perfidy

See also:

The">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=The+Great… Great Global Warming Swindle

Just watched that doc - it was on my list of things to track down in the wide interwebs, so thanks for saving me the trouble. Very well put together film, and had a lot of information I was not aware of, particularly on the origins of global warming as a political advocacy movement. A lot of that I had heard, of course, but it put it all together in a very damning way. Damning for those who blame CO2 for every odd weather day, anyway.

I am writing a longish post on this, long enough, perhaps, to attract the attentions of Steven den Beste again...

From the tail end of the first page of the article:

"There are many important environmental battles to be fought," says Bill McKibben, the Vermont-based writer, activist and passionate cross-country skier. "But if we lose this one -- which we're doing -- none of the others matter. It's crunch time."

As clear a case of ipse dixit as you'll ever see.

And regarding your third question, Phil, if it's not anthropogenic, we get back to my old point about how arrogant it is for man to think he can either destroy or fix the global environment.

As B says, there are lots of components of the alleged man-made fix to global warming that just make good sense - waste less, pollute less, do things better, cleaner, and more intelligently. All of which make sense, whether we've got global warming, global cooling, or global stasis.

It's the highly speculative (as to outcomes and efficacy) & economically ludicrous stuff that provides the only reason I pay attention to the alleged issue of GW.

Because, as GL correctly if impolitically points out, without some level of global warming, none of us would even be here right now, in all likelihood.

Not to hijack the thread here, but is it not PC to say that some global warming is OK?

I mean, otherwise, I'd be living under about 2,000 meters of ice. So I am in a postion to say that I like not living under 2,000 meters of ice, so it follows that I must like global warming...?

Shit, I lied -- there's a followup question:

3. Supposing for a moment that global warming and climate change are happening -- with potential disastrous results for lots and lots of people and other living things -- but are the result of processes that are completely inevitable and non-anthropogenic. Does that mean we then shouldn't try to do anything to mitigate their ill effects?

Global warming is not coming; it is here. Greenhouse gases -- most notably carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas -- are trapping solar heat that once escaped from the Earth's atmosphere. As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.

Perhaps some day, sports arenas will be as environmentally friendly as the one SI asked architectural firm SmithGroup to design: self-sustaining and carbon-neutral.

It's the tone that got to me. Okay, here:

Question one, fair enough. If you talk about how climate affects sports - as the article finally begins to do after a page of doom and PC environmental pieties - that's germane. No snow, no skiing.

Question two, I wouldn't go so far as to say utterly non-factual, but huge parts of the first page are speculations presented as established fact. Even if those speculations are grounded in research - the verdict is not in.

Question three, the biggest unknowns about the climate situation are 1) what the climate will do in the future - it got warmer up until 1940, then colder until 1970, then warmer again, and might be turning down again now. 2) If there is warming or cooling, are we at fault? New research has implicated changes in solar output and cosmic rays. and 3) if there is a long term warming trend, what will the effects actually be? Good or bad, the computer models are not up to predicting what will happen.

In the face of these unknowns, taking action - drastic action in the case of some proposals, seems unwarranted, aside from incremental improvements in efficiency, cleanliness, etc, such as have been going on for decades. The things we know we should do, for reasons other than preventing a global warming holocaust, like reducing pollution, being more efficient in our use of resources and energy, and not spraying toxic waste everywhere - we should keep doing, and wait on the rest.

Just two questions:

1. How is an article on how weather and climate affects the way sports are played -- ignoring for a moment the question of global warming and taking the question in isolation -- not relevant to sports reporting? (I mean, do you object to stuff about, say, how fall the ball travels in Denver, or the differences in offensive strategy in rain vs. dry weather?)

2. Which parts of the article were non-factual?

And perhaps someday they'll stop printing photos of swimsuits that look crappy on men with beer bellies.

Whatever. I'm in a bad mood today, so don't even go there, or I'll have to get over my pacificism and kill somebody.