Is Pope Francis right on climate change?

[estesbob]

There is another thing to consider. When I was a kid, tornadoes came through the countryside now and then and never made the news. The only people who knew about them were the people in a very limited area. Sometimes nobody witnessed them at all. Now and then I would find a place in the woods where one went through, but nobody knew about it at all. Now, no tornado goes unreported. Why? First, because weather radar now picks them up, or at least the conditions for them. Second, because there are a zillion tornado chasers going out to see and report them. Third, because the population in this rather large rural area has massively increased since I was a kid. Nothing goes unseen.

Similarly if "Sandy " had come ashore on a sparsely populated area of the coast nobody would remember it nor would it even have a name .

 

[tomarin]

I would say the climate is a massively complex phenomenon and the science isn’t settled. And leave it at that.

 

[sps49]

There is another thing to consider. When I was a kid, tornadoes came through the countryside now and then and never made the news. The only people who knew about them were the people in a very limited area. Sometimes nobody witnessed them at all. Now and then I would find a place in the woods where one went through, but nobody knew about it at all. Now, no tornado goes unreported. Why? First, because weather radar now picks them up, or at least the conditions for them. Second, because there are a zillion tornado chasers going out to see and report them. Third, because the population in this rather large rural area has massively increased since I was a kid. Nothing goes unseen.

This is typical of sampling problems for long duration measurements.

We had a big blow in Portland Oregon in '62, the Columbus Day Storm as it was called. Unreal wind gusts and sustained winds, and had it occurred 150 years earlier no one would have known why so many Douglas firs were uprooted or snapped in half.

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is typical of sampling problems for long duration measurements.

We had a big blow in Portland Oregon in '62, the Columbus Day Storm as it was called. Unreal wind gusts and sustained winds, and had it occurred 150 years earlier no one would have known why so many Douglas firs were uprooted or snapped in half.

It still happens without anybody knowing it. Maybe five years ago or so I was in a very large, uninhabited woods; maybe 500 acres or so, and ran across a tornado path. It apparently set down, mowed trees for maybe fifty to a hundred yards, seemingly skipped over a valley, possibly went into a grassy area on the other side of the valley and lifted. Nobody reported it because nobody saw it. But if that woods was settled even by small acreage owners, it would have been known.

 

[sps49]

It still happens without anybody knowing it. Maybe five years ago or so I was in a very large, uninhabited woods; maybe 500 acres or so, and ran across a tornado path. It apparently set down, mowed trees for maybe fifty to a hundred yards, seemingly skipped over a valley, possibly went into a grassy area on the other side of the valley and lifted. Nobody reported it because nobody saw it. But if that woods was settled even by small acreage owners, it would have been known.

I can see that. That storm I mentioned beat up a lot of the Oregon coast. We would get infrequent very small twisters, not dust devils, in Oregon from time to time that no one knew about. In Colorado there were devastating hail falls that no one would know about unless you were in the area and saw the damage yourself, or was caught in it. Sometime you hiked into an area where most of the trees had the leaves knocked off them a from a fast grape size hail dump, nothing but piles of green and white .

 

[lynnvinc]

What you’re describing above is “weather” .

Guess what. Climate is the aggregate of weather, and it affects weather. With increasing heat in earth systems from the continually enhancing GH effect, we can expect stronger heat waves, droughts, more deluges and floods (warmer air holds more water vapor, sucking it out of water bodies, plants, and soil), more wild fires, more intense storms & hurricanes (heat energy turning into kinetic energy under certain conditions), increased disease spread into new areas, crop failures, sea rise from warmer sea expansion and melting glaciers.

Sort of like the nightly news these days … which never mentions AGW, bec it is funded by corporate interests that block the complete truth.

Bec so many people here can’t even take the 1st step of accepting that AGW is real, they have absolutely NO IDEA about all the negative impacts from AGW and how these will be affecting them, their children and progeny, and people around the world, esp the poor.

By God’s grace we have a Pope who isn’t afraid to face the truth and speak out.

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Very Scientific Poll:

I would like to ask fans of the carbon dioxide theory of climate change (esp. Lynn and Karen), if the devastating takedown of Dr. P (see posts 166, 171, 195,200,207-208, 296, 312) has caused your trust in the climate science establishment led by the IPCC to be a) even greater, b) the same, c) somewhat less, or d) a lot less?

If you select a) or b), please 'splain yerself.

cordially,

ferd

Lynn,

Care to be part of the Very Scientific Poll?

 

[tomarin]

President Obama announced a new anti-global warming initiative today - I’m surprised there’s not a thread dedicated to it.

 

[lynnvinc]

Lynn,

Care to be part of the Very Scientific Poll?

Who is Dr. P?

If you mean Pachauri, then he is NOT a climate scientist, but an engineer. Bush didn’t like the climate scientist who headed the IPCC, Sir Houghton, bec Houghton took AGW way too seriously for Bush and was quite strong about it, so Bush agreed to have Pachauri (a non-climate scientist) replace him, thinking Pachauri wouldn’t be so strong (being an Indian). Pachauri just did the best job he could re heading the IPCC and turned out to be strong on AGW, fooling ole Bush.

If the past IPCC report had a few errors and typos which Pachauri didn’t know about at first, I’m not going to thrash him for that.

Y’all can do what you will in excoriating Pachauri, 1000s of climate scientists, the Pope, and me and others at CAF who dare to believe what the scientists are saying,… and go on your merry way refusing to turn off lights not in use and the many other things we need to do to reduce our GHG emissions and other pollutants. If that’s your pleasure…

 

[lynnvinc]

President Obama announced a new anti-global warming initiative today - I’m surprised there’s not a thread dedicated to it.

Environmentalists are already calling it much ado about nothing much; they (we) do not consider Obama an “environmental” president, esp after opening the arctic to dangerous drilling and ramming thru the TPP.

But of course there will be anti-environmentalists having fits and going apoplectic over it…

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

That’s politics again… Political scientists?? Would that include the EPA?

My definition of a political scientist is one who uses a hoax to advance a political agenda

The EPA goes beyond that…it FORCES an environmentalist agenda on people at the point of a gun. The sooner that tyrannical agency is closed down, the sooner America will return to prosperity. Jobs will return from overseas. Employment will soar. and the world will be a better place.

…Of course public opinion matters… our opinions matter if we want to see change. Activism is not a bad thing as been presented here. I would say Jesus and the Apostles were activists for change and that was a good thing!..

Jesus did not use scare tactics or doctored data to promote His change.

The trouble with you people who embrace the “religion” of rabid environmentalism is that you actually believe you are right. You consider it justifiable to use questionable data to strengthen your argument. Environmentalist teachers have no shame sending children home in tears when they tell them that baby polar bears will die because their parents drive an SUV. (By the way…how is that polar bear population doing these days?)

Now I see two people you and sps admitting that no one is saying that the temperature isn’t changing. I see that as a step in the right direction.

Yes. it is an historical fact that the Earth’'s climate has changed hundreds of times. But that fact poses a real problem for you alarmists. What caused all the changes when man was not around? Without an answer to that question, how can an intelligent person arbitrarily blame man for a natural occurrence?

We CAN do a lot more to reduce our emissions and no one is saying that means we have to live like a third world nation, we just have to develop better technology and not more of the same old way which is reliant on fossil fuels. A 20 year low is good yet we can even do better. Perhaps stop buying so many disposable bottles of water will help, less meat, drive less and use more fuel efficient cars and that is the short list, all the things people have gotten accustomed to that are contributing to the excess amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.

snvplastics.com/global-warming-on-plastic-bottles/

The way I see it conservation is a win win win situation. We stop pollution, live more naturally as God intended, as well as lessening the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

So, if the earth isn’t actually cooling, it may possibly be warming. Either way, you conclude that:

1. this is bad;
2. someone is to blame; and
3. massive imposition of socialism on everyone will fix the problem.

Also, by “fix the problem,” presumably, you mean to stop the earth from getting warmer (if that’s what it’s doing) or to stop it from getting any cooler (if that’s what it’s doing). From this, you also deduce that, since you want to prevent the earth from changing temperatures…then at the present, the earth must be at the perfect temperature.

To the extent that mankind’s actions have had an effect on the climate, you must also conclude that mankind is responsible for having caused the earth’s climate (which has fluctuated dramatically over the last few billion years) to reach its current state of perfection, and that it has done so, in large part, through carbon emissions.

So, remind me again, what problem are we trying to solve??

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

The scientific consensus is that the Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming, and that it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. In addition, it is likely that some potential further greenhouse gas warming has been offset by increased aerosols.[2][3][4][5]

Remember I pointed out before that consensus is not science and science is not consensus.

You can get a consensus amongst a group of witch doctors…but it does not mean they are right. One must provide a **verifiable experiment **proving their point.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.— Galileo Galilei

Galileo should know.

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Hi Lynn,

I will conclude, then, that your confidence and trust in the IPCC has not diminished. Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider in light of the following?

1. Despite its pretensions, the IPCC really is a political organization where the politicians, not the scientists, have the final say. Post 166.
2. The IPCC is biased against CO2. It’s “main customer” (Pachauri’s words) is the UNFCCC, a convention which decades ago tried and convicted CO2 of causing dangerous global warming. Post 166
3. The IPCC has acted in accordance with this bias in ways too numerous to count. The IPCC leaders, including Pachauri, have been hardly models of dispassionate objectivity. In accordance with their mandate from the UNFCCC, the IPCC has systematically ignored other plausible causes of global warming. The IPCC routinely lets hundreds of environmental activists into her ranks where they have served as administrators, lead authors, contributing authors, and expert reviewers, even while they have worked for organizations like Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund. Post 177.
4. The expertise of the IPCC is not as advertised. They do not use the best and the brightest. Grad students serve as lead authors! Pachauri has repeatedly misrepresented and exaggerated the expertise of the IPCC scientists. Post 195.
5. The number of participating scientists and the implied agreement among them is greatly exaggerated. A mere handful (around 60) contribute to the writing of the all-important Summaries for Policymakers. See post 200.
6. Pachauri has boasted that the IPCC only relies on peer-reviewed articles. Not true. An audit of the 4th Report found 28% of the cited sources were not peer-reviewed. The point is Pachauri makes false statements like this and no one form the organization ever calls him on it. Doesn’t speak well for the integrity of the whole outfit. See 207
7. The vaunted IPCC review process is not very scientific or rigorous and falls far short of the requirements of standard peer review (which has its own problems). See 208
8. The Hockey Stick scandal demonstrates that the IPCC (to use your words) does not “use only top level peer-reviewed studies and data.” See 296 and 312.
9. Finally, there are numerous documented instances of cheating and other bad behavior which prove the IPCC cannot be trusted. The Climategate emails arguably show that IPCC insiders are guilty of journal tampering and of conspiring to violate Freedom of Information Act laws. The emails also contain disturbing evidence of collusion between a journal editor and IPCC insiders. IPCC rules and deadlines are routinely ignored when convenient. Scientific evidence is often misrepresented in reports and evidence has been manufactured.

Conclusion from 312: In a court of law a jury may disbelieve a witness if it finds the witness is biased, has lied, or is guilty of serious misconduct. The testimony of an expert scientific witness can be discounted if it shown that his expertise has been misrepresented or he does not adhere to the disciplines of science. With respect to the IPCC and the climate science establishment in general, all of these grounds are present, and a responsible and rational jury will reject their claims. Rather than accepting their sentencing recommendations, we should be demanding a new trial.

 

[Ender]

With increasing heat in earth systems from the continually enhancing GH effect, we can expect stronger heat waves, droughts, more deluges and floods (warmer air holds more water vapor, sucking it out of water bodies, plants, and soil), more wild fires, more intense storms & hurricanes (heat energy turning into kinetic energy under certain conditions), increased disease spread into new areas, crop failures, sea rise from warmer sea expansion and melting glaciers.

Given that temperatures have not risen in over 18 years, how is it that you claim we are experiencing the effects of temperature increases? Beyond that, there is no evidence that all the plagues you envision are actually happening. We have already seen that the data does not support the claim that hurricanes have increased in frequency and intensity, yet the claims continue unabated.

Bec so many people here can’t even take the 1st step of accepting that AGW is real, they have absolutely NO IDEA about all the negative impacts from AGW and how these will be affecting them, their children and progeny, and people around the world, esp the poor.

The effects you have claimed simply aren’t happening. Does the lack of supporting data for your claims mean nothing?

Ender

 

[Karen107]

No- that is what alarmist are saying. There is no evidence we .are receiving more or more severe storms than we have in the past

No that’s what the scientists are saying which is alarming. If a weatherman told us we were in a path of a tornado would we stand there and do nothing? No, we’d listen to the experts.

 

[Karen107]

I wasn’t discussing their motivations; I condemned their actions. I challenged what they did, not why they did it.
Here’s an example of the problem I cited earlier when I called out the actions of AGW supporters. One of the problems that turned up a few years ago was that one person had become the gatekeeper for virtually every single entry in Wiki that even touched on the subject of global warming. He had edited and controlled the comments appearing in roughly 5000 Wiki entries.

Here’s another problem. One of the surveys from the entry you cited was by Anderegg et al. They “found” that about 98% of serious climate scientists “support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” What was their methodology? They “reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers, based on authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on multisignatory statements.” The problem with this is twofold: first, the AGW crowd routinely reference one another’s papers, and second, that same group aggressively manipulated the peer review process to prevent the publication of papers challenging their conclusions. This is another fact that came out from the release of the UEA emails. All in all, the mendacity of certain members of the AGW community is rather spectacular.

Ender

Mainstream scientists came to a concensus with the IPCC on AGW.

 

[Karen107]

Very Scientific Poll:

I would like to ask fans of the carbon dioxide theory of climate change (esp. Lynn and Karen), if the devastating takedown of Dr. P (see posts 166, 171, 195,200,207-208, 296, 312) has caused your trust in the climate science establishment led by the IPCC to be a) even greater, b) the same, c) somewhat less, or d) a lot less?

If you select a) or b), please 'splain yerself.

cordially,

ferd

I’m sorry ferd but I’m not following it very well.

 

[Karen107]

The number of tornadoes, per month, year, decade, by type, etc., has been affected by different reporting methods over the years. There are recent studies that claim that after reporting bias adjustments there is a slight negative, slight positive, and no trend observed since 1950. This was pointed out in the public comments of the 2014 draft of the National Climate Assessment.

This means evidence that AGW is responsible for increased frequency, magnitude or damage caused by tornadoes during the reporting period is equivocal at best, and most likely not at all.

I can tell you we’ve had a rise in tornadic activity. Just the other day another touch down in northern Michigan and almost hit my friends. I’m tired of going into the basement. I"m tired of calling my son who lives an hour away from me in tornado alley. I’m sorry for the man who lost his life the other day in a weather related event and the warnings… I’m wish I didn’t hear about all the storms my relatives are having in Texas during hurricane season. It’s not rain rain rain it’s storm storm STORM! NOAA confirms I’m right!

ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tornadoes/201506

 

[Karen107]

So will massive increases in the price of energy help or hurt the poor?

The Poor are affected the worse from the storms if we don’t do something to stop global warming they’ll be affected more so what is the price? Save your money or hurt the poor…

I just heard the other day that our economy will improve with the new energy sources because of all the investments in it and besides, using things like water and wind is sure a lot cheaper than relying on fossil fuels. And what of the poor in third world countries when many don’t even have electricity! What we could do that Charitable Catholic organizations are presently doing in places like the Phillippines is provide them with solar energy lanterns so they can have at least lights at night.

treehugger.com/gadgets/buy-one-give-one-solar-lamp-luci.html
mashable.com/2014/01/13/solar-energy-developing-world/

 

[estesbob]

I can tell you we’ve had a rise in tornadic activity. Just the other day another touch down in northern Michigan and almost hit my friends. I’m tired of going into the basement. I"m tired of calling my son who lives an hour away from me in tornado alley. I’m sorry for the man who lost his life the other day in a weather related event and the warnings… I’m wish I didn’t hear about all the storms my relatives are having in Texas during hurricane season. It’s not rain rain rain it’s storm storm STORM! NOAA confirms I’m right!

ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tornadoes/201506

Anecdotal evidence proves nothing