Global Warming

The Monticello News ^ | August 7, 2008 | Ted Dunagan

[cogitator]

Find me a single contemporay report for that assertion anywhere in world literature and I will help you champion it.

So the assertion is Erik the Red's salesmanship, eh? It's actually in the Norse Sagas! Who needs a "contemporary" report!?

Erik the Red

Eric the Red From: Sailing West to Vinland

Shouldn't Greenland be known as Iceland and vice versa

But if you want it verbatim (translated):

Erik the Red's Saga. Read the last paragraph of Part II.

Start championing.

[Old Professer]

Sagas? What’s next, Ulysses discovers Mars?

As far as whether Greenland was ever a verdant paradise has little merit on the reliability of climate records but it does make a good story in either direction.

[RogerFGay]

Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate

[saminfl]

I concern myself with what the scientists are doing, and I'm pretty sure there are very few climate scientists intent on wrecking Western civilization.

Exactly how would their "cure" not wreck Western Civilization? When was the earth at the "ideal" temperature? Who determined the "ideal" temperature? Has mankind and nature ever adapted to climate variations?

[cogitator]

Exactly how would their "cure" not wreck Western Civilization?

My comment was to the effect that the majority of climate scientists are trying to understand how much Earth's climate is changing, and what's causing it, and aren't suggesting policy, social, or economic changes. Though there are a couple of vocal ones that are doing that, most aren't.

When was the earth at the "ideal" temperature? Who determined the "ideal" temperature? Has mankind and nature ever adapted to climate variations?

1. The further you go back in time, the temporal resolution of changes in Earth's climate decreases markedly. For the Triassic-Jurassic-Cretaceous (as an example), changes are only apparent on the time-scale of millions of years. The climate data indicates that conditions were stable; ecological and species transitions tend to occur when climate wasn't stable. There are numerous examples of drastic regional and global ecosystem transitions coinciding with very rapid climate change.

Going forward in time, this pattern can be observed at increasing temporal resolution. So the key is to examine the stability of a given time period. The current interglacial period (the Holocene) has been abnormally stable; in fact, this stability is credited with being a factor allowing the rise of human civilization. So specific time periods have a certain level of climate (temperature) stability.

Thus, for the Holocene, global temperature has only varied in a narrow range. Though this figure is for Antarctic ice cores and thus for Antarctic temperatures, it illustrates the point:

So you can see that over the entire Holocene (commencing about 11,000 years ago), the full range of variability is less than +/- 2 degrees C, and if a couple of spikes like the 8200 year event are tossed out, then the range is significantly less than that.

Mankind has likely adapted, and nature has adapted to climate change. The paleo-lesson, however, is that there is a limit to the rate of adaptation; if climate change exceeds the adaptation capability of a species or ecosystem, species go extinct and ecosystems collapse. [In this thread we've peripherally discussed the Viking settlement of Greenland; during the MWP, they hung on there a couple of centuries. When it got a bit colder, that was enough for them to either give up or die out.] Given the dependency of current human civilization on many global environmental support factors (reliable rainfall for crop growth, mountain glaciers supplying freshwater to rivers, existence of increasing populations in tropical or arid climates) it is possible that rapid climate change triggered by a rapid change in global temperatures could seriously and detrimentally affect these support factors. Additionally, natural systems have been constrained by the dominance of human systems, so there is much less range of adaptability than when human civilization had a much smaller global "footprint".

I hope that was a reasonable answer to your question.

[RogerFGay]

OK, I like to chat sometimes and even moreso, I think basics are very important; and I often pick at semantics.

Science deals with knowledge and scientific method involves being objective and logical. PhDs sigh when I make the old-fashioned statement that science is a search for truth (but please put some emphasis on "search for") ... and in the modern context, from a naturalist perspective.

Much is made these days about specialized education and the term scientist is most often related to someone with a hard-science degree, moreso the higher the degree. But sufficient education and skill in objective analysis and logic applied in other areas also rates use of the term pretty much all over the world. And in a more general sense, if you are on this track, regardless of education, then you are philosophically and characteristically a scientist.

Even more generally, it has been said that all men are scientists. If one doesn't accept that a door is in the way, one will slam into it. Accepting the fact objectively, selecting and applying a strategy to get through the doorway implies use of a scientific method, even by those who need some trial and error to perform the task. The necessity to interact in a world with a particular nature has made us all scientists even down to a genetic level - whether the natural philosophy is consciously embraced or not.

[raygun]

O.k., so what’s your point?

[RogerFGay]

So, on the basis of what I said in my last post - there are some people with PhDs in hard-sciences that I do not regard as scientists. James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA for example - the global warming alamist who recently said that anyone who disagrees with his position on the subject should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature by an international tribunal.

Hansen is not a scientist because he has abandoned (assuming he ever in his life embraced) science. He is a political operative for Al Gore (see Wikipedia for confirmation), who has hung onto his position at NASA with heavy Washington lawyers pleading the private right of free speech.

[techcor]

I agree with you. Especially about James Hansen and his ilk. I think liberalism in general is twisted with people who think they are logical just because they reject religion.
For instance, I just happen to catch Larry King interviewing Peter Jennings. Larry asked Peter why it seemed that liberals were ok with their heroes like Al Gore using so much energy and polluting so much. Peter answered that liberals were ok with it because their politicians "voted the right way" even if they themselves didn't live the life they were trying to impose on everyone else. That's the height of hypocrisy but he and Larry didn't even see it (being liberals themselves).
I thought that was so funny I had to keep watching. Then Larry asked him if liberals were tolerant to which Peter replied "They are tolerant of people who agree with them". Bwhahah! Even the Nazis and KKK are that tolerant. You can't get any less tolerant than that but both Larry and Peter acted as if he had said something profound and that he had confirmed that liberals were tolerant which he actually hadn't done.
I'll write more about this kind of thinking as it applies to GW a little later.

[GregoryFul]

What is a weed? I was told that a weed was any plant that you did not want to grow in some particular place.

I wish the grass I plant could thrive like the crab grass I cannot get rid of.