Posted on 05/12/2008 1:37:03 PM PDT by shrinkermd
I did not listen to Rush’s entire show. The part I did here, was a “look-down-your-nose-sneer” at Senator McCain’s concern and proposals about climate change. I know this is problematical with those believing we are on the edge of a catastrophe and those who feel this is all hokum.
Seemingly, faith has replaced all reason in assessing the problem.
In actual fact the problem is really quite simple. What the European and other governments want to do is to hold the concentration of carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million. Presently, it is 380 ppm. At the beginning of the industrial age it was 280 ppm. As far as I can tell these are facts. My source is a recent article by Fred Pierce in the New Scientist. That link is: here.
The actual problem is not clearly a scientific problem and there are disputes as to the meaning of the rise of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. A few excerpts from the above article include the following:
”…European governments are pressing for an agreement that would keep atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide below 450 parts per million. This compares with pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm and current levels of 380 ppm. This, they argue, will prevent warming by more than 2 °C, and so avoid "dangerous" climate change.
”Yet many climate scientists wince at this. First, because the European governments like to claim that the IPCC backs these targets, when in fact the IPCC goes out of its way to say that setting targets is a job for politicians. And second, because nobody knows either whether 450 ppm will hold warming below 2 °C, or whether this amount of warming will turn out to be safe. "It's horrifying when you see things boiled down to simple terms like a 2 °C warming. That will mean hugely different things for different places," Palmer says.
One reason the IPCC's official reports are slow to bridge this gap is the panel's policy of only considering published peer-reviewed research that is available when its review process gets under way. This means the current report, published last year, takes no account of research published after early 2005.
An increasingly scary debate about the state of the Greenland ice sheet is almost entirely absent in the 2007 report, for instance (see "What if the ice goes?"). Other recent research suggests that warming may be accelerating beyond IPCC predictions: first, because higher temperatures are releasing greenhouse gases from forests, soils and permafrost; and second, because the ocean's ability to absorb CO2 seems to have declined in the past decade.
"An increasingly scary debate about the state of the Greenland ice sheet hardly figures in the IPCC's 2007 report"
Equally worrying is the fact that climatologists are losing confidence in the ability of existing models to work out what global warming will do to atmospheric circulation - and hence to local weather patterns like rainfall. The most recent IPCC report made a number of regional predictions. It felt able to do so because it was generally assumed that if most models agreed on future climate in, say, the Amazon rainforest or western Europe, then they were probably right.
From my perspective Rush is more interested in pandering to his base with oversimplifications and relying on ridicule as argumentation.
I frankly, don’t know how serious this problem is, but there is a problem—within the lifetime of many reading this post atmospheric carbon dioxide will double. As cited in this article:
One of these unknowns was highlighted last month in the preprint of a paper James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has submitted to the journal Science (www.arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126). Looking back 50 million years, to a time when falling CO2 levels in the atmosphere reached 425 ppm - a level we are likely to reach within two decades - he says that was the moment Antarctica got its ice cap. This suggests that the planet may have a tipping point at around that level, give or take 75 ppm, and that by going above it we could render Antarctica ice-free once again. That would raise sea levels by around 60 metres.
I think Senator McCain’s interest in this subject is based on factual considerations. What we don’t know, we don’t know but now is not the time to close off all reasonable consideration and debate.
No, I am not involved with McCain or his campaign. Are you a ditohead?
All Presidential candidates and George Soros are members at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Wealth redistribution towards the goal of a One World Gov is what they're all about. They all use this warming scare as a bridge to other achievements.
McCain lost me today. For good. Let the RINOs, moderates, “Regan Democrats”, independents, disaffected Clintonistas, GOP locksteppers, immigrant lobby, global junk science lobby, beltway insiders, “maverick” enthusiasts, and the rest of his shabby coalition elect him. I won’t help.
And when McCain spews garbage like he did on O'Reilley's the other night (when he compared Anwar to the Grand Canyon), I just shake my head in disbelief: "My God! What are we doing!"
You're voting for the Pope?
Global warming is junk science, it is a fact that man made global warming is punk BS. If you believe otherwise that is your right. Rush is not pandering and McCain has finished putting the final nail into his coffin. I believe that McCain never wanted to win the election but is in it merely to disrupt the republican party and ensure a Democrat win. It is apparent to me that is his intention and I don’t believe that I am the only one who thinks this.
Is Co2 the cause or the effect? It appears you have bought in to the concept that Co2 is the cause and GW is the effect, and that’s not clear to me, nor to a lot of the climatologists in question. It is quite possible that warming is the cause, and Co2 is the effect, as the oceans lost their ability to retain Co2 as they warm up.
Let’s see you believe concern about global warming is “junk science” and Senator McCain wants to destroy the Republican Party rather be elected President.
Hmmmm...
He's pandering without shame. SOP for McQueeg.
This part you have right. But the "faith" is entirely on the side of the chicken littles. To be truly scientific, a hypothesis should be falsifiable. The global circulation models in use -- all of them -- are considered above falsification because "something must be done know to avoid consequences 20 or more years into the future." Thus, whether they are accurate or not, they must be taken by faith.
That ain't science: that's religion.
To date, by the way, none of the GCMs that have been around long enough to have some semblance of historical data entered into them have produced anything at all accurate beyond one month's time into the future. Not one. Temp, precip, doesn't matter. They are worthless as prognosticators.
Now, in view of the above, should we not gain more FACTS before acting rashly?
And oh, by the way, why is it cooling so rapidly in defiance of what the chicken little types would have us to believe?
actually China surpassed the USA in CO2 emissions last year and will theirs are growing by 11% a year while ours are flat. By 2016 they will be producing TWICE as much CO2 as the US and by 2020 they will produce as much CO2 PER CAPITA as the US. The yare building a new coal fired electric plant every 7-10 days, and have no plans to do anything but expand their use of fossil fuels. The genocide in Sudan isa direct result of the Chinese keeping the UN from taking any meaningful action to reign in the janjaweed, because China is Sudan;s biggest customer for crude. The Chinese feel globalw arming is just another aysmetric weapon to use against the capitalist USA. Our liberals, the UN and McCain are the useful idiots they need to help their plan to destroy our economy.
What our enemies could never do militarily, they use our enviro/liberal/marxists, our media, our judiacy, and our education establishment to acheivwe our destruction.
We need more conservatives with pilonidal cysts, football injuries and other accouterments of manliness.
>> What our enemies could never do militarily, they use our enviro/liberal/marxists, our media, our judiacy, and our education establishment to acheivwe our destruction.
So sad that McCain seems in favor of a strong defense, while at the same time pledging the ruin of the very country our brave troops are defending, in the ways you mentioned. That really hurts.
Yes, Hmmmmmmmmmm. You are either a DU plant of you are working for the RNC or directly for McCain. Anyone who believes Global warming is real has never read the facts. I don't "believe" global warming is BS, I know it because of the facts, the records going back thousands of years. Those are facts.
Global warming is designed to control people and to take money from them. Nothing more, nothing less. And, yes I definitely believe McCain is bitter from his loss in 2000, he almost switched to democrat at one time. I believe in his heart he is a dem, I know for a fact he is a pandering socialist scum bag. I think he is out to ruin the party, once and for all. He refuses to tell the truth about Obama and chastises anyone who does.
There are two possibilities, and only two, 1.)He is either so confidant he can win without conservatives so he is pandering to all the lefties out there and trying to win their vote. or 2.) He is deliberately trying to lose the Presidential election.
If it wasn't for Dem cross overs in the Primaries we wouldn't have this pimple on the butt of a puss filled boil for a candidate.
Absolutely. CO2 is a by-product gas. And its levels have been higher in the past, before evil Western white-male Capitalists began burning fossils fuels. The Sun is the number 1 cause of global warming, always has been...learned that in like 3rd grade. Mars is also warming, I'm betting that's caused by the Sun too, and NOT evil Western white-male Capitalists. 80% of the Sun's energy is abosrbed by water vapor(#1 greenhouse gas) and the other gases within the first 30 feet off the surface of the Earth. Only 20% of the Sun's energy radiates above our rooftops.
What a joke - first a lack of confidence in the models is stated, then it says the IPCC took a poll of the admittedly untrustworthy models in an attempt to divine the future! The climate models are unable to accurately predict today's climate if fed old climate data as input, so why in the heck would anyone think the models can accurately predict future climate conditions? It's simply absurd that anyone would have faith in these ridiculously over-simplified computer simulations of the earth's climate.
A few other things to think about...if global warming is such an immediate catastrophic concern, why has global temperature not increased over the last decade (some data sets actually indicate a slight cooling trend), why have ocean temperatures have not increased over the last decade, and why has the rise in sea level over the last decade been so low (appox. 1.5 mm/yr)?
There is nothing in today's climate or CO2 levels that is any different than what the earth has experienced in the past, yet for some reason now we're all supposed to believe it's the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it if we don't "do something". Sorry, I'm not buying it. There's no reason to saddle our economy with billions of dollars of expense to avert global warming, when the situation is totally normal, and besides, nothing we do will have any effect. John McCain is an idiot for trying to set our country on this path - he should be ashamed of himself and his pandering for power.
I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what wiki has to say about Limbaugh, or McQueeg for that matter. I just know that I will not be bullied into voting for McQueeg because he was a POW in a bad place. I already used up my quota of votes for John McQueeg in past local elections, and I’m done with him.
What IS true, beyond any doubt, is that there are a lot of legitimate, highly credentialed climate scientists who disagree with the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, and who offer all sorts of conflicting data and explanations about the state of the climate.
What is also true, is that the global warming alarmists are in dishonest denial about the fact that there is, in fact, a DEBATE about the hypothesis itself.
These alarmists ask us to disregard the evidence of our own eyes and ears about the existence of this debate, and seek to argue not facts, but the motives of those who disagree that we must take immediate action.
This insulting denial is in itself strong evidence that at the very least, we ought to take with a LARGE grain of sodium chloride the insistence by global warming believers that we must urgently adopt all sorts of dangerous, inhumane, self-serving and draconian political/economic actions to “fix” this “crisis.”
We would not allow a pharmaceutical company to market (let alone impose by force) a “cure” that is so far from being proven effective (or even needed), for a medical problem that has not even been proven beyond reasonable argument to exist, as are the solutions proposed by the global warming debate deniers.
The burden of proof properly belongs to them, not to those who are justifiably skeptical of their hypothetical model-driven claims.
The Hippocratic imperative to “first do no harm” ought to be applied as rigorously to the global warming policy advocates as it should be to the medical and pharmaceutical sector.
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