Global Warming Gospel
Howard Hayden, physics professor (emeritus) at U. of Conn, offers his thoughts on AGW "hypothesis" and the Gore church:


"The hype surrounding the issue of global warming is a bunch of hot air, a retired physics professor told members of Rotary Club 43 on Monday.
"Global warming is not a problem," Howard C. Hayden said. "Go find something useful to do." Hayden is an emeritus professor of physics from the University of Connecticut and now resides in Pueblo West.
Hayden, who spoke at the Rotary Club's weekly meeting, offered a skeptical view of global warming.

"This is not a view you'll hear from Al Gore," Hayden said, prefacing his slide show presentation. ........

........




Jupiter Kazoo, aka the Butt-Trumpet

"Hayden claimed that much of what is being advertised about global warming issues such as the melting polar ice caps, greenhouse gases and changes in carbon dioxide levels is not factual.

"Yes, the polar ice caps are shrinking . . . on Mars," he said, "On Mars, the ice caps are melting and small hills are disappearing."

Hayden added that there is warming occurring on Jupiter, Saturn and Triton.

He said the increased carbon-dioxide levels that global-warming promoters keep talking about is nothing new. He said the levels of carbon dioxide have been rising and falling for more than 400,000 years.

"We are at the lowest levels in the last 300,000 years," he said. "During the Jurassic period, we had very high levels of carbon dioxide."

Hayden added that the majority of carbon dioxide is the result of natural sources and not to be blamed on humankind.

Worldwide, the burning of coal, oil and gas contributes to only an estimated 3 percent of the carbon-dioxide emissions, he said.

"About 97 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, not humans," Hayden said."""


Ouchie! Back to those cliffsnotes for "Physics for Dixiecrats 101" courses, Al.

GOP on AGW

NY Times:

"The Republican presidential contenders regard global warming as a hoax or, at best, underplay its importance. The most vocal denier is Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, who insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”


Never mind that nearly all the world’s scientists regard global warming as a serious threat to the planet, with human activities like the burning of fossil fuels a major cause. Never mind that multiple investigations have found no evidence of scientific manipulation. Never mind that America needs a national policy. Mr. Perry has a big soapbox, and what he says, however fallacious, reaches a bigger audience than any scientist can command.


With one exception — make that one-and-one-half — the rest of the Republican presidential field also rejects the scientific consensus. The exception is Jon Huntsman Jr., a former ambassador to China and former governor of Utah, who recently wrote on Twitter: “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” The one-half exception is Mitt Romney, who accepted the science when he was governor of Massachusetts and argued for reducing emissions. Lately, he’s retreated into mush: “Do I think the world’s getting hotter? Yeah, I don’t know that, but I think that it is.” As for the human contribution: “It could be a little. It could be a lot.”


The others flatly repudiate the science. Ron Paul of Texas calls global warming “the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years.” Michele Bachmann of Minnesota once said that carbon dioxide was nothing to fear because it is a “natural byproduct of nature” and has complained of “manufactured science.” Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, has called climate change “a beautifully concocted scheme” that is “just an excuse for more government control of your life.”"

+++++ +++++

~(Relatedly): AV Press editor Dennis "Sarge" Dunderson wins another prize

Consensus Science: the Al Gore Truth-process


Just as a show of hands in a high-school classroom (how many think Answer A is right??) will not necessarily establish the right answer to an algebra problem, the truth of Global warming will not be decided by a poll. Science is NOT done via consensus: it’s a matter of confirming a given hypothesis via experimental proof. (No shit, perhaps you are thinking--say it to Big Al).

Einstein himself wrote on this topic when his first papers on the experimental confirmation of relativity were not accepted by "peer reviewed" scientific journals. Obviously, that a majority of experts might mostly agree on the global warming hypothesis does not itself confirm the hypothesis (except maybe to Al Jr., who managed a D+ in "Physics for Dixiecrats" at Haw-vard).

Contrarian views do quite often prevail in science: most victorians held to Screeptural views and considered Darwinian evolution the most horrid, blasphemous idea in the world, and Darwin's theory was not accepted for many years, either among society or scientists (and still is not with many biblethumpers--or koran-thumpers). Newtonian mechanics, accepted as truth for 2+ centuries, was substantially modified by special and general relativity, though Einstein's theories were considered odd at the time (contrarian or "fringe" in blogspeak).

Of course GW is not close to Newtonian mechanics: the theory has not really been established (i.e. the basic claim that increases in anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere leads to global warming has not been conclusively established--that is, assuming that present and historical temperature data itself is accurate! Gore of course doesn't know margin of error from the margin on his NASDAQ stock). A consensus does not even exist among global warming "experts" to the degree that Gore suggested, and a consensus of climate modellers does not equal a consensus of atmospheric scientists. GW experts merely offer probabilities and estimations, not certainties or truths (though YES, the IPCC research should be seriously considered): though that did not prevent Al Jr. from presenting GW as established, and "true" theory. See this site for some effective debunking of Gore/AIT (which is not the same as the IPCC report anyway):

Edelman/AIT

The Politics of Temperature

Temps nearly flat since late 90s

"""Solomon et al. begin their article stating “Over the past century, global average surface temperatures have warmed by about 0.75°C. Much of the warming occurred in the last half century, over which the average decadal rate of change was about 0.13°C, largely due to anthropogenic increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases. However, the trend in global surface temperatures has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing due to the sum of the well-mixed greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, halocarbons, and N2O), raising questions regarding the understanding of forced climate change, its drivers, the parameters that define natural internal variability, and how fully these terms are represented in climate models.”

Admitting that the trend in global temperatures has been flat over the past decade will not win any awards for this team, so we once again applaud their honesty. The team suggests that part of the reason for the flatness deals with the amount of water high-up in the upper troposphere, the tropopause, and the lower stratosphere. They clearly state “Water vapor is a highly variable gas. Tropospheric water vapor increases in close association with warming and this represents a major climate feedback that is well simulated in global climate models. In sharp contrast, current global models are limited in their representations of key processes that control the distribution and variability of water within the stratosphere”. Furthermore they note “Current global climate models simulate lower stratospheric temperature trends poorly and even up-to-date stratospheric chemistry-climate models do not consistently reproduce tropical tropopause minimum temperatures or recently observed changes in stratospheric water vapor.”

Those who have some doubts about the IPCC/Gore AGW models do not thereby necessarily affirm FoxCo-style climate "denialism". While temperatures did rise slightly over 80s and 90s, the last decade, 2000-2010, reveals a cooling trend. (Dr. Solomon, for one, is rather more qualified to speak on AGW than is Doc Rachel Maddow).

Climate modellers and most AGW researchers are not actual atmospheric physicists. They model certain scenarios, given certain assumptions --e.g. increases in man-made CO2 results in higher temps. The CO2 to warming assumption has little or no empirical/lab support. Some evidence suggests AGW; some doesn't (check online for Dr. Hug's studies). Timelags and "thresholds" complicate the problem, as do other GHGs and water vapor (solar activity another possible factor).

The AGW claim has not been adequately verified. GIGO, however trite, would apply. Researchers have forced large quantities of CO2 (such as 10+ times present conditions) into a simulated earth atmosphere, and have not produced significant increase in temps (any lurkers have a study refuting Hug, and other real chemists? link, or cite, etc.). It's not merely wrong, but obscene to proceed on the basis of a few simulations to spend millions (if not more) to prevent a crisis that may not even exist, or is not nearly as severe as imagined. Besides, worst case scenarios, oceans rise a few feet, and merely wash Malibu condos and chateaus out to sea.

More on the villain water vapor

Solaric

Dr. Soon on the Sun (and against the Church of Gore):

"""""We have known for nearly 80 years that small changes in solar activity can cause large climatic changes. Where sunlight falls, for how long, and with what effect, determine how climate will respond.

The most recent scientific evidence shows that even small changes in solar radiation have a strong effect on Earth’s temperature and climate.

In 2005, I demonstrated a surprisingly strong correlation between solar radiation and temperatures in the Arctic over the past 130 years. Since then, I have demonstrated similar correlations in all the regions surrounding the Arctic, including the US mainland and China.

The close relationships between the abrupt ups and downs of solar activity and of temperature that I have identified occur locally in coastal Greenland; regionally in the Arctic Pacific and north Atlantic; and hemispherically for the whole circum-Arctic, suggesting that changes in solar activity drive Arctic and perhaps even global climate.

There is no such match between the steady rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration and the often dramatic ups and downs of surface temperatures in and around the Arctic.

I recently discovered direct evidence that changes in solar activity have influenced what has been called the “conveyor-belt” circulation of the great Atlantic Ocean currents over the past 240 years. For instance, solar-driven changes in temperature, and in the volume of freshwater output from the Arctic, cause variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic 5-20 years later.

These previously undocumented results have been published in the journal Physical Geography. They make it difficult to maintain that changes in solar activity play an insignificant role in climate change, especially over the Arctic.


Ego Dominus Tuus

The hallmark of good science is the testing of a plausible hypothesis that is then either supported or rejected by the evidence. The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.

It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of “preventing catastrophic climate change.”

Bill Clinton used to sum up politics by saying, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Now we can fairly sum up climate change by saying, “It’s the Sun, stupid!” """"

This type of objective, fact-based research (rather than ideology-based) might ruin an eco-bot's day. Given Dr. Soon's research, the eco-bot can't really pin global warming on anyone, even Cheney and GOP! Soon, a Harvard astrophysicist and sun researcher (a bit beyond Al Gore, Harvard alcoholic), has over the last few years produced a number of articles criticizing the IPCC/Mann models. He still claims solar activity, not CO2, accounts for most global warming (–that is, assuming the temp data is correct–still an issue).

Unfortunately, some petroleum people did contribute a bit of cash to Soon’s research, so the KOS lemmings automatically assumed he was in the pocket of Big Oil, which is not a valid argument: simply because Dr. X receives some money from a corporation–-or even has support from those villainous repubs–-does not prove bias. It’s relevant, but not proof. AGW researchers take money from oil companies as well (BO's eco-guy, Chu worked for BP)). Dr. Soon has become public enemy #1 for the Mann/Hansen/IPCC groupies, though he certainly knows more about the atmospheric hard-science than the climate “modellers,” or a Gorean at the KOS party-house, even those KOS grafix experts.

UCSB physicist resigns over global warming

Hal Lewis/Resignation from the American Physical Society:

""When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?


How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.


It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.""  

Wow.  Res ipsa  loquitur. 

Science: Real (EO Wilson), and Bogus (Al Gore)

"With sociobiology prospering, Wilson has carried his research into the full arena of human knowledge, publishing the hugely ambitious Consilience in 1998, in which he developed his ideas about gene-culture co-evolution further and resurrected CP Snow's efforts to conjoin the "two cultures". In fact, Wilson's arguments are more fundamental and persuasive than Snow's; works on evolution, like Sociobiology and Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, have been absorbed into western cultural life as neatly as any neo-Darwinist could have predicted.

"He is," says Ian McEwan, "a scientific materialist who warmly embraces the diversity of human achievement - including religion and art, which he sees in evolutionary terms. One of his tasks has been to further the Enlightenment project of absorbing the social sciences into science proper; another has been to find a sound ethical basis for ecological thinking. He is fundamentally a rational optimist who shows us the beauty of the narrative of life on earth. He is living proof that materialism need not be a bleak world view.""

EOWilson



I read Wilson’s Consilience a few years ago and was somewhat impressed, though he may over-simplify a few issues (in regards to ethics and the biological evidence for species-altruism, for one). While he offers quite a bit of support for his socio-biological ideas, he, like his colleague Dawkins (tho' Doc Dawkins a bit more strident in tone than EO), tends to a sort of reductionism which might irritate some political or ethically-oriented writers--(and few liberal hacks shrieking 24/7 about what they take to be "ethics" have troubled with Hume on the fact-value distinction, or Bentham 101, or the cliffsnotes to Plato's Republic for that matter). Most philosophical types who I am acquainted with who bothered to read Consilience objected to it, but they are rarely able to formulate their objections. Many philosophers tend to be sort of Kantian, if not theists, more often than they are materialists; thus, Darwin, if not biology as a whole, is taken to be wrong-- or at least questionable--owing to its materialist, deterministic grounds. Or they are Humean sorts of skeptics and subjectivists, and while generally supportive of the methods and ends of the physical sciences, they often point out the contingent and provisional nature of much inductive research, even that of biology and medicine.

We here at Contingencies, however, contend there are no good grounds for upholding Kantian idealism (or theology for that matter), nor for immaterial conceptions of mind, nor for the more extreme forms of Humean skepticism (--tho' in many situations, doubts about causality or any absolute inductive knowledge ARE more than warranted, as in the "social sciences"). And obviously Darwinian accounts of evolution and natural selection as well as Mendelian genetics and many other modern biological concepts have been established. Thus the burden rests on idealists to disprove Darwin, if not materialism, which they have failed to do; the Intelligent Design argument, however subtle and complex, being the latest theological fiasco--tho' the IDT people (who are NOT the same as the fundies or biblethumpers who have made use of IDT) raised one valid point-- Darwinism still has not provided a complete account of evolution: Father Darwin was no biochemist, for one. Yet there is a sort of naive Darwinian leftist, nearly as pernicious as the fundamentalist or dogmatic xtian (or muslim, jew etc.), who quotes Darwin and then some marxist-multiculturalist BS --or, Osiris forbid, Al Gore--as if they were equivalent. Hah. Darwinism does not offer any comforting assurances or utopian ideology for the liberal--or conservative--do-gooder.


and now for something completely different from Big Al:

"The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge."

SO much for unbiased research, data-gathering, and the sound biological science that Wilson practices. By what means were the problems associated with biodiversity, justifying altruism, sustainability, global warming (and the big issue of proving "anthropic" cause---some evidence suggests global warming and ozone depletion are natural phenomena) converted into a "generational mission," a "moral purpose" or "spiritual challenge"? Maybe they became so in Gore's mystical vision of the protestant-buddhist Verde. Big Al unlikely knows nitrogen oxide from nirvana, but that doesn't stop the Gore-Bot liberal nurseys from worshipping him. Cactus Ed Abbey would hisself have had a effective solution for the pathetic phucks who take Gore to be some scientist---or philosopher: pocka pocka pocka.

Freeman Dyson on The Dogma of Global Warming


Ah some clear-headed thinking from Doc Dyson guaran-f-n-teed to irk the faithful of the Church of Al-Gore-in-the-Field:

"""My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."""""



Dyson

Science: Real (EO Wilson), and Bogus (Al Gore) (Cont. retrofit)

"With sociobiology prospering, Wilson has carried his research into the full arena of human knowledge, publishing the hugely ambitious Consilience in 1998, in which he developed his ideas about gene-culture co-evolution further and resurrected CP Snow's efforts to conjoin the "two cultures". In fact, Wilson's arguments are more fundamental and persuasive than Snow's; works on evolution, like Sociobiology and Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, have been absorbed into western cultural life as neatly as any neo-Darwinist could have predicted.

"He is," says Ian McEwan, "a scientific materialist who warmly embraces the diversity of human achievement - including religion and art, which he sees in evolutionary terms. One of his tasks has been to further the Enlightenment project of absorbing the social sciences into science proper; another has been to find a sound ethical basis for ecological thinking. He is fundamentally a rational optimist who shows us the beauty of the narrative of life on earth. He is living proof that materialism need not be a bleak world view.""

EOWilson



I read Wilson’s "Consilience" a few years ago and was quite impressed. While Wilson may over-simplify a few issues (in regards to the biological evidence for species-altruism, for one), he offers quite a bit of support for his socio-biological ideas; Wilson, like his colleague Dawkins (tho' Doc Dawkins a bit more strident in tone than EO), tends to a sort of reductionism which might irritate some political or ethically-oriented writers--(and few liberal hacks shrieking 24/7 about what they take to be "ethics" have troubled with Hume on the fact-value distinction, or the cliffsnotes to Plato's Republic for that matter). Most philosophical types who I am acquainted with who bothered to read Consilience objected to it, but they are rarely able to formulate their objections. Many philosophers tend to be sort of Kantian idealists (not to be confused with Henry-Fonda idealists), if not theists, more often than they are materialists; thus, Darwin, if not biology as a whole, is taken to be wrong-- or at least questionable--owing to its determinist-naturalist grounds. The idealists rarely offer any convincing arguments showing the real problems with strict determinism.

We here at Contingencies, however, contend there are no good grounds for upholding Kantian idealism (or theology for that matter)--though the First Critique, however jargon-ridden, should at least be kept on the intellectual jukebox (Kant's synthetic a priori rather "proto-cognitivist" anyway)--nor for the more extreme forms of Humean skepticism--tho' in many situations, doubts about causality or any absolute inductive knowledge ARE more than warranted, as in the "social sciences". (Those few new-agey narcissists who mistake Niels Bohr and quantum mechanics for evidence of mystic idealism may be safely ignored). The Chomskyan sorts of "Cartesian rationalists" have raised a few interesting issues regarding innateness (and a prioricity in trad. terms), yet those issues and the supposed "Universal Grammar" do not disprove naturalism, though the relation of cognition to the brain's hard-wiring--to neurology-- has not been conclusively established (especially in regards to intention and higher order thinking)--most mortals will have little or nothing to say on that topic anyway.

Darwinian accounts of evolution and natural selection as well as Mendelian genetics and many other modern biological concepts have been established. Thus the burden rests on idealists to disprove Darwin, if not materialism, which they have failed to do; the Intelligent Design argument, however subtle and complex, being the latest theological fiasco--tho' the IDT people (who are NOT the same as the fundies or biblethumpers who have made use of IDT) raised one valid point-- Darwinism still has not provided a complete account of evolution: Father Darwin was no biochemist, for one. The IDT people often commit the ad ignorantium sort of fallacy: the theory of Darwinian evo. still has gaps; therefore, "God" must exist to explain the gaps. NICHT. There are, however, sort of naive leftists, nearly as pernicious as the fundamentalist or dogmatic xtian (or muslim, jew etc.), who quote Darwin and then some marxist-multiculturalist PC BS --or, Osiris forbid, Al Gore--as if they were equivalent. Hah. Darwinism does not offer any comforting assurances or utopian ideology for the liberal--or conservative--do-gooder.


and now for something completely different from Big Al:

"The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge."

SO much for unbiased research, data-gathering, and the sound biological science that Wilson practices. By what means were the problems associated with global warming (and the big issue of proving "anthropic" cause---some evidence suggests global warming and ozone depletion are natural phenomena) converted into a "generational mission," a "moral purpose" or "spiritual challenge"? Maybe they became so in Gore's mystical vision of the protestant-buddhist Verde. Big Al unlikely knows C02 from karma, but that doesn't stop the Gore-Bot liberal nurseys from worshipping him.

Alex C. on Al G.

"Al Gore's Peace Prize"
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

""""It's As Ridiculous As If They'd Given Goebbels One in 1938""""

"""""Put this one up on the shelf of shame, right next to Henry Kissinger's, or the peace prize they gave to Kofi Annan and the entire UN in 2001, sandwiched between the UN's okay for the bombing of Serbia, the killing of untold numbers of Iraqis, many of them babies and children in the years of sanctions, and its greenlight for the bombing of Baghdad in 2003. In 1998 the Nobel crowd gave the prize to Medecins Sans Frontieres, whose co-founder Bernard Kouchner is now France's foreign secretary urging the bombing of Iran. Like Gore, Kouchner was a rabid advocate of the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia and onslaughts on Serbia.""""

We are not worthy. Cockburn realizes that Gore, like Hillary, is "Them." Perhaps Gore no longer has as much "Them" as a Dick Cheney's Them, but Them nonetheless. Clinton/Gore phucked up. That's the Res Ipsa Loquitur of Democratic politics of the last 15 years. They could have done great things, implemented reforms, taken on the corporate and financial oligarchies. Instead, Bill-Al decided to play it safe, accomodate, move to the right, while increasing bureaucracy (though in some cases, Clinton/Gore cut needed infrastructure--Gore in fact slashed funding for environmental research). Gore's the role model for like liberal protestant-stoners everywhere who think if software executives and IT barons just start to recycle and eat tofu everything will be kosher.


Gore's new greenish turn is more or less calculated and corporate as well. Global warming rates as a pseudo-issue compared to peak oil, to war, to nuclear weapons problems, to theocracy. The Inconvenient Truth was more corporate-sponsored liberalism. What's more, Al fails to mention all the decent arguments why CO2 is not the culprit.

""""The most often cited reconstructed global average temperature curves (themselves somewhat tenuous, see below) show increases in global mean temperature of approximately 0.5-1 C in the last 100 years. Let us compare this to the extremes of temperature to which humans routinely adapt. Humans have thrived in every possible ecological niche on the planet, from deserts to tropical forests to the North Polar Regions, since well before present technological advances. These environments show mean temperature differences of as much as 50 C or more. Many of these environments also show day to night and seasonal differences of as much as 20-50 C. A sudden 0.5-1 C increase in mean annual temperature (not spread over 100 years) would be imperceptible to any human and indeed could barely be detected using all of the methods of the modern scientific enterprise."""""

Rancourt

And that's no Freeper: but a Canadian scientist, and green showing the BS of Gore's pseudo-environmentalism. The temperature curves themselves are problematic: the margin of error could possibly be sufficient to show that the supposed rises in temperature due to CO2 (natural or anthropic, Al?) are negligible. Phuck Al Gore, that phony corporate lackey.

Al Cockburn on Al Gore's flim-flam environmentalism



"""""".....There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution. Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments. By the sixteenth century, long after the world had sailed safely through the end of the first millennium, Pope Leo X financed the reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica by offering a "plenary" indulgence, guaranteed to release a soul from purgatory."""""


Hah. Even an old-school marxist journalist such as Cockburn (with a few scientist-stringers, of course) outdoes the Gorean faithful when he puts his noggin to it. Comrade Cockburn's rants are an acquired taste, and he IS rather misguided on many things, but better some fairly honest, data-driven leftism--- even if misguided on occasion--- than suburban, PC liberal- emotivists.

EL Pollo Gore-Do may not be the worst person in American politics (compared to say a MittBot Romney, or Bushco, or even Hillarity, Gore's pretty benign), but Chairman Al does seem rather fond of alarming people with all sorts of bogus research (however in fairness to the greenhousers, there are some who dispute Cockburn's dismissals). Moreover, as Cockburn realizes, the greenhousers' scare tactics are often a type of deception: politics is not only defined by the "climate crisis" (perhaps some greens might recall the record profits posted by Exxon and other petroleum giants over the last few years: that's a crisis as well, as is, well, theocracy, whether xtian, muslims, or jew). At the very least, claims regarding human-caused global warming should be not be accepted as fact (or, Osiris forbid, dogma of the Church of Gore) until all the facts are in (and the IPCC has itself not reached a consensus--a point which Cockburn addresses in a more recent essay). Either way, we here at Contingencies doubt that Gore-do, a half-assed journalist before joining the American political carnival, knows photosynthesis (which, btw, accounts for most CO2 emissions, hepcats) from his favorite tofu-fajitas recipe.

No on Prop. 23

LA Times/Prop. 23:

""""Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere, warming temperatures on land and in the oceans, according to scientific studies. California has begun to feel the effects, with rising sea levels, the disruption of habitats for plants and animals, and diminishing mountain snowpacks that are critical to the state's water supply.


California's global warming law, also known as AB 32, is the most sweeping in the nation, requiring greenhouse gas pollution to be slashed to 1990 levels by the end of the decade, and setting a goal of an 80% reduction by mid-century.


Over time, the law would affect nearly every industry and household in the state, with regulations to cut the carbon intensity of gasoline, require auto companies to build more fuel-efficient cars, force electrical utilities to switch to solar and wind energy, make buildings and appliances more energy-efficient and encourage denser development with access to public transportation.

Vote NO on 23.

Arsenic-based life study flawed

NASA*::

""""Redfield blogged a scathing attack on Saturday. Over the weekend, a few other scientists took to the Internet as well. Was this merely a case of a few isolated cranks? To find out, I reached out to a dozen experts on Monday. Almost unanimously, they think the NASA scientists have failed to make their case. "It would be really cool if such a bug existed," said San Diego State University's Forest Rohwer, a microbiologist who looks for new species of bacteria and viruses in coral reefs. But, he added, "none of the arguments are very convincing on their own." That was about as positive as the critics could get. "This paper should not have been published," said Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado.""""

The hasty, conclusionary thinking typical of the NASA researchers--"we've discovered a new form of life"!---might be considered symptomatic of corporate research, or what one might term the Factoid-as- Entertainment business ( Factoid-bots live for the newest research or pop-science discovery; paraphrasing that clever factoid-positivist Bertrand Russelll, provide a necessarily true argument that the world didn't start yesterday).

Al Gore did much the same via his pitch of global warming, overlooking many difficult scientific issues (ie, proving whether natural or manmade CO2 results in warming, for one) jumping to conclusions, thus creating both mindless "climate advocates" and a yokel backlash. Uncertainty doesn't move product.

Huntsman, cont.

LA TIMES:

"Addressing Perry’s stated skepticism of theories of evolution and climate change, Huntsman tweeted, “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Almost immediately after that, he trained his fire on the president, saying “With the jobs crisis this country faces, President Obama should be calling Congress back to DC, not going on a 10-day vacation.”

Obviously feeling liberated, Huntsman then started to riff: “Wonder if a tweet where I admit how much I like Captain Beefheart will make the followers skyrocket even more!” he questioned. (Huntsman used to play keyboards in a rock band, not that that explains his fondness for the esoteric Beefheart.)"

Quite focking copacetic Jonny yet I doubt Don VV were he still present in this dimension would reciprocate the sentiment.

Pena

Dykes on Karl Popper (update)

Contingencies announces an exciting new series of posts on Karl Popper, and Popper's mistakes, with assistance from one Nicholas Dykes, an English writer and philosopher of science (that does not mean, except to the dysfunctional, that we completely buy libertarianism, or the Objectivism that Dykes sometimes leans towards (as in Ayn-Randian Ob.). Regardless, Dykes brings up some important points criticizing Popper's "Critical Rationalism", as the following passages indicate:

""""Popper built his philosophy on foundations borrowed from Hume and Kant. His first premise was wholehearted acceptance of Hume's attack on induction. The second, to be addressed in the next section, was agreement with Kant's view that it is our ideas which give form to reality, not reality which gives form to our ideas.

Hume, whom Popper called "one of the most rational minds of all ages" [PKP2 1019], is renowned for elaborating the 'problem of induction' - a supposedly logical proof that generalisations from observation are invalid. Most later philosophers have accepted Hume's arguments, and libraries have been filled with attempts to solve his 'problem.'

Popper thought he had the answer. "I believed I had solved the problem of induction by the simple discovery that induction by repetition did not exist" [UNQ 52; c.f. OKN 1ff & PKP2 1115]. What really took place, according to Popper, was CR, knowledge advancing by means of conjecture and refutation: "... in my view here is no such thing as induction" [LSCD 40]; "what characterises the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested" [LSCD 42].""""

Good, if a somewhat naive reading of Hume's points on induction. Not so naive readings would consist of awareness of undecidability of various issues, whether in sciences or social sciences. The current problems with identifying all the causal factors associated with global warming (ie CO2: culprit or benign? most likely benign) and atmospheric physics somewhat Humean. Few humans would care to wager on weather predictions for say October, or the stock market, or World Series). At the same time, unpredictable is not the same as undetermined (a point Bricmont makes, rather forcefully, and with boo-coo partial derivatives).

Dykes does not address falsification in much depth either; we might also question whether Hume's skepticism regarding induction entails Popper's falsification ("what characterises the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested"). Popper tends to be a bit "conclusionary" himself; at the same time, much empirical research (whether in sciences, economics, social science, history, etc) does often relate to Popperian themes (even statisticians are ad hoc Popperians. Confidence intervals, margins of error, sampling problems---not to say reliability of any data. That is Popperian (or perhaps Kuhnian, who updates KP)).

""""Hume, said Popper, had shown that: "there is no argument of reason which permits an inference from one case to another... and I completely agree" [OKN 96]. Elsewhere he referred to induction as "a myth" which had been "exploded" by Hume [UNQ 80]. He further asserted that "There is no rule of inductive inference - inference leading to theories or universal laws - ever proposed which can be taken seriously even for a minute" [UNQ 146-7; see also RASC 31].

The Problem with 'The Problem'

Popper's solution was certainly correct in one respect. The problem of induction would indeed vanish if there were no such thing as induction. However, the issue would be resolved much more positively were it to turn out that Hume had been wrong, and that there never had been any problem with induction in the first place. And, in point of fact, this is the case. Despite his great skill as a thinker and writer, Hume missed the point. Induction does not depend for its validity on observation, but on the Law of Identity.

Hume stated, in essence, that since all ideas are derived from experience we cannot have any valid ideas about future events - which have yet to be experienced. He therefore denied that the past can give us any information about the future. He further denied that there is any necessary connection between cause and effect. We experience only repeated instances, we cannot experience any "power" that actually causes events to take place. Events are entirely "loose and separate.... conjoined but never connected."8

According to Hume, then, one has no guarantee that the hawthorn in an English hedge will not bear grapes next autumn, nor that the thistles in a nearby field won't produce figs. The expectation that the thorn will produce red berries, and the thistles purple flowers, is merely the result of "regular conjunction" which induces an "inference of the understanding."9 In Hume's view, there is no such thing as objective identity, there is only subjective "custom" or "habit."

However, Hume also wrote: "When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false"10 and the idea that one might gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles is surely absurd enough to qualify. And false is what Hume's opinions most certainly are. Left standing, they lead to what he himself called "the flattest of all contradictions, viz. that it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.""""""

OK, but at the same time, the law of identity is a logical law, and analytically true: 5 squared will always equal 25. The pythagorean theorem (identities regarding the relationship of a right triangle) holds whereever you are, as does modus ponens or the law of non-contradiction and other logical givens (some freaks might dispute the LONC: they are mistaken). But a rose might be red this year, white next year, or non-existent. The naive reader of Hume (or Popper) utters "the bastard's saying inductive knowledge, indeed science, is impossible"! Yet the real point concerns epistemology: whatever sort of knowledge induction is, it is NOT logical and mathematical. Yes, ceteris paribus as they say, the roses will probably be red, and our observations about regular order to nature will be confirmed, and we will grant, reluctantly, that Hume (and his disciple Popper) may have overstated the case for subjectivity. But that "that bush with red roses will, nearly with certainty, have red roses next year" is not necessary in the sense of 5 squared equals 25; a botanist knowledgable in Mendelian genetics could hardly predict the flower's exact shape or form or color.

Dykes errors at least slightly here: evolution itself shows adaptationism (as Popper, often somewhat Darwinian, realized). What appear to be regularities often are not (especially over centuries); probability always enters the picture with inductive knowledge, and in many cases, even with hard sciences (say medicine) things may remain unresolved; Wittgenstein in the Tractatus often seemed somewhat Humean: "We cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present. Superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus." (TLP, 5.1361). At the very least inductive knowledge is NOT the same as the axiomatic knowledge of logic and mathematics, whether one holds that axiomatic knolwedge to be a priori or not.

"""""The crux of the case against Hume was stated in 1916 by H.W.B. Joseph in An Introduction to Logic: "A thing, to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is. To assert a causal connexion between a and x implies that a acts as it does because it is what it is; because, in fact, it is a. So long therefore as it is a, it must act thus; and to assert that it may act otherwise on a subsequent occasion is to assert that what is a is something else than the a which it is declared to be."12 Hume's whole argument - persuasive though it may be - is, to borrow Joseph's words, "in flat conflict with the Law of Identity."13

Existence implies identity. It is not possible to exist without being something, and a thing can only be what it is: A is A. Any actions of that thing form part of its identity: "the way in which it acts must be regarded as a partial expression of what it is."14 Thus to deny any connection between a thing, its actions, and their consequences, is to assert that the thing is not what it is; it is to defy the Law of Identity.

It is not necessary to prolong this discussion. Entities exist. They possess identity. By careful observation - free from preconception - we are able to discover the identities of the entities we observe. Thereafter, we are fully entitled to assume that like entities will cause like events, the form of inference we call induction. And, because it rests on the axiom of the Law of Identity, correct induction - free from contradiction - is a valid route to knowledge. The first premise of CR is therefore false."""""

That "law" works with equations, functions, numbers, argument forms. Does it work with roses or roosters? Not quite. There's an egg. Safe bet that if a chick hatches it will have one head. Then after a few years, a two-headed bird appears! Sacre bleu! St. Hume at work again.

"""""There is nonetheless a substantial grain of truth in Hume's position, or few philosophers would have followed him. The grain lies in the precision of our knowledge of future events. Hume denied all knowledge of the future because we can have no experience of it. As we have seen, this is not true, it overlooks the Law of Identity. What is true, is that our prediction of events is limited by the unforeseeable. An 'O' ring may fail and destroy an otherwise reliable spacecraft; an icy road surface may cause a pristine Rolls-Royce to crash. For, no matter how sound our judgement nor wide our experience, we cannot possibly have complete, certain and absolute knowledge of future events. We are not omniscient: all kinds of unforeseen happenings may intervene to spoil even the best laid of our plans. Further, new information about old subjects continuously comes to light and, over time, things can evolve or change. Nonetheless, armed with the Law of Identity, there is no reason to allow the unforeseeable to turn us into sceptics. The universe is not a series of "loose and separate events" any more than time is a series of discrete, unrelated segments of duration.

It should also be noted that, in fact, all knowledge of entities, and all knowledge of language, is acquired inductively. A child's knowledge of apples, for example, is based on a very limited sampling. A student's knowledge of the word 'inference' is founded on a similarly narrow acquaintance. If it were true that induction is a myth, then all knowledge of external reality, all language, and all human thought - which depends on knowledge of reality and on language - would be myths as well, including, of course, CR...."

That's the naive reading of Hume again. Hume read his Newton fairly closely (supposedly), and does not really suggest radical skepticism: he's saying inductive knowledge, whatever it is, does not operate like deductive knowledge operates. Yes, the cannonball trajectory, if we know all the parameters and initial conditions (another problem), will nearly with certainty follow a predictable parabolic path. Yet whatever it is that gives that regularity is not at all the same as the pythagorean theorem. It's damn near certain, but not necessary (that's not to suggest that we take a naive reading of quantum physics and uphold "non-locality" either; locality appears to be the default position (as Bricmont also argues). Hume arguably does not deny determinism, and is not as subjective as Dykes believes, nor is Popper: Hume's doing epistemology, not physics. If determinism does hold for physical reality and our knowledge of the physical world, it's a quite a different type of thinking than the axiomatic thinking of logic and mathematics (though that's not to make claims for any quasi-platonic dualism either).

Dissent: Rational, and not-so-rational.



""Among people who have learned something from the 18th century (say, Voltaire) it is a truism, hardly deserving discussion, that the defense of the right of free expression is not restricted to ideas one approves of, and that it is precisely in the case of ideas found most offensive that these rights must be most vigorously defended.""" (Noam Chomsky)

The Chomsky's not our favorite Ivy League intellectual, but he raises an important point here (whether he himself obeys his own maxim is another matter). The connection to Voltaire and the Enlightenment also might be noted: monarchists had for years, nay centuries, stifled criticism and dissent (as had religious clerics), and that was arguably one of the "historical crimes" which jacobins rightfully objected to (of course when the sans cullottes seized power, they engaged in censorship and communication control as well, as did the Bolsheviks, later-day sans cullottes. So did the nazis).

Authentic democracy depends to some degree on "communication rights". Totalitarianism on the other hand, whether communist or fascist or theocratic, depends on controlling and eliminating those communication rights. Unfortunately, blogs and websites, as much instruments of communication as the old daily newspaper (regardless of the grumbles of a few metro editors), have over the last few years become ever more controlled, moderated, policed: Bukharins, Goebbels, and J-edgars rule the cyber-roosts to a large extent.

In his introduction to a new printing of Orwell's 1984, the novelist Thomas Pynchon recently suggested that the Net could become some crypto-totalitarian zone, "a development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old 20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches could only dream about." Pynchon's prognostication should not be dismissed out of hand. Cyber-Bukharins are on the rise. We here at Contingencies contend that liberal sites–-like a DailyKOS–-are generally as guilty as the rightist-bonehead sites in that regard, regardless if the Kossack’s intentions rate higher on the Benevolmeter. Troll-paranoia, for instance, on KOS and similar sites has resulted in all sorts of moderation guidelines and procedures. “Troll” doesn’t really even mean what it used to mean: now it connotes something like outsider, dissenter, renegade, crypto-fascist-on-meth, etc. Formerly on newsgroups it had more of a hacker connotation: real trolls didn’t merely say speculate on Hillary’s pubic hair style on a dem site, but like played pranks, launched viruses, engaged in ID theft, phucked things up.

The membership/registration jazz, and the mandatory login/pass (or worse, the pinche verification capchas) seems pretty anal really: on the old sites you
just posted something and let it fly (wordpress is a bit better, but many
wordpress sites are heavily moderated as well). In certain contexts some moderation or deletion is understandable (like deleting some hick conspiracy buff afflicted with verbal diarrhea who remains convinced that Dick Cheney piloted the planes into WTC on 9-11), at least if people agree not to use obscenity or discuss their favorite sapphic erotica DVDs.

---------------

A rather sullen and resentful scribbler aka Demonweed shows the characteristics of the cyber-Bukharin. AS his regular brain-farts indicate, he has difficulties with writing, and with rationality. Apparently, D-w doesn’t quite know what a valid argument consists of, either, regardless of his supposed interest in philosophical hype and trite bon-mots from the Greats (Russell!!! What a joke. D-w. would not know the theory of logical types from his TCP-IP settings). D.w. in fact revealed his real character with a bon-mot from Dan Quayle, offered sans irony or sarcasm.

The cyber-Bukharin like Demonwind however is usually a clever ghoul. He writes things which appear to be profound. He indulges in ideology. He attempts lightweight satire or invective, while generally avoiding any sort of fact-based argument. Demonweed in fact lost his ass on some global warming sites: not merely due to rightist-boneheads (yet even the anti-AGW writing of a Bonehead like Crichton should not be dismissed), but by all sorts of people (including some non-conservatives) who actually know something about the difficulties associated with the science, rather than the hype, of AGW (i.e., see Dennis Rancourt, canadian physicist, green, and AGW skeptic). Then, after his trashing, D-weed started into his usual milquetoast defamations, bogus inferences, and preacher-speak: anyone who objects to that great liberal Al Gore and his Chevy-sponsored eco-politics supports the Republicans, if not the aims of fascism itself! Suffer fools gladly.

Al Gore more or less flunked his science courses at Harvard, misrepresented
evidence of AGW (as was proven when the Feds themselves corrected Mann, the
hockey stick guy); the political record of Big Al, who took Occi money for
years, is a few baby steps away from say Reagan’s. But who cares: Gore’s the
hero of the PC bogus suburban-greens.

The Demonweed sort of control freaks, now proliferating at an alarming rate, should not be mistaken for Hunter S. Thompson like gonzo hipsters either. D-weed's own blog, a collection of moralisms and generalized idiocies (he hasn't quite grasped what inductive reasoning--ie. economics-- entails either) demonstrates how square he really izz: “What You Should Think”. Hah. Sounds about like a collection of Paul Craig Roberts columns (and reads like that as well, at least if one can make it past 3 or 4 paragraphs of humorless, rhetorical sludge).

One could continue, ad nauseum. Even a few ancient scribes, however, knew the score in regards to the politics of language: "Thou shalt not bear false witness". Consider that carefully, Demonweeds.

What is a lie to a pragmatist? (Cont. retrofit).


Pragmatists, idealists (at least some), mystics, and postmodernists generally assert that truth is not a matter of confirming some alleged facts, "out there", in an objective, empirically-knowable world. There are various differences between these groups, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that they uphold some version of William James' concept of pragmatism: that truth always has some relation to usefulness, whether that truth relates to the sciences, social sciences, humanities, etc. The pragmatist indeed prides himself on his ability to see "truth" as somewhat provisional.


Old-fashioned Truth


(However, the "is" means inclusion--class membership---and not equality (which would be bi-conditional) nor cause. I.e, "All prime numbers are included in the set of natural numbers." So it's a conditional, really (as Frege translated it, I believe). Moreover Aristotle's Square works dandy with modern predicate-logic as well, ala universal and existential quantifiers, or with summation signs for the I and O). The "syllogistic" then outlines the rules of inference for various forms created from this template. )

The Cash Value of Truth model has of course been criticized, and not without reason. While in some contexts--say medicine--utility would seem to be critical (--testing the functionality of a pharmaceutical, say)--in others, whether history or law, or various social sciences, any modifications of the actual facts to fit some ideology might conceivably result in highly unethical situations. Some naive AGW advocates, to take a contemporary instance, argue that while Gore's eco-movie, An Inconvenient Truth, may not be completely correct in terms of the science, good--or "awareness"-- will come out of the movie and Gore's celebrity Green status. GW Skeptics, including professional scientists, on the other hand allege that Gore not only manipulated and exaggerated the dangers, but in some cases made flat-out errors, as with the "hockey stick" chart of supposed rising temperatures.

(Traditional pragmatists such as James or Peirce would have unlikely agreed to that sort of deception, anyway: proceeding via Jamesian terms, the authentic pragmatist (or pragmaticist) would require experimental evidence (i.e. chem. lab) of CO2 substantially increasing radiation (heat) before giving his assent to the AGW hypothesis, and would probably not agree to mere GW "models" based on shaky inferential evidence regarding temperatures.)

Bertrand Russell noted a few potential problems entailed by "utopian pragmatism" in regards to John Dewey's philosophy of education. If the pragmatist's goal is to create a harmonious community, or even harmonious classroom, or "well-integrated self,"---or hip ecotopia--- then it would seem the pragmatist might "shape" facts (say historical, scientific, or economic facts, or even literary narratives) to fit his pedagogy--making the students see the world through rose-tinted glasses, more or less (or perhaps green-, or red tinted glasses, in green or marxist indoctrination centers). Various theologically-oriented pragmatists might do the same with religious texts: Paddy McMuffin might grant that he cannot verify Scripture, but he insists it's good for you, regardless.

Assuming the that "fact-shaping-process" (mendacity, in old-fashioned terms) resulted in a harmonious community and well-balanced individuals (or even a supremely efficient proletarian State), then pragmatists would grant, it would seem, that the right thing had been done. And other sorts of similar absurdities, possibly Orwellian, resulting from pragmatism (or any ideology where truth is solely a matter of functionality) across the board could be realized. The documented crimes against humanity of stalinism or fascism could be eliminated from history curriculums because they are too negative; or some eco-bureaucrats suppress scientific evidence disproving a politically-correct model of global warming because it's considered too threatening to their own eco-political vision. AS Russell realized, politics should never override historical or scientific facts, regardless of the visions of bureaucrat-pragmatists.

Barack Obama's homie, David Brooks

Alex Cockburn recently penned some thoughts on Obama's supposed shift to the right:

"...one of the New York Times’s extensive stable of neo-conservative columnists, David Brooks, was fretting that a statement Obama had made after Bush’s Knesset speech did indeed constitute “appeasement”, indicating he had drifted off into “Noam Chomskyland”. Obama’s sin had been to say that “it’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to build a new Lebanese consensus,” focusing on electoral reform, an end to a corrupt patronage system and the promotion of an equitable economy.

So anguished was Brooks by these dread prospects that he phoned Obama who promptly furnished answers resoundingly mollifying the columnist’s suspicions. According to Brooks, Obama said that “in some ways he’d be tougher than the Bush administration”, doing more, to take one specific example, to arm the Lebanese military. (This schedules a bloodbath in Lebanon in Year One or Two of the Obama administration.) Obama’s bottom line to Brooks was straight-up Caesarism: “The [U.S.] generals are light-years ahead of the civilians. They are trying to get the job done rather than look tough.”

Representin', y'all

Those few dissenting anti-B.O. voices on KOS (now mostly moderated, banned, deleted) do not appear to be so off-the-mark after all. Obama's response to Bush's Knesset speech featured other interesting allusions which Cockburn neglected to mention, including a positive reference to those two GOP hepcats, Reagan and Nixon: "Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power - including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria." Contingencies doesn't really trip on that, but it would seem that many an old-school Demo might.

Americans should expect General Obama to appear a few weeks after his electoral victory in 11/2008. (insta-qualification: though one might object to Cockburn's occasional Leninist aspects {tho' Cockburn seems une petite romantique for marxist orthodoxy), A.C. did, with assistance from quite a few respected scientists, point out corp-shill Al Gore's shoddy research in regards to global warming. Of course that hasn't stopped Obama from embracing Gore's pop-green agenda....(sponsored by Chevy, Chevron, Occi, and many others)

Floods--climate change in its early stages

McKibben/LA Times

"There are no grounds for optimism in this fight against the weather. So far we've only increased the temperature of the planet about a degree, and that's been enough to set the Arctic to melting, turn the ocean 30% more acidic and make the atmosphere about 4% wetter, loading the dice for floods. Climatologists predict that unless we kick oil, gas and coal habits very, very fast, the increase in temperature will be 4 or 5 degrees before the century is out. If one degree does the damage we're seeing at the moment, we'd be fools to find out what 4 degrees will look like.


But foolishness is carrying the day at the moment. Consider the fecklessness Washington has shown on climate. Just last month, the House voted by a 56-vote margin to deny that climate change was real. It's like an entire chamber full of Neville Chamberlains, hopeful that they can wish trouble away.


There's no one we can shoot to make global warming disappear. But we could, if we wanted, devote the scale of resources we've spent in the last decade invading Iraq and Afghanistan to the task of retooling our energy infrastructure. That's the kind of commitment it would take, an effort we usually seem to muster only in the face of military threat. But the danger that comes from climate change is every bit as real, and in the long run far greater, than anything Al Qaeda could throw at us. We're really fighting for our civilization, as people in the lower Mississippi will spend the next few weeks finding out.""

Let's not forget that the Teabugger-led House recently voted to deny that climate change was occurring .