suggesting that 200,000 lives are saved by smoking is ridiculous, you can backup and realize that saying that 400,000 deaths are caused by smoking is equally ridiculous. Perhaps you have heard the other devastating number associated with smoking 23x the risk for lung cancer. Terrifying. They don’t tell you that this means that there is a 92% chance that a lifetime smoker will not get lung cancer.
I fully expect that you will not see me as intelligent. There is hope though that others that read this will say.
Hmm, I wonder what he means about those statistics. Maybe I should check into that. OMFG, WTF are those scientists thinking.
Brian Dunning talked about Zeno’s Paradoxes on skeptoid.com this week. Zenos suggested that it was impossible for a person to get from point a to point b because the person is always halving the distance in his trip, so he never actually gets there. Diogenes the Cynic stands up and walks around the circle and sits down effectively refuting Zeno’s conjecture.
We can’t test everything that science does. We can reexamine what they try to impose on us. If it fails secondary analysis, it might be necessary to ignore it.
@Tommy —
First — Google — http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=97+climate+scientist+believe+in+global+warming
Second — Here is the breakdown http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/consensus_opiate.pdf
@ocLiberal — The one armed bandit gig should read “the poisson ratio was less than 0.05.”
The poisson ratio by the way is the chance that the null hypothesis has not been refuted. If the Poisson ratio is 0.05, this means that there is a 1 in 20 possibility of the result being an accident.
With a lot of studies these days this 1 in 20 is no longer 1 in 20. Lots of tests are done comparing lots of factors. When one gets the magic ratio, papers are published. The problem is that when you do this for lots of tests (and the tests performed by a single study can get into the thousands), the chance of finding a correlation somewhere approaches unity.
I have been looking at these now for 10 years. Only two of them have any real merit. The first was smoking and lung cancer. The second came out in the last couple of year tying oral sex to cancers of the mouth. HPV (Human papillomavirus) was linked to the cancers. You dig into all the other research that relies on epidemiology and you become disappointed. Percentages are great way to hide small numbers. One study I looked at linking Aspartame to early death in rats couldn’t even get itself to report percentages. They reported “Statistically significant decrease in life expectancy”. There were no number reported in the report until you got to tables page, which only showed data from 1 of the runs of the experiment and the only group in the test that was significant was the group that was fed the highest dosage. It was very discouraging.
I suppose there are a couple of other conspiracy theories there then.
1. Publish or Perish — Either get something published OR FIND another job — wait that is just the “Keep bread on the table” conspiracy.
2. Publication Bias — Studies that result in negative results are not likely to get published unless there is a study already completed that it counters. Even then it is likely to end up in the trash heap.
The most important results of the studies done turn out to be the ones that show nothing, but these are not the ones that get published for rather obvious reasons.
An interesting read if you are interested http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
A lovely follow up to the above —
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=4142
Proffessor Briggs by the way would love to be in the pay of Big Oil, Big Pharma, or Big Enviro, but none of them will give him the time of day.
@Janet — Denial is a two way street. I do not deny that the climate is changing. I deny that CO2 is the cause. Ask me to fight real dangers and I will.
If there is no power to light my house, no gas to heat it, I will cut down the trees outside my door and use that to keep my kids warm. I will not be worried about excessive CO2.
That said. Don’t get too worried. There are solutions to a lot of our problems already in production. The plastic we will capture and turn into electricity, the waste products from oil refineries and oil fields will be separated and turned into go juice. Ocean water will be used to irrigate the fields (after it has been desalinated). Soon land fills will no longer be used because we can turn municipal garbage into electricity and raw materials for industry. We have the means to close the loops and make our impact on the environment less per stroke of human activity.
The consequence though will be increased human activity.
Brad, I most certainly do NOT see you as unintelligent. You seem like a pretty smart guy. That doesn’t mean you aren’t skewed in your reasoning.
I WILL say this. It is not rocket science to look at an experiment in a closed environment (Earth’s atmosphere) in which the doubling of CO2 (by human activity) causes heat to be trapped. Your eloquent ramblings about scientific method don’t change that. What is next, your dissertation on Intelligent Design?
You just make my point with the link to SPPI. The rest of us don’t know whether this Robert Ferguson dude is legitimate or some nut, or worse, some pawn of the powers that want to pump oil and sheer off mountains for dirty coal. Can I see his stock portfolio at least?
If you want to convince me do this (and it will be VERY powerful for all who read this): Send me links to major, legitimate scientific organizations that question the concept that human activity is the cause of Climate change. Organizations that prove empirically, that higher CO2 levels (which we KNOW raise the temp of the planet) are not caused by human activity.
No nuts, not pawns of the energy overlords and no Representatives from Oklahoma.
@ocLiberal — Why do you immediately fall back to Ad Hominem (in this case the Economic Fallacy) Attacks?
He got the numbers from the published study and provided them. Can you attack the numbers? Are the numbers wrong?
Do you suspect everyone of their funding or just the ones whose funding bothers you?
For a discussion of doubling of CO2 see.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/4-carbon-dioxide-is-already-absorbing-almost-all-it-can/
Can you discuss the merits of the argument instead of immediately jumping on her funding source?
Ok Brad, now you are looking less smart. Sorry.
It is not an ad Hominem attack to question who this guy is. I didn’t say “he is an idiot,” I said we don’t know who he is and who might be giving him lots of scratch to have an opinion. In response to your question, yes, I suspect everyone’s motives until I have reason to believe they are being absolutely straight and real. I suspect YOUR motives. The politicians who are denying Climate Change are getting big contributions from the energy companies who want to continue making billions. I question their motivations and it is smart to do so. Always ask yourself if they have a dog in the race.
Next, I am not qualified to analyse the science. The link to JoNova… There is no source listed on that graph. Maybe it is real and perfect and enlightening and maybe it is not. I don’t know. I am interested in science and have been for about 40 years, I have a college degree and have taken college science courses receiving an A in all of them. The university from which I graduated taught me in those science classes that Climate Change is not only real but that it is exacerbated by humans. Do I believe the California State University system or a website by somebody I don’t know? I talk about science to anyone who wants to talk. However, I don’t fancy myself competent to analyse scientific studies. I suspect neither are you.
Finally, you failed. I asked for “links to major, legitimate scientific organizations that question the concept that human activity is the cause of Climate change” and you send me a link to a website for a gal who writes books and lectures on Global Warming skepticism. Brad, she has a dog in the race. Who sends her funding?
@ocLiberal — It is an ad Hominem attack. You attack his character instead of the argument.
As to who should you trust.
NO ONE.
Nullius in Verba….
(This is the motto of the Royal Society of Science).
I do not want you to trust me, Jo Nova, John Brignel, Matt Briggs, or anyone else. They will tell you the exact same thing. DO NOT TRUST THEM. Check out what they say. Find out for yourself what the math is. Find out for yourself what the science is.
When you throw the term Denier at me and other (I don’t know if you have, but it is common in threads like this), you are committing an Ad Hominem attack. When you say “The ‘real’ scientists have already demonstrated that you are wrong” you are using Argument from Authority. AA is not necessarily a fallacy. It is something we have to do to survive. Neither you nor I can research every detail of every subject. We have to rely on authority from time to time. When discussing a specific issue though, we shouldn’t have to resort to the argument. We can quote specific references and discuss what those references mean. We can discuss the interpretation of the research. We can dig into the ideas behind them. We can do ever so much more than jumping on each other and saying “Hey, that guy is a conspiracy theorist” or “He is in the pay of big oil!”. I understand needing to suspect the motives of people, but you should first attack the argument.
Point to the flaws in the statistics. Point to the problems in the analysis. Point to things that are overlooked. Point to discrepancies. That you graduated from a university where they taught that Climate Change was predominantly caused by humans says that you graduated within the last 20 years. Should I attack your youth?
Who is funding Al Gore? Who is funding the Climate Models? How much money did Dr. Hansen receive from non government sources? Who is getting more funding?
Are you worried about the $23M that Big Oil has put into the skeptics camp or the $750 M they have put into the AGW camp? Before you start calling the kettle black, take a good long look at funding chains. It is damn annoying to have people complain that a scientist got $10k to write a paper when the scientist on the other side received 10x that, but that funding was not to be questioned.
Hi Brad,
Thank you for explaining Logical fallacies. The judge may even say you are right, that to question the speaker instead of debating the content of his argument is an ad Hominem argument. My point, however is the same. YES, it DOES matter who they work for and are funded by. You simply have no good response to that, so you try to school me in the technicalities of Logical fallacies. I was saying that I can’t use Robert Ferguson as an authority when I know NOTHING about him. Anybody can put a website.
It has been years since my “youth” was attacked.
You don’t have to answer this, but do you by chance have a dog in this race?
I am STILL waiting for: “links to major, legitimate scientific organizations that question the concept that human activity is the cause of Climate change.”
@ocLiberal —
Richard Lindzen – MIT
John Christy – University of Alabama
Roy Spencer – University of Alabama
Christopher Monkton — Published in the APS.
The last two are the people who created the means to make monitoring temperature from space possible.
It doesn’t matter what link I put up. I don’t expect you to change your mind. The best that is going to happen is that someone else will read this thread and make their own assessment. I expect them to make their own assessment and not take either your or my word for it.
Have a great day. Cling to your heroes and never question them whoever they may be.
I told you, I never mentioned my heroes.
These are people, not major, well known organizations. Just because Mr. Monkton was published by the American Physical Society, it does not make him an organization.
You actually COULD change my mind. It is possible. I have changed my mind many times before. But you are coming from the fringe, Brad. All the biggest scientific organizations say what I am saying, so I need more than a list of four individuals who agree with you. I can send you a list of people who belong to the Flat Earth Society too.
Have a great day.
@ocLiberal — http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
“It does not take 100 people to prove me wrong, it takes just 1!” – Einstein.
Make a prediction and check your prediction against reality. This is all I use to evaluate the ability of the science.
Oh, in case you missed it.
The Royal Society Changed their position because their members rose up.
There was a revolt at APS because of their position.
When they predict that the world will be in drought forever and the drought ends, I expect you to say “HEY, they were wrong”. I especially expect you to get pissed when they say “See we told you it would flood”.
I don’t mind people making wrong predictions, that is how we learn. I detest people making wrong predictions then after the fact changing what their prediction was and saying that they were right.
brad, I’ll happily answer your question “Do you suspect everyone of their funding or just the ones whose funding bothers you? ” – not for ocLiberal but for myself.
I’m critical of anything I’m going to ‘invest’ my life and health in but YES, I am absolutely more critical of the ones whose funding bothers me!
I shouldn’ t even have to describe or itemize the meaning and implications of that but let me know if you don’t immediately recognize what I’m saying. I trust those the most who have the least motivation to distort statistics or to deceive me. Relying on or referencing the economics isn’t evasive or changing the subject – it’s an important part of the equation – of anyone’s personal decision.
I trust my body, my instincts, my broader but not highly specialized, knowledge. Now that I can afford it I live out in the country where I breathe healthy air and drink clean water, and raise my own meat and vegetables.
I was born dead, at home and after my grandmother massaged me to life the doc predicted that if I took great care and lived a quiet life I might make fifty! At seventy two still leading a very active life I have yet to spend a night in the hospital. Surrounded by the genetics of heart disease, I have the heart of a healthy horse!
I got there by exercise, good health and nutrition and trusting my instincts and my body.
Regarding the ‘funding’ issue and since you brought up BPA in another post, I am just skeptical enough to have found out that that ‘The American Chemistry Council Inc’, isn’t at all what the name implies and I doubt that’s a coincidence. It’s a well funded P R Arm of the industry who may or may not do their own ‘chemistry’. Knowing that I don’t even have to care – living without BPA is like a fish living without a bicycle – a huge sacrifice!
Since I’m not as thrilled as you seem to be, by a statistic as by a symphony and since I have ‘a life’, that’s all I need to know! I can conveniently make that ‘sacrifice’ and avoid BPA – even enjoying an occasional canned product if I like just by doing a little research – there are other , safer plastics you know – and it’s often covered on the label!
All that logic also applies to smoking, second hand smoke and salt.
You and I might agree about salt but here you’re arguing a very old argument. I don’t think anyone advocates eliminating healthy salt anymore, just commercial salt with aluminum driers. I’ve eaten the same natural rock salt as my horses and cattle for years and haven’t thought about it for that long, so it may no longer be true but commercial salt used to be loaded with aluminum driers, so that ‘when it rains, it pours’. I make that ‘sacrifice’ plus the huge ‘sacrifice’ of not cooking with aluminum cookware either! Now I’m sure you could wax eloquent about the statistics showing how I needn’t make that choice but for the most part, healthy choices are quite easy. When it comes to eating natural tastes better too!
My ranch requires a big truck but by investing just a little energy in the ‘problem’ I had the choice to opt on the safe side regarding carbon as well. I now drive a one ton, clean, diesel, dually, king cab, four wheel drive which delivers 27 mpg and I can afford to drive it into town on Saturday night and pick up a bag of feed if need be. It pollutes a little less than my old, small displacement, air cooled Porsche but costs a little more for the diesel.
If we’d be alive to settle the bet and in spite of your impressive array of science aligned against my view of reality I’d still bet you ten thousand damn dollars that I’m right and you’re wrong about global climate change! We know it’s happening – we know it’s happening at a time in the world’s history when the human population is at it’s highest count – we know it’s happening at a time in history when carbon pollution from our industrial and personal sources is very visible and clearly affects asthma (you should be aware of that) and other respiratory ailments and risks. We know that we can’t know the final outcome until it’s too late and that there are healthy ways to change our behavior. If it’s caused by human activity but not necessarily carbon alone, what difference does that make? If your side proved that ti isn’t affected at all by human activity I’d happily relax and maybe buy a newer, peppier, Porsche, have more overseas vacations and haul my horses to more competitions. However the life style I live right now, erring on the side of caution is just not that deprived!
We even know that a new, modernized energy system would create new industries, new j-o-b-s and improvements in our general health, break the cycle of military interference to secure petroleum resources all over the world and the old way of life and it’s clear that some people fear the changes – some from greed, some from inertia and intellectual laziness, some because they just enjoy a good argument and displaying their brilliance.
Whatever renegade statisticians say we know there is little risk in making these changes and huge potential gains.
We know that the profit motive mitigates in favor of an energy industry campaign to deceive us and that there is a lot more money for funding studies favorable to the industry point of view than for funding the alternatives.
If I’m wrong but err on the side of caution what harm have I done? Hell, If Al Gore’s wrong what harm has he done except to make some people a little nervous about that almighty paycheck and their love of life, exactly as they know it! Of the pure, exquisite pleasure of driving a big, ugly SUV – usually alone – or a Grand Am – or of living in an ‘impressive’ house big enough for three families and having an extra in the Bahamas – just in case.
@brad:
When ocLib asked you to provide “links to major, legitimate scientific organizations that question the concept that human activity is the cause of Climate change”, I had to chuckle when you came back with this:
“Richard Lindzen – MIT
John Christy – University of Alabama
Roy Spencer – University of Alabama
Christopher Monkton — Published in the APS.
The last two are the people who created the means to make monitoring temperature from space possible.”
First of all, let me point out that what you provided are neither links nor are they scientific bodies, legitimate or otherwise. They’re the names of four people. Now, I don’t know the first 3 names on your list but I am well acquainted with the last one, Christopher Monkton.
The simple fact that you would use Monkton as a source to validate your views on climate change just about tells me everything I need to know about where you’re coming from on this topic. If you would have bothered to check up on the man, you would have discovered that he is a fraud and a proven liar with no background in science of any kind. The man is a charlatan.
But you need not take my word for it. There is a 4 part video series on the man which exposes him as a lying charlatan. The first thing you’ll discover (should you actually watch the first video) is that Monkton never wrote a peer-reviewed piece for the APS. He wrote an opinion piece which he claimed was peer-reviewed. So right off the bat, your note that Monkton is “published in APS” is totally misleading.
Here’s what I’m going to ask you to do. If you truly do care about the issue of climate change (and I believe you do), then take 10 minutes to watch the first video on Monkton. You’ll find that the person who produced the video does not use conjecture to tear Monkton to pieces. He uses facts. He uses links to real scientific journals. He uses the man’s own words.
After watching it, come back here and share your thoughts.
Moncton Bunkum Part 1
@Fred —
I support your choices. Can you tell me which one tone dually delivers 27mpg, because I wouldn’t mind knowing.
I am all for improved gas mileage if it is possible.
I am all for alternatives. I suspect the BPA statistic for the same reason you suspect the people funded by Big Oil. I have a primary beef which is the statistic is so tiny that it doesn’t even raise a blip. I have a second beef which is that is quite convenient for the people whose patents have run out on BPA.
If Al Gore, what wrong has he done except mass more money than the entire global warming skeptic community has received. You are all about following the money. FOLLOW IT.
And speaking of houses which can support 3 families.. How many of those 3 family houses does Old Al need.
I know that climate change is happening. I also know that the temperature isn’t getting measured all that well (http://www.surfacestations.org/) I know that Dr. Hansen gets more money than any of the skeptics. http://www.atinstitute.org/ati-law-center-asks-court-to-force-nasa-to-produce-ethics-and-outside-employment-records-of-dr-james-hansen/ . It is apparently ok for him to rake in lots of money, but you don’t question whether or not he is ethical. This is a man who won’t release his code to be reviewed by experts in coding. The problem? Every time he lets someone look at his code they find errors that make his pronouncements wrong.
Why is it okay for the University of Virginia to release all the papers of a Climate Skeptic, but when people ask for the papers of Dr. Mann, they get up in arms.
When a nut job threatens a AGW proponent, there are calls for civility. When the climate alarmist say “We need to brand the deniers” or “We need to set them out on pike in the harbor”, do you get pissed at them?
Some of the leaders of the AGW movement are the perpetrators of such statements. They want to incarcerate or execute deniers. Why?
@Mario — It is interesting that you don’t know who the first three are yet you can slam Lord Monkton. A 4 part video ON THE Internet. Damn. That puts him in his place. Can you argue against the points he makes? Or can you only point to someone else’s video and say “See he’s a liar”
Have you read his paper that was published?
Can you refute anything in the paper? Are his equations wrong? Is he using faulty logic?
He just debated a gentleman in Australia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma6cnPLcrtA&feature=player_embedded
Can you assassinate his arguments instead of his character?
You all teach me that the left refuses to discuss the issue. They only want to attack people’s character. You don’t want to talk about the fundamentals of the issue. You want to make people look like idiots so you can laugh at them and pat yourself on the back at how humorous you are.
I admit that such tactics work. They are taught routinely at boot camps for political causes. Always attack the person. Negative ads work much better than arguing over the science. The science is settled isn’t it? Repeat that often enough and never let the issue get to debate and maybe the masses will believe that the science is settled.
@brad.
So you didn’t bother to actually watch the video before penning your little diatribe, did you? Fine. It tells me that you are not really interested in the topic or the truth. Your comment “the left refuses to discuss the issue” tells me that this is nothing more than a political issue for you. If your side is against it and libs are for it then you’re automatically against it….whatever “it” might be.
There’s no point discussing much with you, brad. You’re not interested in actually debating the issue. You’re more concerned with showing us that you’re right and we’re wrong no matter what evidence to the contrary anyone presents.
You ask if I ‘can assassinate [Moncton's] arguments instead of his character”. No I cannot but I directed you to someone who could and you didn’t even bother to watch the video before coming back with your silly response.
Brad, you’ve just proven yourself to be a tool of the right.
@mario — Interesting video. He didn’t quite assassinate the character as others have.
There are bits there that make me curious though. One of my pet peeves with this entire discussion is the use of Anomalous Zero. Quick what is the temperature outside in degrees anomalous?
Which brings us to
What is temperature?
What are the units of temperature?
What is a good zero point for temperature and why?
Should we use C, F, R or K?
I get annoyed at both sides for this. I have chastised as many of my side as possible. I barely scratched the surface at junkscience and at least got them to start using Kelvin. Maybe I didn’t have anything to do with it. I can dream.
What city has more energy in it? Minneapolis at 85F and 90% humidity or Pheonix at 110F and 10% humidity? How do you calculate this?
How do you average this? What does the average physically represent?
Once you average it, can you back out the temperature? Does that backed out temperature have meaning?
Sorry. I am a big fan of zero. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero
My professors were big fans also which may be where I got my love. It was the blood they put on my charts when I turned them in without the zero that made an impact. It wasn’t until years later that I finally figured out why they were so merciless. Without a proper zero it is easy to misobserve data. When you are monitoring a system it is very useful to know if the the system is changing by 1% or 20%.
Try charting the data for world temperature in K, C, R and F (you can skip R, it should look just like K). Use 0 as your baseline for each. Plot CO2 against Temperature using zero as a baseline for each.
Hey Brad, working on my computer and quite busy right now – but two things, quickly.
The truck is the new Dodge, Cummins, Clean Diesel. I have a standard transmission and always believed that they get better mileage when driven properly but my son gets slightly better mileage with his automatic. Several mfr’s claim better mileage from their automatics nowadays.
As you know the dealer isn’t able to claim mileage that good – not quite sure how that works – except it’s political.
I’m not a huge fan of Mr Gore tho I voted for him against Bush and still maintain…well doesn’t matter …
Mostly I resent that he’s a gazillionaire politician and that only such people can enter politics, win and run our country.
That aside, he once was fully vested in tobacco then changed course and was quite heavily vested in oil and changed course, adjustments which must have cost him a few bucks each time. I can’t criticize him for investing in what he believes in and while he wasn’t so generous as to break the bank he has donated heavily to green institutions which MIGHT profit him in the future, maybe not. He’s a smart man but I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams that he invented an entire fiction of global warming just for profit, or that he took on the entire scientific community, (I know he didn’t have to many believers were lined up to receive his support) cynically, w/o a reasonable belief in his position.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html
@Mario — the arguments weren’t exactly assassinated though. A selection were carefully dissected to maximize the effect of the appearance of assassination.
I am not a very good tool for the right. I represent a rather small subset. Conservative Atheist.
I am firmly an adherent of the three laws of thermo though which is unfortunately what makes me a conservative.
It is also what keeps me saying “LOOK AT THE ENTHALPY!”
The one zero I will accept without reservation is 0 enthalpy. We get all the temperature data into units of enthalpy and plot them against zero. Next to that we can plot the derivative of enthalpy. When we plot the derivative of mass, I would like to see the chart of the mass next to it.
I have started seeing people reporting derivative enthalpy. That is cool. That will get us a lot closer to figuring out the issues than the number currently being used. The importance of the absolute values though can’t be understated. Knowing that the greenland ice cap reduced by x M tonnes is interesting, but without the chart of its total mass, you are left wondering if they are obscuring something.
BTW — The end point discussion of the video you sent is spot on. NOW, if they would only recognize the full import of the end point fallacy and how to rid the world of it. SHOW THE DATA. don’t show the smoothed data. Show the data. Data smoothing is what you do to try and predict what will happen next. The data is the data. Display the data.
@Fred — you know they had a hydraulic drive for the Expedition apparently that got 32mpg in the city. They haven’t put that into production yet.
Trying to find cars that get decent mileage that fit a person 6’5″ with two sons who will soon be eclipsing him is challenging. That truck might just fit the bill as long as it is extended cab. Maybe dodge makes a SUV with the same engine. Have to look.
The new automatics have overcome the limitations of the originals. The fluid used to suck up a lot of energy and reduce the mileage. They can now be more efficient because we humans aren’t always perfect. Automation can get closer.
Al Gore runs around telling everyone to live a moderate life, yet runs a household without any moderation. He buys his indulgences from his own company (carbon credits). I don’t like Ed Begley Jr. I respect his lifestyle though. He walks what he talks. Any small transgressions he has I forgive. I can’t forgive Al his mansion nor his heated swimming pool. Live what you preach. I won’t necessarily follow you, but I can assess your level of faith in your beliefs by your actions. I respect that.
@ocLiberal — Who is Robert Ferguson?
Let me post this link again in case it got mangled.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/consensus_opiate.pdf
Marios video chided Monkton for his endpoints. The author of the article above points to the same fallacy used to concoct the “97% of climate scientists consensus” statement.
Where you set the endpoint makes a big difference in how you answer.
@ocLiberal — Sorry. I didn’t see Robert Ferguson until the bottom of the page. I assumed you were talking about the author of the paper I linked to which as Dennis Ambler.
Why should you trust Dennis Ambler? Once again you shouldn’t. You take the numbers he puts in his report and go get a copy of the study he is referencing and see if the numbers match up.
If his numbers don’t match up, you send him a note and point it out. Chances are, he will thank you and make the change.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/consensuswhatconsensusamongclimatescientiststhedebateisnotover.html
Here is an analysis of an essay that is also Highly touted as significant.
Someone went and attempted to replicate Dr. Oreskes research and was unable to do it. He was able to find the papers in question but they weren’t the numbers Oreskes used. Apparently she missed some.
Will you be able to analysis this paper that makes a fool of Oreskes?
Brad, busy night. You are not quite getting it. Mario is trying to show that you are doing what you accuse us of. You are only looking at the facts you choose to believe. The difference is that you are trying to justify a fringe idea that is rejected by
all the major, legitimate scientific organizations. You can say that they are all being paid off by Al Gore, but then you would REALLY sound like Michelle Bachman.
I do know what I am talking about. When forming an argument you MUST site your sources and they MUST be legit.
Do you have a dog in the race?
I’m coming very late to this post.
Janet said (way back there somewhere) “…we that believe, see God as Father…”
My response to this is, and has been for a long, long time, that children are not meant to live in their father’s house all their lives. They learn about the world, grow up and strike out on their own. Clinging to the father’s beard is no different than clinging to apron strings. If there is a god, it must be very disappointed that all but a minority of us haven’t yet learned to stand on our own two feet.
Wow. Not the first time you have judged me unfavorably, E.A. Blair. Only this time you claim to be one of a minority of people that can handle life with out what must be some imaginary friend to you. Ok.
Janet, I was not judging you personally; I was giving my reaction to the notion of a paternal deity. I am not completely an atheist, but if I were asked in a poll if I believed in god witha capital “G” I’d have to say “no. I do think that almost all religions are silly. In fact, I have only come across one that I do not think is silly, and no, I am not a member. But I do not accept the bible as an authority in my life – it has a few good ideas, but you have to look really hard to find them (and yes, I have read it, and in more than one language) and they’re all things that can be found elsewhere. I also think that whe world would be better off if, instead of having organized religion, people’s spiritual impulses were kept on a personal level.
@EABlair — The challenge for me with the bible is ignoring all the bad ideas that are in it. I get to the story of the 10 plagues and I wonder how dastardly Yahweh is. I follow Moses further and wonder exactly who is a worse criminal Moses or Hitler. Hitler attempted to get rid of a people. Moses didn’t attempt, according to the bible, he succeeded. Paul tells women to be pretty and STFU.
Paul also tells us to do two things.
1. Pray
and
2. Procreate when we aren’t praying.
I have tried to use this to my advantage, but it has never worked..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/21/thank-the-gods-for-climategate/#more-43850
A discussion of the unsettledness of climate change.
If I waxed on too much about the process of science, it was to try and impart that no science is settled ever. If someone steps forward and says they can create an overunity device, I am highly skeptical that their machine will pass muster because I have great faith in the 2nd Law of Thermo. I am not opposed to him proving me wrong though. Set up the device and show me. I will be fastidious in demanding that there be no batteries attached. I may x-ray the device to make sure there are no hidden batteries. I might point out the real invention that was created. The appearance of overunity may be a clever bearing design or a great way to capture lost energy. I am capable of scoffing at overunity conspirators though. If you can make a device that can convert one form of energy into electricity and can do it at an efficiency that lets me amortize the expense and be profitable, we can put together a business plan to get it into place. If you tell me that Big Oil is conspiring to keep you out, I will scoff.
Big Electricity would love to make energy for cheaper. They won’t waste money in the process, but if you can show them a proof of concept that a person squeezing the shaft, they will be interested. There is a hurdle to get over though. Too many people have deceived themselves into believing they could flaunt the 2nd law. Often they overlook simple things like the pump they used to get the water to the roof.
BTW — Pray/Proceate – I Corinthians 7.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7&version=NIV
There might be a little wiggle room there between sex and prayer. I think it pretty clearly says “Have Sex” and “when you aren’t having sex pray”. He may leave just a little bit of room there for other other activities.. Eating, Sleeping, feeding the cows..
Only a little though.
brad,
Now I can say, ‘it’s nice talkin’ to you.’
@Fred — Can you provide more information on the Dodge truck you bought. I can’t find Clean Diesel options on the dodge site. Light Duty seems to be word, but even that seems to be missing. Other searches come empty also.
It looks like they had plans to put it in the 1500 and even the Durango, but they are hiding it now.
Their website isn’t the easiest. Looking at the page for 1500s does not inspire me to want to look for a truck. Black websites are really annoying.
brad,
My truck wasn’t brand new – my son’s was bought new but he’s a landscape architect and it’s like his business car/recreation truck and has lotsa miles. I got mine for 1/2 price, restored after it fell off a flat car in transit and it’s still almost brand new but it’s a 2009 model.
I’m not very familiar with the website or the 2011 models – mine and my son’s are 2009′s – both one tons – 3500s. If you had asked I would have guessed that they’d never – well that they hadn’t yet – put the Cummins engine in anything smaller than the 2500 (3/4 ton), large trucks. I’ve been told that everything in smaller trucks is made too light for the diesel engines (in both Ford and Dodge) and that the weight of the engine and all the heavier drive train required is too much for the suspension, brakes and torque pressures of the big diesels.
If I’m not mistaken Dodge doesn’t make anything like an SUV which is heavier like the 3/4 ton Ford and Suburban models.
Also, I remembered last night a lot of info I’ve been getting by email lately lately about a big, V6 gas engine they’re putting in new Ford 1/2 tons but again, I can’t say they put it in anything but trucks. (until this truck I’ve been a lifetime Ford man.)
It (the engine) is brand new, just released and is supposed to have v8 pulling power and V6 fuel consumption – lots of strong, lightweight materials and just unbelievable endurance. I know they put it in 1/2 tons – including crew cabs – but as far as I know nothing else in their lineup.
Since my silly flirtation with getting a second, compact truck to haul my art around in, I realized I was better off driving a too much, too big truck, on a date if necessary, rather than risking damage to a lighter weight truck – maybe even that super endurance Ford.
I have hauled eight or more horses long distances thru mountains in hot weather and pulled 3/4 ton trucks all apart before, blowing injectors, clutches and differentials! And my big stock trailer will hold a lot more weight in steers than those eight horses tho I seldom drive so far with cattle.