The Trouble with AGW

[Brant Gaede]

I used "crank" much more broadly than you do, William, that's all.

Petr was my friend for the last years of his life. When he started his journal he knew he was dying in slow motion from prostate cancer. I think that's why he started the journal, so he could maximize his writings on the subject plus other contributors in the time he had left. He had 3 1/2 years left.

He had a very nice, un-ostentatious home in the mountains above Boulder, CO. He was retired from his professorship in Electrical Engineering at the University of CO. His C.V. contains many technical books and articles. He used the machines in his basement to maximize his productivity including an A.B. Dick printer. He had his two publications going plus Ft Freedom, which was like a dial up Web site before the Internet we have today. A fellow in Australia now has it up as an archive. (Google Brant Gaede Ft Freedom)

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

What's wrong with "being a crank like Beckman"(sic)?

The full sentence was meant to add some context to Bob's notion: "To call Wegerner a mere meterologist (weatherman) is to simplify beyond reason -- it forgets his training in physics and astronomy and makes him sound like he could be mistaken for a crank like Beckmann."

So, what is wrong with being a crank like Beckmann?

It depends on your point of view, I guess. Let's say you wanted to dig a new water well on your property. Whose expertise would you grant value to when selecting your contractor -- let's say, among a water-witch/diviner, a hydrologist, a geologist, or my old Aunt Fanny, who uses tarot cards?

None of these can be called cranks without understanding the term in its widest play. For almost every scientific (and humanities) discipline, there are what we might call 'fringe' actors or claimers to knowledge. My Aunt Fanny insists that she is among the only persons in the county who really knows where water can be found, and she dismisses all the other noted contractors and specialists as fools. She also publishes her, er, findings in a mimeographed monthly newsletter called Your Cards Are Telling You The Truth. When challenged on any claims in her, er, publications, she cries, plugs her ears, and orders you off her property. She also considers those who do not follow her, um, publications as in bed with THEM ...

That makes Aunt Fanny a crank -- to me, anyway. As always, your mileage may vary. What is wrong with calling her a crank, I will leave for you to explain at your leisure (in the meantime, have some fun reading the fifteen year-old Salon article which I excerpt below**).

What's wrong with "being a crank like Beckman"(sic)?

--Brant

Beckman [sic] was dead wrong about relativity. Both relativity theories are solidly supported by empirical evidence and neither has ever been falsified empirically or because of a mathematical inconsistency. In short, so far they are solid science. Use your GPS to see just how solid.

Yes, Petr said Einstein was wrong about Relativity, and wrote a book about it and founded a journal to carry on the discussion. Why he said what he said is obviously irrelevant to you, only that he said Einstein was wrong and you go all Pavlovian Dog. [...] Supposedly such a falsification happened and was reported 22 years ago.

Beckmann's journal was not only self-published but also self-edited. He stepped aside from the various scientific mainstreams onto a hermetic path, and did not attempt to submit his 'I falsified relativity' papers to the gladiatoral arena of scientific publication outside his path, outside his walled garden. He did not, for some reason or another, subject his work to contemporaneous peer-review in the disciplines which he had 'falsified.'

I will borrow some paragraphs from Rational Wiki that cover the term 'crank.' The editors are rather snarky, but hey -- if one can relish Ayn Rand's robust critical snideness, one can relish a few indicative paragraphs on crankery (I've removed the hyperlinks). The standard is Reason.

Crank is a pejorative term applied to someone who holds extremely unorthodox views on a subject and is often very vocal about these opinions. A crank will usually maintain their viewpoint despite, or perhaps because of, evidence to the contrary. The crank is usually an amateur in the field they are arguing against, but sometimes individuals with expertise in that field will become a 'crank' (which can lead directly to pathological science); sometimes for personal gain, which is ironic because cranks often accuse rational people of being driven by personal gain.

Cranks emerge in all fields of study and hold a wide variety of inaccurate or unorthodox views, from being able to square the circle with a straightedge and a compass, to Biblical literalists in the creationism movement.

Synonyms include kook, contrarian, and crackpot (the latter of which has led to the creation of the term "psychoceramics" as the name for the study of such people). Cranks who believe a lot of nutty things at once are sometimes said to suffer from crank magnetism.

-- Now, I have been a regular reader and poster at Objectivish venues for enough time to realize that my earliest estimations of crankery in Objectivism were wrong and biased and prejudiced. I have a lot of respect for the rationality and open-mindedness of Objectivish folks with whom I disagree profoundly. I am glad to have spent ten year here sharpening my own reasoning abilities in hard argument with folks of great intelligence and diligence. Even an argument with J Neil Schulman about his crankish insistence that he 'became God' gave me good results ... even idiots like 'Seymour' supplied me intellectual fuel.

Yes, Petr was a crank. What's wrong with being a crank? Einstein was a crank. Archimedes was a crank. I'm a crank and you're a crank. It's fun being a crank.

Do you really believe Einstein was a crank? -- that he worked only in a walled-garden without submitting his ideas to the scientific arena? I don't think you do believe that.

Two of my favourite cranks/kooks are Immanuel Velikofsky and Wilhelm Reich, and among the fields of crankery-kookery that have attracted my attention since my mid-teens are many publications of the Satanic Panic era in North America and the UK. Cranks abound in almost every conceivable angle of science-cum-pseudoscience, as well noted in Martin Gardner's classic book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, which I am sure you have read. (if not, there is a brief article on the book's legacy from Scientific American in 2010 which you will enjoy. Excerpted at bottom)

-- all of this longwinded ramble to explain why I thought Bob was wrong to characterize Wegener's work being dismissed by colleagues via "what can a weatherman know of earth geology?" Wegener was not a crank. He played in the big leagues. His theories became accepted because of evidence amassed from convergent directions. Wegener was a scientist of great distinction. It is foolish to consider him as a crank against orthodox numpties.

What about the data that says the oceans are heating up? After all, water holds many orders of magnitude more heat than air and so is a much better indicator of global warming than air temperatures. See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/

I am sad to say that RealClimate is probably viewed as a formal outlet of THEM -- the bad guys. If anyone (Bob, for example) was willing to engage with debate outside the sterile fields of climate conformity, we would have seen a thoughtful consideration of and reply to my second comment above.

One can always hope, though. I haven't finished my foray into the scientific reaction to the Gehrlich paper touted by the crank Casey ...

___________________

From the article "Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists"

The "hermit scientist," a youthful Gardner wrote, works alone and is ignored by mainstream scientists. "Such neglect, of course, only strengthens the convictions of the self-declared genius." But Gardner was wrong by half in his prognostications: "The current flurry of discussion about Velikovsky and Hubbard will soon subside, and their books will begin to gather dust on library shelves." Adherents to Immanuel Velikovsky's views on how celestially caused global catastrophes shaped the beliefs of ancient humans are a quaint few surviving in the interstices of fringe culture. L. Ron Hubbard, however, has been canonized by the Church of Scientology as the founding saint of a world religion.

In 1952 Gardner could not have known that the nascent flying saucer craze would turn into an alien industry: "Since flying saucers were first reported in 1947, countless individuals have been convinced that the Earth is under observation by visitors from another planet." Absence of evidence then was no more a barrier to belief than it is today, and ufologists proffered the same conspiratorial explanations for the dearth of proof: "I have heard many readers of the saucer books upbraid the government in no uncertain terms for its stubborn refusal to release the ‘truth' about the elusive platters. The administration's ‘hush hush policy' is angrily cited as proof that our military and political leaders have lost all faith in the wisdom of the American people."

** from Did Einstein Cheat?

If you’re tired of hearing about creationists and the war against Darwinism, you might be surprised to learn that another pillar of modern science, Einstein and his theory of relativity, is under attack.

An underground of “dissident” scientists and self-described experts publish their theories in newsletters and on the Web, exchanging ideas in a great battle against “the temple of relativity.” According to these critics, relativity is not only wrong, it’s an affront to common sense, and its creator, Albert Einstein, was a cheat.

A review of anti-relativity proponents and their publications reveals a plethora of alternative theories about how the universe really works. In spite of their many differences, common themes do emerge: resentment of academic “elites,” suspicion and resentment of the entire peer-review process in the mainstream scientific journals and a deep strain of paranoia about government involvement in scientific projects.

One Web site, How Much of Modern Physics Is a Fraud, displays essays attacking everything from relativity to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Another page cites the work of Stefan Marinov, a self-described iconoclast, who apparently threatened to immolate himself in front of the British Embassy in Vienna, Austria, because he was so angered by the refusal of the respected journal Nature to publish his “proofs” against relativity. An Aethro-Kinematics Web site claims to refute relativity by resurrecting Rene Descartes’ theory that the Earth and all the planets are carried around the sun by an “Aether vortex.”

Some, like Ruggero Santilli, an Italian physicist, have published hysterical attacks on mainstream science. Santilli maintained in his book “Il Grande Grido: Ethical Probe on Einstein’s Followers in the U.S.A.” that physicists Sidney Coleman, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg (the latter two are Nobel laureates) conspired to frustrate his attempts to conduct research on his theories to disprove relativity while he was at Harvard. The late Petr Beckmann, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado, self-published his theory about why relativity is wrong and started a newsletter called Galilean Electrodynamics, which has been carried on by his followers (although it isn’t clear from recent issues that they still believe in their founder’s theory).

The list goes on. Is this a new front in the war on science? Does the Kansas State Board of Education now need to take a vote on relativity?

Beckmann's objections to Einstein's theories were on philosophical grounds. The only things that count against a theory are (1) a prediction is empirically falsified or (2) the theory is mathematically inconsistent. Any other objections are irrelevant with perhaps one exception --- you have a theory which predicts correctly everything the other theories predict correctly and is simpler and or more general in its predictions. In short a better theory. Did Beckman have a Better Theory? If he did, he never published it, not did he submit it to experimental test or peer review. By the way the Galilean Transform has been busted ten thousand way till Christmas. The Lorentz Transform is solidly corroborated by experimental evidence. No reasonable person, at this juncture doubts. it. Galilean Relativity is WRONG, WRONG WRONG. It has been falsified empirically again, and again and again. And that is why I say Beckmann was a crackpot on this issue.

The incorrectness of Galilean Relativity was demonstrated before Einstein was born. Maxwell's electrodynamic theory was corroborated by Hertz in 1885. Maxwell's Electrodynamics is Lorentz Invariant right out of the box. it is a totally relativistic theory. Einstein's great initial contribution was demonstrating that all of physics, not just electrodynamics was Lorentz covariant. Attempts to cast electrodynamics in a Galilean fashion was doomed. In low velocity regimes Galilean Physics and Lorentz physics are indistinguishable but as soon as velocity which are of the order of the velocity of light are involved the differences are measurable.

Beckmann was not the only physicist that choked on the fact that velocities to not add simply when they are of the same order of magnitude as the speed of light. The special theory of relativity is very counter-intuitive which is most likely why Beckmann objected to it. It goes against common sense. But it turns out common sense at man scale is a very poor guide to how nature works.

[Brant Gaede]

Bob, the only thing I would say further is insofar as Beckmann may have objected on philosophical grounds, he did much more than that. (He did have your same contempt for philosophy generally as you do, but only stated it once that I remember in a short sentence within a short paragraph.)

His journal was called Galilean Electrodynamics. He described it as "anti-Einsteinian." That gave me pause for Einstein was not "anti-Newtonian." His book is Einstein Plus 2. His working premise was everything explained (up to 22 years ago) by Relativity could also be explained by classical physics.

He was a friend of Edward Teller's. Teller remained an Einsteinian until he died.

I noticed in my years of reading him that Petr could jump too fast to some conclusions. He embraced "cold fusion," although with his fingers crossed, and I thought, "Oh, oh." When that went bust he dropped that subject. He thought the Osprey would result in a major change in aviation. As a pilot, I knew better. I sent him a note on that. The Marines use it today. I think it's all military. One crashed just north of me some years ago in Marana, AZ. 22 Marines died. They were on a training mission. The engines--props--rotate from horizontal to vertical for vertical take offs and landings. I think they got the bugs out now. Very expensive.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

[beckmann] had his two publications going plus Ft Freedom, which was like a dial up Web site before the Internet we have today. A fellow in Australia now has it up as an archive. (Google Brant Gaede Ft Freedom)

I did. Interesting archive it is -- especiall the letter exchanges. Here's a snippet of a younger Freeman Gaede, writing a friendly note to Mr Beckmann (I loved what you wrote about Galt's speech and the latter-day Rand as well, but I don't want to do a Peter Taylor and dump a huge remnant of discussion):

In any case, I pretty much foresaw everything that subsequently

happened to the Ayn Rand movement. It's just a cult that gets smaller

and smaller.

And here we are, with not a cultist in sight.

[Brant Gaede]

I was more conservative in those days. I don't think I wrote that for Ft. Freedom. Petr started his site with a bunch of accumulated material and that was part of it. I think he got it up and going in 1989. My Kaypro computer had a built in 300 baud modem. No hard drive. Watching the material appear on your green screen was like watching high speed typing. I soon upgraded to a 1200 baud external modem. I still have that old Kaypro. If I were to fire it up it'd still be as good as new in 1984. I upgraded to a DOS computer in 1991. I still have that one too. I have all my old computers. My last desktop was a Windows 98. If I twist my head I can see it on the table.

After I started on Ft. Freedom I was posting on something called "The John Galt Line" out of Florida. I've effectively been posting on the "Internet" now for over 26 years. Most of what anyone is posting today will be washed away in electronic time. The entire electronic world we live in is at risk for it's not robust. It's been too much too soon. The first great shakeout, which will destroy trillions of dollars of wealth and multiples of tens of millions of lives--many literally--has yet to happen. I hope it's not going to be that bad.

--Brant

no water, no electricity, no medicine, no transportation, no food: whatcha going to do--call Washington with your dead phone?

and, worst of all, no TV

[william.scherk]

The IPPC GCMs (Global Climate Models) are based on a scientific error committed back in 1906.

[...]

For the entire article see: http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net

Some math is necessary to fully grasp the nature of the error.

[...]

So the earth is not going to turn into Venus anytime soon.

Bob, I think you might enjoy a page of experimental evidence at the Watts Up With That blog (the home of Anthony Watts, where a longstanding skeptical position regarding 'alarmist' claims and bullshit is the reigning paradigm. It is the position of Casey/Gehrlick/Postma -- under the rubric Sky Dragon Slayers -- that the Greenhouse Effect (GHE) does not exist at all. That is the whole point of Gehrlich's article ...

I am not understanding if you wholly accept the Gehrlich/Casey/Postma/Dragon-slayers position, as your comments are somewhat ambiguous. Maybe a straight up question can tease out your position: Do you believe that Gehrich et al have falsified the Greenhouse Effect?

Anyway, have a look at the WUWT page and see what you think. "New WUWT-TV segment: Slaying the ‘slayers’ with Watts."

I am still distilling what I have discovered in the published to-and-fro from the Gehrlich article you (and Casey) cited. I will try to winnow down and summarize what might be a black hole of boredom for some readers!

Which journal was [the Casey article] published in, Bob? And what have subsequent publications had to say about it?

Check out the math. [...]

None of this should be taken as disproof that human activity has some effect on climate. There is no doubt that humans have affected climate. The only question is how much and by what mechanisms.

Okay, I infer that you leave open the possibility that Casey is a crank or crackpot -- using the same standards by which you dismiss Brant's friend Beckmann as a crank.

So, how will you know (how can you know) if Gehrlich's article is also a lot of crankery or not? While you are mulling that over, have a gander at the Postma, Sullivan et al book "Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory." Here's the blurb:

Even before publication, Slaying the Sky Dragon was destined to be the benchmark for future generations of climate researchers. This is the world's first and only full volume refutation of the greenhouse gas theory of man-made global warming.

Nine leading international experts methodically expose how willful fakery and outright incompetence were hidden within the politicized realm of government climatology. Applying a thoughtful and sympathetic writing style, the authors help even the untrained mind to navigate the maze of atmospheric thermodynamics. Step-by-step the reader is shown why the so-called greenhouse effect cannot possibly exist in nature.

By deft statistical analysis the cornerstones of climate equations – incorrectly calculated by an incredible factor of three - are exposed then shattered.

This volume is a scientific tour de force and the game-changer for international environmental policymakers as well as being a joy to read for hard-pressed taxpayers everywhere.

[Brant Gaede]

Considering AGW purely as a scientific issue ignores the elephant in the room: the use of CC for political reasons crowding out all political and true scientific debate and creating the illusion it's just a scientific issue and that those who take issue are cranks and "deniers."

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Considering AGW purely as a scientific issue ignores the elephant in the room: the use of CC for political reasons

If the 'Greenhouse Effect' can be falsified, then the entire superstructure of atmospheric physics will need to be revised. This is a scientific issue foremost. The policy suggestions, or the clamor for action, or the anti-clamor of 'do nothing' follow from the science.

One can be entirely convinced by the science of the actual 'greenhouse effect' -- as is your favourite cimate commenter Judith Curry, as is Ellen's friend and colleague of Ellen's husband Richard Lindzen, as is the skeptic Christopher Monckton, as is the climate commenter Roy Spencer and so too John Christy [insert here other great and good anti-alarmist folks involved in the greater debates] ... and be firmly on the side of skepticism towards wildly wrong alarmist policy at governmental levels.

Do you see what I mean, Brant?

I certainly can entertain a long and interesting exchange on the policy wackiness of alarmism, yet at the same time accept the physics of CO₂ as an agent (simply put) of 'global warming.' The elephant, so to speak, is not what I am concentrating on in this thread.

the use of CC for political reasons [is] crowding out all political and true scientific debate

I disgree strongly with this. That there is a vibrant and sometimes raucous political debate is easily proven. See the efforts of such as your favourite, Dr Curry, in political debate at the highest level in the USA -- in her testimony to Congress. See Dr Lindzen, Dr Curry and Dr Christy in the workshop of the APS detailed in the other thread about the American Physical Society**.

As for the scientific debate, there are various levels -- from the lowliest blog through extremely high-traffic sites like WUWT, Curry's Climate Etc and RealClimate ... all the way to mass-circulation media like the Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal and other foundations committed to debate, from the lowliest dissenters to the Heartland Institute ... and to the political campaigns currently underway (in which all the GOP presidential candidates save one have signalled their 'side' in the debate). Beyond this, of course, scientific debate is hugely apparent in the peer-reviewed literature.

(If I could whine for a moment, I wish that folks here would take up my suggestion to read Spencer Weart's Discovery of Global Warming. It comprises both the science and the politics -- from the earliest days of Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius. As far as I can tell, nobody here has so much as glanced at it (save perhaps Ellen, who mentioned it in quotations of Bernie Lewin's blog review article of the 2003 edition, which she excerpted in two parts [1 and 2] in the thread Scientific Fraud becoming endemic? -- where the reviewer took issue with Weart's discussion of consensus, among other defects. What might interest Ellen is that Spencer Weart added his own friendly commentary to the reviewer's blog posting (Debate!). I have excerpted Weart's responses at the very bottom^a.)

For those who are willing to get their feet wet, I suggest either reading the timeline of discovery or the narrative version of the timeline. The book is also available at Amazon (bear in mind that Weart's website is a vastly extended version of that volume -- but is meticulously documented). Readers who really don't have the time or interest might take time to read an excerpt from it at Scientific American ... it's a mere 2203 words.

the use of CC for political reasons [is] creating the illusion [that climate change] just a scientific issue and that those who take issue are cranks and "deniers."

I'm sorry, but this confuses me. Please take the time to read the WUWT article I noted for Bob above, if you haven't already. I would say that if one can't understand the scientific disputes surrounding the thread topic, that someone has claimed to falsify the central concept of the 'greenhouse effect,' then the political debates will make no sense.

You are a very bright man, and you are entirely skeptical, I would guess, that there is such a thing as 'settled science' except in narrowly defined circumstances. Your intelligence, and your rational tools of inquiry are the only thing that can help you make sense of both the scientific and political debates.

I do not use the term 'denier,' whatever its convenience. I use the term that the so-called deniers prefer: (climate change) skeptic.

As for crankery and crackpots, they exist -- and they exist in climate debates (the WUWT article I recommended is an instance of where climate realists or climate skeptics put to the test a crackpot notion, via replicable experiment). I gave the example of Velikovsky and the metaphor of a walled-garden. I believe you understand what the term means, and I believe you understand the distinction between pseudoscience and science. I believe you understand that rigorous methodology and hard-played peer review is a necessary form of winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

If we don't start with the scientific debate -- before arguing politics -- then we are in a state of relative ignorance, and our political struggles have only a strained association with reality.

That is the final arbiter, isn't it, Brant? Reality.

Please show me good faith and review my several comments in this thread before you reply -- not to agree with me, but just to understand my stance vis a vis reason, evidence, objectivity and the processes of scientific debate. We are allies in our most basic values, I believe. We seek the same ends. We each want to be as informed as humanly possible, within our limitations and cognizant of our biases.

_________________

** without going too close to the black hole, I suggest that folks acquaint themselves with the positions of the scientists of the APS Workshop. One can discover there the fissures between proponents and skeptics, and discover that the scientists involved accept the theory of 'greenhouse warming' while being of divergent opinions on 'certainties' and 'uncertainties' and the limits of present knowledge.

The discussion is rigorous and mostly free of tainted terminology like 'denier' and 'alarmist'

Gawd help me, but I am on my second run through the APS Climate Change Review Statement Workshop. It is only 573 pages long, transcribed in courtroom style, so it is not a completely daunting enterprise to review it:

a. Spencer |

May 4, 2010 at 2:25 am

An interesting and well thought out review with a number of good points, although of course entirely partisan. One thing that disappoints me is that you pay little attention to the powerful forces that have deliberately encouraged the view that global warming is “not a problem.” I tried to balance discussion of that with some discussion of the motivation of the scientists, but their interest in getting attention and funds was a minor factor compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars and anti-regulatory ideology at stake.

I also take exception to your claim that major past climate changes were slow on a human timescale. More recent research (noted in the second edition) does make us more confident that well-observed huge decade-scale shifts were a feature of glacial epochs and are unlikely within the next half-century at least… it depends of course whether your time-scale extends to your grandchildren. Anyway I think we can agree that climate change can be really, really hard on a civilization over a century or so. And I suppose we can agree that there is some risk of severe global warming; I put the risk at 90% and you put it at… not zero, I trust…?

Note however that this is not posted to get into a discussion with you: you won’t change my views and I won’t change yours. I just wanted to post a few comments and now I’ll go away. Keep thinking hard!

Spencer | May 5, 2010 at 11:15 pm

Although I said I don’t want to get into a long conversation, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and I want to acknowledge that the lines you quote from the first edition turned out to be exaggerated. They were drawn from the work of Wally Broecker, and Broecker himself admitted the idea had gotten overblown (the movie The Day After Tomorrow really steamed him). Broecker is not an alarmist, he is just one of those guys who gets worked up about things, especially his own work of course, which has made him a good scientist.

I explained in the second edition and on my website that thanks to new research–not everything that is published in Science and Nature is on the pessimistic side–we are now less worried about huge decade-scale changes. Which is not to say that they cannot happen, since there remain known mechanisms that could produce them and there’s always unknows as well. But the probability now seems much smaller.

I agree that a warmer world would be okay, up to about 2 degrees warmer, although with the strain of six billion people and counting it would be a hard adjustment. In particular, since the human race is already using a quarter of the planet’s total biological productivity, the additional strain on other species will wipe out a lot of them… which would be a pity, but at least they’re not the ones we rely on. Also, the warming and precipitation changes now are very fast compared with known changes over the past few thousand years, which is a problem not only for nonhuman species but also in terms of what farmers in less-developed countries can easily adapt to… especially given that they are already stretched by environmental degradation and overpopulation.

But I agree that we can get through that, and our great-grandchildren (but not our children) might thank us for giving them a 2-degree-warmer world.

The problem is that there’s a good chance, probably a lot better than even odds, that business-as-usual will give us a world four, six, or even more degrees warmer. That goes beyond anything the planet has seen since the Paleocene-Eocene mass extinction event, and would be undoubtedly not nice. See Watts (no, not that Watts, D.J. Watts), “Six Degrees.” To be sure, impact studies… unlike, I believe, geophysics studies… are susceptible to pessimistic bias, but if you take just half of the studies seriously, it’s serious. Sure, maybe it’s all a mistake. There are only four bullets in the six-shooter revolver, go ahead and pull the trigger.

Now I really do think I have no more to say, but thanks anyway.

Edited June 30, 2015 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

I know nothing about Judith Curry. You need to address Richard Lindzen, not me. The Greenhouse Effect is not controversial to anyone not a complete ignoramous. Neither is climate change. "Climate Change" is used as a Trojan Horse. Bring it into your city and all the statists come out and take over. You're fucked.

--Brant

now to read your next paragraph

[Brant Gaede]

I can accept CO2 as an agent of global warming as I can accept smoking one cigarette in my life as an agent of my lung cancer. Or even 1000 of the suckers.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

The human race can worry about four big things. (1) Yellowstone blows up. (2) The next ice age. (3) The temporary collapse of electronic, communicative technology. (4) The biggie from outer space. Humans can worry about how to brush their teeth or even who's trying to use the government to screw them.

--Brant

if it's not freedom it's the left and the left is attacking on all unopposed fronts, but personally all you need for you and yours is aikido or not to even be where they think you are so you can whap them from behind (Whap or whop, make a choice. Don't let the spell checker do it for you.)

[william.scherk]

I know nothing about Judith Curry.

Fair enough. That was not what I assumed in light of earlier comments in a different thread seventy-five days ago.

My position, Bill, is merely reflective of the scientist I linked to in post 12.

That post twelve was a citation of .... you guessed it ... Judith Curry giving testimony to the US Congress. If you read the subsequent comments of mine, I discussed Judith Curry ... and the APS Workshop, which brings us back to home base here ...

My memory is a like a lobster trap, my friend.

Maybe Bill wants something like this, though I wonder.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/15/skeptical-climate-scientist-dismantles-dem-lawmakers-alarmism/

My blathering response is here. best left unread in that thread. Unless of course you want to once more plough through my attempts to understand your understandings!

Fun aside, I think we each better appreciate each other's opinions on cranky or outlandish or hysterical aspects of science and public policy. Thanks for the good faith reading of my turgid prose.

The Greenhouse Effect is not controversial to anyone not a complete ignoramous. Neither is climate change.

Wonderful. We both are suited up on the same general team as Curry, Lindzen, Christy etcetera (whose antipathy to alarmism is predicated on their estimations of uncertainty in prognosticatin,g). Poor Bob is on the other team with Velikovsky, claiming as he did in the opening post that the 'greenhouse effect' is a pile of shite because Gehrlich.

-- more seriously, if you doubt my bona fides or my attitude to alarmism and assorted whoopee, you can re-read my comment that helped Adam to understand where I am coming from ...

Edited July 1, 2015 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

Now I know a little about J.C. My mind is not a "lobster trap" the way yours is. The link I provided was for what was expressed not for who expressed it. Since I didn't know about her going in I forgot her going out. You can save yourself a lot of work interacting with me by assuming I'm honest if in some ways mentally deficient. I just made an honest statement. I also try to shovel in some self-deprecating humor (not?), to wit: I don't have your raw brain power; I'm too busy being a genius.

--Brant

three steps forward, two steps back; three steps forward, one step back; one step forward, two steps back; five steps forward, no steps back--Excelsior!

[BaalChatzaf]

I know nothing about Judith Curry.

Fair enough. That was not what I assumed in light of earlier comments in a different thread seventy-five days ago.

My position, Bill, is merely reflective of the scientist I linked to in post 12.

That post twelve was a citation of .... you guessed it ... Judith Curry giving testimony to the US Congress. If you read the subsequent comments of mine, I discussed Judith Curry ... and the APS Workshop, which brings us back to home base here ...

My memory is a like a lobster trap, my friend.

Maybe Bill wants something like this, though I wonder.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/15/skeptical-climate-scientist-dismantles-dem-lawmakers-alarmism/

My blathering response is here. best left unread in that thread. Unless of course you want to once more plough through my attempts to understand your understandings!

Fun aside, I think we each better appreciate each other's opinions on cranky or outlandish or hysterical aspects of science and public policy. Thanks for the good faith reading of my turgid prose.

The Greenhouse Effect is not controversial to anyone not a complete ignoramous. Neither is climate change.

Wonderful. We both are suited up on the same general team as Curry, Lindzen, Christy etcetera (whose antipathy to alarmism is predicated on their estimations of uncertainty in prognosticatin,g). Poor Bob is on the other team with Velikovsky, claiming as he did in the opening post that the 'greenhouse effect' is a pile of shite because Gehrlich.

-- more seriously, if you doubt my bona fides or my attitude to alarmism and assorted whoopee, you can re-read my comment that helped Adam to understand where I am coming from ...

Gehrlich's math is correct.

The well known 33 degree warming is explained without the flawed Greenhouse Analogy

Please see: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/11/derivation-of-entire-33c-greenhouse.html

Again, check the math. That math tells it all.

The current flawed Green House analogy is based on an error that Arnheneus made back in 1906.

The warming we experience is partly due to the fact that the heat radiates out slower than it comes in from the Sun. A body cannot radiate more heat than it receives from all of its energy sources. That would violate the first Law of Thermodynamics.

If the "back radiation" theory were correct the Earth would have burned up a billion years ago when we had 20 times the CO2 in the atmosphere we have now.

A similar thing happened a little over 90 years ago when a meteorologist named Wegner figured out how continents moves. They do move and they always have. He postulated the now corroborated and accepted theory of tektonic plates. Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener

At the time the Geological Establishment not only disagreed with Wegner (which was o.k., because he did not have all the evidence needed to back his hypothesis), but they ridiculed him, bad-mouthed him, prevented him from publishing etc. He was an immovable continent "denier". In the 1960's evidence of sea floor movement and paleomagnetism emerged. Further investigation showed that Wegner was right. Wegner's initial clue came from the fact the South America's east coast fits Africa's west coast like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and the flora and fauna on the two coasts are very similar, suggesting that at some point in time they were joined. The reluctance of the Establishment to accept this hypothesis was reasonable up to a point, but it went from professional critical thinking and reasonable skepticism to abuse.

Now as to the current warming theories and observations. First of all the IPCC's predictions have -never- come out in fact. Second the IPCC is so politically determined to "hang" man made CO2 that it has ignored or down weighted several other natural drivers including cloud formation and temperature redistributing due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and several others. The political situation associated with this issue has taken on a life of its own that has driven far beyond the bounds of competent science. Svensmark has shown how cosmic rays can produce clouds in the upper atmosphere. Clouds provide albido which can reflect back sun light and keep the earth cooler than otherwise would be the case. Please see

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51188502/PLA22068.pdfThebottom line: The IPCC hypothesis that it is ALL due to man made CO2 is faulty.

Now none of what I am saying should imply that we take a cavalier and devil may care attitude about the condition of the atmosphere. After all it is the only atmosphere we have to breath. There may be a very good case for slowing down or stopping the overburden of man-made CO2 on the atmosphere. BUT.... The IPCC is NOT making that case well. The IPCC is "circling the wagons" to protect its favorite hypothesis which alas has not accounted for the temperatures we actually measure in the atmosphere. And who can blame them? The Blame the Man Made CO2 game has the favor of governments and politicians (Al Bore???) and has become a billion dollar industry.

[merjet]

Matt Ridley on Climate Change at EconTalk. Listen and/or read the transcript.

[BaalChatzaf]

Matt Ridley on Climate Change at EconTalk. Listen and/or read the transcript.

Thank you.

[william.scherk]

The Greenhouse Effect is not controversial to anyone not a complete ignoramous. Neither is climate change.

Wonderful. We both are suited up on the same general team as Curry, Lindzen, Christy etcetera (whose antipathy to alarmism is predicated on their estimations of uncertainty in prognosticatin,g). Poor Bob is on the other team with Velikovsky, claiming as he did in the opening post that the 'greenhouse effect' is a pile of shite because Gehrlich.

Gehrlich's math is correct.

Bob, I have to ask -- have you looked for or read any of the rebuttals to the Gehrlich paper on the Greenhouse Effect (GHE)? If not, are you interested or willing to read some of them (published in the same journal where Gehrlich's paper appeared). If not, why not?

Is it possible in your mind that Gehrlich is wrong about the GHE, and that his 'falsification' is no such thing?

I mean to probe your ability to sift wheat from chaff. Your touting of Gehrlich and Casey and Siddons is fine and dandy, but if you haven't explored the opposing side, and considered objections to these folks' notions, then you aren't showing much good faith effort.

The well known 33 degree warming is explained without the flawed Greenhouse Analogy [...]

Please see: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/11/derivation-of-entire-33c-greenhouse.html

The Hockey Schtick blog is run by a nameless somebody named MJ. The link you posted in the other thread is to a 'guest post' by a fellow named Alan Siddons. Why should a guest blog post or anonymously-written internet publication overturn the basic atmospheric physics of the GHE? Have you not read and 'checked' for critical reactions to the blog post?

Your new link is written by ... apparently the same somebody named MJ. Or maybe it was Siddons and they forgot to cite him. Who knows ...

Here is a clue to where Siddons stands in the anti-alarmist camp, from the comments at your first touted Hockey Schtick link:

Reply from Alan Siddons:

AGW skeptics are mad at me for swimming upstream too — Lindzen, Spencer, Singer, Monckton et al despise me

— but to me their defense of shoddy physics (i.e., "the settled science") only enables the alarmist cause.

Anyway, you will not be surprised that there is some push-back to the whole argument of Anonymous, MJ, Siddon and Gehrlich and the physical models they tout. It is in your interest to entertain objections to the 'falsifiication by blog post' ... if you don't, you are not being a rational inquirer, and you have given up engaging in good-faith discussion.

What makes me say that about good-faith? Because, in your output here, you put a stress on the importance of rigorous peer-review in mainline journals. Does this work only for the goose and not for the gander? Look at what you say at multiple times in multiple comments -- these are just the most recent:

• mainline peer reviewed scientific journals
• science deprived ignoramuses of the open publications
• A reference to a peer reviewed (or refereed journal) would be appreciated.
• If you do not publish and it is not peer review it does not count.
• If peer review was good enough for Richard Feynman it is good enough for me.
• Have you published and has it been peer reviewed?
• When a scientist goes to the mass-media instead of a refereed journal or does not post a short article to Phys Revs (or like journal) my bullshit alarm starts to ring.

So, seriously -- what value does Ba'al Chatzaf place in the anonymous blog entries and assorted websites and pal-reviewed publications you have cited in this and the other current thread?

There may be a very good case for slowing down or stopping the overburden of man-made CO2 on the atmosphere.

Why? If there is zero 'greenhouse' effect in earthly reality, if CO₂ has zero effect on global temperature rise since the Industrial Age began, there is no reason not to churn out CO₂ until the cows come home.

Just to open up your mind to the possibility that the 'falsification of GHE' is wrong, here's a snippet from Skeptical Science:

Empirical Evidence for the Greenhouse Effect

We only have to look to our moon for evidence of what the Earth might be like without an atmosphere that sustained the greenhouse effect. While the moon’s surface reaches 130 degrees C in direct sunlight at the equator (266 degrees F), when the sun ‘goes down’ on the moon, the temperature drops almost immediately, and plunges in several hours down to minus 110 degrees C (-166F).

Since the moon is virtually the same distance from the sun as we are, it is reasonable to ask why at night the Earth doesn’t get as cold as the moon. The answer is that, unlike the Earth, the moon has no water vapour or other greenhouse gases, because of course it has no atmosphere at all. Without our protective atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be as barren as our lifeless moon; without the heat trapped overnight in the atmosphere (and in the ground and oceans) our nights would be so cold that few plants or animals could survive even a single one.

The most conclusive evidence for the greenhouse effect – and the role CO2 plays – can be seen in data from the surface and from satellites. By comparing the Sun’s heat reaching the Earth with the heat leaving it, we can see that less long-wave radiation (heat) is leaving than arriving (and since the 1970s, that less and less radiation is leaving the Earth, as CO2 and equivalents build up). Since all radiation is measured by its wavelength, we can also see that the frequencies being trapped in the atmosphere are the same frequencies absorbed by greenhouse gases.

Disputing that the greenhouse effect is real is to attempt to discredit centuries of science, laws of physics and direct observation. Without the greenhouse effect, we would not even be here to argue about it.

See also, please, another dismantling of the 'falsification of GHE' claims at SS, this one taking on the Joseph Postma claim. A short excerpt from the conclusion.

In summary, Joseph Postma published an article criticizing a very simple model that nonetheless produces useful results. He made several very simple errors along the way, none of which are very technical in nature. More sophisticated models are obviously designed to handle the uneven distribution of solar heating (which is why we have weather!); nonetheless, the educational tools are useful for their purpose, and in no way does Postma undermine the existence or necessity of the greenhouse effect. Without agreenhouse effect, multiple studies have shown that the Earth collapses into a frozen iceball (Pierrehumbert et al., 2007; Voigt and Marotzke 2009, Lacis et al 2010) and indeed, after an ice-albedo feedback, plummets below the modern effective temperature of 255 K. This work makes extraordinary claims and yet no effort was made to put it in a real climate science journal, since it was never intended to educate climate scientists or improve the field; it is a sham, intended only to confuse casual readers and provide a citation on blogs. The author should be ashamed.

So, to winnow my concerns about your easy acceptance of non-peer reviewed whoopee on the fringes of debate: what makes you suspend your usual critical attitude towards crackpot science -- what makes the peer-review process in mainline journals of high value in some contexts and not in others?

In the end, I think you are willing to look at the materials I am amassing that take issue with Gehrlich -- please give me a sign. If you aren't willing to check your own assumptions, then of course, the material will fall on deaf ears and the pointlessness of my research will be clear. In which case, I will bail on this thread and any other where you tout crackpot theory ...

Matt Ridley on Climate Change at EconTalk. Listen and/or read the transcript.

Okay, I have read the transcript ... and I don't understand what recommends it to the issue in this thread: falsification of the GHE. For example, Ridley has repeatedly described himself as a 'lukewarmer,' as he does in the interview podcast. Nothing he writes as a science journalist takes exception with the Greenhouse Effect. See, for example, "My Life as a Climate Lukewarmer," by Matt Ridley. Rational Optimist, February 2015.

From the podcast ...

What I mean by a lukewarmer is somebody who is not challenging the idea that carbon dioxide levels are increasing or that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or that we have seen warming in recent years or are likely to see warming to continue. But is challenging the idea that there is a strong likelihood that this will turn dangerous at some point in the future. In fact, I would often go further and say, actually, there's pretty good evidence that the carbon dioxide emissions we are putting into the atmosphere as fossil fuels are in many ways improving the environment.

[merjet]

Matt Ridley on Climate Change at EconTalk. Listen and/or read the transcript.

Okay, I have read the transcript ... and I don't understand what recommends it to the issue in this thread: falsification of the GHE.

I didn't post it to address what you regard as THE issue in this thread. I posted it here rather than starting yet another thread about AGW.

[Brant Gaede]

Gee, William, the GHE is real and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This doesn't mean CO2 is significant is raising temperatures, that AGW is real, or that the significant increases in atmospheric CO2 don't follow instead of precede warming. The temperature has been increasing since the Little Ice Age. The likely cause not the GHE or increase in CO2 but increase in solar activity. A billion years from now this planet may be uninhabitable by complex life because the dynamics of the sun's radiation will cause inevitable heat increase on the surface of the Earth. Because of continental drift in a couple of hundred of millions of years all the continents may be stuck together creating vast inland, virtually uninhabitable desert over most of the landmass. In the meantime we seem to have many ice ages to come. When the glaciers come back there'll be no stopping them by us. There is a scenario in which the next ice age might actually be triggered by a global warming out of changing precipitation patterns, but that has to be an untestable guess. Of course, that'd be followed by a general drop in temperatures as the increase in the amount of ice going south reflects more of the sun's energy back into space.

More CO2 in the atmosphere = more plant life = more animal life or win, win, win. (?????)

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Matt Ridley on Climate Change at EconTalk. Listen and/or read the transcript.

Okay, I have read the transcript ... and I don't understand what recommends it to the issue in this thread: falsification of the GHE.

I didn't post it to address what you regard as THE issue in this thread. I posted it here rather than starting yet another thread about AGW.

Fair enough. What are your thoughts?

[william.scherk]

Gee, William, the GHE is real and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This doesn't mean CO2 is significant is raising temperatures, that AGW is real, or that the significant increases in atmospheric CO2 don't follow instead of precede warming. The temperature has been increasing since the Little Ice Age. The likely cause not the GHE or increase in CO2 but increase in solar activity. A billion years from now this planet may be uninhabitable by complex life because the dynamics of the sun's radiation will cause inevitable heat increase on the surface of the Earth. Because of continental drift in a couple of hundred of millions of years all the continents may be stuck together creating vast inland, virtually uninhabitable desert over most of the landmass. In the meantime we seem to have many ice ages to come. When the glaciers come back there'll be no stopping them by us. There is a scenario in which the next ice age might actually be triggered by a global warming out of changing precipitation patterns, but that has to be an untestable guess. Of course, that'd be followed by a general drop in temperatures as the increase in the amount of ice going south reflects more of the sun's energy back into space.

More CO2 in the atmosphere = more plant life = more animal life or win, win, win. (?????)

Brant, I am tempted to disjoint this paragraph and respond to each claim with a "Who says?" or "How do you know that?" I am also tempted to find peer-reviewed science articles that take issue with your certainties, and patiently try to rationally explain the limits of my knowledge and understanding.

Should I bother? Are you interested in discovering which of your claims may be 1) generally true, but; 2) not actually true; 3) in dispute; 4) requiring more exposition?

If you are interested in that, any of that, please let me know. If you aren't then I will just assert a claim without supporting warrants or cites or references to literature, and proffer an opinion that the entire paragraph is a mess of supposition, true-buts, specious reasoning, fiddle-faddle and malarkey -- along with hopes and dreams that we have nothing to worry our little heads about. Apple trees and honey-bees, and snow-white turtle-doves.

That way we can just inhabit two mutually incompatible opinion zones without reasonable discussion or study -- and get back to the business of profitable argument elsewhere ...

Edited July 1, 2015 by william.scherk

[BaalChatzaf]

So, seriously -- what value does Ba'al Chatzaf place in the anonymous blog entries and assorted websites and pal-reviewed publications you have cited in this and the other current thread?

Answer: I checked the math myself. It is kosher. That is as good a review as any paper can get.

[Brant Gaede]

Gee, William, the GHE is real and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This doesn't mean CO2 is significant is raising temperatures, that AGW is real, or that the significant increases in atmospheric CO2 don't follow instead of precede warming. The temperature has been increasing since the Little Ice Age. The likely cause not the GHE or increase in CO2 but increase in solar activity. A billion years from now this planet may be uninhabitable by complex life because the dynamics of the sun's radiation will cause inevitable heat increase on the surface of the Earth. Because of continental drift in a couple of hundred of millions of years all the continents may be stuck together creating vast inland, virtually uninhabitable desert over most of the landmass. In the meantime we seem to have many ice ages to come. When the glaciers come back there'll be no stopping them by us. There is a scenario in which the next ice age might actually be triggered by a global warming out of changing precipitation patterns, but that has to be an untestable guess. Of course, that'd be followed by a general drop in temperatures as the increase in the amount of ice going south reflects more of the sun's energy back into space.

More CO2 in the atmosphere = more plant life = more animal life or win, win, win. (?????)

Brant, I am tempted to disjoint this paragraph and respond to each claim with a "Who says?" or "How do you know that?" I am also tempted to find peer-reviewed science articles that take issue with your certainties, and patiently try to rationally explain the limits of my knowledge and understanding.

Should I bother? Are you interested in discovering which of your claims may be 1) generally true, but; 2) not actually true; 3) in dispute; 4) requiring more exposition?

If you are interested in that, any of that, please let me know. If you aren't then I will just assert a claim without supporting warrants or cites or references to literature, and proffer an opinion that the entire paragraph is a mess of supposition, true-buts, specious reasoning, fiddle-faddle and malarkey -- along with hopes and dreams that we have nothing to worry our little heads about. Apple trees and honey-bees, and snow-white turtle-doves.

That way we can just inhabit two mutually incompatible opinion zones without reasonable discussion or study -- and get back to the business of profitable argument elsewhere ...

I am primarily concerned with AGW as an essential part of the green religion being used as a Marxist-fascist power grab over the world's economies. If I wasn't I wouldn't bother much with a scientific discussion on the matter. You are inviting me into an arena--your arena--where I will be continually out-gunned, but you're not a scientist and we'd not be having a scientific discussion no matter how many facts you're able to adduce for whatever your position is, and you'd adduce those facts until the cows come home, go out in the morning and come home again. There are millions of adduce-able facts. Throwing them at the side of a barn and seeing what sticks is neither science nor interesting nor am I into it. For a scientific conversation talk to Bob. There's no one else on OL for you to talk to. No matter how well it's done, BTW, science without numbers is no better than scientific philosophy and numbers without the right supporting context, as in a theory tested, aren't very valuable either.

--Brant

I always liked that commercial

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I love your passion, but climate change is losing the PR war the world over.

Brant nailed one of the main reasons why.

"Climate Change" is used as a Trojan Horse. Bring it into your city and all the statists come out and take over. You're fucked.

I never see you talk about this. Nor do I see this addressed by those of your way of thinking.

There's that.

And there's an issue that is deeper: credibility.

I have mentioned this before. The sheer amount of sleaze with which the scientists and administrators have behaved in promoting the end of times along with a power grab has been breathtaking in its amateurishness. Everyone can see it.

But do I see you, or people who think like you, slamming the dishonest assholes? No.

Do I see you telling people that this or that scientist who promotes AGW cannot be trusted because they blew their scientific integrity? No.

Do I even see you say Al Gore is a clown and jerk for selling out to oil money? That his words and actions do not align? No.

You just keep arguing as if this stuff is going to go away over time.

It isn't.

The only way to correct a credibility problem this big is to blast the idiots who abused their authority and good name, and mean it by ostracizing them. Only after that can you point to people of integrity who promote your position and have skeptics listen.

Unfortunately, all you do when people complain about this huge mess of manipulation is say the equivalent of don't look at that guy, look at this guy instead.

That works when choosing among rational options. It does not work when "that guy" was a dishonest prick who was filling his pockets with illicit money, intimidating honest scientists with the power of the government, and staging a power grab the likes of which has not been seen.

It's not OK to ignore "that guy." Or "that other guy." Or "that other other guy." Or "that other other other guy." (I mean the sleazy folks, of which there are lots.)

Throw the bums off the team and make it loud and clear, with some teeth behind it, and I, for one, will start listening to other options. Nothing less will work because nobody believes people who tolerate and welcome scientists and administrators who sell-out their integrity on their team.

Until then, I think along the lines of Brant, that looking at "this guy instead" is the equivalent of humoring someone who is throwing a lot of crap up against a wall to see what sticks.

Nobody is eternal to keep doing that.

You can no longer persuade by wearing down the skeptics with repetition in different forms.

I have no doubt you are in earnest and believe this is a serious problem. But if you want to reach skeptics, realize that one of the main reasons for their skepticism is the sleaze on your side. Once you fully understand that, get rid of the sleazy folks. Get pissed at them. Let the skeptics know that your passion for facts does not allow for sleaze. From nobody. Especially from folks on your side. Let these assholes know they betrayed you and let everyone see it.

Do that and skeptics will start listening.

Or ignore it like you have been doing and watch the skepticism keep growing.

And I fear this is exactly what you and those who think like you will do. Do you know why? You are afraid of the sleazy folks on your side. You don't want them to come after you like you know they will if you start speaking out against them.

But if you want to advance awareness and action in reality rather than keep dwelling in this alternate universe driven by end of times panic and contaminated by sheer greed for money and power, that is the only way I know of to get it done.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Happy Canada Day, Brant. It is forty freaking degrees here and I really need a cool refreshing pause. I was going to leave you with a schmaltzy version of the communist Coke song -- with the lyrics spelled out, but then I realized that would wreck it for everyone and push this thread into the ditch.

On a much cooler less rational note then, the 2012 Canada Day Parade in Vancouver, the fiercely British portion, in two minutes of costumed strutting and piping martial pageantry (skipping the hypnotic motorcycle cop intro. and putting the video speed to 2X). I know you got this same kind of shit down there. Look at these people. Are North Americans afraid of Global Warming?

Hell no. Bring it on.

Michael, my curiosity and my observations tell me there is a divergence of thought on this issue in this forum, you might call it an overwhelming opinion.

Every time a new thread raises a global warming topic, we tend to identify the more basic contradictions at the heart of the particular issue in play. The thing. The issue. Things to solve. The neighbourly, rational ways of Rand.

I think we always, passionately or ploddingly, get closer to a more-correct 'narrative' among other more-or-less correct stories and explanations -- theory, model, equation, law, blah blah. I think by concerted effort folks who disagree can get to the point of disagreement and thrash it out. Here we have actually done good work lately, Brant and I offside to Bob. We kept it fairly cool. Brant and I at least, see more eye to eye than we did before our first discussion.

There are fuzzly lines remaining, where we still seem to diverge, Another step to solve.In the midst of dispute. Another tricky mental task.

Divergence between Brant and I and Bob and I, and in some ways you and I, this is interesting to me as a puzzle, even if it requires a lot of critical thinking or 'mental combat.' We help each other as long as we are after the same goods.

This scramble of issues then is not always a passion, it can be a chore, Useful, illuminating, but requiring sustained effort. I get tired or frustrated if I feel I haven't at least expanded my understanding of the other guy's point of view. Every time I am off the bench, however, and engaged in argument, my understanding ratchets in increments, notch by notch.

This is the Pollyanna underneath my surly exterior. I wish and hope disputing shouldn't ever be a chore here, on the field of rationality, so to speak. This is my major point of contact with Objectivism. I should and we do narrow our differences by rational inquiry,

I am getting there. Everyone has their own turf and term and pace.

I have no real concerns about global warming for my country. We are rich, industrialized, adaptive, with scientific foresight and tools. I think we will be in that top silky cream who will benefit even by the most dire-elsewhere scenarios. No scenario has an emotional grip on me. I hope and would prefer to believe that there is nothing to be concerned about in and around increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. I would like to believe that at the heart of the dispute is an elaborate multi-national ruse or hoax.

I appreciate your cautions. Maybe we are handling differing slices of the larger heart of The Story, Michael. I am kind of on a different argumentative journey than you, I think! We will tend to converge toward the same point or level of common understanding.

As you say, sometimes, it's all good for everyone involved. Even the chores.