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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 29, 2011 - 10:21am PT
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The Great Global Warming Fizzle The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom.
By BRET STEPHENS
How do religions die? Generally they don't, which probably explains why there's so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastrians converted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can't kill what wasn't there to begin with.
Still, Zeus and Apollo are no longer with us, and neither are Odin and Thor. Among the secular gods, Marx is mostly dead and Freud is totally so. Something did away with them, and it's worth asking what.
Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.
As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.
This week, the conclave of global warming's cardinals are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for their 17th conference in as many years. The idea is to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire next year, and to require rich countries to pony up $100 billion a year to help poor countries cope with the alleged effects of climate change. This is said to be essential because in 2017 global warming becomes "catastrophic and irreversible," according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.
The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece.
Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds.
All this has been enough to put the Durban political agenda on hold for the time being. But religions don't die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.
That's where the Climategate emails come in. First released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago and recently updated by a fresh batch, the "hide the decline" emails were an endless source of fun and lurid fascination for those of us who had never been convinced by the global-warming thesis in the first place.
But the real reason they mattered is that they introduced a note of caution into an enterprise whose motivating appeal resided in its increasingly frantic forecasts of catastrophe. Papers were withdrawn; source material re-examined. The Himalayan glaciers, it turned out, weren't going to melt in 30 years. Nobody can say for sure how high the seas are likely to rise—if much at all. Greenland isn't turning green. Florida isn't going anywhere.
The reply global warming alarmists have made to these dislosures is that they did nothing to change the underlying science, and only improved it in particulars. So what to make of the U.N.'s latest supposedly authoritative report on extreme weather events, which is tinged with admissions of doubt and uncertainty? Oddly, the report has left climate activists stuttering with rage at what they call its "watered down" predictions. If nothing else, they understand that any belief system, particularly ones as young as global warming, cannot easily survive more than a few ounces of self-doubt.
Meanwhile, the world marches on. On Sunday, 2,232 days will have elapsed since a category 3 hurricane made landfall in the U.S., the longest period in more than a century that the U.S. has been spared a devastating storm. Great religions are wise enough to avoid marking down the exact date when the world comes to an end. Not so for the foolish religions. Expect Mayan cosmology to take a hit to its reputation when the world doesn't end on Dec. 21, 2012. Expect likewise when global warming turns out to be neither catastrophic nor irreversible come 2017.
And there is this: Religions are sustained in the long run by the consolations of their teachings and the charisma of their leaders. With global warming, we have a religion whose leaders are prone to spasms of anger and whose followers are beginning to twitch with boredom. Perhaps that's another way religions die.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 29, 2011 - 11:31am PT
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We know bookworm's view of climate scientists:
In truth, virtually the entire warmist edifice is built around a small, tightly knit coterie of persons (one hesitates to refer to folks with so little respect for the scientific method as scientists)
So really, it is opinions that matter, not facts.
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Ashcroft
Trad climber
SLC, UT
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Nov 29, 2011 - 12:49pm PT
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Maybe bookworm doesn't see the irony of an opinion piece that asserts (without any scientific basis) that anthropogenic climate change has no scientific basis.
Stephens also seems to imply that because world governments are unlikely to do anything about climate change, climate change must not have been a problem after all. Logic like that goes a long way to explaining how we got into our current financial mess. Thank you Wall Street Journal.
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Lennox
climber
just southwest of the center of the universe
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Nov 29, 2011 - 02:56pm PT
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I think bookworm has mentioned before that he teaches AP English Language--he does not have a science background--so it's not surprising that he prefers rhetoric over substance.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:14pm PT
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Bruce that's an enjoyable article although saying it "explains everything" may be bit much.
An interesting (at least to me) observation is the author's apparent assumption that people who believe that the leaked "Climategate" emails suggest wrongdoing on the part of "scientists" are engaged in delusional, although in some ways understandable, thinking.
Seems to me more likely that it's the opposite (that certain folks with a predetermined view of the world cannot stand the idea that some of "scientists" have engaged in scurrilous behavior and so they invent all sorts of preposterous interpretations of straightforward statements).
One prominent scientist who posts on this thread has to this day not acknowledged that scientists (including their administrators) have violated FOIA laws, even though I posted a government report that found exactly that!
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:45pm PT
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People's Rep. of China 16% (87%)
United States 14% (410%)
Russian Federation 10% (264%)
And the predominant sources are;
China, Coal
United States, Natural Gas (or soon to be)
Russia, Oil and Natural gas
China finishes building a multi megawatt coal fired plant every week or so.
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Tony
Trad climber
Pt. Richmond, CA
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Nov 29, 2011 - 11:02pm PT
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I'm reluctant to finally give in to the trolling, but it might also be appropriate, in addition to the per capita rates, to consider how much of the China CO2 emissions are used to produce goods for the US and other developed nations. The same might also apply to Russia.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nov 29, 2011 - 11:14pm PT
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Dr F is actively interested in shutting down industry here and shipping that production over to China.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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COP17 SOUTH AFRICA
Day 2 at the Climate Synod in Durban and all is not well, Canada is the new
great evil and the epic failure of Kyoto is about to be carried out in a
body bag, but then there is also Brazil where economic reality is also
biting hard.
Brazil despite all the propaganda from those that believe in Anthropogenic
Global Warming, wants a “reflection phase” before signing a global economic suicide pact....
..Canada is now the great Satan for wanting to withdraw from the Kyoto
protocol...
more
http://toryaardvark.com/2011/12/01/cop17-day-2-the-gloom-continues/
:)
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Lennox
climber
just southwest of the center of the universe
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Once again you demonstrate your preference for rhetoric over substance. Why don't you quote from the original Science article and provide your own analysis?
The article you linked is written by someone who has an axe to grind, and who cherry-picks from one scientist--who does accept that AGW is happening and only disagrees on it's severity--to attack environmentalists as using AGW to further their nefarious agenda.
Which is something he, ironically, is actually doing himself; because like you he doesn't give a damn about what is really happening and what will happen if all those other scientists are right, and the one who fits in better with his and your selfish agenda is wrong.
And that, "in layman's terms . . ." quote is not from the scientist and is complete made up bullsh|t with no evidence to support it.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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One of the IPCC Inquisitors hard at work at COP17
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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The Secret Life Of Climate Researchers
Our very planet depends on them. Yet they remain nature’s most elusive
scientific species, inhabiting some of the world’s most delicate and
daunting academic environments.
But thanks to new breakthroughs in high speed cameras and email files,
metascientists are finally beginning to understand their mysterious
behaviors and complex social interactions. Tonight on Iowahawk Geographic:
step inside the Secret Life of the Climate Researchers.
http://toryaardvark.com/2011/12/08/the-secret-life-of-climate-researchers/
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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I've been in San Francisco this week at meetings of the American Geophysical Union, 21,000 attendees by one estimate. Thousands are presenting original climate-related research across dozens of different disciplines, drawing on just about every kind of data.
Hallway conversations about the gypsum streak on Mars, Eric Steig takes on the conventional wisdom about what's melting southern ice shelves, a modeler plans her first icebreaker cruise, Richard Alley previews Earth: The Operator's Manual, my niece breaks new ground on the paleoclimatology of Wyoming ... it's a heady show, watching science unfold.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 11, 2011 - 01:42pm PT
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21000 conspirators eh?
Lol.
Yup. The AGU has something like 55,000 members total, about 10,000 of them atmospheric scientists. A massive conspiracy indeed, and that's just the tip of the iceberg -- the AAAS has 110,000, ASA 18,000 ... on and on.
Back home now, I just got my mail and read the 29 Nov issue of EOS, the transactions of the AGU. Topping the front page is an article on hydrological projections (lots of hydrologists at the AGU meetings last week) that leads off with
Motivated by a common interest in establishing data access for climate change impacts analysis...
Sharing the front page is another story from NASA's Heliophysics Science Division, a group I think of every time I see clueless declarations (as many times in this thread!) to the effect that climate scientists "forgot that the sun affects climate!" They did not, the sun is being studied closely with every instrument they have, and studied backward and forward in time.
On page 3, EOS has a carefully non-political piece on the highly political Congressional criticism of the Environmental Protection Agency's R&D activities.
The final page of EOS is their Research Spotlight feature, "Highlighting exciting new research from AGU journals." Of the 8 articles spotlighted, 4 deal directly with climate change, across 4 completely different disciplines.
 High-resolution peatland photos show change with global warming
Was ocean acidification responsible for history's greatest mass extinction? [note: modern ocean acidification, the other place all those gigatons of carbon are going, has been described as global warming's "evil twin."]
Using regional wind-inducing circulation patterns to estimate future rainfall
Measuring carbon uptake by karsts in southwestern China
This broad scientific interest in climate change, with thousands of different research teams contributing parts of the puzzle (because it shows up in so many different kinds of data), was well represented at the AGU meetings last week. It casts only a faint shadow in popular media, though, as evidenced by some of the nonsense that gets posted on this thread.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 14, 2011 - 01:56pm PT
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This is ultimately bad news and could mean that no matter what we do, the viscous cycle of warming is locked in. Say goodbye to Florida (and Bangladesh and a bunch of other places) within a 100 years or less
Published on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by The Independent/UK
Shock as Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Deadly Greenhouse Gas
Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface
by Steve Connor
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.
In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.
"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."
Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
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