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I Deny I’m a Denier
I consider myself to be a skeptic in the matter of man-made global warming. I’m not a denier; I’m not smart enough to be that certain. But, as with a lot of things in life, I’m skeptical. (And see what they did there? By labeling skeptics as deniers, they equate us with Holocaust Deniers. Pretty clever, huh?) Every now and then, I’ll use my Twitter account to send out a tweet poking fun at climate alarmists (see what I did there?). And, while most Twitter users understand the humor, there are those who get very, very angry.
First, they pointedly remind me that I’m not a scientist. That’s very helpful, because sometimes I confuse being a TV game show host with being a scientist. (It’s always embarrassing when I show up for a taping in a white lab coat.) Actually, that’s not the first thing they do; the bulk of them usually start with obscene name-calling. There are two favorites, but Ricochet’s Code of Conduct forbids my being any more specific on the matter. Finally, most of them tell me that they don’t care what such an idiot who hosts such an idiotic program for idiotic viewers thinks about something that 90% (or 94% or 97%) of climate scientists agree on. Of course, the fact that they read my tweet, became agitated by it, and responded to it demonstrates that they truly do care. I find that rather odd, because I’m not sure why anyone would particularly care about any beliefs—or non-beliefs—held by a quasi-celebrity, especially one who doesn’t use his television forum to proselytize (as some are wont to do).
I’m also often reminded by my global warming (climate change?) Twitter buddies that climate is not weather. The fact that it’s extraordinarily cold in particular areas at particular times does not negate their argument. The climate—hockey stick and all—will doom us if we do not act quickly and drastically. I find the climate vs. weather argument interesting because weather events can only prove their point; they cannot disprove it. The historically calm Gulf hurricane period since Katrina—despite predictions of increasingly strong and devastating storms—can be explained away. However, it’s a safe bet that, had the last decade been marked by more violent activity, it would have been more evidence that The End Days were near. Snowless winters in England are a sign of the climate changing times, but when the snow and ice return…well, it’s weather, not climate.
So here we are. The science is settled. Extreme weather of any kind confirms it. Weather that seems to fly in the face of predictions is irrelevant. So how can one possibly deny all that? I can’t, because I’m not a scientist. But can’t I be just the teeniest bit skeptical?
Published in General
I’d love to be a paid stooge, should I send an invoice for my prior comments directly to the Koch brothers? You wouldn’t happen to have the address?
Progressives have a penchant for championing “solutions” that have unintended consequences far worse than the problems they intended to solve. Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised that, if they were successful in spending trillions to mitigate warming, they ended up destroying the one thing protecting us from the next ice age. A hundred years from now, they may be cursing fraudulent Nobel laureate Michael Mann and the IPCC. Of course, I won’t be in a position to care. Because I will be…very, very old.
As an aside, the scenario I described – mankind combating warming and bringing on a freezing of the planet – was the main plot point of “Snowpiercer”, a recent, exceedingly strange movie. In contrast to reports that described it as a conservative film, I found it to be the exact opposite: an allegory of the class system that any Marxist would cheer.
Will the gown match my environmentally green eyes?
Back off Stanko. Fleecing the gullible rich is my gig. I’ve almost got thirteen bucks and a gown I can get at least twenty for on e-bay. Don’t ruin it for me.
Let’s heat it up with tacos!
Wouldn’t the answer to global warming to add a touch of nuclear winter? I can think of a few places that would be nice targets. It’s for the good of the planet, ya know? Just a little to start with. We can titrate it up as needed to adjust the global thermostat.
I understand your points, and they make sense to me. But what explains, according to alarmists, all the hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, etc., if temperatures aren’t rising? What is the mechanism by which CO2 causes extreme weather in the absence of increasing temperatures?
Could be wrong but I don’t think they seriously contend there are more of these events yet. Rather, they take every weather event (and resulting overblown media coverage) as a “teachable moment.”
“Think Hurricane Katrina was bad? We’ll have them every year if we don’t do something about Climate Change! Think the California drought is bad? It will last a thousand years if we don’t stop Climate Change!!! Think this blizzard is bad??? Blizzards will personally hunt down and kill your entire family (sputter gasp) Climate!!! Change!!!”
Climate change is religion for those that have none.
Pat’s important point (and with him being a quasi-celebrity, it’s even MORE important) is that he is skeptical. And that, imho, is a wise thing to be. Healthy, even. If we were all a little more skeptical about more stuff, we’d probably all have more money in our bank accounts and fewer embarrassing memories.
I grew skeptical of the claims about climate change about the same time Al Gore started getting rich off of it. With a huckster like Al heading up their sales team, I began to suspect that Climate Change, Inc. just might be in it for the money.
To this day, I remain skeptical.
We just got about five inches of snow down here in southeast Arkansas. If this is the result of global warming (ok, Climate Change), I’ll gladly take some more, thank you very much.
Technical difficulties. Blue Yeti: how delete entire post?
I am a denier of catastrophic global warming. By which I mean, I have noticed that the computer modelers who call themselves “climate scientists” are full of a substance that must not be named under the CoC. Like all deniers, therefore, I must have been bought off by “the corporations.” Or is it “The Corporations”? Any time any one questions the “consensus,” we are told that they don’t count because they have been bought off by The Corporations.
But here is the problem. The Corporations are not sending me my checks. I go to my mailbox, open it, and no check. I don’t even get a discount when I fill up my gas tank.
This is no way to run a global conspiracy to undermine a settled scientific consensus! I am doing my part. I am openly, publicly, and flagrantly denying that there is any evidence of impending catastrophic global warming. And yet The Corporations are not paying up. If this situation is not corrected immediately, I am going to have to write a computer model on my Tandy 2000 (which is still in my garage, somewhere) proving that the Rocky Mountains will be underwater by the year 2018, and apply for a generous grant from the National Science Foundation. I’m sure the NSF will be more timely in their payments than The Corporations.
Putting megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere is almost certainly contributing to some changes in climate, and certain issues (like ocean acidification) that result from this are fairly non-controversial and ought to be addressed. Like just about everyone here, however, I’m not about to turn the national or world economy upside down in a fit of panic. There are plenty of amazing things we can do to limit reliance on fossil fuels – molten salt reactors being my personal favorite – which is probably a good idea anyway, since leaving our entire civilization vulnerable to fluctuations in the price and availability of a single energy input is probably asking for trouble. We will almost certainly innovate our way out of this, like we have done with most other problems that have confronted humanity.
From what I’ve read, the current CA drought is in line with recent historical mega-droughts in the American west, though it is possibly indicative of a return to predominantly drier climatic conditions that seem to have obtained before 1500 AD.
I have only “Science” to blame for my own healthy skepticism. If they really wanted me to jump with both feet on to the global warming bandwagon then they shouldn’t have tried so hard to scare the bejesus out of me when I was a kid with dire predictions of over-population, world-wide starvation and the impending Second Ice Age – – a Trifecta of Terror that was allegedly going to guarantee that I never even lived to see retirement. (Not a warm or well-fed one, anyway.)
So when my friends tell me “the science is settled” on this, I ask them to please tell me, specifically, what it was they saw or read that settled it for them, so far beyond all argument, doubt, or skepticism that they actually feel confident enough to mock anyone who hasn’t arrived at the exact same conclusion. I ask them to send me a link to the information they read that “settled” it and if they can’t remember the exact article or scientist that made such a deep and abiding impression on them (odd, but . . . okay) then just give me some key words that I can Google, so I can find the article and read the settled science for myself.
Despite a few promises here and there to follow up – – I’ve gotten nothing, which is what I’m starting to suspect is exactly what’s backing up most of the vague “settled science” claims I’m hearing.
Some conundrums:
Isn’t there a 50% chance the Climate Change could be a good thing?
Wouldn’t their efforts be more rewarding if they cleaned up the filthy Third World?
If man’s activity can make the climate hotter, then man can make it cooler with “Nuclear Winter”.
This is a good point and it’s actually the case that periods of warming (including considerably warmer periods than the present) in human history have been associated with positive outcomes: fewer outbreaks of pandemics, less war and large-scale migration (which are correlated), better agricultural production, fewer extreme weather events etc. Colder periods are associated with the opposite. The so-called Dark Ages, for example, correlate with a cool period between the Roman Optimum and the Medieval Warm period. There are several warm periods through the Holocene era, and the Holocene optimum, several thousand years ago, was far warmer than the present. Anthropologists have mapped out the fate of civilizations over this period and there is a clear and consistent pattern: by almost every measure, warm periods are good for civilizations, cold periods are a disaster.
The bedrock view of the modern green movement is that a “pristine” environment is always better than one altered in any way by man.
Our ancestors drained swamps, modern environmentalists restore “wetlands.”
This is just off the top of my (non-scientific) head, but has anyone considered that the causation might run the other way?
Might it not be the case that the world is warming, if indeed it is, because of some non-CO2 factor, such as solar activity. The warming is conducive to plant growth, and the additional plants exhale additional CO2, raising the concentration of it in the atmosphere.
I categorically deny that any published measurement has ever demonstrated any influence of human activity on planetary climate.
Yes, many have. Historically, increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide have followed temperature rises, not preceded them. (I note that alone doesn’t mean that increasing CO2 can’t raise temperature.)
You’ve got photosynthesis backwards. Plants take in CO2 and give off oxygen.
As Rick Perry famously said, “Oops.”
How can they be so sure they know the climate is changing? They don’t even know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.
In the words of Captain Obvious: “Duh!”
If people really understood the arguers’ arguments, they would know their intelligence was being insulted. Instead, you of course must genuflect and say, “Yes, Science great. Superstition bad.”
In Seattle, you really can prove the weather changes. Just wait five minutes.
To prove climate change is a little harder. Gather all your friends around the fire. Gaze at the black pebble. Listen for the Great Eagle. Then, “Uggh!” It is decided, the climate is a-changing.
See how great is the power of belief? You only need to get 90%, or 94%, or 97% of your friends to believe, and you can change reality.
What about the 3% that don’t believe in changing reality? That’s what clubs were made for.
The earth is big. Humans are small.
Think for a moment about the earth as a ball. We humans who live on the surface are all but invisible to somebody looking at the ball. For eons, colder, warmer temperatures, volcanos, ice ages, glaciers forming and breaking, land formations changing. But long stretches of time where nothing happens. But over a (relatively short) time period, something does change, and that something that changes is uniquely attributable to human activity. What differences can you see?
I would argue that in the centuries since the dawn of the industrial revolution, we have managed to change the color of the planet’s dry surface. Through growing or cutting down forests, cultivating land, developing cities, redirecting rivers with dams. These things are evident from space (when atmospheric conditions permit, anyway). That’s really the only visible difference that human activity has made.
Is that enough to affect the climate? It can change weather and patterns of moisture deposits regionally. But it won’t make a dent globally.
What about the atmosphere? Haven’t we made a dent on the atmosphere?
Here’s a chemistry thought experiment. The atmosphere makes human made emissions stretch far (farther than we can see) because all fluids disperse, and the atmosphere is in constant motion. Gases will also expand to fill a vacuum. But in stretching far they become diluted by all of the other stuff that is continually being added and subtracted from the atmosphere.
To put this into proper perspective, it would be helpful to know how tiny our percentage of man-made emissions is compared to the natural emissions of the entire earth, the oceans, the plants, all of God’s creatures, including we as humans.
Logically that process (not to mention extra planetary effects such as solar cycles) has gone on and continues to go on for thousands of millennia before and after such relatively short time periods as our lifespans are.
Call me a realist. I deny that we tiny humans could make enough of a dent on our planet that we would not be able to adapt.
What do they think we are, dinosaurs?
I like to say that I deny CAGW:
C: The last century’s warming trend wouldn’t be catastrophic if it continued for five more centuries, it would be beneficial.
A: There has never been any measurement that indicates any degree of human influence on climate. Of course humans have influence, and so do butterflies. Neither is significant enough to be measurable.
GW: Every remotely defensible global temperature average has been flat or declined for the last 17 (18 now?) years.
I’m waiting for some climate alarmist to identify the changes in either climate or weather or global temperatures that would disprove anthropogenic climate change. Until they can put something on that list what they are doing is not science.