Cascadia

On a totally unrelated note, except it's the title...

I have a problem with "Martha Stewart Speak" like "it's a good thing". The statement tells the listener to react the way the speaker wants them to react without having to make the case or actually produce the effect. Obviously you didn't mean it that way, since the first word is "why", though it still functioned as described, since its a proxy for the real conclusion. How about "Regional Agreement on Global Warming Informs Washington that States will Act if Not Enough is Done"?

It's a good example of the English language's noun fraud, in general. From the time the Normans invaded, said basically "we are you" and we ended up with a parallel language, English is the language of choice for fraud. It's interesting to be watching late night TV in, say, Ethiopia, and it's an old Hollywood movie, dubbed into Ethiopian, but the commercials for "rock hard abs" and the like are in English.

A bit verbose. Could have said, "English; it's a bad thing. Trust me, you don't want to go there".

As usual, RS makes a good point. If I may be allowed to go off on a slightly different tangent, can anybody explain to me why it takes "climate change" (which in my opinion is still a matter of faith-not science) as an issue to motivate serious discussion on energy conservation and not a much more black and white issue, like our soldiers and others being maimed and killed in the middle east just so we can live in the style to which we are accustomed? (i.e. oil intensive lifestyle). Is it worth having our young men and women die, so we can live conveniently? Spare me the "bringing democracy to the middle east" BS. If it wasnt for oil no one would give a rats ass what happens in that part of the world. Thanks for the opportunity for a Monday morning rant!

JK: Russell, Have you checked out realclimate.org, the web site run by (or for) the well respected “scientist”, Michael Mann, the father of Al Gore’s hockey stick? -- There is this little problem that, in the past, CO2 has NOT risen until AFTER 800 years of warming, making CO2 NOT the cause of warming. I would like your comment on this explanation, apparently from Al Gore’s source:

At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.

Does this prove that CO2 doesn't cause global warming? The answer is no.

The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.

The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.

It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a "feedback", much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.

from: realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

Of course, another possibility is that CO2 comes out of the oceans as the oceans warm due to something unknown (maybe the sun?)- just like the fizz comes out of a carbonated drink when it gets warm. Occam’s razor anyone?

Thanks JK

JK: Russell, Have you checked out realclimate.org, the web site run by (or for) the well respected “scientist”, Michael Mann, the father of Al Gore’s hockey stick?

realclimate.org has dozens of contributors.

Michael Mann is currently at Pennsylvania State University. Here's his Penn State website.

One more thing, on Michael Mann's Penn State website, you can view PDFs of a range of scholarly publications by clicking on the Articles and Research Tools buttons. This recent review article is a good entry point to the literature.

Sorry folks, that review article link didn't work right when I checked again. Go to Mann's website and click on the Articles button; the review paper is at the top of the list, and you can link from there.

JK: another possibility is that CO2 comes out of the oceans as the oceans warm due to something unknown (maybe the sun?)- just like the fizz comes out of a carbonated drink when it gets warm. Occam’s razor anyone?

That's interesting, and at the simplest level, just thinking about chemical equilibrium and the change in CO2 solubility with temperature--the sort of chemistry taught in a basic college chemistry class--one could do some very rough calculation. JK's a smart guy, an engineer, surely he knows some chemistry. And there are obviously oceanographic data bearing on change in ocean temperature (and thus CO2 solubility) over time. Now, of course, this sort of calculation would sweep an enormous amount under the rug, but I would be really pleased to see JK do the calculations to test this hypothesis even at this simple level. If he can make a convincing case, he should write it up and submit his paper to an appropriate scientific journal. In fact, I'm volunteering myself right now to do an informal peer review before he submits his paper for publication.

That's what science is about, folks: testing one's hypotheses.

torridjoe: " In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. JK: Thanks Joe, you don’t need to go any further. I just asked for comments on the article. Now what do you suppose started the warming? Why do we have to postulate and amplifier, instead of merely a continuation of the original cause. Besides we are only 150 years into the current warming (since the little little ice age.)

torridjoe: We finally got Jim to admit that CO2 causes global warming after all JK: No you didn’t, I merely asked for comments on an article on a web site associated with Al Gore’s prime source.

torridjoe: a speaker that AMPLIFIES the sound JK: Just a little detail, Joe: a speaker transforms electrical energy into sound. It does not amplify - that function is done by the amplifier.

lin qiao: JK: another possibility is that CO2 comes out of the oceans as the oceans warm due to something unknown (maybe the sun?)- just like the fizz comes out of a carbonated drink when it gets warm. Occam’s razor anyone? JK: Hi Lin, any comments about the article itself? Any idea what could have caused the initial warming? And why we need to invoke an amplifier of some sort, instead of just the original cause continuing? OR the initial, unknown, cause getting stronger?

lin qiao: one could do some very rough calculation. JK: Sorry, I have better things to do.

lin qiao: That's what science is about, folks: testing one's hypotheses. JK: Which, of course, is impossible with climate models until we wait years for their predictions to be falsified. BTW, has anyone actually TESTED the CO2 hyopthesis?

Thanks JK

Why don't they just build giant reverse smokestacks at the top the world and suck out all the bad stuff and pump it into the ground? There - problem solved. But they would rather us all ride on our bicycles or be packed in like sardines riding their toy train and bus systems and live in tiny overpriced condos and apartment in the urban ghetto Portland.

lin qiao: one could do some very rough calculation. JK: Sorry, I have better things to do.

Well, I guess that sort of sums up Mr. Karlock's approach to science. I commented that he could actually try to test his hypothesis about CO2 effervescing from the oceans. In response, he quotes me out of context to make me sound silly, and then tries to distance himself from testing his own hypothesis by telling us he has better things to do.

Kind of an interesting attitude. Mr. Karlock is an electrical engineer, I believe. He holds several patents. Does he also approach testing his own designs by telling himself that he has better things to do? Something tells me not.

On February 1, I sent a note privately to Mr. Karlock. Or at least as far as I know I did. I sent the note to [email protected]. As this is Mr. Karlock's website, I assume he is the webmaster and saw my message. I did not receive a reply. Here is the message:

<hr/>

Dear Mr. Karlock,

Geez, we're practically neighbors in the Grant Park area, but that's another matter entirely.

As I mentioned to you in a BlueOregon post oh-so-long-ago, I'm not frivolously trying to maintain anonymity. I work for a public agency and if I post to blogs with my own name and mention my scientific background, someone with an axe to grind is going to wrongly decide I am making "official" pronouncements, and I will wind up having a very unpleasant chat with my supervisor.

I actually have a reason I'm not going to engage you in a "debate". You see, I remember quite clearly what happened several months ago. I took a whole day to read a bunch of technical papers in Reviews of Geophysics and other journals, read up about principal component analysis, and finally wrote a lengthy posting on BlueOregon specifically addressing your criticisms of some figures in a paper (Mann the first author, as I recall). I politely corrected your misunderstanding of those figures because I was operating on the assumption that you were, like me, trying to get at an understanding of a thorny scientific issue. And your response was...nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even an acknowledgment on your part. Instead you posted the same criticisms all over again. And you keep posting them....

I am, like you almost certainly are, too, a busy person, with demanding job, family, yadda yadda yadda. I took a chunk of time out of my life to try to address your criticisms and came away feeling completely dissed. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that you're insincere. I'm forcefully reminded of the way Lucy kept persuading Charlie Brown to take one more kick at the football she was teeing up for him.

lin, I take it that you are not interested in addressing the original subject: the apparent evidence that CO2 does not cause global warming.

Thanks JK

Hey Jim,

I think my last comment got deleted by the whacked out liberal thought police. Hey, there is another attempt to try to gut Measure 37 even though SB 505 went down in defeat. The Senator is calling up a meeting at PCC on March 14th starting at 7PM. OIA is amassing the tropps right now. You should come videotape - let's see if this one tries to shut you down also.

Fraudulent Al Gore apparently does not even believe in his own Inconvenient Truth sensationalism. He is to the environment what CEO salaries are to the corporate world. He shares that fraudulent example with California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, both owners of multiple SUVs and users of private planes, Even Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski who is chauffeured in a big car often accompanied by a big SUV and lives in a big house some distance away from his office in the Capital Building also shares part of that same fraudulent example. All provide lip service to push for laws that make other people cut their energy use and emissions, but are far too affluent and arrogant to make the sacrifices themselves. Just read: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/06/EDGRJN7AHQ1.DTL&hw=gore+global+warming&sn=001&sc=1000

I think there's a principle in what Lin is saying that isn't fully appreciated. If it were 99% of the scientific/political debate could be advanced constructively.

He keeps saying hypotheses, but the core principle isn't some scientific game vs. environmental real politik, it's falsifyability! To keep the discussion at a hypothesis testing level means to generate only falsifyable assertions. The rest is literature.

I live in the UK and the US creation vs evolution debate has always seemed to be a matter of the scientists not being able to explain themselves to the public clearly. Faith is by definition not falsifyable. That's the point. No matter what you do, no matter what I see, I'll still believe. I explicitly say that, by definition, there can never be a falsifyability test. What would I have to do to prove to you that God doesn't exist? No test? No matter what the evidence, you'll hold the line? That's faith. Actually the Book of Job says all that, so I guess the Christians don't know their own argument either. The point of hypothesis testing is the opposite. Your statement has no scientific value if it is not falsifyable. Good scientists limit the expression of their beliefs, no matter how passionate, to the pub.

Case in point: String Theory is no where close to science, compared to Relativity Theory, at the same stage of development. Within a few years of Einstein's publication, astronomers were able to measure the amount light was bent as it passed by the sun from a star during a solar eclipse. If it had not happened, he would most likely have taken it at face value. Science today is all about social values and conforming to ideology. The religious right doesn't (on the whole) question quantum theory. I think on some level they know the people telling them how to raise their children don't know what they're talking about and so resist.

Really, Lin, I think this is the crux of what you were saying and I think it's great that people still can follow the basic values. The irritation in my tone comes from the way the left has become as "faith based" in the last few years. Try having a technical discussion with someone about GMOs. Again it's all primary school variables, who you identify with and standing up for the group, etc.

I had a teacher at Oxford that was a student of Gilbert Ryle that used to ask, "which system of thought in the history of ideas has been the most productive?" His answer was the Logical Positivists, which seems strange since by their own evaluation they accomplished nothing. His reasoning was that they were so consistent and systematic that when everything they were trying to do turned out to be utter and total kaka, they pointed the way for all Western philosophy since. That's a good scientific theory. It's the duty of every good theorist to push and push until the theory disintigrates into a million pieces. Unfortunately, Thomas Kuhn, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (early 60s) described the current condition better when he said that major theories are only replaced when their proponents retire or die.

Another symptom of the problem is the rise of PC talk. Personally I don't think a falsifyable statement can be objectionable. What's the problem with saying, "all blondes are dumb", if, when you show me data to the contrary, I abandon my hypothesis? PC correct speach is about code words and reacting a specific way when they're uttered. Words like "the troops" and "the children". Which unfortunately are largely the same.

TR-

<h2>Bravo! You summed it up perfectly. They live in their golden palaces and want the rest of us working class to live in squalor. That way they have control over our choices. So much for this being a free country. In Oregon its so bad that they don't even want anyone to live in the countryside! They would rather force us all into the cramped UGB so they can extract even more money from us so they can build additional costly Disneyland projects all over town.</h2>