jbullfrog’s Recent Comments

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  by the way

  The recent "plateau" is no more "evident" than those around 1880 and 1940, and look where we've gone since then.

  The questions scientists must try to answer are whether this LONG-TERM trend will continue (they feel it will likely do so), whether we humans are contributing to it (they feel it's likely we are), and at what point the consequences of such a continuing trend become undeniably negative for us in any way.

  The existence of another little trough in the graph doesn't change its overall direction.On 'Global warming stopped in 1998'--Only if you flagrantly cherry pick posted 1 year, 6 months ago 170 Responses

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  maybe

  Maybe because the article was written in late 2006.On 'Global warming stopped in 1998'--Only if you flagrantly cherry pick posted 1 year, 6 months ago 170 Responses

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  still frustrated

  If your argument was solely that there was a conspiracy theory, and your evidence was more than, "Think about it, it makes sense," I'd happily consider that route.

  If your argument was scientific and you were correctly using scientific evidence and terminology and analysis to show me that these thousands of scientists all over the world are lying or mistaken,  you'd have my ear.

  If you agreed that these scientists have it right but wanted to argue the policy and economics of action vs. inaction, or compare different approaches to mitigating the problem, I would be interested.

  But attaching the label "hysterical hype" to the work of an enormous number of scientists while failing to provide any valid hard evidence to the contrary leaves you far short of convincing.

  I take it you have no response to any specific points in my previous post.On 'There is no consensus'--If this is not consensus, what would consensus look like? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 109 Responses

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  unexpected

  I didn't expect to fire up the grist site for the first time in weeks and find any rational thinking going on. Thanks, MonoApe, for speaking up.

  Here is one example to add:

  All the folks on here who are trying to rely on the Hadley data as a counterargument to AGW seem to feel that "smoothing" data is "cheating." Yet they then talk about a "cooling trend" in the last 8 years.

  Listen, folks, smoothing is simply a graphical representation of the concept of a trend. If you say there is no more global warming because of a downward trend, clearly you are examining small samples of less than a decade at a time. Or in your own words, you would like to look year-by-year. That's fine, let's do that. If we take a one year sample, we may find that, say, 2004 was cooler than 2003. If you implement a very fundamental and uncomplicated type of reasoning you might predict that 2005 would continue this "trend". But this was not the case. It was significantly warmer. So is the "trend" now towards "warmer?" Because the next year reversed again, and 2006 was a lot cooler, and 2007 a bit cooler still.

  In other words, if you go year-by-year, then yes, we have a one year cooling "trend" from 2006-2007. If you go back another year, we have a two year streak of one-year cooling "trends." If you go back another year that streak is over, so your argument is dead. By your own year-by-year logic, we have only been cooling for two years...

  ...UNLESS you want to redefine "trend" to help us understand your theory, which is the "crime" of which you're accusing hundreds of scientists. Which will it be? Are you going to be scientific about this, or just quote the dictionary as if their definition of the word climate had ANYTHING to do with the true essence of this debate about rising temperatures and the credibility of the scientific community. No, you're stuck with two years of cooling, or else you are cheating, just like all scientists everywhere who ever say anything that sounds like it might not be any fun.

  I can't stand this juvenille approach. If you're going to argue a scientific theory, you have to use scientific data to support your argument. If you're going to use scientific data to support your argument, you have to use it as part of a legitimate and consistent scientific approach.

  NiceGuy, you're a better man than me. (Have I already said this?) You continue to prove it is possible to argue your position with consistency, accuracy and depth without getting visibly pissed off. I just can't help getting mad. I feel as if the denial folks on here think I wouldn't listen if there were a serious scientific counterargument being presented, and as if they think they are presenting one. It's like watching poison at work as they co-opt useful terms and positive traits and use them for their own irresponsible purposes. Like when they mock the fact that you make your arguments with civility, as if that lends their argument credibility. Like when they take a term like cherry-picking, a term representing a concept used by the scientific community to identify an illegitimate argument, and apply it haphazardly and erroneously to any data they can't understand.

  So frustrating.On 'There is no consensus'--If this is not consensus, what would consensus look like? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 109 Responses

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  continuing response

  Since you were so thorough with all this I thought I owed you a response, B.W. So, continuing with this next post, "You like to debate"...

  First of all, I don't agree that the polar bear would do fine. I have no idea and I'm not qualified to predict these things. Apparently in some areas, they're doing very well. That's great for them. Again, I'm asking for a more sophisticated view of ecology, habitat, and change, on that acknowledges our interdependency as human beings, species, and ecosystems. Let's say the polar bears stay put the course of the next ten years as temperatures rise further. They begin to adapt to their new habitat. Babies that can't adapt die, and evolution speeds up a bit to give us: polar bears that do fine birthing on rocks, feeding on foxes, antelope babies, different kinds of fish than they're used to, or whatever. But as temperatures change everywhere, species of all types will be either adapting, migrating, or becoming extinct. Not being much of an ecology professor, I can only throw out speculation... let's assume that some new animals and plants migrate into the polar bears' territory. Some may be predators looking for habitat or food, and they then compete with these bears. Some may be insects, diseases, algae or other organisms that can plague a habitat or a body of water and cause rapid changes. Furthermore, some of the prey the polar bear was hoping to chase down begins to die out because its food is no longer available, or its habitat no longer suits it, and it cannot adapt quickly enough.

  Now this is just one very hypothetical situation, yet it echoes the sorts of changes that happen on a regular basis in response to multi-year weather patterns, pests, contaminated water supplies, etc. If it happens every day on a small scale in response to small adversities, can you not see that it seems likely to happen on an enormous scale if temperatures continue to fairly rapidly?

  And if this happens, can you not see that farms, hatcheries, fishing operations, lumber operations,  parks and conservationists all suddenly have widespread rapid change to cope with? That new animal populations will bring new problems to human populations with an increasing rate of speed? That human and animal populations will be exposed to unfamiliar pollens, toxins, predators, pests, and diseases more and more?

  Add to that the complications from a rising ocean. We may have several decades or more before this becomes urgent, but if I ignore any selfish temptation to bequeath this issue to my daughter, and I find myself wondering... As the ocean invades sewer systems, gas stations, treatment plants, refineries, military installations, chemical plants, and other toxic structures and infrastructures that might happen to be near the coast, what happens? What happens in Sacramento? New Orleans? Venice? How does that impact the surrounding ecology? The economy? The more heavily burdened infrastructure? The more strained health care system?

  And while all these problems (aside from seeming like a pipe dream to some people) might appear less daunting living in a first-world country, imagine the death and destruction if a few diseases, plagues, or droughts hit the third world. Wait... that's happening now, and it's causing war, famine, and enormous refugee migrations.

  I don't know if scientists are thinking about these things. These are at least as much about policy as about science; I think such decisions must be based in science, but beyond that are entirely up for debate. In other words, policy-makers must look at science to describe what is happening analyze what has happened before, and predict what may happen in the future, and then they need to set a course of action. Hopefully as evidence mounts for AGW, people will begin planning for realistic scenarios based on predictions of rising sea levels due to rising temperatures.

  J. Bailo referred to these scenarios as extreme. I would like to think so. I have to wonder though, if a few degrees of temperature change occurs in a relatively short time span, won't it be enough to trigger exactly this sort of natural-disaster-type response from our environment? That last paragraph you questioned was a response to J. Bailo's skepticism. Assuming you believe the sea level will rise a fair amount, then to me the only reasons to be skeptical that the environment (and we) would be severely affected by this are (1) if you thought that the predicted amounts of sea level rise really wouldn't cause any damage like I've postulated, or (2) if you thought we could plan our way out of it, efficiently relocating many millions of people, relocating or replacing industries from the coast, and effectively mitigating or preventing the release of unspeakable amounts of toxins being leeched into the ocean, all before any disaster did actually strike.

  I personally don't belive we're proactive enough as a culture (certainly here in America) to plan sufficiently ahead of time (see: Katrina) and I do believe that the predicted sea level rise will be enough to cause enormous problems. This makes me think the disastrous scenarios I posed may not be so "extreme."

  Hopefully I cleared that up. Far from my most eloquent writing, sorry! I think I've covered all the posts I care to answer, so... see y'all later.On 'Global warming stopped in 1998'--Only if you flagrantly cherry pick posted 1 year, 7 months ago 170 Responses