I love reading articles that seem to count their chickens before they hatch. Take this one about how 2008 we will be known as the year that anthropogenic global warming was disproved.
Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming.
The three main events that are cited are the current dip in global temperature, the Manhattan Declaration, and the economic downturn / global recession.
First, the current leveling of global temperature is not a predictor of anything. If you look at the instrument temperature record there are plenty of subtle downturns over the course of the temperature anomaly (but the prominent slope of the graph is up). So to say that the current downturn is evidence to debunk climate change is disingenuous. There is just not enough evidence at this point to back that claim and there is no reason to think that the overall warming trend is not stopping.
Second, the Manhattan Declaration is not what I would call a turning point in terms of scientific dissent on climate change. I mean -- you probably need a few hundred more medical physicians, bachelors of chemistry, engineering majors, and masters of administration to beef up your list of climate experts to seriously have any credibility.
Third, the case about politicians not wanting to spend money to implement solutions because of the global economic mess is not evidence to say climate change is not happening anymore. It is just a sign that politics and the economy are not in a perceived condition to start addressing the problem in broader contexts.
There is not a smoking gun in all of this. Skeptics still think there is a simple key to turn and lock the door on this all together. One year is not going to prove anything. Heck, three years is not going to prove anything. There will probably need to be decades of data to prove it has stopped or reversed.
I am sure they will wait.
Sometimes you have to wonder when you mix the human mind and the Google Maps API.
So Seattle officials refuse to use salt on roads citing that the use of salt is too "effective"?
The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."
Ummm... "Bare roads"? That is point.
I can understand environmental impact. But this is ridiculous.
The article goes on to say that officials by "design" want to create a "hard packed" snow and icy surface. Huh?
Considering Seattle averages 12 inches of snow a year, I hardly believe the infrequent application of salt-based de-icers would have an everlasting effect on local water habitats. Or even an effect at all.
But if residents want to brave iced and snow-packed roads because their government refused to be effective at clearing them, that is their business.
I wonder if car insurance premiums will go up in the Seattle area? Hmm...
If Denver pulled this sort of policy, those officials would be run out of town. In fact, after the December snow storms we experienced two years ago, the metro cities changed their snow clearing policies after much uproar from the citizenry. The previous policy was only to focus on major arteries, but after minor arteries and side streets became impassable, it really didn't matter since you couldn't even get to the interstate.
But hey, at least they use salt.
What I find interesting with the global warming skeptic camp is that they can easily glom onto headlines when it is convenient to their belief system while ignoring other contradicting, more compelling data sets.
Take for instance the latest set of buzz regarding 2008 and its status on the warming hierarchy. RealClimate has a great post about this.
The great thing about complex data is that one can basically come up with any number of headlines describing it - all of which can be literally true - but that give very different impressions. Thus we are sure that you will soon read that 2008 was warmer than any year in the 20th Century (with the exception of 1998), that is was the coolest year this century (starting from 2001), and that 7 or 8 of the 9 warmest years have occurred since 2000. There will undoubtedly also be a number of claims made that aren't true; 2008 is not the coolest year this decade (that was 2000), global warming hasn't 'stopped', CO2 continues to be a greenhouse gas, and such variability is indeed predicted by climate models.
And George Monbiot has an excellent observation about the skeptic camp.
Until now, the "sceptics" have assured us that you can't believe the temperature readings at all; that the scientists at the Met Office, who produced the latest figures, are all liars; and that even if it were true that temperatures have risen, it doesn't mean anything. Now the temperature record - though only for 2008 - can suddenly be trusted, and the widest possible inferences be drawn from the latest figures, though not, of course, from the records of the preceding century. This is madness.
But what I truly find interesting about all of this is the inference of how the global warming / climate change movement is rooted in some sort of religious cult whackoism. That there is this giant conspiracy among climate scientists to push a global socialist agenda. That there is this belief system that twists science to push that agenda.
Well, the science speaks for itself. In my mind it is the skeptics that use religious type of arguments (much like misguided creationist cherry-picking type arguments against evolution) to prove it is all hype and not science. Using a talking point here to disprove the mountain of evidence there. That is not science. That is religion.
There is no smoking gun for skeptics. Either you address all of it or none of it.
The irony of linking climate change to religion is that we will have an answer to what is being predicted now in due time. We are not waiting for a rapture or a second coming here. We are not talking about predicting god in a computer model.
We will definitely have more observations and even better understanding in the near future.
Present day hypotheses will be answered.
But one thing is for sure. And that is science and data will be at the heart of policies in the next administration.
You see... saving the economy and creating bailout bills is hard work.
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
They were just too busy to prevent the automatic pay increase. But don't worry, I am sure this raise will only serve to boost approval numbers for Congress.
Maybe instead of demanding plans from American automakers that would show how they think they will return to profitability, Congress should figure out their own plan to reduce our nation's debt.
Then we can talk about raises.
Sometimes you just have to laugh...
"The Large Earth Collider will surely gain us priceless scientific insight by offering a brief glimpse of the universe at the moment of its destruction," Fermilab director Gordon Josephs said. "But because the Collider achieves this by hurdling Earth into another large celestial object, there are some who feel the risks associated with annihilating our world are too high. All I know for certain is that this rigorous debate will only end when we activate the VLEC, make the Earth collide with another planet, and obtain results through firsthand observation."
"That's just good science," Josephs added.
I wonder if the password combination to start the Collider is one, two, three, four, five? :P
There must be a balance (taxes, spending) to reduce this to a level that is reasonable (and it will probably take a lifetime).
Mess with the balance and we continue to climb into more deficit spending and more debt. If taxes are too high and the economy slides even more, there will be more looking for government assistance (e.g., more spending). If spending is too high, well, what's the point?
It has to be more than "pay as you go."
I hope there are not many people like this (via NPR Planet Money) who are reading the telegraph of political rhetoric and thinking that it is all in the tea leaves.
You see this person wants to know if she should stop paying her mortgage so she could benefit from those billions of dollars being handed out by the government.
Your government at work.
Mandi Hamlin was just trying to grab a flight from Lubbock, TX. She made it through the main security scanners and her various metal piercings hadn't set off any alarms. Then she was wanded by a female TSA employee and discovered that, without her knowledge, her breasts had joined Al Qaeda.
Read the article. It only gets better.
