First there was the inconvenient truth that the world has been cooling since 1998 or so; despite the very clearly stated predictions of the global warming folks that it would continue to warm.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that we've just enjoyed a couple of the most mild hurricane seasons since modern records have been kept despite the alarmist claims of the global warming fanatics that we would certainly face more and bigger hurricanes.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists on the global warming side of the debate kept a careful silence while politicians and dissipated British princes made unbelievable claims about doom being around the corner if we didn't all go back to living like good peasants while they continued living like pashas.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists on the global warming side of the debate refused to release the basic data on which they based their climate models despite the fact that the data amounted to little more than temperature records kept by government paid for thermometers.
Finally, in the past couple of weeks we've learned the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists at East Anglia University and their worldwide associates who have been the primary providers of data and predictions behind all the hype about global warming have been running a Stalinist campaign to destroy their opponents by making them unpersons in the scientific community.
Isn't it about time to step back from all the hurry to hamper the world's economy and thus condemn hundreds of millions of people to lives of poverty and even actual starvation with hairbrained schemes like Cap and Trade until some of those inconvenient truths are examined carefully by real scientists with access to all the data?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
Here's a report on the global warming "scientists" claiming their dog ate the primary data, so unfortunately no one can check and see how they twisted it to get the conclusions they wanted.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
And here's a 30 minute video that tells about how the so called global warming scientists corrupted other data they came in contact with. In one case they sent out one of their toadies to do a shoddy half baked tree ring study despite the existence of a far more professional and extensive Finnish study. In another case they turned a set of Finnish lake sediment data upside down to achieve the hockey stick graph they wanted.
The Finns are proud and protective of their tree ring and lake sediment studies, so a nice sense of outrage comes through in the video, making it funny in parts. If only NOVA here in the U.S. were still doing science programs on PBS instead of propaganda programs
http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
You cannot make this sort of stuff up
There is now a retail store in the Washington, DC train station that sells nothing but Obama merchandise. I wonder if they sell vegetables from the White House garden that Michele and the girls planted a couple of months ago?
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/05/17/cultwatch-union-station-new-york-times/
Meanwhile, in other news: We went to dinner on Friday evening with Mark and Linda L and happened to run into the first night of the Blobfest, which is a cult event in commemoration of the filming of The Blob in Phoenixville. The event has gotten so popular that they now set up bleachers so spectators can watch the running of the blobbers as they flee the theater in panic at the climactic scene where the giant blob emerges through the movie screen.
Very appropriately, there was a fellow across from the theater trying to get people to sign a petition in favor of President Obama's health care plan, which is a cleverly disguised medium sized blob intended to grow to monstrous proportions and devour everything. No one was running from the Obama cultist in panic; but they should have been.
Checking further into the My Obama Store I found that it's a venture of a Jamaican fellow who calls himself Yehmon (http://www.yehmon.com/id31.html). This fellow Yehmon is somewhat of a poet. I found one of his poems right on point (http://www.yehmon.com/id28.html). I may print it out to give to the Obama health care cultist the next time we go to Phoenixville. Or I may bring a CO2 fire extinguisher in hopes of stopping his monstrous project the way Steve McQueen stopped The Blob.
In still other news: Here's a coincidence that may or may not be related to what President Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Representative Barney Frank and their ilk are likely to do to the economy if they pass their plans into law.
On July 10th a lady in Virginia bought my copy of the Foxfire Book, and on July 11th a fellow in Oregon bought my copy of Foxfire 4; so two widely divergent people are suddenly interested in hog dressing, log cabin building, fiddle making, horse trading, berry buckets and other affairs of plain living.
Perhaps I should remove my remaining five Foxfire books from the "for sale" list on Amazon. Within 96 months when all of us peasants are living the simple life Al Gore and Prince Charles want us to live those books may become very valuable.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/just-96-months-to-save-world-says-charles-1738049.html
Meanwhile, in case you haven't noticed, Al Gore's so called global warming has provided unbelievably good weather in Collegeville so far this summer. Here it is July 13th and we still haven't needed to use our air conditioner. The very mild high seventies daytime and high fifties nightime temperatures don't quite qualify for calling this a year without a summer that the sunspot people told us was possible; but if this is the global warming Al and his fellow CO2 fanatic buddies have been harping about for the past ten years I want more of it.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/05/17/cultwatch-union-station-new-york-times/
Meanwhile, in other news: We went to dinner on Friday evening with Mark and Linda L and happened to run into the first night of the Blobfest, which is a cult event in commemoration of the filming of The Blob in Phoenixville. The event has gotten so popular that they now set up bleachers so spectators can watch the running of the blobbers as they flee the theater in panic at the climactic scene where the giant blob emerges through the movie screen.
Very appropriately, there was a fellow across from the theater trying to get people to sign a petition in favor of President Obama's health care plan, which is a cleverly disguised medium sized blob intended to grow to monstrous proportions and devour everything. No one was running from the Obama cultist in panic; but they should have been.
Checking further into the My Obama Store I found that it's a venture of a Jamaican fellow who calls himself Yehmon (http://www.yehmon.com/id31.html). This fellow Yehmon is somewhat of a poet. I found one of his poems right on point (http://www.yehmon.com/id28.html). I may print it out to give to the Obama health care cultist the next time we go to Phoenixville. Or I may bring a CO2 fire extinguisher in hopes of stopping his monstrous project the way Steve McQueen stopped The Blob.
In still other news: Here's a coincidence that may or may not be related to what President Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Representative Barney Frank and their ilk are likely to do to the economy if they pass their plans into law.
On July 10th a lady in Virginia bought my copy of the Foxfire Book, and on July 11th a fellow in Oregon bought my copy of Foxfire 4; so two widely divergent people are suddenly interested in hog dressing, log cabin building, fiddle making, horse trading, berry buckets and other affairs of plain living.
Perhaps I should remove my remaining five Foxfire books from the "for sale" list on Amazon. Within 96 months when all of us peasants are living the simple life Al Gore and Prince Charles want us to live those books may become very valuable.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/just-96-months-to-save-world-says-charles-1738049.html
Meanwhile, in case you haven't noticed, Al Gore's so called global warming has provided unbelievably good weather in Collegeville so far this summer. Here it is July 13th and we still haven't needed to use our air conditioner. The very mild high seventies daytime and high fifties nightime temperatures don't quite qualify for calling this a year without a summer that the sunspot people told us was possible; but if this is the global warming Al and his fellow CO2 fanatic buddies have been harping about for the past ten years I want more of it.
Monday, May 18, 2009
The wisdom of the ages
We ignore folk wisdom at our peril.
For instance: I've always remembered Pop as saying that you shouldn't plant your garden until May 20th because of the danger of frost. Sam, on the other hand, has always claimed that Pop's edict was that you can plant anytime after Mother's Day. We've gone around about this for years; and for years Sam has maintained that I've been planting too late.
Like the slow drip. . . drip. . . drip of Chinese Water Torture, uh, Chinese Intensive Interrogation, Sam's constant negative feedback and Al Gore's incessant harping about global warming have weakened my allegiance to my own remembrance. So here I am on May 18th with all my carefully nurtured tomato and swiss chard and zucchini and cucumber plants already set out in the garden; and Linda mentioned this morning that they're predicting possible frost tonight.
Now, in a proper world, a mob of us peasants would rise up and go on a rampage with our shovels and rakes and hoes. We would put a dunce cap on Sam and equip him with a set of flimsy wings with which to stir the air over the tender tomato plants. And we would then storm off to capture Al Gore, the false Shaman, so as to render him down for fat to fuel smudge pots. The renderings from Al would fuel a lot of smudge pots and thus save a lot of crops.
But. . but. . . unfortunately we can't do those things, just yet. . . because the folly of the whole global warming hysteria has not yet become clear to enough of the population.
So instead we are reduced to reliance on our own singular efforts. In my own case I'm okay; because it happens that yesterday Linda replaced the living room drapes. The lining of the old drapes is a very thin material which will make perfect plant caps. You can bet that I'll be cursing later today as I go about tenting all the plants.
Meanwhile: in other news, Alec Baldwin has the Filipino segment of the great global multicultural community a tad upset. Alec was joking the other day about importing a Filipino mail order bride for breeding purposes; and it seems that Ramon Revilla, a senator in the Phillippines, was not amused. He threatened to open a big can of whup-ass on Alec.
For myself, I wasn't terribly offended by Alec's remarks about mail order brides because I'm not Filipino. But I was wondering how it is that Alec didn't get some negative feedback from the Gaia community for wanting more children, they being bad for the environment and all. And that got me to wondering how it is that Baldwin is still here in the United States. As I recall Alec was one of the lefty idiots who threatened to leave the country in the event George W. Bush was re-elected back in 2004. Why is Alec Baldwin still here in the U.S. spouting his racial hatred? Shouldn't he be, like overseas somewhere, like maybe in The Phillippines?
And another thing. How is it that President Barack Obama's continuance of George W. Bush's evil war in Iraq has not caused lefties like Alec Baldwin to go ballistic? Back before the recent election I distinctly recall being reminded that the war in Iraq was evil and that it was moreover causing terrible problems because it was costing $8 Billion per month.
Well, here we are, well into President Barack Obama's new Hope and Change regime, and Barry has found time to spend like many trillions of dollars on Hopey Changey stuff; but somehow he hasn't found time to end the war in Iraq, which was just funded by Obama's Democratic Party controlled congress for another eight months at the rate of, uh, $8 Billion per month. Surely the left still cares about that $8 Billion per month.
And surely President Obama wasn't lying back during the campaign when he constantly promised to end the war in Iraq and do a whole bunch of other Hopey Changey stuff like close the evil and illegal prison down in Guantanamo Bay where President Bush put all those misunderstood sons of liberty who our military captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thinking about President Obama has me remembering some old wisdom of Aunt Mary R's. During virtually any discussion of politicians she would remind you that "they're all whoremasters." She couldn't get away with saying that today of course because calling Barack Obama a whoremaster, or criticizing him in any way, would quickly be denounced as racism by the baying leftist pack, he being half Kenyan and all.
If President Obama was half Filipino, apparently, anybody could go on national TV like Alec Baldwin and joke about buying one of his daughters with a credit card on EBay and having her shipped to his home for breeding, and none of the politically correct crowd of race hustlers would turn a hair.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D988KQ001&show_article=1
Update: In other news, our pal Alec Baldwin has suddenly discovered that he hates Detroit cars and wants to see U.S. auto workers out of work after shilling for Chevy Tahoes for years. And he goes on and on about global warming despite the fact that he wants to wants to buy and import a Filipino to make another carbon spewing offspring. Do the United Auto Workers Union and the National Organization for Women know about this guy?
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmU4YzVlYWExNzMxOTU2NDlhMDA2MjgyM2FjMTg5ZGM=
Hat Tip to Greg Pollowitz, of National Review's blog Planet Gore, who evidently has a strong enough stomach to keep a closer eye on Alec Baldwin than I do.
For instance: I've always remembered Pop as saying that you shouldn't plant your garden until May 20th because of the danger of frost. Sam, on the other hand, has always claimed that Pop's edict was that you can plant anytime after Mother's Day. We've gone around about this for years; and for years Sam has maintained that I've been planting too late.
Like the slow drip. . . drip. . . drip of Chinese Water Torture, uh, Chinese Intensive Interrogation, Sam's constant negative feedback and Al Gore's incessant harping about global warming have weakened my allegiance to my own remembrance. So here I am on May 18th with all my carefully nurtured tomato and swiss chard and zucchini and cucumber plants already set out in the garden; and Linda mentioned this morning that they're predicting possible frost tonight.
Now, in a proper world, a mob of us peasants would rise up and go on a rampage with our shovels and rakes and hoes. We would put a dunce cap on Sam and equip him with a set of flimsy wings with which to stir the air over the tender tomato plants. And we would then storm off to capture Al Gore, the false Shaman, so as to render him down for fat to fuel smudge pots. The renderings from Al would fuel a lot of smudge pots and thus save a lot of crops.
But. . but. . . unfortunately we can't do those things, just yet. . . because the folly of the whole global warming hysteria has not yet become clear to enough of the population.
So instead we are reduced to reliance on our own singular efforts. In my own case I'm okay; because it happens that yesterday Linda replaced the living room drapes. The lining of the old drapes is a very thin material which will make perfect plant caps. You can bet that I'll be cursing later today as I go about tenting all the plants.
Meanwhile: in other news, Alec Baldwin has the Filipino segment of the great global multicultural community a tad upset. Alec was joking the other day about importing a Filipino mail order bride for breeding purposes; and it seems that Ramon Revilla, a senator in the Phillippines, was not amused. He threatened to open a big can of whup-ass on Alec.
For myself, I wasn't terribly offended by Alec's remarks about mail order brides because I'm not Filipino. But I was wondering how it is that Alec didn't get some negative feedback from the Gaia community for wanting more children, they being bad for the environment and all. And that got me to wondering how it is that Baldwin is still here in the United States. As I recall Alec was one of the lefty idiots who threatened to leave the country in the event George W. Bush was re-elected back in 2004. Why is Alec Baldwin still here in the U.S. spouting his racial hatred? Shouldn't he be, like overseas somewhere, like maybe in The Phillippines?
And another thing. How is it that President Barack Obama's continuance of George W. Bush's evil war in Iraq has not caused lefties like Alec Baldwin to go ballistic? Back before the recent election I distinctly recall being reminded that the war in Iraq was evil and that it was moreover causing terrible problems because it was costing $8 Billion per month.
Well, here we are, well into President Barack Obama's new Hope and Change regime, and Barry has found time to spend like many trillions of dollars on Hopey Changey stuff; but somehow he hasn't found time to end the war in Iraq, which was just funded by Obama's Democratic Party controlled congress for another eight months at the rate of, uh, $8 Billion per month. Surely the left still cares about that $8 Billion per month.
And surely President Obama wasn't lying back during the campaign when he constantly promised to end the war in Iraq and do a whole bunch of other Hopey Changey stuff like close the evil and illegal prison down in Guantanamo Bay where President Bush put all those misunderstood sons of liberty who our military captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thinking about President Obama has me remembering some old wisdom of Aunt Mary R's. During virtually any discussion of politicians she would remind you that "they're all whoremasters." She couldn't get away with saying that today of course because calling Barack Obama a whoremaster, or criticizing him in any way, would quickly be denounced as racism by the baying leftist pack, he being half Kenyan and all.
If President Obama was half Filipino, apparently, anybody could go on national TV like Alec Baldwin and joke about buying one of his daughters with a credit card on EBay and having her shipped to his home for breeding, and none of the politically correct crowd of race hustlers would turn a hair.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D988KQ001&show_article=1
Update: In other news, our pal Alec Baldwin has suddenly discovered that he hates Detroit cars and wants to see U.S. auto workers out of work after shilling for Chevy Tahoes for years. And he goes on and on about global warming despite the fact that he wants to wants to buy and import a Filipino to make another carbon spewing offspring. Do the United Auto Workers Union and the National Organization for Women know about this guy?
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmU4YzVlYWExNzMxOTU2NDlhMDA2MjgyM2FjMTg5ZGM=
Hat Tip to Greg Pollowitz, of National Review's blog Planet Gore, who evidently has a strong enough stomach to keep a closer eye on Alec Baldwin than I do.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Your tax dollars being put to good use
General Motors and Segway have just unveiled your urban transportation future. They plan to fully engineer it between now and 2012 using your tax dollars while General Motors continues to lose billions per year because its cars aren't selling.
This thing is such a dangerous, bad and unnecessary design along so many dimensions that I can't find words to express how stupid it is.
I'm thinking that Al Gore's kid must have designed it on his Etch a Sketch.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123906731177395605.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments
This thing is such a dangerous, bad and unnecessary design along so many dimensions that I can't find words to express how stupid it is.
I'm thinking that Al Gore's kid must have designed it on his Etch a Sketch.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123906731177395605.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments
Monday, April 6, 2009
I thought the pastor did it with the hand bell in the choirloft
I figured the clues pointed to the pastor with the hand bell in the choir loft; but I got it just as wrong as those folks who guessed that the First Lady did it with the rake in the garden. The notion that the President did it with the scimitar in the Oval Office always struck me as ridiculous.
It looks like the visitor shot him with the gun at home.
http://www.gbmnews.com/articles/2383/1/Murder-Rocks-Chicago-Church-Community/Page1.html
Meanwhile: new clues suggest that Al Gore was also just a bit wrong when he said we would be sunbathing in January up here in Collegeville by 2020.
When you play Clue you have to be careful to let enough clues accumulate to allow for a reasonable guess. And you have to remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Oh, and by the way, the sun is still very, very quiet. Don't donate all your winter clothes to charity just yet.
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/04/03/global-warming-a-classic-case-of-alarmism/
It looks like the visitor shot him with the gun at home.
http://www.gbmnews.com/articles/2383/1/Murder-Rocks-Chicago-Church-Community/Page1.html
Meanwhile: new clues suggest that Al Gore was also just a bit wrong when he said we would be sunbathing in January up here in Collegeville by 2020.
When you play Clue you have to be careful to let enough clues accumulate to allow for a reasonable guess. And you have to remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Oh, and by the way, the sun is still very, very quiet. Don't donate all your winter clothes to charity just yet.
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/04/03/global-warming-a-classic-case-of-alarmism/
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Walking in the rain
Linda and I returned from our nightly walk a little while ago. I wrote "nightly walk" but truthfully we very rarely walk in the rain as we did this evening. And we almost never walk when there's too much danger of icy sidewalks and streets. But tonight we broke all the usual rules.
On the way back we ran into one of our neighbors and learned that we're not quite so virtuous as we thought we were. We've been keeping the thermostat set at 66 degrees, although sometimes it creeps up to 68 or even 70. It turns out this neighbor keeps their house at 61 degrees, and she said her sister keeps her house at 55 degrees. That's impressive. On a twenty degree night like tonight our woodstove comes very close to keeping the house in the 60s all by itself when I feed it every few hours. And that's without running it seriously hot the way I used to do occasionally back in the day on truly bitter cold nights.
55 degrees! That's serious hair shirt style self denial. You can let Al Gore know from me that the polar bears will all be treading water and the rising ocean will be lapping at the twentieth floors of the buildings down in Philly before we turn the thermostat down to 55 degrees.
We're all done with the poplar from the big tree near the house, which is just as well. Poplar is okay for moderate weather; but it burns up too fast if I run the stove the way I need to for freezing nights. Way back when before we knew better Pop had me cut up and split a big willow that had fallen over behind the springhouse. Talk about a waste of effort. That willow was about as light as balsa wood once it was dry. Pop burned it up; but it almost wasn't worth the effort of putting it into the woodstove. Of course, him and Mom really used their woodstove only to make it toasty warm in the living room since the air couldn't really circulate out of that room at any great rate.
Recently we've been burning the ash from the big limb that fell down and made a six foot high bridge across the driveway a couple of years ago. After that we'll get into the walnut from the tree Alex cut down to get a big enough piece of heartwood to carve his last year's Christmas gift for Christina. And then I have a bunch of apple, maple, cherry and walnut from the smaller trees I thinned out of the woods last year over on the other side of the property.
All in all I still have about two cords of good well dried hardwood stacked out there near the house. And I have another half cord of cured small stuff over on the other side of the property that I'll be bringing over a bit at a time with the tractor on weekends when the ground is frozen.
I already have a couple of cords worth of maple and cherry rounds to split for next winter from the leaning trees that were near the driveway. And I have my eye on the oak grove back of the house. There are a couple of smaller trees in that grove that should be thinned out.
On the way back we ran into one of our neighbors and learned that we're not quite so virtuous as we thought we were. We've been keeping the thermostat set at 66 degrees, although sometimes it creeps up to 68 or even 70. It turns out this neighbor keeps their house at 61 degrees, and she said her sister keeps her house at 55 degrees. That's impressive. On a twenty degree night like tonight our woodstove comes very close to keeping the house in the 60s all by itself when I feed it every few hours. And that's without running it seriously hot the way I used to do occasionally back in the day on truly bitter cold nights.
55 degrees! That's serious hair shirt style self denial. You can let Al Gore know from me that the polar bears will all be treading water and the rising ocean will be lapping at the twentieth floors of the buildings down in Philly before we turn the thermostat down to 55 degrees.
We're all done with the poplar from the big tree near the house, which is just as well. Poplar is okay for moderate weather; but it burns up too fast if I run the stove the way I need to for freezing nights. Way back when before we knew better Pop had me cut up and split a big willow that had fallen over behind the springhouse. Talk about a waste of effort. That willow was about as light as balsa wood once it was dry. Pop burned it up; but it almost wasn't worth the effort of putting it into the woodstove. Of course, him and Mom really used their woodstove only to make it toasty warm in the living room since the air couldn't really circulate out of that room at any great rate.
Recently we've been burning the ash from the big limb that fell down and made a six foot high bridge across the driveway a couple of years ago. After that we'll get into the walnut from the tree Alex cut down to get a big enough piece of heartwood to carve his last year's Christmas gift for Christina. And then I have a bunch of apple, maple, cherry and walnut from the smaller trees I thinned out of the woods last year over on the other side of the property.
All in all I still have about two cords of good well dried hardwood stacked out there near the house. And I have another half cord of cured small stuff over on the other side of the property that I'll be bringing over a bit at a time with the tractor on weekends when the ground is frozen.
I already have a couple of cords worth of maple and cherry rounds to split for next winter from the leaning trees that were near the driveway. And I have my eye on the oak grove back of the house. There are a couple of smaller trees in that grove that should be thinned out.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Lions and Tigers and Bare-Faced Liars
Lions and tigers and bears were what Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Cowardly Lion feared in The Wizard of Oz. But today we have much more to fear from Bare-Faced Liars like those in the media who persist in trying to make massacres carried out by Muslims be about everything except what they're really about.
But before I get started on that I wanted to mention that it's as cold as. . . Well, as Pop used to say, it's cold as a brass bra on a witch's. . . Sorry, I forgot for a moment that this is a family blog. Sis reminded me just the other day after I posted that thing about how pleased Aunt Mary would be to see the acceptance of the new word in the language.
Bobbitise was used as a verb by a writer for the Times of India. You'll have to look it up on your own because I don't have time to explain right now since I'm determined not to let this turn into one of these interminable posts that wanders all over the place.
I have to get back to the fact that it's wery, wery cold out there right now, as Bugs Bunny would say. I just walked back from leaving my car over at the Ford Dealer. I wanted to get it serviced before Ford goes bankrupt or they shut all the dealers down. Plus, I noticed on Friday that my inspection sticker was three months out of date.
Fortunately for me the local police are shockingly inefficient after almost eight years of poor leadership by the Bush administration, which is being held responsible for every other goofy thing that goes wrong in the country so why not this. I have a feeling that important laws like getting our cars inspected every year in the proper month and not mixing recyclables in the regular trash will be a lot better enforced after Barry drafts a million or so secret police stooges, I mean community service volunteers, to poke their noses up our. . . er. . . to keep a very close and helpful eye on all of us. And I just can't wait until he provides me with a community organizer to help keep me better organized and more attentive to the environment and stuff.
So anyway, being a law abiding citizen, I dropped my car off at the dealer this morning as soon as I could after realizing that I would eventually get caught; but then I had to walk home, a shocking thing, a very unnatural thing with gasoline down to $1.79 a gallon at the Wawa.
Is this a great country or what! The rest of the world is paying like $8.00 a gallon for gas and we're well on our way down to paying a buck. You almost hate turning the car off overnight and then having to run out there to start it so it can warm up while you're having your second cup of coffee in the morning. I really, really need one of those remote control starters. I'll bet Al Gore never has to waddle his fat. . . er. . . never has to waddle outside to start a frozen car so it can warm up in the morning.
Speaking of which, or rather not speaking of which, I just read a great paragraph in Florence King's latest column in National Review when I slipped outside for a cigarette The way Barry's going to be doing on the White House balcony once he gets inaugurated. What? The media never told you he's a weak willed tobacco addict. Never mind.
Anyway, I'm too lazy to look up the link to Florence King's column, so you'll have to google it if you want to read the whole thing. Her column is called "the bent pin," and this edition's entry is titled 'Iceberg, Right Ahead'.
She wrote, "Did you know it's entirely possible to drink a whole bottle of vodka a day with no hangover or other ill effects if you use milk as a mixer? I did it the last week of the campaign. I don't know what size the bottles were because I don't understand these new foreign measurements, but they were whole bottles and I polished them off. My doctor was alarmed. "Don't worry," I said, "it was skim milk,""
I had a fraternity brother back in college who swore by scotch and milk; but he never could get me to try it. Not that I was terribly scrupulous about the scotch, although I considered it an expensive affectation. That was during the period when I was perhaps not paying as much attention to my studies as I should have been. I had a free ride scholarship from the Navy that also included $100 per month in spending money, and I was making some extra money on the side, so money was the least of my problems; but something about paying for scotch just didn't fit my thinking.
That same buddy and I later quit drinking cold turkey for quite a while after watching the movie The Lost Weekend. The movie was very powerful; but our period of temperance may have had something to do with the fact that we shared a quart of on-sale cognac and a bottle of wine during the movie on the theory that cognac is made from wine so it should be compatible with wine. Oh, and we watched the movie after returning from The Knotty Pine after the bartender rudely refused to continue to serve us.
I think the wine was Barcelona Sweet Red; but it may have been Thunderbird, which had a great slogan. The Senior VP of Sales at my company recently greeted me with "What's the word, Sully?" as I approached him in a corridor. I immediately gave him back, "What's the word? Thunderbird. What's the price? Thirty twice." It turned out he had never heard the slogan, so I had to explain it to him later. He's a bit younger than me so I'm not sure he believed me 100% that T-Bird was sixty cents a quart at the time.
The wine turned out not to be compatible with cognac on top of beer. And it did not endear me to my roommate, Dave B, who returned to the room from the weekend at home to find me curled up on his bed in a nest made of the formerly clean clothes that had been neatly stacked there. He took a can of instant drink powder and turned me into a crusted mummy while I slept. Later, when I woke he was not at all sympathetic to my explanation that I had moved to his bed only because mine became unsuitable for sleeping in during the night.
All was not lost though, for the pattern of events did result in a never since repeated physiological experience. When I finally arose to stumble down the hall to the shower room I found that all I could see was a tiny image in the center of my field of view. The effect was like looking down a long pipe. Very strange and edifying in a certain sort of way.
Ever since then I've been a veritable paragon of moderation in all things, more or less. All of us learn in life. Well, most of us learn, mostly from experience, those of us who survive. There is, of course the fact that ultimately none of us survive. But best not go there.
I was talking about my lack of temperance in my younger days, and perhaps to this day in some things. I take solace in Saint Augustine, who sort of said, 'Lord give me temperance and self control; but not yet.' Good old Saint Augie. He was definitely a righteous dude who would have fit right in at our fraternity, at least before he got into the robes and started talking and writing all kinds of heavy downer stuff.
I've always wondered if he's an ancestor; but I've done so privately since senior year of high school. One of the nuns at Bishop Kenrick became quite cross with me when I speculated a bit along that line in a book report that strayed a somewhat from the theme of City of God. She very unjustly gave me a C for that paper even though that was an A paper if I've ever written one, very inventive. But she was a wise old bird though, that nun. She was just teaching me a valuable lesson with that C grade. Never, never, never speak truth to power. The Cambodians, I think it's the Cambodians, have a somewhat similar wisdom, in their folk saying, 'When elephants dance the mice should stay clear.'
But I was writing about Florence King. Ah, Florence, it's a great pity she's about a hundred or a hundred and ten years old and can't live forever. What a piece of work. One of these days I really need to get her first book, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. I've read all of her other books and I've been looking forward to her columns for years.
But I appear to have digressed and gotten myself all twisted around like a coyote in a hall of mirrors with a roadrunner. I was at the Ford Dealer. And I was dressed in about five layers for the walk; but still, I about froze my. . . Sorry again. . . Uh, various and sundry parts of me were very chilled by the time I walked the couple of miles home.
What the heck is going on anyway. We were promised global warming to eliminate these cold winters. Yet this November and December are easily the coldest we've had for a long while. The pond has had a skin of ice on it for a couple of weeks which is unprecedented in the thirty years since we moved here.
Anyway, I plan to get back to that in another post; so back to the running amok Muslims and their perfidious apologists in the media.
Here are the plain facts. . .
Eh, I'm too lazy to lay out the facts and the Ford Dealer just called to say my car is ready; so I'll just give you a link to a column by Mark Steyn, who's a lot more disciplined and organized than me, and who makes a lot of sense on this subject.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzA2Y2E2MDU2YjQzOTQwZjUzNjcwZDA0OTE3YmFkYzg=
But before I get started on that I wanted to mention that it's as cold as. . . Well, as Pop used to say, it's cold as a brass bra on a witch's. . . Sorry, I forgot for a moment that this is a family blog. Sis reminded me just the other day after I posted that thing about how pleased Aunt Mary would be to see the acceptance of the new word in the language.
Bobbitise was used as a verb by a writer for the Times of India. You'll have to look it up on your own because I don't have time to explain right now since I'm determined not to let this turn into one of these interminable posts that wanders all over the place.
I have to get back to the fact that it's wery, wery cold out there right now, as Bugs Bunny would say. I just walked back from leaving my car over at the Ford Dealer. I wanted to get it serviced before Ford goes bankrupt or they shut all the dealers down. Plus, I noticed on Friday that my inspection sticker was three months out of date.
Fortunately for me the local police are shockingly inefficient after almost eight years of poor leadership by the Bush administration, which is being held responsible for every other goofy thing that goes wrong in the country so why not this. I have a feeling that important laws like getting our cars inspected every year in the proper month and not mixing recyclables in the regular trash will be a lot better enforced after Barry drafts a million or so secret police stooges, I mean community service volunteers, to poke their noses up our. . . er. . . to keep a very close and helpful eye on all of us. And I just can't wait until he provides me with a community organizer to help keep me better organized and more attentive to the environment and stuff.
So anyway, being a law abiding citizen, I dropped my car off at the dealer this morning as soon as I could after realizing that I would eventually get caught; but then I had to walk home, a shocking thing, a very unnatural thing with gasoline down to $1.79 a gallon at the Wawa.
Is this a great country or what! The rest of the world is paying like $8.00 a gallon for gas and we're well on our way down to paying a buck. You almost hate turning the car off overnight and then having to run out there to start it so it can warm up while you're having your second cup of coffee in the morning. I really, really need one of those remote control starters. I'll bet Al Gore never has to waddle his fat. . . er. . . never has to waddle outside to start a frozen car so it can warm up in the morning.
Speaking of which, or rather not speaking of which, I just read a great paragraph in Florence King's latest column in National Review when I slipped outside for a cigarette The way Barry's going to be doing on the White House balcony once he gets inaugurated. What? The media never told you he's a weak willed tobacco addict. Never mind.
Anyway, I'm too lazy to look up the link to Florence King's column, so you'll have to google it if you want to read the whole thing. Her column is called "the bent pin," and this edition's entry is titled 'Iceberg, Right Ahead'.
She wrote, "Did you know it's entirely possible to drink a whole bottle of vodka a day with no hangover or other ill effects if you use milk as a mixer? I did it the last week of the campaign. I don't know what size the bottles were because I don't understand these new foreign measurements, but they were whole bottles and I polished them off. My doctor was alarmed. "Don't worry," I said, "it was skim milk,""
I had a fraternity brother back in college who swore by scotch and milk; but he never could get me to try it. Not that I was terribly scrupulous about the scotch, although I considered it an expensive affectation. That was during the period when I was perhaps not paying as much attention to my studies as I should have been. I had a free ride scholarship from the Navy that also included $100 per month in spending money, and I was making some extra money on the side, so money was the least of my problems; but something about paying for scotch just didn't fit my thinking.
That same buddy and I later quit drinking cold turkey for quite a while after watching the movie The Lost Weekend. The movie was very powerful; but our period of temperance may have had something to do with the fact that we shared a quart of on-sale cognac and a bottle of wine during the movie on the theory that cognac is made from wine so it should be compatible with wine. Oh, and we watched the movie after returning from The Knotty Pine after the bartender rudely refused to continue to serve us.
I think the wine was Barcelona Sweet Red; but it may have been Thunderbird, which had a great slogan. The Senior VP of Sales at my company recently greeted me with "What's the word, Sully?" as I approached him in a corridor. I immediately gave him back, "What's the word? Thunderbird. What's the price? Thirty twice." It turned out he had never heard the slogan, so I had to explain it to him later. He's a bit younger than me so I'm not sure he believed me 100% that T-Bird was sixty cents a quart at the time.
The wine turned out not to be compatible with cognac on top of beer. And it did not endear me to my roommate, Dave B, who returned to the room from the weekend at home to find me curled up on his bed in a nest made of the formerly clean clothes that had been neatly stacked there. He took a can of instant drink powder and turned me into a crusted mummy while I slept. Later, when I woke he was not at all sympathetic to my explanation that I had moved to his bed only because mine became unsuitable for sleeping in during the night.
All was not lost though, for the pattern of events did result in a never since repeated physiological experience. When I finally arose to stumble down the hall to the shower room I found that all I could see was a tiny image in the center of my field of view. The effect was like looking down a long pipe. Very strange and edifying in a certain sort of way.
Ever since then I've been a veritable paragon of moderation in all things, more or less. All of us learn in life. Well, most of us learn, mostly from experience, those of us who survive. There is, of course the fact that ultimately none of us survive. But best not go there.
I was talking about my lack of temperance in my younger days, and perhaps to this day in some things. I take solace in Saint Augustine, who sort of said, 'Lord give me temperance and self control; but not yet.' Good old Saint Augie. He was definitely a righteous dude who would have fit right in at our fraternity, at least before he got into the robes and started talking and writing all kinds of heavy downer stuff.
I've always wondered if he's an ancestor; but I've done so privately since senior year of high school. One of the nuns at Bishop Kenrick became quite cross with me when I speculated a bit along that line in a book report that strayed a somewhat from the theme of City of God. She very unjustly gave me a C for that paper even though that was an A paper if I've ever written one, very inventive. But she was a wise old bird though, that nun. She was just teaching me a valuable lesson with that C grade. Never, never, never speak truth to power. The Cambodians, I think it's the Cambodians, have a somewhat similar wisdom, in their folk saying, 'When elephants dance the mice should stay clear.'
But I was writing about Florence King. Ah, Florence, it's a great pity she's about a hundred or a hundred and ten years old and can't live forever. What a piece of work. One of these days I really need to get her first book, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. I've read all of her other books and I've been looking forward to her columns for years.
But I appear to have digressed and gotten myself all twisted around like a coyote in a hall of mirrors with a roadrunner. I was at the Ford Dealer. And I was dressed in about five layers for the walk; but still, I about froze my. . . Sorry again. . . Uh, various and sundry parts of me were very chilled by the time I walked the couple of miles home.
What the heck is going on anyway. We were promised global warming to eliminate these cold winters. Yet this November and December are easily the coldest we've had for a long while. The pond has had a skin of ice on it for a couple of weeks which is unprecedented in the thirty years since we moved here.
Anyway, I plan to get back to that in another post; so back to the running amok Muslims and their perfidious apologists in the media.
Here are the plain facts. . .
Eh, I'm too lazy to lay out the facts and the Ford Dealer just called to say my car is ready; so I'll just give you a link to a column by Mark Steyn, who's a lot more disciplined and organized than me, and who makes a lot of sense on this subject.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzA2Y2E2MDU2YjQzOTQwZjUzNjcwZDA0OTE3YmFkYzg=
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
It's snowing cats and dogs here
It's snowing cats and dogs here, and it's even sticking on the side streets, the earliest heavy snowfall I remember; which puts me in mind of Nobel Prize wiener Al Gore (PBUH).
I wonder if Al is out on his yacht, or flying somewhere in his jet, or being driven somewhere in his Cadillac Escalade, or whether he is giving a song and dance show about global warming or climate change or whatever he's calling to nowadays.
I'm going to be writing a longer, kinder, post about Fat Albert very soon, for I have learned that he has joined me in the legion of the threatened, at least in one respect; so I hope he won't mind my taking his name in vain today.
Excuse any errors, no time to spell check or proofread this - must run.
I wonder if Al is out on his yacht, or flying somewhere in his jet, or being driven somewhere in his Cadillac Escalade, or whether he is giving a song and dance show about global warming or climate change or whatever he's calling to nowadays.
I'm going to be writing a longer, kinder, post about Fat Albert very soon, for I have learned that he has joined me in the legion of the threatened, at least in one respect; so I hope he won't mind my taking his name in vain today.
Excuse any errors, no time to spell check or proofread this - must run.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Electrorheology Leads to Efficient Combustion
I find it amazing that I just read this at sciencedaily.com and haven't heard of it before. If this is workable on standard production cars and trucks at reasonable cost and with reasonable reliability it's amazing news. Yet it hasn't leaked to the popular press despite the fact that it was sent to the American Chemical Society on June 12th. The Temple professor who did the research must be very closemouthed indeed given the significant implications. For one thing it has the potential to reduce U.S. oil usage by something like ten percent and reduce oil imports by something like twenty percent. That's a greater impact than all the windmills and solar energy plants Al Gore envisions being built in the next ten years in his wildest dreams. For another thing the patent on it is probably worth more than Temple University spends on it's entire science program in a decade.
I'll be interested to see what Alex thinks of the original paper on which the science daily article is based. Given what this paper claims this may be totally bogus, or else it may be hugely expensive or impossible to manufacture on a large scale. It's claims are not quite like claims to be able to run a car on water, but they are almost as remarkable given the maturity of internal combustion engine technology and the huge efforts automotive engineers put into improving fuel efficiency by one or two percent.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080925111836.htm
I'll be interested to see what Alex thinks of the original paper on which the science daily article is based. Given what this paper claims this may be totally bogus, or else it may be hugely expensive or impossible to manufacture on a large scale. It's claims are not quite like claims to be able to run a car on water, but they are almost as remarkable given the maturity of internal combustion engine technology and the huge efforts automotive engineers put into improving fuel efficiency by one or two percent.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080925111836.htm
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Now I'm more of a skeptic again about global warming
This graph at the website below shows what the big kahuna of the global warming movement predicted in 1988 versus what has actually happened since 1988.
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/30/hansenlineartrend.jpg
The predictions that Dr. James Hansen published in 1988 are the orange and yellow lines in the graph. Dr. Hansen is the favorite climate scientist that all the global warming folks like Al Gore talk about when they want to say they have scientific proof for their beliefs.
The blue jagged line with dots are the actual temperatures measured since 1900. It's apparent that the temperatures since 1988 have not followed the predictions made by Dr. Hansen.
Since he was wrong then it seems pretty foolish to spend big money based on what he says now. And don't kid yourself, the global warming folks are talking about things that are going to cost us and our kids really big money - trillions and trillions of dollars. They're wanting to hide the money in complicated regulations, but it's still our money that will be spent.
It may very well be a good idea to do research on and develop ways to generate more electricity from nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, etc. But from what I've seen the evidence thus far of global warming is not a good argument for not doing anything panicky and foolish.
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/30/hansenlineartrend.jpg
The predictions that Dr. James Hansen published in 1988 are the orange and yellow lines in the graph. Dr. Hansen is the favorite climate scientist that all the global warming folks like Al Gore talk about when they want to say they have scientific proof for their beliefs.
The blue jagged line with dots are the actual temperatures measured since 1900. It's apparent that the temperatures since 1988 have not followed the predictions made by Dr. Hansen.
Since he was wrong then it seems pretty foolish to spend big money based on what he says now. And don't kid yourself, the global warming folks are talking about things that are going to cost us and our kids really big money - trillions and trillions of dollars. They're wanting to hide the money in complicated regulations, but it's still our money that will be spent.
It may very well be a good idea to do research on and develop ways to generate more electricity from nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, etc. But from what I've seen the evidence thus far of global warming is not a good argument for not doing anything panicky and foolish.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Having at it with folks at badastronomy.com
Sometimes my judgement deserts me and I comment on other sites. Usually the results are not pretty but this discussion with what seem to be pretty knowledgeable people on badastronomy.com was very productive. I've been becoming less of a skeptic about global warming for some time. The net of this discussion is that I think I've now moved all the way over subject to a review of the material on the "start here" page on realclimate.org.
We need to do something serious about CO2 in the short to mid-term. Now the question becomes what to do and how fast.
The following discussion started with my reaction to a political post on badastronomy.com which irritated me.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 7:53 am
I thought science was supposed to be predictive. Hanson put out predictions of future temperatures. Unless I’m reading it wrong the temperatures have not followed his predictions for several years. I understand that the system is very complex and hence prediction is difficult, but why should I be willing to change my already relatively green lifestyle based on a predictive system that has failed?
And this notion of so called environmentalists living like pigs while buying indulgences in the form of carbon credits does not build confidence.
And T.Boone Pickens is a businessman ready to jump onto the environmental bandwagon for subsidies and special favors, just like those who jumped on environmentalism for ethanol subsidies, although I can’t help but like the man for answering honestly when asked why he doesn’t have windmills on his ranch. ‘They’re ugly,’ is basicly what he said.
And Phil Plait, I like your site for the astronomy but I think you’re acting more than a little like the Allah in the gristle folks on this topic.
MartinM Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Unless I’m reading it wrong the temperatures have not followed his predictions for several years.
‘Several years’ is too short to establish meaningful trends. The observed long-term trends fit nicely with model predictions, however.
Mark Schaffer Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Sully,I think you meant to type Dr. James Hansen rather than Hanson. What have you read about his predictions and where? Is the notion of “so called environmentalists living like pigs” true? How do you know this?
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
“Several years’ is too short to establish meaningful trends. The observed long-term trends fit nicely with model predictions, however.”
Was there a model before the “observed long term trends” that predicted them?
It’s been said that predictions, especially about the future, are hard. Back in a younger day I spent some time going back in the history of the stock market and discovering “models” that “predicted” some aspect of it. Since I’m not rich I have to assume that making models about complex systems to predict past events does not necessarily mean one can make a model that predicts future events.
As an aside I’ll mention that I’m not a total doubter just from the simple fact that we must at some point get big enough in our activities to have effect on the overall environment. I thought and said in the 1970’s that we should start a small tax on imported oil and increase that tax gradually and predictably every year until no more oil was imported. I think we should do the same thing now on all fossil fuels, but doing that cleanly and openly and gradually is a lot different from what I think we’re going to get out of the sausage factory down in Washington if we let this train run through that place at high speed.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Mark - thanks for the correction. I read the the Hansen stuff on a link from Climate Debate daily on the environmentalist side of the list. What struck me was that the answer to the question about why his predictions had not panned out was defensive and scornful of the doubters rather than honest and illuminating. When I commented (respectfully I thought) to that effect, my comment was censored as judgemental even though I was commenting on the judgementalism of the article and some of the comments.
As to living like pigs anyone who owns a home larger than about 1000 square feet per person in his family, or who uses, even one time, a private jet on a route served by a regular flight is a pig in my personal measuring system, and he or she is a hypocritical pig if he or she purports to be an “environmentalist.” Al Gore is the archetype. What really surprises me is that he’s so dumb as to provide his enemies with the easy ammunition his life style provides. Sort of like a fat doctor smoking and drinking while he tries to convince a patient to live healthy.
Mark Schaffer Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Sully,
Why would you consider Climate Debate authoritative on Hansen? Please post the link to the actual discussion you are referencing.What if the house is doubling as office with employees? Does this not alter your perception or are you immune to complexity on this? Since you are obviously referring to Al Gore have you read how he is offsetting his carbon energy use?Your analogy is really poor, or good depending on point of view. Since the health effects of being overweight, smoking, and, I assume you meant excessive, drinking are blindingly obvious, than it is irrelevant that the doctor is not practicing what he tells the patient. This is, as if I should have to point this out, because the health benefits still exist for losing weight, quiting smoking, and moderating or stopping all alcohol consumption. So your argument fails to convince as the evidence is that changing our carbon consumption habits will bring many benefits whether public speakers are perfect or not. QED.
Chip Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Sully -Ha! Get real. You probably also believe Al Gore said he invented the internet and that the Nobel Prize he earned is worthless. At least those are the Limbaugh-Hannity inspired goofy talking points. Yet no mention of Republican supporter T. Boone Pickens having to give up his wealth and live in a house less than 1000 square feet in order to legitimately promote his energy independence plans? Give me a break. The truth is neither of them should and both of them support energy efficiency. Your arguments are made of straw. Have a nice day. For change try tuning in to Air America sometime.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 11:52 am
Mark - Climate Debate links to sites arguing both sides - for the record I think the environmentalist side sites are generally more convincing than the doubter side sites, but I don’t keep a list of links, and, frankly, I’m not qualified to judge the more complex arguments.
However, I’ve read sites on both sides of the debate about the issue of Hansen’s predictions and their recent innacuracy. When a theory fails to predict I expect folks to at least be open to the possibility that the theory is flawed. Folks who merely cite dogma don’t impress me, and a lot of the environmentals seem to spout dogma.
As to “Since you are obviously referring to Al Gore have you read how he is offsetting his carbon energy use?”
Here’s another analogy for you. If a murderer feeds the poor and contributes to orphanages it doesn’t absolve him of murder. Generating CO2 is either bad or good. If it’s bad one shouldn’t capriciously generate it no matter how many trees one plants. Private jet travel capriciously and unnecessarily generates CO2, as does living in a 10,000 square foot house.
Good point about him possibly having staff in the house. If Gore has staff in the house and it’s his office he should publicize that but then I will want to know how much office and living space he rents or owns elsewhere for himself and his staff.
Subject to more info I have to assume that Al Gore wants to live like a king while he preaches like a prophet and pushes for laws to circumscribe the lives of others. He’s not the only one who wants to do that, but it still makes him a hypocrite. And, I saw the hockey stick graph he pointed to and later noted that it was statistically falsified. I don’t know he was aware that it was cooked up when he showed it, but. . . now I have to doubt his other “evidence” especially in light of the recent turnaround of the temperatures. Why I should have been surprised that a lifelong politician would play fast and loose with facts is another question.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Chip,You apparently don’t read or analyze very well.
I mentioned T. Boone Pickens earlier and my comment wasn’t flattering although I gave him some credit for honesty.
Also, I never said that anyone has to live in 1000 square feet or give up his wealth as you allege. I said that anyone who poses as an environmentalist is a hypocritical pig if he flies in private jets or lives in more than 1000 square feet. There are excellent sources on logic and usage out there for you to study if you have trouble understanding the difference between the two concepts.
UPDATE (not posted on badastronomy.com) - 4:26 PM - it was hailing a few minutes ago here in Collegeville, and it's now raining cats and dogs. Well, it's not literally raining cats and dogs, but you get the idea. We need the rain.
Mark Schaffer Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Sully,
Try this regarding Dr. Hansen’s original model:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
Brant D Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Sully: Saying that the models are failing currently because of a temporary decrease in observed global average temperature is silly in the long term view. If you look at the GISS data that were presented earlier in this discussion, you would see that according to your definition of a model failing or being inaccurate - predicting a warming trend when the obs show cooling - since the year 1980 the models failed in predicting 1982, 1984-1985, 1989, 1991-1992, 1996, 1999-2000, 2003-2004, and 2006. Yes, not every year is warmer than the last. Not every year has a monster El Nino event like 1998 did. Natural variability does not disappear even with GW. The models have problems, yes, but replicating a very fundamental property in our atmosphere, the relationship between greenhouse gas concentration and global average temperature, is not one of them. I find your position silly and unrepresentative of both the observations and the state of the science currently.
You mentioned that good science should have predictive power. So here is a prediction for you: the next time Earth experiences an El Nino event with an order of magnitude comparable to the 1998 event, the temporary rise in global average temperature will swamp any temporary cooling Earth may have experienced in the years beforehand. It will stick out in the temperature record just as strongly as the 1998 anomaly currently does. I also predict that the response from TeeVee talking heads will be hysterical, and well worth the popcorn and cola consumed watching them making ridiculous excuses.
Also, please don’t confuse what environmentalists say with what climate scientists and other professionals say. Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace might mean well, but scientists generally many of their claims to be questionable at best.
Ragutis Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Ah… I think I figured it out. His critics are hoping Al Gore will begin living the hermit lifestyle in a cave so he’ll stop being in the public eye, raising awareness, and persuading governments to change energy policy.
He doesn’t have much choice in terms of security and travel decisions. The Secret Service pretty much dictates that. I doubt Nancy Reagan can get her hair done without a dude with sunglasses and an earpiece tagging along. And anyone with any experience in business or politics knows the value of face-to-face meetings. Teleconferencing and video-meetings are useful, but limited. A look in the eye and a firm handshake can be invaluable.
He runs offices out of his house, with a staff. So, yeah, the electric bill is sorta high. Especially since he pays 3 times the regular rate to get green power. And he’s also extensively renovated recently to improve the efficiency significantly beyond what one would expect of the typical 80+ year old home.
And you know what? Even if he was the biggest hypocrite in his lifestyle, that wouldn’t change a damn thing about the fact that AGW is real and happening. And who the hell ever said we need to adopt some ascetic lifestyle in the first place? There may be some radicals saying we should tear down the cities and return to the wild, but just about every rational person is looking at solutions for us to keep our way of life, as well as improve that of others in undeveloped nations only without releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the environment.
“So-called ‘global warming’ is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don’t let them get away with it!”
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Mark S - Thanks for the patience and the link but unfortunately I don’t understand it a lot better today than I did the last time I read it last fall or so. Now that I’ve seen that site again I do recall that it was on that site that I observed a bunch of judgemental and downright nasty comments about doubters or questioners who posted but where my comment questioning some of the premises of the judgemental posters was censored by the monitor. Maybe it was just one monitor and maybe he had seen enough of back and forth on the questions, but since then I’ve been suspicious of RealClimate as at least as much a quasi-religious site as a scientific one.
Brant D. - “Also, please don’t confuse what environmentalists say with what climate scientists and other professionals say. Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace might mean well, but scientists generally many of their claims to be questionable at best.”
The problem is that non-climatologists like me have to depend on popularizers, so naturally we judge the debate based on the pronouncements of the popularizers for each side. The doubters say we can continue with our lifestyles and relax so they start with a natural advantage since no one wants to be taxed or forced to sacrifice if that isn’t necessary. The burden of scientific proof and the burden of effectively selling that proof are with those who want us to act.
And, re your prediction about the effects of an el nino. The prediction that matters is what the average global temperature is going to be in 2010, 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050 etc. if we do nothing. Hansen was (trusting RealClimate.org) reasonably predictive between 1988 and 2005 but that’s only 17 years. And I understand (from other reading) that he was not so predictive re 2006 and 2007. It’s all well and good to say that data from a couple or a few years can be anomalous but not when you only have only 17 years of successful prediction behind you.
So what is a voter to do?
Brant D Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Sully: I agree that climatologists do not do a good job of communicating the science to the public, hence the overreliance on popularizers. Naturally most climatologists have the public relations ability of a bookworm, and training for this kind of work is not emphasized at all in the profession. So there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The “burden of proof” has been met, in fact was met at least a decade ago, but this point is not well communicated.
However, I also infer from your words that you expect the general public to be passive participants in this topic, receiving their information only from the TeeVee from designated media outlets. I am highly critical of this opinion. Democracy depends on active participation from the public in order to succeed. As a nation we are going to crash and burn if we make no effort to doublecheck the official sources. And that includes questions where the answers may not be particularly comforting. I understand that unfortunately many people actually do operate as passive participants currently, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea. And if you think that this is the way things were, are, and always will be, then I can’t find much hope or a reason to care about the future.
Also, “sacrifice” is what religious people offer to deities. The word you are looking for is “investment”. It takes money to make money.
As for the prediction, I offered a prediction that could be likely be verified within the next decade or two. You keep pushing the interval of prediction back further into the future, so that it would be impossible to meet the obligation you set up. It might warm from 2010 to 2040, but what if it cools from 2040 to 2050? That’s the silliness that the AGW contrarians pull (not that you are a contrarian), and sadly it convinces people. As as for prediction, the first prediction for AGW was made in the late 19th century. It was not taken seriously back then, and rightly so (no known way to verify), but the math that predicts AGW is over a century old. And while global climate models are only three decades old, and the best ones one decade old, they have succesfully “retrodicted” the long-term warming trend over the past century. It is impossible to explain what happened in the 20th century without considering the influence of CO2. So the timespan in which we can check the theory with the observations is longer than 17 years.
Sully Says: July 24th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Brant - Very good points and thanks for the patience. I’ll review the “start here” material on realclimate.org again, more carefully this time.
We need to do something serious about CO2 in the short to mid-term. Now the question becomes what to do and how fast.
The following discussion started with my reaction to a political post on badastronomy.com which irritated me.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 7:53 am
I thought science was supposed to be predictive. Hanson put out predictions of future temperatures. Unless I’m reading it wrong the temperatures have not followed his predictions for several years. I understand that the system is very complex and hence prediction is difficult, but why should I be willing to change my already relatively green lifestyle based on a predictive system that has failed?
And this notion of so called environmentalists living like pigs while buying indulgences in the form of carbon credits does not build confidence.
And T.Boone Pickens is a businessman ready to jump onto the environmental bandwagon for subsidies and special favors, just like those who jumped on environmentalism for ethanol subsidies, although I can’t help but like the man for answering honestly when asked why he doesn’t have windmills on his ranch. ‘They’re ugly,’ is basicly what he said.
And Phil Plait, I like your site for the astronomy but I think you’re acting more than a little like the Allah in the gristle folks on this topic.
MartinM Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Unless I’m reading it wrong the temperatures have not followed his predictions for several years.
‘Several years’ is too short to establish meaningful trends. The observed long-term trends fit nicely with model predictions, however.
Mark Schaffer Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Sully,I think you meant to type Dr. James Hansen rather than Hanson. What have you read about his predictions and where? Is the notion of “so called environmentalists living like pigs” true? How do you know this?
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
“Several years’ is too short to establish meaningful trends. The observed long-term trends fit nicely with model predictions, however.”
Was there a model before the “observed long term trends” that predicted them?
It’s been said that predictions, especially about the future, are hard. Back in a younger day I spent some time going back in the history of the stock market and discovering “models” that “predicted” some aspect of it. Since I’m not rich I have to assume that making models about complex systems to predict past events does not necessarily mean one can make a model that predicts future events.
As an aside I’ll mention that I’m not a total doubter just from the simple fact that we must at some point get big enough in our activities to have effect on the overall environment. I thought and said in the 1970’s that we should start a small tax on imported oil and increase that tax gradually and predictably every year until no more oil was imported. I think we should do the same thing now on all fossil fuels, but doing that cleanly and openly and gradually is a lot different from what I think we’re going to get out of the sausage factory down in Washington if we let this train run through that place at high speed.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Mark - thanks for the correction. I read the the Hansen stuff on a link from Climate Debate daily on the environmentalist side of the list. What struck me was that the answer to the question about why his predictions had not panned out was defensive and scornful of the doubters rather than honest and illuminating. When I commented (respectfully I thought) to that effect, my comment was censored as judgemental even though I was commenting on the judgementalism of the article and some of the comments.
As to living like pigs anyone who owns a home larger than about 1000 square feet per person in his family, or who uses, even one time, a private jet on a route served by a regular flight is a pig in my personal measuring system, and he or she is a hypocritical pig if he or she purports to be an “environmentalist.” Al Gore is the archetype. What really surprises me is that he’s so dumb as to provide his enemies with the easy ammunition his life style provides. Sort of like a fat doctor smoking and drinking while he tries to convince a patient to live healthy.
Mark Schaffer Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Sully,
Why would you consider Climate Debate authoritative on Hansen? Please post the link to the actual discussion you are referencing.What if the house is doubling as office with employees? Does this not alter your perception or are you immune to complexity on this? Since you are obviously referring to Al Gore have you read how he is offsetting his carbon energy use?Your analogy is really poor, or good depending on point of view. Since the health effects of being overweight, smoking, and, I assume you meant excessive, drinking are blindingly obvious, than it is irrelevant that the doctor is not practicing what he tells the patient. This is, as if I should have to point this out, because the health benefits still exist for losing weight, quiting smoking, and moderating or stopping all alcohol consumption. So your argument fails to convince as the evidence is that changing our carbon consumption habits will bring many benefits whether public speakers are perfect or not. QED.
Chip Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Sully -Ha! Get real. You probably also believe Al Gore said he invented the internet and that the Nobel Prize he earned is worthless. At least those are the Limbaugh-Hannity inspired goofy talking points. Yet no mention of Republican supporter T. Boone Pickens having to give up his wealth and live in a house less than 1000 square feet in order to legitimately promote his energy independence plans? Give me a break. The truth is neither of them should and both of them support energy efficiency. Your arguments are made of straw. Have a nice day. For change try tuning in to Air America sometime.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 11:52 am
Mark - Climate Debate links to sites arguing both sides - for the record I think the environmentalist side sites are generally more convincing than the doubter side sites, but I don’t keep a list of links, and, frankly, I’m not qualified to judge the more complex arguments.
However, I’ve read sites on both sides of the debate about the issue of Hansen’s predictions and their recent innacuracy. When a theory fails to predict I expect folks to at least be open to the possibility that the theory is flawed. Folks who merely cite dogma don’t impress me, and a lot of the environmentals seem to spout dogma.
As to “Since you are obviously referring to Al Gore have you read how he is offsetting his carbon energy use?”
Here’s another analogy for you. If a murderer feeds the poor and contributes to orphanages it doesn’t absolve him of murder. Generating CO2 is either bad or good. If it’s bad one shouldn’t capriciously generate it no matter how many trees one plants. Private jet travel capriciously and unnecessarily generates CO2, as does living in a 10,000 square foot house.
Good point about him possibly having staff in the house. If Gore has staff in the house and it’s his office he should publicize that but then I will want to know how much office and living space he rents or owns elsewhere for himself and his staff.
Subject to more info I have to assume that Al Gore wants to live like a king while he preaches like a prophet and pushes for laws to circumscribe the lives of others. He’s not the only one who wants to do that, but it still makes him a hypocrite. And, I saw the hockey stick graph he pointed to and later noted that it was statistically falsified. I don’t know he was aware that it was cooked up when he showed it, but. . . now I have to doubt his other “evidence” especially in light of the recent turnaround of the temperatures. Why I should have been surprised that a lifelong politician would play fast and loose with facts is another question.
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Chip,You apparently don’t read or analyze very well.
I mentioned T. Boone Pickens earlier and my comment wasn’t flattering although I gave him some credit for honesty.
Also, I never said that anyone has to live in 1000 square feet or give up his wealth as you allege. I said that anyone who poses as an environmentalist is a hypocritical pig if he flies in private jets or lives in more than 1000 square feet. There are excellent sources on logic and usage out there for you to study if you have trouble understanding the difference between the two concepts.
UPDATE (not posted on badastronomy.com) - 4:26 PM - it was hailing a few minutes ago here in Collegeville, and it's now raining cats and dogs. Well, it's not literally raining cats and dogs, but you get the idea. We need the rain.
Mark Schaffer Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Sully,
Try this regarding Dr. Hansen’s original model:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
Brant D Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Sully: Saying that the models are failing currently because of a temporary decrease in observed global average temperature is silly in the long term view. If you look at the GISS data that were presented earlier in this discussion, you would see that according to your definition of a model failing or being inaccurate - predicting a warming trend when the obs show cooling - since the year 1980 the models failed in predicting 1982, 1984-1985, 1989, 1991-1992, 1996, 1999-2000, 2003-2004, and 2006. Yes, not every year is warmer than the last. Not every year has a monster El Nino event like 1998 did. Natural variability does not disappear even with GW. The models have problems, yes, but replicating a very fundamental property in our atmosphere, the relationship between greenhouse gas concentration and global average temperature, is not one of them. I find your position silly and unrepresentative of both the observations and the state of the science currently.
You mentioned that good science should have predictive power. So here is a prediction for you: the next time Earth experiences an El Nino event with an order of magnitude comparable to the 1998 event, the temporary rise in global average temperature will swamp any temporary cooling Earth may have experienced in the years beforehand. It will stick out in the temperature record just as strongly as the 1998 anomaly currently does. I also predict that the response from TeeVee talking heads will be hysterical, and well worth the popcorn and cola consumed watching them making ridiculous excuses.
Also, please don’t confuse what environmentalists say with what climate scientists and other professionals say. Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace might mean well, but scientists generally many of their claims to be questionable at best.
Ragutis Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Ah… I think I figured it out. His critics are hoping Al Gore will begin living the hermit lifestyle in a cave so he’ll stop being in the public eye, raising awareness, and persuading governments to change energy policy.
He doesn’t have much choice in terms of security and travel decisions. The Secret Service pretty much dictates that. I doubt Nancy Reagan can get her hair done without a dude with sunglasses and an earpiece tagging along. And anyone with any experience in business or politics knows the value of face-to-face meetings. Teleconferencing and video-meetings are useful, but limited. A look in the eye and a firm handshake can be invaluable.
He runs offices out of his house, with a staff. So, yeah, the electric bill is sorta high. Especially since he pays 3 times the regular rate to get green power. And he’s also extensively renovated recently to improve the efficiency significantly beyond what one would expect of the typical 80+ year old home.
And you know what? Even if he was the biggest hypocrite in his lifestyle, that wouldn’t change a damn thing about the fact that AGW is real and happening. And who the hell ever said we need to adopt some ascetic lifestyle in the first place? There may be some radicals saying we should tear down the cities and return to the wild, but just about every rational person is looking at solutions for us to keep our way of life, as well as improve that of others in undeveloped nations only without releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the environment.
“So-called ‘global warming’ is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don’t let them get away with it!”
Sully Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Mark S - Thanks for the patience and the link but unfortunately I don’t understand it a lot better today than I did the last time I read it last fall or so. Now that I’ve seen that site again I do recall that it was on that site that I observed a bunch of judgemental and downright nasty comments about doubters or questioners who posted but where my comment questioning some of the premises of the judgemental posters was censored by the monitor. Maybe it was just one monitor and maybe he had seen enough of back and forth on the questions, but since then I’ve been suspicious of RealClimate as at least as much a quasi-religious site as a scientific one.
Brant D. - “Also, please don’t confuse what environmentalists say with what climate scientists and other professionals say. Environmentalist groups like Greenpeace might mean well, but scientists generally many of their claims to be questionable at best.”
The problem is that non-climatologists like me have to depend on popularizers, so naturally we judge the debate based on the pronouncements of the popularizers for each side. The doubters say we can continue with our lifestyles and relax so they start with a natural advantage since no one wants to be taxed or forced to sacrifice if that isn’t necessary. The burden of scientific proof and the burden of effectively selling that proof are with those who want us to act.
And, re your prediction about the effects of an el nino. The prediction that matters is what the average global temperature is going to be in 2010, 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050 etc. if we do nothing. Hansen was (trusting RealClimate.org) reasonably predictive between 1988 and 2005 but that’s only 17 years. And I understand (from other reading) that he was not so predictive re 2006 and 2007. It’s all well and good to say that data from a couple or a few years can be anomalous but not when you only have only 17 years of successful prediction behind you.
So what is a voter to do?
Brant D Says: July 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Sully: I agree that climatologists do not do a good job of communicating the science to the public, hence the overreliance on popularizers. Naturally most climatologists have the public relations ability of a bookworm, and training for this kind of work is not emphasized at all in the profession. So there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The “burden of proof” has been met, in fact was met at least a decade ago, but this point is not well communicated.
However, I also infer from your words that you expect the general public to be passive participants in this topic, receiving their information only from the TeeVee from designated media outlets. I am highly critical of this opinion. Democracy depends on active participation from the public in order to succeed. As a nation we are going to crash and burn if we make no effort to doublecheck the official sources. And that includes questions where the answers may not be particularly comforting. I understand that unfortunately many people actually do operate as passive participants currently, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea. And if you think that this is the way things were, are, and always will be, then I can’t find much hope or a reason to care about the future.
Also, “sacrifice” is what religious people offer to deities. The word you are looking for is “investment”. It takes money to make money.
As for the prediction, I offered a prediction that could be likely be verified within the next decade or two. You keep pushing the interval of prediction back further into the future, so that it would be impossible to meet the obligation you set up. It might warm from 2010 to 2040, but what if it cools from 2040 to 2050? That’s the silliness that the AGW contrarians pull (not that you are a contrarian), and sadly it convinces people. As as for prediction, the first prediction for AGW was made in the late 19th century. It was not taken seriously back then, and rightly so (no known way to verify), but the math that predicts AGW is over a century old. And while global climate models are only three decades old, and the best ones one decade old, they have succesfully “retrodicted” the long-term warming trend over the past century. It is impossible to explain what happened in the 20th century without considering the influence of CO2. So the timespan in which we can check the theory with the observations is longer than 17 years.
Sully Says: July 24th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Brant - Very good points and thanks for the patience. I’ll review the “start here” material on realclimate.org again, more carefully this time.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
how about me for some of that political loot
The Democratic Party is buying carbon offsets so as to pretend that their big national convention boozefest will be "carbon neutral." But they're buying the offsets in a thoroughly discriminatory manner, favoring only Native Americans indulgences, I mean offsets.
The Democratic Party won't be buying any offsets from Italian Americans like me because we don't qualify as members of a "minority group" even though we are a group and we are in the minority just like Native Americans. Also we don't have a well developed mechanism for funnelling loot to politicians.
The net is that I can't hope to sell any indulgences to the Democratic Party, even though I have plenty of indulgences that I could sell if ordinary schnooks were allowed to take advantage of the game. I have, for instance, been partly heating the house with home grown and home cut wood for three decades. And I have been letting much of our lawn grow into high grassland during the summers for at least a decade. And I have a bit of woodland on which the trees are patiently sequestering carbon each year. That, you see, is what offsets are about. A person like me who arranges his life so as to use less fossil fuel sells his savings in carbon emissions to a porcine like Al Gore who arranges his life so as to emit more CO2 than twenty or thirty ordinary people. A person like me could do that if he was of a mind to kick back a nice fat envelope of Benjamins to the right people.
Al Gore gets some of the money he uses to buy his indulgences by flying around the world on private jets giving speeches and writing books about why everyone should emit less CO2. And Al, like the Democratic Party, also gets his share of Benjamin filled envelopes from people and companies who want to pollute like pigs, as he does, but who don't want to be mentioned in his speeches and books and movies. Not that there's anything in the least illegal about this. I'm utterly sure Al is a careful enough man to ensure that any Benjamins that find their way into his pockets have passed through a special kind of laundry which turns dirty Benjamins into clean Benjamins.
Al Gore and the folks who are arranging the Democratic Convention are well aware of a simple fact known to The Godfather. "A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns."
The Democratic Party won't be buying any offsets from Italian Americans like me because we don't qualify as members of a "minority group" even though we are a group and we are in the minority just like Native Americans. Also we don't have a well developed mechanism for funnelling loot to politicians.
The net is that I can't hope to sell any indulgences to the Democratic Party, even though I have plenty of indulgences that I could sell if ordinary schnooks were allowed to take advantage of the game. I have, for instance, been partly heating the house with home grown and home cut wood for three decades. And I have been letting much of our lawn grow into high grassland during the summers for at least a decade. And I have a bit of woodland on which the trees are patiently sequestering carbon each year. That, you see, is what offsets are about. A person like me who arranges his life so as to use less fossil fuel sells his savings in carbon emissions to a porcine like Al Gore who arranges his life so as to emit more CO2 than twenty or thirty ordinary people. A person like me could do that if he was of a mind to kick back a nice fat envelope of Benjamins to the right people.
Al Gore gets some of the money he uses to buy his indulgences by flying around the world on private jets giving speeches and writing books about why everyone should emit less CO2. And Al, like the Democratic Party, also gets his share of Benjamin filled envelopes from people and companies who want to pollute like pigs, as he does, but who don't want to be mentioned in his speeches and books and movies. Not that there's anything in the least illegal about this. I'm utterly sure Al is a careful enough man to ensure that any Benjamins that find their way into his pockets have passed through a special kind of laundry which turns dirty Benjamins into clean Benjamins.
Al Gore and the folks who are arranging the Democratic Convention are well aware of a simple fact known to The Godfather. "A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns."
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