Watermelon philosophy and liberal statist control; green on the outside and red on the inside.

Nobel laureate, economist and philosopher F.A. Hayek explained how there are limits to the knowledge that any one individual can possess, yet many have the “fatal conceit” that they know more than they do, and thus, they think they can plan and predict in ways they cannot. It is no surprise that climate models were wrong. For them to have been right, the model builders would have had to know all of the significant variables that affect climate, and the magnitude and interaction of each of those variables. There is virtually no single variable on which scientists are in total agreement about the magnitude of its effect. Carbon dioxide (CO2), for example, is considered to be very bad by most global-warming alarmists, including many officials in governments. We know that some level of CO2 is necessary for life, but we do not know the optimum level. The higher the level, the more rapidly plants grow, and the cheaper food becomes. It is just as plausible to say that there is too little CO2 in the atmosphere as that there is too much to maximize human well-being.

One of the world’s foremost experts on climate change, professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder, recently wrote: “Flooding has not increased over the past century, nor have landfalling hurricanes. Remarkably, the U.S. is currently experiencing the longest-ever recorded period with no strikes of a Category 3 or stronger hurricane.” These anecdotes, along with a cold March, prove nothing one way or the other except that human beings know very little about what drives the climate.

Germany has spent more than 100 billion euros ($130 billion) on subsidizing the solar industry; yet, as Der Spiegel reported, “the 1.1 million solar systems have generated almost no power” this winter, and Germany is forced to import power from elsewhere. They are paying three or four times the U.S. rate for electricity, making many of their industries noncompetitive. The U.S. has been equally stupid. Even The New York Times has acknowledged that the U.S. ethanol experiment has been a disaster. It has actually increased carbon emissions and the price of fuel and world food, which really whacks the poor — all because of a “fatal conceit.”

Sorry I left you guys Friday I should have replyed to a couple of you but I was up in the Mountains and had no internet. it was interesting that the girl with 4 children from 4 different fathers, her choice, is the victim and I pay for her and her kids and don't like it and I am the $&%hole.

Global warming, is this the first time there has ever been a tornado in Oklahoma? Hasn't earth been warming and cooling for 50 million years? Why do people build houses on a river bank or ocean front? The natives didn't. Why when world wide there has been billions maybe trillions spent on global warming oh sorry climate change has the climate not changed at all? I think George Carlin was right, humans are pretty arrogant to believe they can control the earths tempature.

"I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists. These white, bourgeois, liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths" George Carlin, Rest in peace my freind.

Global -- Next the Koch Brother owned republicans will want trees in red states to be counted as 2/3 of a person.

Is the opposite of "fatal conceit" to sit on your butt and do nothing? The solar systems in Germany eliminated the need to build 8 nuclear power plants. Because they have a cloudy winter, are you suggesting they wished they had built those nuclear power plants? Do you disagree that CO2 traps heat? What the planet does with that heat is very complex, and I do not think any of the climate scientists have the "fatal conceit" to think they know what it wil do next. Almost all of them work in the realm of probabilities. As a conservative, I would think one would not want to experiment with what 400 ppm will do to the earth.

Incidentally, do you receive any monies from the CATO institute?

Newsweek article 1975;

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

Chuckles, you are way off, look it up! Even the 1999 Oklahoma tornado was stronger -- an E5. Others going back 100 years were stronger.

Tara, just because you are born rich doesn't mean you are going to stay rich. People lose their wealth all the time.

Are you saying they don't have money for birth control but they have money to have kids, are you kidding me. Those poor children.

They built those homes on high ground near a water source. Only fools build on a low lying river bank or on the beach in a hurricane area.

The fact is I was born to a poor family. I worked up North on the rigs in the freezing cold Canadian North. Horse flies big enough to eat you. Out of town weeks on end well all of my freinds where where slacking. I know not everyone has the same opportunities I had but having 4 children when you have no means to look after them is criminal.

Each major devastating natural disaster makes me think of this passage from the sacred writings of the Baha'i Faith:

"O YE THAT ARE LYING AS DEAD ON THE COUCH OF HEEDLESSNESS! Ages have passed and your precious lives are well-nigh ended, yet not a single breath of purity hath reached Our court of holiness from you. Though immersed in the ocean of misbelief, yet with your lips ye profess the one true faith of God. Him whom I abhor ye have loved, and of My foe ye have made a friend. Notwithstanding, ye walk on My earth complacent and self-satisfied, heedless that My earth is weary of you and everything within it shunneth you. Were ye but to open your eyes, ye would, in truth, prefer a myriad griefs unto this joy, and would count death itself better than this life. [emphasis added]

http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/HW/hw-93.html

- By Baha'u'llah, Hidden Words (#20 of the Persian section), from the Bahá’í Faith, www.bahai.org or www.bahai.us

This is not the same thing as saying that God is punishing us for our myriad faults, but it is saying that we are not behaving as another excerpt from the writings describes: "Noble have I [God] created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.” Maybe if we rose up to practice the 'love thy neighbor' that all the major Faiths of God teach - and treat the earth better, too - the earth would be nicer to us.

Just something more to ponder...

I could cut & paste comments too, but I just want to go to the bottom line.

My place runs on solar pv panels and solar hot water. We're completely off grid. We do have a backup generator. We're expanding the solar with a larger battery bank (from 5 to 10 deep cycle lead/acid). I've recently installed a 21 foot utility pole that for now is used to bring in internet, bundled w/sat tv. This pole will soon sport a VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine) to augment solar, being useful at night and during winter months. My place is oriented east-west for passive solar as well.

We live in the mountains SE of Tucson AZ. So wind and solar is a natural here. I'm semi-retired and am working on a solar-thermal parabolic trough in hopes of making a solar air conditioning system (absorptive) and then also solar-thermal electrical generation (rankine cycle). In the not so distant future I may be able to sell energy back to the grid.

The idea of "distributed generation" has come of age and is being implemented in some parts of the US. I hope to be part of the solution. And not just full of hot air.

Thanks, Thom. You make sense.

Quote Global:Watermelon philosophy and liberal statist control; green on the outside and red on the inside.

Good point Global! Racist; but, good logic. 400 points per million of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere for the first time in human history is a fact. What caused it, or what the effects on the planet will be are pure conjecture. Pointing fingers at each other at this point is futile. Personally, I hope Thom is right and you are wrong. I hope climate change brings us to the brink of extinction. I hope it happens soon. The sooner the better. Why?

Because the first thing that is going to go extinct are rich, right-wing lug nuts like you and your Corporate friends. The sheer masses of desperate people will remember just who got us into this mess and how they delayed any attempts to reverse the damage. If indeed, Thom and the environmental scientific community are right and you and your friends are wrong you folks will be the first to be sacrificed on the altar of an outraged multitude. Good riddance!

It will be worth near extinction just to be rid of you and the rest of your Corporatocracy Cabal. It would also be a sweet, sweet irony as well if "Global" warming has nothing to do with carbon emissions at all; and, was just a natural part of the planet's evolutionary cycle. Your own demise set up by the natural evolution of the planet combined with your own greed, arrogance, and your big mouth. Now that would be really,really funny. Keep talking! I love it! Hasta La Vista!

I think it is worse than we realise. We may be beyond the point where the planet kicks in and undergoes the transformation of leading into another Ice Age.

When we first heard about Climet Change it was as though it wouild effect out great great grandchildren, yet here we are now seeing its effect.

It is similerto the subject like devices of war, we do not see the current Aircraft, Submarine, Tank, Missile ectra.....

What we see is the older stuff, for security reasons.

I think that very soon we will see millions, or perhaps billions of people moving across the planet because their homeland is no longer inhabital. All because all of the developed countries governments who may have had a chance to stop it, were slowly overtaken by the corperate interest.

Her I am at 56 years old & perhaps likely going to see the beginning of the end....jimi

For all you deniers out there I highly recommend the time lapse satellite images of climate change. Just google them! Of course we can't let this inconvenient truth also known as science get in the way of the fossil fuel industry profits.

The Kochs along with the rest of their oil pals remind me of fools crossing an expansive desert on foot carrying heavy sacks of gold in place of water. Problem is they have many of the rest of us on this same foolish trek, minus the gold and against our will. Actually they have the entire planet on this same suicidal trek, irregardless of complicity.

I can't help but think there's an alien world out there someplace taking bets right now on how long the human species has left.......

The 1999 Oklahoma tornado's trajectory was very similar to this storm.

Inconvenient COINCIDENCES ...........

I heard that the number of major weather events has increased 8-fold in the last decade. I don't think that counts as being anecdotal. What does count as an anecdote is the Oklahoma tornado being the strongest ever recorded.

Hi. On reading your words, Chuckle8, this is what came to mind: The increasing technology capabilities of GEO-ENGINEERING, ionosphere manipulation, weather modification, and weather weaponry have followed the same trajectory as these increasing storms.

Coincidental, I guess.

But I think it must be an inconvenient truth that the topic of increasing storms is more complex than just what the media limits the discussion to -- that is, a one option answer -- climate change due to CO2.

DANNEMARC we can only hope to be around to wittness that!!!

Though I do tend to lean towards G. Carlins satirical philosophy regarding Man's arrogance and egotistical thinking/actions when it comes to "Saving the Planet"...That being said, there is no doubt in my mind that "modern man" and his reckless wasteful ways have caused adverse harm to the enviroment; which in turn gravely jeapordizes man's ability to excist. The laws of physics apply; "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This also applies to all the "do gooder" save the planet meddleing. Mother Natural is the one in charge here; we are at her mercy...Not the other way around. True, the more crap we pump into the air and water the more damage we cause which in turn affects ALL life forms in an adverse way, including the dumbest...humans, (For a species with the largest and most complex brains we are our own worst enemy)!!! It's our wittle egos that get the best of us! I mean we use to sacrafice virgins to Volcanos; believing that it would keep us safe from disaster...But that really didn't work...Just ask the people of Pompeii.

As G.Carlin once said; "One day the Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, and all that will be left is the Earth plus plastic!"
If we want to "Save the Planet" we should do so, first, by realizing that in order to sustain Human Life we need clean water, clean air, and clean food. If we have those essentials in check and balance then we are working in a direction of sustaining life. The rest is at the mercy of Mother Nature....She is the genius...She tells us EVERYTHING...We are merely her technicians. And when we act recklessly...You can ignor reality, but you cannot ignor the consequences of reality.

DAnne, so emotional. I am sure Ken W if he is out there is getting a few laughs at your attacks. I am a "RACIST " because I don't go along with the liberal mantra when it comes to most issues. That is perfect when you show your true colors.

Well said Nachos, it really does start with the individual.

I don't have an issue with any of the alternative energy sources. My issue is with empowering the government and their authority to dictate and force the outcome. When big authoritarian government gets involved it usually gets very expensive and the little guy gets abused.

NO