Potato Beetle
Researchers predicted a particular beetle would not be able to get into the cold areas of Kazakhstan and western China. But the sneaky beetles learnt to cope with the cold by burying themselves in the ground. The modelers failed completely to predict the spread. Imagine the ecological modelers who are not only using inadequate biological models, but guesstimating the future temperature with climate models that don’t work either.
In the last 500 million years as life on Earth evolved the temperature has swung up and down through a range of about 15C. We are currently in the cooler half of that temperature range, in a mini-warm-moment surrounded by ice ages. Despite this, the climate-industry is panicking that a half a degree of extra warmth this century will wipe out species that survived the last ten million years.
The potato beetle laughs at them.
Crop pests outwit climate change predictions en route to new destinations
Scientists highlight the dangers of relying on climate-based projections of crop pest distribution
…Dr Bebber uses the example of the Colorado potato beetle, an important pest of potato crops whose spread across much of the Northern Hemisphere has been linked to global warming. Although the beetle had invaded most European and Central Asian countries by 1950, one leading climate change computer model predicted it would be unable to establish in Kazakhstan and western China. In fact, the pest spread rapidly through the region — entering Xinjiang Province in China from Kazakhstan around 1992.
This difficulty in projecting future distributions was partly down to the Colorado potato beetle proving to be highly adaptable, evolving its behaviour to burrow down and escape the cold.
Dr Bebber said: “Our review has highlighted how difficult it is to predict where damaging crop pests may turn up. Their ability to evolve tolerance to different climates has been investigated in only a few species but has not been considered in distribution models. We now urgently need to improve monitoring and identification of these pests, particularly in the developing world, both for research and to secure food production.”
Daniel Patrick Bebber. Range-Expanding Pests and Pathogens in a Warming World. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 2014; 53 (1): 150605182533006 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-phyto-080614-120207
Related posts: Humans live from -50C to +40C, but two more degrees will kill us. Panic now.
Models do not predict anything. They are merely confirmation bias backed by processing power.
464
“one leading climate change computer model predicted it would be unable to establish in Kazakhstan and western China” HuH? How could a climate model predict that? Climate models can not even predict the weather?
331
Climate models cannot predict the weather
That is not what they are meant to do!
25
Agreed Maxine.
The models are just to provide useful sciency propaganda for the UN and warmists.
Nothing more.
70
I think there is substantial truth in your statement tom0mason.
The critical thing to remember is that the definition of ‘climate change’ includes putative anthropogenic influence, with or without the models, with or without the science, and irrespective of what CO2 is or is not ‘doing’. Also explicit, is the absence of an ‘end point’ or statement of criteria that no longer require the bureaucratic management of an eco-elite. It’s unadulterated ideology pure and simple
60
Climate models were originally weather forecasting models. From the WMO:
“Climate models have been developed from weather forecasting models but, due to the large number of calculations involved, climate models currently use bigger grid spacing and longer time steps so that they can be run further ahead in time for a given amount of computer time.”
31
I know. Just having a bit of fun.
00
Depends on the intended goal of the model.
I used computer models to predict aerodynamics and structural strength of various projects. This is as a reference point. (To get an idea if the widget I was designing can handle design specifications). I then build a prototype to test and verify the simulation numbers. (Wind tunnel and static/dynamic testing). I always ask myself if these numbers align and are within a reasonable threshold of error.
For university students, around 10% error is expected as they are learning the process of computer aided design and manufacturing. Today’s kids are lucky with the advent of affordable 3D printing solutions for rapidly building prototypes.
For commercial engineers, its much lower. (For a Boeing/Airbus/Lockheed-Martin/etc engineer, its approx 1% to 2% …That’s the accuracy of modeling/simulation in aerospace industry).
In terms of Climate Change, its goal is to create propaganda material (portray scientific authority), as a way to support a political agenda. So yes, confirmation bias under this scenario.
Nothing they produce is accurate because they’ve already come to a conclusion. It seems they don’t care too much if they are 200% to 300% off the mark. They don’t seem to accurately account for real world effects like flora or solar. (These are assumed via oversimplified equations or outright ignored).
They do NOT test and verify their model numbers with sensor data, experimentation, or prototyping. This is where their scientific credibility must be questioned. Pure computer models that don’t get checked against real world data…That’s a red flag for any competent scientist or engineer!
You know what’s ironic?
With all the Climate models they are doing, they are consuming vast amounts of electricity! Supercomputers need megawatts of electricity to run and cool. (Need lots of air conditioning to crunch numbers!). Its a huge carbon emissions footprint!
For example…
China’s Tianhe-2 (aka: Milky Way-2) supercomputer.
Power consumption: 24 MW (including cooling).
…The supercomputer itself consumes 17.8 MW.
Of course, China doesn’t waste their computing resources on Climate modeling. The world’s most powerful supercomputer is actually used for “government security applications”. (Maybe breaking foreign cryptography algorithms? Simulate military attack/defense strategy? Etc?)
SIDE NOTE:
When I said “It seems they don’t care too much if they are 200% to 300% off the mark.” …That needs to be elaborated on. They don’t care when they push the numbers out for propaganda use. But when their numbers don’t match the real world, that’s when you see them act surprised or tone down their rhetoric in a following report or “study”!
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Hmm! Just the one super computer, eh!. (my bolding here)
You know, the same total power generation for Chad in Africa with a population of 12.6 Million people.
Tony.
210
Warm Hans Schellnhuber’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Myths recently installed something like a supercomputer. Let’s call it a “heating system” because they do!
They have to run more climate models in the colder months to stay warm. How’s that for motivation?
The kind souls at the EU chipped in some small change to pay IBM for it.
100
An interesting read (although its Wikipedia)
You need 16 GE wind turbines (turning) to power the thing (plus a small fossil fuel power plant to back it up).
30
A brilliant outline Aussieguy!
KK
Some past comment on “models”
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/the-secret-life-of-internet-climate-trolls/#comment-1278218
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/the-secret-life-of-internet-climate-trolls/#comment-1277363
20
Back in the mid 1980’s, I built numerical models for structural analysis for structural engineering. The main structural loads of concern were wind loads but the model included “secondary loads” which are loads resulting from movement; “structural displacement” essentially due to the self-weight of teh structure. As the model was developed from first principles, it was rather easy to calculate the secondary loading; merely recalculate the loads at the initially-displaced position. Iteration until the structural deflection converged meant that the structure was supporting all of the loads. This, I later learnt is formally a numerical application of the relaxation method.
Another side-effect was that I was able to calculate structural buckling limits by finite offsets of loads; which is far easier than modelling the structure as an equivalent spherical cow to facilitate “correct” mathematical analysis.
Actual implementation of first principles to find a solution was however fraught by the limits of numerical representation of the physical world. Detecting convergence to the final shape over iterations by exactness almost never happened. What did happen more often was numerically-computed “wiggles” in deflected shape that would “oscillate” between iterations. So I “fudged” the convergence by defining it to be a displacement envelope relative to the shape at previous iteration; iteration zero being the initial, unloaded shape. Christopher Essex’s recent video of “Six Impossible Things” illustrates some of the numerical meanderings and procrastinations that are the bane of the serious numerical modeller.
Engineering analysis is conservative. Loads are conservative; i.e. the worst-case that is plausibly justified is applied. Similarly, the strengths and dimensions of materials are taken at their plausible worst, “within” manufacturing tolerances. It was very time consuming to unravel Engineering practice as e.g. reflected in Standards, from the fundamental structural calculations. The roots of some of the practices dated back to an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Standard of 1945; when the prevalent calculation was bound by slide-rule.
Once the physical model was sorted, it was necessary to preserve the conservative nature of both loading and materials to determine the structured engineered fitness for purpose.
When my numerical technique’s verity was put to a physical test under the critical eyes of SECWA; some of which couldn’t believe that so little steel could do so much; I’d taken the precaution of measuring the strengths of the materials; their minimum dimensions; performing the model run based on those figures, along with the actual test loads that simulated wind by application at a few points. I was quite confident that the structure would survive 120% of the rated ultimate load, but not 125%. The ultimate load rating is that which the structure must sustain without permanent damage. It broke at 123%. It could have failed at 120% if the testers had cranked up the test loads in a different order and a breeze been blowing in the wrong direction.
In the real, real world, most of the loading that the structures would encounter in life would be from the overhead lines that they supported; lines supported via comparatively fragile insulators. SECWA refused to supply insulators for the destructive testing, insisting that we supply some steel “insulators” to connect the loading cables at equivalent offset.
Aeronautical Engineers are quite “lucky” to have materials with very close tolerances in material dimensions, stiffness and strength. But given all the computational power in the world and a total knowledge of materials and loads, prototypes are still built and flown by test pilots with parachutes.
10
TS,
That’s a load of [self-snip].
By the way, it was Neil Armstrong’s birthday yesterday. Apollo 11 thrusters were fired in a sequence calculated from a computer model.
The implication of your statement is then obvious.
I reckon Neil and Mike’s old buddy Buzz would like a word with you.
31
Andrew, thanks for your comments. Yes, amazing things have been done based on computer modeling using the best available physics (that is the best available that provide a basis for quantitative computations as their output, i.e. the equations of motion in space). If the NASA used a model that predicted that you could make it to the moon if 15 min or that it would take 5 years, those models would be scrapped in a New York minute.
The point is, their models were constructed based on the equations of physics, then the produced predictions. Those predictions were tested by comparison to previous aeronautical results, to wind tunnel experiments, and by launching test vehicles to telemeter their performance to compare with the model predictions. These validation studies continued until the models matched data to the extremely high standards.
Global warming on the other hand starts with an assumption, CO2 causes warming, and the models are built on this concept. When their predictions are way off, they do not correct the models to include better physical assumptions and equations. Rather they start adjusting the observed data, making predictions hundreds of years out that cannot be tested, and playing every trick and scheme they can think of to ignore the error and focus on the false predictions as “real data”.
NASA engineers and their astronauts were focusing on real world problems and racing to find real world solutions. Their motives were noble, brave, and honest.
Climate science modelers are the exact opposite. Their objectives are to confuse, obfuscate, lie, and fool the public to control the public, and to get rich and powerful in the process. Nothing noble, nothing good, nothing true, nothing useful.
110
There is a world of difference between engineering/astrogation and climate “modelling”. One is based on science and real data, the other is poor quality fiction.
70
Andrew,
We are trying to differentiate between engineering models and climate models. (We use models in chemistry/chem eng too.)
This is from WUWT about a year ago and I think the guy did a really good job pointing out this difference.
I think the only way Climastrologers have gotten away with their shoddy work is because the REAL scientists and engineers assume it is done to a high standard (as their work is) and never actually checked. Alex is not the first highly trained individual to say he is shocked. A whole team from NASA said the same.
SUMMARY OF PRELIMINARY REPORT
The Right Climate Stuff Research Team
John Kehr, the Chem Engineer I have mentioned a few times is working with this group. That is why his website has been sort of abandoned.
100
gai
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ELM model from the 1970’s US International Biological Program?
It was an attempt to simulate rangeland ecosystems.
The two questions were (as I recall)
1. Can we simulate a rangeland ecosystem?
2. HOW WELL can we simulate a rangeland ecosystem?
Course lectures around this were heavy on verification and validation.
One wry comment from a participant was
“Real knowledge does not accumulate as fast as computer output”
30
Real knowledge is a tad more reliable.
What we have here is complex code mixed with political zeal. Then there is vanity and carelessness that is always a problem.
00
Yes, “we” are, if “we” does not include TS. TS made a very general statement with far-reaching implications which are contrary to the seasoned advice that you’ve shown from Alex H and contrary to the lived experience of Apollo 11 and about half the global warming skeptics who have replied since.
If TS wanted to aim his criticism only at climate models then he would (or should) have said such specifically.
I congratulate you on supplying the entire quote from Alex H, as a more timid soul might have been tempted to cut out the part where he endorses the existence of a greenhouse warming effect from CO2.
In reading the responses to Alex H’s comment I was introduced to the word Gleichschaltung. I suspect we will be needing this word in the future, for one reason or another.
10
Andrew, I have no problem with a ‘Greenhouse warming effect’
See, it is right HERE. Along with an ozone warming effect from incoming solar energy.
I do have a problem with the concept of an increase in CO2 causing a run away increase in water vapor That is water as a positive feedback tripling the effect of CO2.
Also most of the effect of CO2 was in the first 200 ppm and we have to have CO2 above 250 ppm if we expect plants to thrive. (I prefer to see at least 1500 ppm.)
Also I did not think it right to not include the entire comment.
10
gai
You have hit on a major factor here.
The exponential effect is highly relevant but climate science acts as if it did not exist.
Perhaps their study courses did not include maths or chemistry or physics, just Eco-Righteousness!
KK
00
KK if you factor in the exponential effect plus the evidence that water is NOT a ‘positive feedback’ of CO2 then the entire crisis goes away.
Actually when you consider the oceans are 70% of the earth’s surface and CO2 is regulated by the temperature of the oceans, the ClimAstrologists have it completely backwards. CO2 is the feedback of water!
10
Andrew McRae,
Also note that every complex electronic device has been modeled and simulated on computers before manufacturing production.
Yes and so too all those vehicles, most modern buildings, transport and communication systems, crowd management systems, modern medical systems, etc…
Modeling is a useful tool where all variables can be accurately parameterized, or at least well approximated, and where variations of the parameters can be precisely and mathematically defined.
Therein are the difficulties —
1. Knowing all the variables.
2. Ensuring all the variables can be parameterized in a meaningful ways.
3. Having a adequate level of precision to the parameterized data.
4. Identifying, and resolving all the dependencies and feedbacks adequately.
5. Identifying, and defining (or approximating) the limits of deterministic, stochastic, and chaotic elements.
These are just some of the difficulties that can cause failure of a modeled system.
When modelling nature the number and complexity of the non-linear, interdependent, variably coupled feedback systems often makes for very complex computer algorithms linkages that are not complete in their ability to reflect reality, and are often unstable over some timescale.
Amazingly nature has none of these problems as it smoothly bumbles along doing what it deems to be neccessary to continue along its temporarily anti-entropic way.
50
gai reminds me I’ve missed that importatnt steps which real world modelling always applies — verification and validations. Without these steps the model is just a very elaborate equation of guesswork and conjectured results with little meaning or worth.
40
“verification and validations”
Those who have training or practical, real world expertise in modelling know straight up that the so called “Climate Models” are not Models.
Every time I hear the word Model I cringe, because it reminds me of the true purpose of present day models which is to muddy the waters and overpower sensible analysis.
Powerful computers are not necessary to have good model, at least to start with.
If the basics are correct and meaningful they are probably also simple.
By definition, a model has certain requirements that must be met:
First a model has one or more input factors which are variable (eg atmospheric CO2 level)
and when this variable changes the model must register changes in another factor (eg
atmospheric temperature) which shows conclusively that the two factors, input and output,
are linked.
The most important requirement of any Model however is that it must duplicate reality.
By definition a model successfully duplicates reality in some range of operation and allows extension, and
prediction, outside the measured limits used to verify the model.
A model which does not duplicate reality is by definition NOT A MODEL.
Global Climate models have NEVER duplicated reality in any way and by definition cannot be claimed to be
models.
KK 🙂
40
Modelling is also how Wind power is allowed to get away with what it does. Every proposed wind Plant is modelled at the front end before the proposal is written, and from then, the proposal is dressed up with language to disguise the actuality, so let me show you how it is modelled.
Modelling states that wind power can deliver at a Capacity Factor (CF) of 38 to 40%, and I have seen some (that’s more than just the occasional one) as high as 45%, and an occasional one up at 60%. Modelling also states that the plant will have an operational life of 25 years Minimum, and that the plant will actually deliver at the modelled CF (38 to 40%) for that full time.
In actual life, after the plant had been constructed, the CF at the start MAY actually reach 35% in some cases, but very few, but after the plant settles down into normal operation, they are proven to operate at an absolute best case at 30%. In fact, in most Developed Countries with large scale wind power, that whole of fleet CF can be below 20%, China 12 to 15% Germany 18% to name just two Countries. That modelled total life span is also highly questionable at 25 years, and the current World average is closer to 15 years, with the CF decreasing dramatically over even that shortened life.
So then, let’s do the sums based on the modelling.
A Nameplate of 500MW at 40% with a 25 year life span will give a modelled total power delivery of 43,830,000MWH. The actual cost is $1.5 Billion. Half of that is gifted to the entity which constructs the plant, so now they only need to recover $750 Million over the life of the plant, (eg. total power delivery) so to recover just the capital cost then that equates to $17/MWH. (important here to note that this is just recovery of the capital cost for construction)
However, the actual will be something completely different. Same 500MW plant. An actual 15 year life span and a 20% CF, and the full cost of $1.5 Billion, without the government subsidy at the front end.
This shows a total power delivery of 13,149,000MW, and the end cost is $114/MWH. (Just the capital construction cost remember)
6.7 times greater than what is modelled.
Can you gain an inkling now how wind power can (artificially) look cheaper than coal fired power.
It’s done with models.
And then quoted as fact.
Tony.
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Hi Tony
You have given a good illustration of the difference between “prediction” or estimation, which you have described, and engineering modelling, which is the true modelling implied by but not achieved by the Climate “modellers”.
Unfortunately climate models are a joke and belong in the same basket as Economic Models which are also widely used by politicians.
The number of real factors omitted from Climate Models is a farcical situation as is the poor description of constraints and other factors besides Temp and CO2 levels.
Climate Model is a political term and DEFINITELY not a scientific entity.
KK
20
KK,
You are correct. The ClimAstrologists use the words ‘Model and ‘Science’ to lend respectablility to their B.S.
This is the most accurate description of the state of Climate ‘Science’ I have seen.
When it comes to climate change, we have to trust our scientists, because they know lots of big scary words By Sean Thomas
30
There was a paper by Soon, Monckton, Briggs and Legates on a simple model
http://wmbriggs.com/public/Monckton.et.al.pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11434-015-0856-2
00
Yes Tom, it is knowing ALL the variables. Take cute little bambi for instance….
Scientists in North Dakota watching song birds via “nest cams” in a recent study found whitetails raiding more nests than either foxes or weasels…. Researchers in Canada trying to catch birds in mist nets only succeeded in providing an easy meal for the whitetails that ate the birds right out of the netting.
And Here is Bambi Eating Thumper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o6UxDD0lSM
(The cows will be coming for us next… They already eat chickens… Lal the chicken-eating cow and we thought egg sucking dogs were bad.)
20
gai also makes it clear that it is also incredibly easy for models to stuff things up, just by being used inappropriately.
A long time ago now, I had a holiday job working for a telecommunications company. My job was to model traffic on a landline telephone network, based on the call records – which number initiated the call? – At what time of day? – What number was dialed, and at what speed (manual or autodial)? How that connection was routed through which paths in the network? – How long the routing took? – The time of day when the remote handset was picked up, or the call was abandoned. – Which party terminated the call? – The time of day that the call was terminated. – The time of day that the circuit was cleared.
The purpose was to determine where the bottlenecks were, and where equipment was under-utilised.
It was that last point that caused the problem. Because I started wondered, what would happen if the under-utilised exchanges were removed? It was a minor modification to the model – just removing a few paths – and I could program the model to do that!
All this happened the week before Easter, so I set up my new version of the model to run over the four-day weekend, set it running on a huge IBM mainframe, that we timeshared, and went home. I came back to work on the Tuesday morning to find that a) the model had run all weekend and only completed at about 4.00 am that morning, and b) my boss had received several calls from the Computing Centre Manager, over the weekend, because his staff could not complete the maintenance planned for that long weekend.
I was in serious trouble. Primarily for not seeking permission through the appropriate channels. But also for not thinking sufficiently “outside the box”, of my own little world.
The results of the model? Apparently the optimum solution was one huge telephone exchange, slap bang in the middle of the country. And, of course, that was going to happen … not.
40
Clearly a stark contrast in validation exists between modeling future trajectories and positions based on Newtonian mechanics compared when with the climate modeling of non-linear chaotic systems in which multitudes of unknown, unqualified and unquantified variables are homogenised and smoothed in The Cauldron of Arcane Climate Methodology while reading from The Hansen Book of Spells.
In any event, it is lamentably clear where the good Dr Bebber starts and ends his trajectory:
The final line of the abstract appears as the usual thinly veiled tee-up for further funding.
50
Sigh. Apologies. A morning under pressure led to nonsensical typos. Corrected below:
One can model this kind of intellectual output quite easily and cheaply, and startlingly as it may be, without a sophisticated, heat generating software algorithm.
20
The models those powerful computers were running were extremely simple ones, to whit, Newtonian mechanics, you know, f=ma or v=at etc. The power of the computers was just to do the calculations more quickly and to make new calculations to account for minor errors in measuring the distances to be traversed.
simpicity still has its place.
50
Since the last drought ended in New South Wales on the mid north coast I have observed a change in the life of Ants. Their numbers have multiplied significantly and on my property they have been protecting their nests with a coating that hardens and looks like brown bitumen, and on top they cultivate a kind of thin leaf grass weed that at first glance appears to be moss. When the covering is hit with water under pressure from a hose it takes several seconds to break through and then a black mud like liquid emerges from the hole the water jet created.
I have a theory that the Ants are preparing for extremely colder weather conditions, not all are doing this surface protection coating but many or most are. And they are also milking Aphids, honey like drops left on the leaves of plants, Bamboo for example. The leaves and stems are blackened and apparently the Ants protect the Aphids in return for the nectar. I have also observed their Moss like weed grass growing around a couple of ornamental river stone piles I have on a concrete slab that used to be the foundation of a glasshouse. And Ants have nests below the slab too and nearby the surface protection over nests near the slab.
Ants are known for their ability to take cover before heavy rain, I wonder if they are not preparing for the next little ice age?
321
Ants—and everybody—cannot foretell the future.
The man on the land is already adapting to the AGW that is here and now. French vignerons planting vineyards in Britain, high temperature tolerant varieties of wheat and wine grapes are being grown because normal varieties for the areas are no longer suitable.
06
Maxine,
“Ants—and everybody—cannot foretell the future.”
As you have no evidence to prove that statement, I contend,
If only we could better understand what the ants were telling us. Ants are probably foretelling future scenarios better than the projections cast by the UN rune and ouija board operators.
50
Even when cataclysmic events occur, life adapts; always has, always will. That’s why life ‘is’ so amazing.
Climate change, no matter which way it goes, will simply spur adaptation. Unfortunately, those who want to social engineer, spurn our ability to adapt, especially adaptation enhanced with modern technology.
Bjorn Lomborg is spurned because that’s pretty much what he proposes.
291
The least able to adapt to change are the very people panicked by “climate change”. I can’t imagine the latte sandalistas and SHY types being able to take care of or feed themselves so they will be the first to go. Nature always seeks equilibrium and the left have been in control for too long. Time for a change.
261
Are you claiming they are vulnerable to a change in lifestyle because they haven’t got the brains of a potato beetle?
150
adaptation versus controlling nature
wonder who wins?
STOP CLIMATE CHANGE NOW! … and I want a cookie
the philosophical and intellectual wasteland that this whole ‘climate change’ thing occupies, blows my little (less likely to survive than a potato beetle) mind
50
Graeme.
That is exactly what I thought too.
Cicada burrow into the ground and then nearly two decades later spring forth in noisy abundance. Their brains must also be superior to the “latte Sandinistas”.
30
It was “sandalistas”, a neologism that cleverly melds Central American communists and sophisticated Euro/Northeast and West Coast USA urban-dwelling Birkinstockonians (my own neologism, which doesn’t need to catch on).
30
So how come there is record loss of biodiversity now?
Life adapts to AGW by moving from warming areas to higher latitudes and altitudes—but with the globe warming as it is this adaptation won’t work forever—can’t go higher than a mountain top.
As CO2 levels increase plants can take up less nitrogen and warmer nights mean plants can’t take up the CO2.
18
By ‘record loss of biodiversity’, do you mean we have already exceeded all previous mass extinction events in terms of biodiversity reduction?
This claim seems to be very much at odds with the geological record, but I am happy to be proven wrong.
40
yes Maxine is speaking unverifiable rhetoric. IF she had stated that the best comparative evidence (citations but there are many) suggests that the rate of extinction is at the high end even accounting for difficulty resolving 100 year time scales during past events. Then said that using the recent and most accurately estimated time period shows that extinctions are increasing at a rapid rate and that these are occurring in association with geographic regions of human population expansions, land use, pollution (etc etc). Not all animals are passenger pigeons and not all will ever be described.
13
From Greenfacts: “Human activity has increased the extinction rate by at least 100 times compared to the natural rate.”
This is impossible to know. There is no way to know how many species there were before humans and once a human being arrived, according to this logic, NO changes were natural thereafter. The argument is irrational—no one can know the effects humans have compared to when there were no humans.
60
Sheri… you make all these claims against “greenfacts” (I never knew such a thing existed), what about the published papers? Have you read them and can, with confidence, dismiss them with data reanalysis? If so I’ll gladly assist you getting that published as it would be very high impact.
16
Greenfacts is a website. Try typing into google. I suppose since there are no actual papers on said site, you can ignore that information if you like. Seems rather narrow and blind to ignore things that don’t please you (and this one, even if it does please you). Newsflash—The truth is not contained only in peer reviewed papers. If it were, you’d have about four food items, a couple of drugs and few possessions. Wait, now that I think about it, that may actually be the goal….mmmmmm. Perhaps we skeptics have missed the mark on why warmists insist on peer-review.
As I explained to Maxine, the political animal, not a scientist, no one can possibly know what the rate of extinction in the past was. The fossil record is not verifiably complete—in fact, it’s very incomplete. Plus, there is NO WAY a scientist can look at the fossil record and determine species as is done today. You need the whole animal—and it was rumored that in the case of the Prebles Jumping mouse (look it up), it had to be autopsied for actual confirmation. Prebles is a favorite of the EPA.So, no way the fossil record can be compared to today except in the most general fashion. To do other wise is just unscientific and wrong.
20
you wrote this citing only greenfacts not the research that claims exactly the opposite. where is your critique that justifies what you wrote?
02
Okay, let me try this again in a more simple manner. “This is impossible to know”. I don’t need research claims, etc. Reality says there is no way using a fossil record that you can in any way determine the number of species, when they lived, when they died, etc. It is just physicaly impossible. We find “living fossils” that were thought to be extinct. Even in the here and now, many errors are made in declaring things extinct. If you cannot grasp that, there’s no hope. You have no understanding of science and I can’t help you. Further, I see no point in continuing. Such lack of understanding rules out any scientific discussion.
21
i think what you are saying, and it would be nice to see some evidence otherwise, is that you know nothing about the science behind these claims. You can’t convince anyone to just dismiss the research of thousands of research teams from different cuntries, cultures, expertise sets, going back centuries without providing something better than an unsubstantiated claim. You have to do better than claim incredulity when ignorant.
01
hi mods… the typo that has put me into moderation was unintentional!
01
I’m sure the typo was unintentional—you don’t seem to be able to follow simple logic or think on your own, so typos are to be expected. You are very, very good at name-calling, a skill commonly achieved by age 2 in humans. Beyond that, I’m having a hard time seeing anything other than really superior sounding language and a lot of bluster. You’re the wizard behind the curtain, afraid of being found out. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. For that to be true, I’d have to think you were bright enough to understand logic and science. I do not believe you are either. So, puff up like that wizard and hide behind your curtain. Your claim that we can know how many extinctions occured in the past, how many species there were in the past, etc is patently false.
10
Where Are The Corpses?
“Abstract
The record of continental (as opposed to island) bird and mammal extinctions in the last five centuries was analyzed to determine if the “species-area” relationship actually works to predict extinctions. Very few continental birds or mammals are recorded as having gone extinct, and none have gone extinct from habitat reduction alone. No continental forest bird or mammal is recorded as having gone extinct from any cause. Since the species-area relationship predicts that there should have been a very large number of recorded bird and mammal extinctions from habitat reduction over the last half millennium, I show that the species-area relationship gives erroneous answers to the question of extinction rates….
if there’s been all of those claimed extinctions of birds and mammals … where are all the corpses? What are the names of all the extinct birds and mammals”? This research paper investigates these claims that habitat reduction from temperature change and deforestation has led and will continue to lead to the extinction of a large number of species.
A few clarifications are in order.
This study is not about estimated, predicted, or calculated extinctions. It is an analysis of the actual historical record of extinctions, with the purpose of understanding the nature and size of extinctions from historical habitat reduction.
By extinction I never mean local extinction. I have analyzed total extinctions of species (not subspecies). Local extinction is a separate and valuable study, not covered by this work.
I am not referring to “almost extinct,” “on the brink of extinction,” or “reportedly extinct.” I am discussing the actual extinction of species as confirmed by the relevant authorities….
This chart says it all:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/extinctions_birds_mammals_historical.jpg
The peak is ~1900 with a minor up blip ~1965ish (cold spell) and it has been tapering off ever since.
Sorry Twitter, No Extinction far from it.
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I can get you a reference list or respected text if you are still wanting to address the issue you think you’ve addressed.
Ps surprised that no mod edited the typo
01
If you’re addressing this to me, I believe I made it clear I don’t waste my time on people who are incapable of understanding logic and scientific methodology, which includes you. I don’t put lipstick on pigs, I don’t tease pit bulls and I don’t bother wtih trolls on the internet unless I am in need of amusement. I’m not in need of amusement, so I guess someone else will have to feed the troll or let you starve. I care not.
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No worries if you want to keep tilting at the highly significant greenfacts. I won’t interfere with your desire for your comments to echo through the ages in this thread.
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Been there!
Done that !
Got the geological CO2 levels, the paleo Temperatures and the Sea level changes T shirt to prove it.
Geologic Global Climate Changes
Included graphs with peer reviewed reference sources ;
Geological Time scale ; Concentration of CO2 and Temperature fluctuations
Geological time scale ; Changes of Sea Level and Tropospheric temperatures
Geological Time scale ; Areas of Continent flooded, concentration of CO2 and temperature Fluctuations.
Life sure is tough.
Its still here in all its immense diversity after all those environmentally and disastrously high CO2 levels , those disastrously high temperature levels and that disastrous flooding of the land areas for tens or hundreds of millions of year.
Yeh! Life sure is tough.
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A short list of some of Maxine’s extinct species!
1. Homo rudolfensis:
2. Homo habilis
3. Homo georgicus
4. Homo ergaster
5. Homo erectus
6. Homo antecessor
7. Homo heidelbergensis
8. The Neanderthal
9. Homo floresiensis
10. Homo sapiens idaltu
With a few more Maxines around we might even add “Homo sapiens sapiens” to that list.
Note; The first race of H. sapiens sapiens, Khoisan (today’s Bushmen), emerged 110,000 years ago in Eastern Africa.
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Many species of animals have gone extinct throughout history. From a human caused point of view, Aboriginal occupation in Australia is claimed to have caused the extinction of a vast numbers of animals species. The arrival of humans in Australia and New Zealand, bringing along rats, cats and dogs, has had a similar effect on animal species. Wind turbines are threatening the extinction of a number bird and bats worldwide. Hunting in Africa is threatening the extinction of the few remaining numbers of animals such as the white rhino. Tigers are threatened with extinction in India. The list goes on, but there is not yet one iota of proof, that I’ve read, that CO2 has caused one single species extinction, let alone the death of one single animal.
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Maxine, the predictable and easily modeled alarmist diatribe of ‘species extinction’ and loss of biodiversity stands in contrast to the reality of regular discoveries of new species.
A helpful counterpoint can be found here.
Fortunately for all of us, given the UN is promoting insects as an enticing source of protein there shouldn’t be a catastrophic problem to model for awhile.
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Maxine,
Moving to maintain the same climate isn’t adapting and isn’t evolution – it is stasis – and it is true that life adapts or dies so those who wish to alter the weather to maintain the same climate are dinosaurs.
Dinosaur were once part of the bio-diversity, there loss serves as an academic oddity, an inspiration for movie makers and an example of stasis, what amazes me is that whole new species managed to rise up in their stead and thrive in a multitude of subsequent climates cool, hot and indifferent – that’d be the adaption and evolution thing.
There are plenty of examples of new species being discovered, and I read an alarmist report that 50% of all animal species have been lost in the last 45 years so that means by about 2050 there will be no animal life left on the planet. Polar bears are increasing, walrus are increasing, whales are increasing and not wishing to be harsh, but…
I’m calling ‘Bull$hit’ on your claim of a “… record loss of biodiversity now.”
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WHAT, Record loss?
Where Are The Corpses?
THIS is a real record loss:
It has been estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct.
The other four great Extinctions:
1. Late Triassic (210 million years ago): extinction of 76% of species thought to be caused by glaciation or an extraterrestrial bolide impact.
2. Permian (250 million years ago): extinction of 96% of marine species This was Earth’s biggest extinction. It was thought to because by global cooling, glaciation, and lowered sea levels.
3. Late Devonian (365 million years ago): 85% of species went extinct because of global cooling and glaciation.
4. Ordovician (440 million years ago): 85% of species disappeared because global cooling, glaciation, and decreasing sea levels.
GEE? Anyone see a pattern here?
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Not for nothing have Insects have been around for about 400 million years of evolution. I would not be betting that they will be unable to outlast us, particularly if we keep on obsessing about theories of Global warming in the face of another overdue Ice-Age. Insects, especially ants, have a group or collective intelligence that allows them make extremely rational decisions.
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Nicholas, what a good point. Add termites, bees, etc. and a picture emerges of highly organized and successful creatures.
Creatures such at the potato beetle need what we all need to survive: food, cover, and protection from the weather. Is it really a surprise that they can find these things across a wide range of climate and weather?
Once in a while we find salamanders in the dry deserts of Arizona. Like the spade foot toad, they emerge during favorable wet periods and continue their life cycle. They live in areas with climates similar to Alice Springs. Normally we think of salamanders as primitive creatures that live in moist environments. But they know how and where to burrow down half a meter or more to find spots to escape hot and dry spells as well as cold winters.
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It’s the harmless mollusc in Paris who are in for a literal hiding this December at the hands and salivating mouths of the climate cognoscenti and eco-glitterati. They worry about footprints and the biodiversity yet they fly to Paris to consume escargot by the ton.
It’s criminal hypocrisy I tell you. We must mobilise ‘Save the Snails’ immediately.
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It’s all about Paris, the Paris-ites are worried about their ‘global warming’ income stream. After all, Belugas are now seen off Scotland and Ireland, and I hear ABC this morning saying Southern Right Whales are now being seen as far north as Geraldton.
Oops, that means cooling doesn’t it! Now, I’m all confused. Which is it, warming or cooling?
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It is, it is! All about the funding!
Professor Singer, calling for the resignation of The Science Magazine Editor: “The 3 July 2015 issue of Science features a remarkable editorial by Editor Marcia McNutt. Titled “The beyond-two-degree inferno,” it suggests that an anthropogenic greenhouse (GH) warming of more than 2 degrees C (global average) will literally cause hell on earth, unless we can all agree to reduce emissions of the “infernal” GH-gas carbon dioxide – preferably before or at a UN-sponsored mega-confab in Paris in December. This much-hyped event, to be attended by nearly 200 national delegations and thousands of hangers-on, has even been endorsed in a papal encyclical, referred to, somewhat irreverently, as a “Pope-sicle” by my Virginia colleague Dr Charles Battig.
McNutt’s editorial claims a “global threat to food supplies, health, ecosystem services, and the general viability of the planet.” Yet none of these threats are supported by any scientific evidence — even from the usually alarmist UN-IPCC.” […]
A “Pope-sicle” of Paris-ites.
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They have reason to wonder if this will be their last flight around the world on the “climate warming” penny.
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Love it!
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Paris-ites – that is brilliant.
That is exactly what they will be, undeserving snouts and trotters in the troughs of NGO and government largesse. All trying to outdo each others’ BS, while us poor taxpayers cringe at their waste and proposals to bust the western world economies by over-reliance on so called green energy.
Once again: <p style="text-align: Paris-ites -Absolutely brilliant and so apt.
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I was curious about the typical range of the whales that have been sighted.
Map of Beluga Whale Range:
http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=6335
Map of Southern Right Whale Range:
http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=8153
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We live in a world where when anything bad happens, such as a big hurricane, heavy flooding, an ISIS beheading, or a traffic jam, it is automatically blamed on Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Shift by the high priests of climate alarmism and passed on as fact by those supposedly factual media organisations like the ABC and the BBC.
In the extremely unlikely event Thermageddon did occur, mankind would adapt. About 70,000 years ago (~3,500 generations), all our ancestors left Africa as black, curly haired, flat nosed individuals. Most of us are now very different as the result of where our ancestors settled in the world. All our current species of dogs are believed to be derived a species that once lived in eastern Siberia 10,000 years ago. Look at just about anything we cultivate and eat, most of it bears little resemblance to what it looked like 1,000 years ago.
“Nature will always find a way” is a common phrase. Adaption is a much cheaper and more effective solution to a non-problem than what the climate alarmists are proposing, namely the complete decarbonisation and subsequent destruction of our economies. As Paris gets ever closer, the greater will become the shrill and siren cries of alarmism, the lies will grow ever more absurd and the magnitude of data manipulation/torturing will dramatically increase. We have seen so much of it this year already, but we ain’t seen nuffing yet.
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The most important change that humans ever made was the change from hunter gatherer to farmer. How this happened is almost incredible.
Wheat seeds are held in a structure that is attached to the wheat head by a “rachis”. Normally this structure is brittle and when the seeds in their dispersal structure mature they fall off and get dispersed. Naturally it is a nightmare to pick up all these seeds off the ground. At some point, perhaps around 12,000 years ago a mutation occurred which resulted in a strong rachis meaning the seed remained attached to the head. This meant it could be easily collected.
This mutation must have been propagated by man as it would not have survived naturally.
That single mutation in a wheat plant around 12,000 years ago lead to civilisation.
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My old Anthro course on paleo-indians talked about discoveries showing that the hunter-gathers traveled a great circle route like feral horses do and returned to the same campsites. They found in the midden piles evidence that seeds of a certain plant (can’t remember the name) used as a food source were many times larger than is now found in the wild in the same area. This indicated that the women were selectively planting seeds from the best of the gathering so they would have a better ‘gathering’ the next season.
It seems that selective breeding of plants occurred long before hunter-gatherers decided to stay in one place. I would imagine it was the domestication of livestock that prompted the switch although I imagine the switch was gradual. From following the herds to guiding the herds to having a permanent base that is returned to each winter. To this day you will find Basque children with their herds high up in the Pyrenees
The Basque have a remarkable history.
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Humans are exemplars of adaptation. Consider the Inuits, purportedly descendants of tropical Africans. They live in the north polar region. They represent a successful human transition from >30 degrees avg temp to <10 degrees. Or consider Siberians who routinely experience -60 degree winter lows. And these peoples can't survive without food sources that also survive ultra-cold temperatures. Consider the current tropics. Life abounds there. So, 3 degrees of average global temp rise will kill everybody and devastate wildlife, and will be unsurvivable. Riight.
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People study ecology now and beetles and frogs and really believe in Darwinian selection. That is why they want everything to stop now. Now is perfect. The perfect temperature, the perfect CO2 level, the perfect water height, just the right amount of snow and the right amount of ice on Greenland.
Now what’s the chance of that?
Evolution won’t harm my family. Natural selection will be stamped out. Those poor Neanderthals (moderation?) and Homo Erectus, he was never going anywhere really.
No, nothing will change because we humans have decided that when we were children was just peachy, wherever we were. So apart from imported diseases and pests like rates, cats, rabbits, foxes, spiders, the black death, syphilis, small pox, malaria, ebola, aids, Rift valley fever, Nile valley fever, Japanese encephalytis and Bird flu, the world is just the way we want it. Not enough nice beaches though and there is that spot of bother in the Middle East.
Otherwise if people could just stop farming and mining and making stuff apart from iPhones and Tablets and eating meat, we could all just enjoy our inner city dream time existence and plan a holiday to somewhere poor with great beaches. No need to actually do anything about anything except stop all this changing. Especially that nasty, dirty carbon dioxide pollution. Who needs it?
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Those nice beaches and coastlines will soon be covered in unsightly Wind Farms if certain politicians get their way.
The green types went nuts down in Tassie to get rid of logging and remember the furore over the Franklin dam,don’t they think that wind turbines are a blight on the landscape and cause as much visual damage as covering something in a 100ft of water?
Are some forms of pollution acceptable to the green movement,i would love that question to be presented to the appropriate persons,I somehow don’t think an answer would be forthcoming?
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I just returned to Kansas from a 2-week family reunion in San Francisco. It was fun–NOT. Well, my middle son and his wife had fun meeting up with college friends. Their infant twins had some crying jags, but overall seemed happy most of the time. My oldest son, DIL and daughter had fun, the daughter acted “scared” of me, but she wanted me to play hide and seek. My youngest son was happy.
But my FIL age 90, went off the rails. Mostly because he, a master bean counter, fretted over the new water-use fines. Expecting 11 people for a home with 2 people, and no landscape water usage, he wrote the city water department in advance: “We are going to have 11 people for two weeks.” He had been subjected to a water-rationing order (scam), with a mandatory 20% reduction, even though they were already just using water for bathing , clothes and dishwashing, not lawn-watering or car-washing. He totally blew up at me for doing a full-volume clothes washing. in prior years, it wasn’t a problem. So I went to the laundromat.
The thing is, NorCal has plenty of water. It flows down the Sacramento River. But enviiros prevent most of it from being assigned to human use. Also, enviros stopped dam-building in the 1970s. A system designed to withstand multi-year droughts for 20 million people, was prevented from being expanded to survive multi-year droughts for 40 million people, but then with immigration, 40 million people showed up.
All houses have barred windows at first (hound-level) story, entry doorways have steel barred entries. Oh, that’s idyllic. So, people who live in this shjt are making global policies for everyone else.
Sorry, not interested in living in your pathology.
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Plants also have a rapid adaption process
Tobacco plants are the favorite plant of plant biologists who use tobacco plants a lot in their experiments as so much has been researched and is known of the tobacco plants biology.
When an insect attack begins a field of tobacco and it seems in just about every other plant species where this has been looked at, it is known that the affected or attacked plants rapidly send out warning signals using various chemicals transmitted to the surrounding plants which then rapidly change their chemical make up so as to try and repel the attacking insects or pathogens.
————————–
A couple of abstracts and notes on plant’s attack warning systems;
Underground signals carried through common mycelial networks warn neighbouring plants of aphid attack
Abstract
The roots of most land plants are colonised by mycorrhizal fungi that provide mineral nutrients in exchange for carbon
Here, we show that mycorrhizal mycelia can also act as a conduit for signalling between plants, acting as an early warning system for herbivore attack.
Insect herbivory causes systemic changes in the production of plant volatiles, particularly methyl salicylate, making bean plants, Vicia faba, repellent to aphids but attractive to aphid enemies such as parasitoids.
We demonstrate that these effects can also occur in aphid-free plants but only when they are connected to aphid-infested plants via a common mycorrhizal mycelial network.
This underground messaging system allows neighbouring plants to invoke herbivore defences before attack
Our findings demonstrate that common mycorrhizal mycelial networks can determine the outcome of multitrophic interactions by communicating information on herbivore attack between plants, thereby influencing the behaviour of both herbivores and their natural enemies.
&
Plants to Bugs: Buzz Off!
Plants Use Volatile Signaling Compounds to Fend Off Attack and Possibly Warn Nearby Plants
[quoted ]
Plants may seem passive in the face of an attack by insects, but they aren’t. In fact, plants can marshal elegant defenses in order to do battle with their enemies. And they just might be able to inform their neighbors that they’re in danger.
Plants recognize chemicals in herbivore oral secretions and in that way can discriminate between pruning shears and a herbivore.
Plants’ security measures fall into two classes.
Direct defense entails the expression of defense genes, leading to the production of chemicals such as nicotine or protease inhibitors that are unpalatable or harmful to insects.
Alternatively, a plant under attack can rely on an indirect defense. In this scenario, the plant emits volatile chemicals such as terpenes that attract predatory or parasitic insects.
If the insects are close at hand, they can turn up in less than 24 hours to take on the organism that is munching on the plant.
The plant’s protectors might be parasitic wasps that lay eggs in plant-munching caterpillars; when the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae eat the caterpillars.
The alarm call issued by a plant also “tells potential herbivores that they have been discovered, so it has the effect of deterring other herbivores from laying eggs,” says Ian T. Baldwin, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany [Science, 291, 2141 (2001); Nature, 410, 577 (2001)]. “Moths avoid laying eggs on plants that are giving off these volatile signals, either because they want to avoid competition for their babies or because they don’t want to put eggs on a plant that is going to attract predators.”
Researchers have been unraveling these complex interactions between plants and insects since the 1980s, when Marcel Dicke, professor of insect-plant interactions at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, says he was “the first to show that plants communicate with the enemies of their enemies .
[ more ]
—————-
Life and climate and interactions between the untold multitude of species on this world is far, far more complex than any simplistic model which at best merely reflects its creator’s biases, can ever hope to emulate or fully understand.
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ROM
Also some literature out of South Africa on similar signals as a result of animal browsing
00
Thanks Ian.
Didn’t know about that one .
00
ROM
If you were interested in citations I could fire up the XP leftover and tap Ref-11 and see what I’ve got
00
Quoting Nicholas: “Insects, especially ants, have a group or collective intelligence that allows them make extremely rational decisions”.
So what you are effectively saying is that ants as a collective are smarter than a certain collective of subspecies of humans who believe in the un-rational “Theory of AGW”, lets call them Homo sapiens warmistus. Some examples of Homo sapiens warmistus go by the specimen names Al Gore, James Hansen and Michael Mann. In terms of understanding the ability of life forms on planet Earth adapting to Earth’s environment, one could argue that Homo sapiens warmistus specimens as a collective, are less intelligent than ants as a collective.
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un-rational “Theory of AGW” – make that irrational “Theory of AGW”. Now I know why my poorest subject at school many decades ago was English.
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Yeah, it jarred but I was willing to let it go Because your point was beaytiful. I think I’m going soft.
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What? Us two green icons both struggling with the English language. Likewise in the 4th Test at Trent Bridge where the Aussies have literally handed the old enemy the Ashes on a platter – currently Oz are 9/54 in the 1st Session, Day 1 – Tony from Oz like myself will be thinking – how could this happen? Could we have wreaked havoc like this as a bowlers playing our domestic cricket back in the 1970’s?
50
That should read.
What? Us two green icons both struggling with the “English”. Likewise in the 4th Test at Trent Bridge where the Aussies have literally handed the “English” the Ashes on a platter – currently Oz are 9/54 in the 1st Session, Day 1 – Tony from Oz like myself will be thinking – how could this happen? Could us two AGW skeptics have wreaked havoc like this as a bowlers playing in our domestic cricket comps back in the 1970′s?
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Talk about green,there was enough green grass on that wicket to feed a hundred sheep for a week.
No wonder Clarke had a face like a trod on spaniel after losing that toss,gee we was ambushed,Ned Kelly couldn’t have done a better job.
Now wait until the test at The Oval,England will have two spinners and the pitch will be another monster.
10
It’s climate change.
It adversely affects the willow in the Australian cricket bats, and makes the bat extremely sensitive to the leather of the ball, with a tendency for the bat to move out of the way, in self defense. It is no fault of the batsman. Absolutely none at all. It is the climate change, as you go over the equator.
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Then the Aussies should be using the English willow bats which can handle the local climate conditions better – the “English” made 4/274 compared to the Aussies paltry total of 60 using the Aussie willow bats. Their best batsmen Root is well anchored at the Trent Bridge crease on 124 not out – 110 runs better than the Aussies best effort – Extra 14. I believe this is the first time in test cricket history that Extras has achieved this feat. Next best effort was Mitch Johnson on 13.
20
An uptick for an original excuse RW!
10
At some stage did Tony Abbott visit either the willow patch or the bat factory because this has his mark all over it.
You do know that Abbott’s grandfather invented climate change,before then there was no climate change just bloody lousy weather.
00
Rick Potts, a Smithsonian Institution paleoanthropologist who helped write the report, said that until about 20 years ago, scientists had a simplistic view of how the environment shaped human history. They believed that a few major events, like the expansion of grasslands in Africa and later ice ages in Europe and Asia, signaled forks in the evolutionary path that led to Homo sapiens.
“The human species today is a survivor of lots of different environmental changes,” he said. “The possible implication is that we have, built into us, a certain degree of adaptability or resilience.”
Scientific America
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We know that at some stage the Continents split and moved away from the main land mass,now my interest in this is that it was mentioned in the Book of Genesis 10:25 during the days of Peleg.
It was of enough of an importance to be mentioned,it happened a long time ago,it was observed,how long it took no one knows but it seems to be completely ignored by science
Could the ages that science attributes to certain events be arrived at by the same manner that future climate change is arrived at?
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Oh I don’t know TFH: try stratigraphic superposition, radiometric age dating, the use of key fossils, and a whole lot of other techniques used by the geological sciences. Your comparison with recent climate science is a bit iffy if you don’t mind my saying so. But nobody is even thinking of trying to force you to change your beliefs. It’s your right.
But the forthcoming meeting of the Paris-ites, I would be concerned about that if I was in your shoes.
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‘it happened a long time ago’
The tectonic plate theory was adopted only late last century and at the time it created a paradigm shift, so I don’t see the fairy tales of Genesis getting a look in.
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no
44
Yes I have been saying this for years.
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Sorry that you’ve wasted your time for so long without anyone helping you out.
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Thank you for your kind help Sir.
May be you can help me with this,
what was the rate of continental
drift 20k years ago?
50
go look it up or make the point you want to make so I can respond to that.
12
Gee Aye,
atta … avatar, sickem.
11
Hey Bradley,
Is “atta … avatar sickem” Latin for Attack Now All Those Who Ignore the ‘Beware Armed Leaf’ warning sign?
21
GI,
If the twig fits…
31
Damn right it does!
21
grrrr
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Now let me see ya warface.
00
Ah, yes, the troll manual at this point says “Tell them to go look it up themselves”. Nice to know you’re following the manual. Hate to see any independent thought creep in.
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No Sheri… a troll is someone who asks a leading question and then buggers off. The whole reason that I was asked that question (which was perhaps rhetorical anyway) was so that Alfred could then tell me why the answer was incorrect. Alfred, if he was not a troll, would have just stated what he thought using evidence. How are you going with supporting your comments with evidence and not hand waving and “obvious to anyone” statements of evidence?
11
Gee Aye: No, Gee Aye, trolls never “buggar off”. They ask questions like yours when they don’t know the answer to the question presented. Answering a question with a question is troll behaviour. Plus, your statement “what he thought was evidence” would indicate you already believed that anything he said would be wrong, another troll characteristic. Actually, if trolls asked questions and then buggered off, no one would be bothered by them in the least. It’s the tenacious pit bull grip they take on a thread, spouting words of wisdom from the troll manual while ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
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well at least my typo earlier didn’t change the meaning of someone else’s statement. I wrote, “what he thought using evidence”.
01
Further in the interests of accuracy in reporting, you have also misrepresented the post to which I responded in your blog (btw, the link in your name contains a typo).
I was not asked if I “knew about plate techtonics over the past 20,000 years”. If that had been the question I would have replied, “yes to a reasonable extent as I am an evolutionary biologist who has worked on offshore species, why are you asking?”.
I was actually asked what was the rate of continental drift 20k ya. This is a specific detail that does not pop off the top of my head and would require me to use my personal time to delve into the literature to come back some days later with a considered, evidence based reply with errors and doubt included. That is not my job and me going to that effort gives no additional advantage to the person asking since the same answer was available to the questioner if they looked it up themselves (thanks to GI for reading the quote properly and recognising this 🙂 ). Which is what I suggested they do.
I’ll cross post on your blog.
00
Gee Aye: Are you sure it was a typo? Could have been an very brief IQ test. I’ve been known to deliberately change things just to see if people are actually paying attention. The good news is, you passed—or GI did. (You also picked up on my comment on typos. Took a while, but you finally did.)
I am impressed you actually found the post on my blog. I stand corrected, you actually can research when you want. As for the plate technotonics question, yes, it takes time. I look things up all the time. Itcan take many pages of research to write a simple blog post.
Your answer remains a deliberate attempt to avoid answering the question. You could have given the same answer to Alfred as you did to me. What you did is typical of people who don’t want to answer a question because they don’t know the anwer. Just in the spirit of skepticism and realism, how do I know you are a marine biologist? I could claim to be a climate researcher. How would you know? I realize we all take each other’s vocations for granted, yes. Yesterday, in the paper here a science teacher admitted CO2 does not cause warming while writing about how we need to stop global warming. She was clueless as to what she had done. So degrees don’t necessarily mean anything. Your answers still sound trollish and you dismiss people off-hand. They return the favor. Not very productive, but trying to discuss climate science when the tone says “Troll” all over it is often pointless. Don’t be surprised when people dismiss you.
10
I’m not a marine biologist, but I have worked with many.
I didn’t give Alfred the answer I gave you because Alfred (the missing) just blurted out his question without explaining why I should answer it. If I were to ask you 10 questions now without context, could I accuse you of being a troll if you don’t? (this is not one of them as it has context).
The other thing I stand by is ignoring questions when they interrupt debate. Alfred could have made the point he was making by asking the question. If he was just curious and wanted to know the answer then he really should look it up – ie why ask me and not google or you or Jo or Gai or whoever. The question was directed at me for a reason but the reason was not stated. That is not debate.
00
Gee Aye: Now I’m not sure what you are. Oh well…..no big deal. Actually, I often answer questions that are “just blurted out” and are without context. It seems to me if I have time and can answer the question, why not? If it’s off-topic, I try to be brief. If I totally ignore the question, I would not be a troll. Trolls gain no attention for their views if they just ignore questions and comments. They may ignore the actual comment contents but they still answer the question in some way.
Again, as I stated on my blog, you did not ignore the question. Had you done so, we would not be having this exchange.
You may ask away and you may accuse me of being a troll if you want. That’s entirely up to you.
10
the question was directed to me so it was not one I could easily ignore without accusation of ignoring it for my convenience. I suspect that the questioner never saw my answer and is blissfully untouched by my wrath.
00
Plate tectonics – some measurements:
Africa’s New Ocean: A Continent Splits Apart
In north America the movement has been measured.
Not exactly slow.
The image [below] shows Plate Tectonics at Thingvellir in Iceland, where the North American and Eurasian plates are moving apart. The photograph was taken by The Akhenaten from a plane.
http://randommization.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Plate-Tectonics.jpg
A fence in Point Reyes, California was offset 2.5 meters to the right by displacement along the San Andres Fault in the 1906 earthquake. Image credit: G.K. Gilbert
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–cOrIh7cY–/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/871238580702356514.gif
10
That second photo highlights the difference between American and New Zealand Farmers.
The Americans just string three wires across the gap, which looks naff.
The Kiwis would treat it as a feature, and stick a gate in it – “Yeah, it makes it easier to move the stock …”.
70
I would stick a gate in it too but I would probably use the wires until I found a ‘Roundtuit’
30
gai,
Just look on line for a great line of round-tuits, as they say
See http://www.tuits-r-us.com/
10
I can’t remember who said it or what the correct wording was, but the gist is that the simple answer is usually the correct one.
50
But aren’t we being flogged with the simple answer that CO2 did it?
70
No. The simple answer is – nothing of much importance is happening.
40
I think you are right Gary,
Tens, of thousands of words have been expended on this site, just in discussing a non-problem, that isn’t happening.
30
.
Occams Razor
.
“If you have two theories that both explain the observed facts, then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along”
—–
“The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations.”
—–
“If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, choose the simplest.”
——
“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.”
—–
. . .or in the only form that takes its own advice. . .
“Keep things simple!”
140
ROM
Yes,
But I don’t think Occam would have passed the simple flogging we’re getting with CO2
– something to do with observed facts IMO
90
Never has a minor gas been flogged so hard by so few to so many on so few grounds for so little demonstrated effect!
190
Nice,
CAGW explained in one sentence.
70
IMO add “for so much money” somewhere in that string –
maybe after “by so few”?
30
ROM,
Unfortunately the AGW advocates deployed evermore complex manmade unguents and lotions of intricately designed semantics, with tortuous styptic nick-stick sophistry, to stop the ensueing blood loss resulting from Occam’s razor’s naked blade being presented justly about their thin-skinned, sciency, verisimilitudinous visage.
110
Superlative model of the people involved in climate science. Now that we have a model, we can
theorisepredict how they’ll act in 100 years time. (actualy we know that already).20
You know, I rather like that. It has wisdom and wit, It is poetic, and to the point. It is erudite without equivocation. It is venerable but not verbose.
50
Thank you Rereke Whakaaro, I am trying, often tiresomely.
Something like that. 😉
10
I dunno what tom0mason said but I support everything that he wrote,I think.(gees I hope none of those words were dirty!)
10
A new post up at CO2 Science and it confirms what we have been saying for quite some time, cold air outbreaks can be deadly.
‘Based on data pertaining to a total of 74,225,200 human deaths that occurred between 1985 and 2012, the 23 researchers determined that 7.71% of the lives lost were caused by non-optimum temperatures; and among this group they found that “more temperature-attributable deaths were caused by cold (7.29%) than by heat (0.42%)”, which makes cold in excess of seventeen times more deadly than heat.’
150
It only took them 30 years, God know how much money, and the deaths of ?? people for them to get this. I was going to say “understand this” but I’m doubtful that it’s caused any understanding.
40
Give the number of people who die of fuel poverty in the UK each year, human deaths are not a concern. Fuel Poverty is just a political stumbling block that was easily remedied The UK Government takes 1m out of fuel poverty – by changing the rules
30
If that is true, then they conciously aware that their belief, advocacy and actions are causing people to die. They are either making an attempt to hide this fact, or ……
00
Here in france the potato, Colorado, doriphore beetle has long been known to pass winter in the ground. We used to be able to use Jeyes liquid to kill the buggers in winter but the greenie beenies got that stopped.
It was always evident because the first plants to be attacked every summer were in the same part of the field as the previous years infestation.
Doriphores in the soil has been so since at least the early 20th century.
130
I understand that paraffin (kerosene) will also kill them.
80
Kerosene, being a noxious high carbon pollutant, will also be banned by the greenie beenies, however it’s use by certified climate professionals, when flying to or between conferences, will be exempt.
110
I think Rereke is talking about Lighting kerosene which the Poms call paraffin. Power Kerosene is the fuel for aviation and some of the older farm tractors
30
AvGas also works really well in cars. For a little while, at least 🙂
20
The older farm tractors would be started on Petrol then the operator would switch to [power] kero afterwards. Chamberlains had 40KAs etc.
00
Sure did improve the performance of my VW rabbit diesel especially going up mountains. It made it fly!
00
.
The interpretation of the term”certified climate proffessionals” in Rollos post above being ???
40
I assumed it was intended to imply a certitude of insanity. What other explanation could there be?
50
None.
40
Feed them Sweet Potato and they should die from diabetes, failing that tell the watermelons that Potato Beetles are large emitters of CO2 then start handing out the magnifying glasses….
70
Ducks or chickens will eat the beetles. My ducks have not kept up with the earwigs this year, but it’s been a bumper crop. In the past, I’ve had nearly no grasshoppers or other bugs. I don’t let them in the garden directly (though one has escaped her cage a couple of times with no bad outcome) but in a garden or field with fairly mature plants, they do fine. They may nibble on a plant or two, but don’t do anywhere near the damage of the bugs.
I have used Sevin when bugs get out of hand—once or twice a year maybe. Also, Ecobran for chewing insects.
10
Guinea hens are a favorite around here and weeder geese (goslings) can be turned loose in a garden to pull out the young weeds once the plants are big enough.
30
bees, trees , birds and flowers are thriving in cities up to 16 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside.
They have already exceeded the supposed two degree average increase expected by 2100.
160
I travel extensively around Australia, and I observe the takeover of the Bush by vines and other weeds thriving and choking the natives. In many areas out of control.
100
When you say, “choking the natives”, I hope you don’t mean the first peoples? 😉
90
I’m a keen observer of vegetation up and down the east coast and I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
There are lots of vines at the edges of the rainforests in northern Queensland, but that’s what you would expect so soon after the major cyclones this decade. The only plant taking anything over anywhere is the prickly acacia taking over just about every watering point in the drought affected part of central and western Queensland because anything remotely edible is being eaten out.
So where is this takeover of the bush by weeds and vines?
40
You must drive with your eyes straight ahead;
http://anpsa.org.au/APOL16/dec99-2.html
00
No- I’ve just always noticed the vegetation, and there is nothing out of the ordinary. There are hundreds of weed species, just as there always have been, and the main expenditure on herbicides in Australia isn’t for invasive species, it’s for crops out of rotation. Mainly wheat in canola and canola in wheat.
10
The bush is being choked by regrowth- spindly saplings growing too close together. Bushfires just waiting to happen. Very evident along the Bruce and Burnett Highways in southern Qld.
30
Jo
O/T
Bureau of Magic take note
“Was all this, then, an argument that the Met Office was ripe for privatisation, Letts asked Peter Lilley.
Lilley: “I’m not sure that anyone would buy it.” ”
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/08/05/blue-on-blue-warmist-bbc-slams-alarmist-met-office/
100
James Delingpole!
One of the best journalists around today.
Thanks for the laugh. Seems there is a wee bit of worry going round the UK political circles.
30
Spiders alive! Thirteen new species discovered in Queensland (SMH)
(warning: pictures of spiders)
Since 2010, the program has discovered more than 900 new species – an average of one new species every two days.
About 18,000 new species a year are discovered around the world – an average of nearly 50 new species a day.
140
Surely the biggest flaw here is the scientific hubris of believing that because computer systems are so sophisticated that everything can be modeled.
Well sorry Mr. Virtual Scientist, the linear resolution of life, and its ablility to smoothly morph it’s form to better fit its environment, is less granular than your finest infinite element analysis performed by your simple Mathematical computer model or Computer simulation , regardless of how many quantize corrected, digital bits you attempt to adjust for.
And if something as relatively simple as a beetle can not be accurately modeled, how can ‘climate scientists’ believe a far more complex, naturally chaotic, system of weather and climate be modeled to any degree of accuracy?
171
Hubris is right. The idea that using a computer will somehow give knowledge is generally rubbish. Computer models are only used to check theories against facts and only then can you conceive of prediction. As far as I can see, Climate computer models never match the historical facts but somehow, people believe the models’ predictions and not the real data? That is nonsense, not science, illogical mumbo jumbo. How can a computer, a stupid piece of machinery, create knowledge? It can only confirm a proposition. Otherwise it is like a trillion monkeys accidentally writing Hamlet. Computers are not smart, not even intelligent, not yet.
110
Life on Earth more adaptable than models predict
No kidding, life sure is more adaptable than these fools make it out to be.
I passed through the TV room (I don’t watch it but a tiny bit — soccer mainly or the blues channel) when I saw some lady yammering on about alligators (or was it crocs?) so I stopped to watch as they fascinate many of us in Florida USA. She then stated that they might not make it through global warming because they were “gender benders” and they would all be female or something. It was the damnedest, stupidest thing I have heard. The beasts have been on earth far, far longer than we monkeys with tools — and will most likely last longer than we do if it is only climate we consider. (and they never built any nuclear weapons) But they will all be female if it warms 2C ??? Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!
This CAGW bull crap has taken over the minds of almost everyone in the media. It is a wonder the authorities allow Jo Nova to publish this site. I bet she would play hell getting an article published in a large Austrian newspaper.
~ Mark
150
Those Crocs go back at least 200 to 250 million years million years to the middle of the Triassic period.
Modern versions of the Crocs back to about 100 million years
.
Sarcosuchus ran to about 10 to 12 meters long and more than ten tonnes in weight compared to their modern descendants, the real big Salties of today at about 6.5 meters or a bit bigger.
100
Or even an Australian newspaper.
60
Mark’s Lady Yammerer —
“gender benders”
This is not something I know a lot about, however, animals do have many survival characteristics and the alligators (so I’ve heard) can change the ratio of their offspring by changing the temperature at which they form. Why? I have no idea. This can be done by the size of the nest – bigger is warmer, smaller is cooler. Diverse strategies are used and someone likely has a list. Locally we have Coyotes and they adjust litter sizes to fill the environment suitable for them.
Control is difficult because about 70% of the population needs to be culled each year to keep their numbers low. Another strategy (don’t remember the animal) is to delay birth (pause gestation development) if the environmental situation is poor. I think the Lady Yammerer should talk less and read more.
Again, I suppose folks have studied these behaviors. I haven’t had the passion, yet, to get into that literature.
30
“…Another strategy (don’t remember the animal) is to delay birth (pause gestation development)”
Most prey animals can also delay giving birth until they feel it is safe. There are many mares or kids project animals who waited until a 1/2 hour after you gave up and left to have their babies. Just ask any farmer.
40
“Talk less and read more.”
I will try to take that to heart. It has been quite fascinating reading through the comments this morning.
40
A wise old Owl lived in an oak.
The more he heard the less he spoke.
The less he spoke the more he heard.
People should be like that old bird.
60
Catalyst had an interesting piece on barrier reef corals recently. The interviewer and the narration appeared to be steering the discussion towards catastrophism (perhaps I am showing some bias here), but Prof Terry Hughes seemed to be taking a more balanced view in painting a picture of change rather than the total destruction of the reef preached by others.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3576802.htm
50
Sounds like he is tip toeing away from Catastrophism. This is how CAGW will die. A slow back down with statements about how Life is more resilient and how the measures the west took have averted disaster. With pats on the back all round.
………….
Six phases of ill-considered projects
1. Unbridled enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Investigate / Determine Blame / Search for the guilty
5. Punish the innocent
6. Reward the guilty and promote the uninvolved
…….
I think we are now at step #5, with hopes that Paris is #6.
70
However Catastrophism finishes I seriously want to see some heads roll and severe punishments included lengthy jail time for some of the perps.
20
I doubt you will see any punishment. People will adapt and nothing will change except we will have to pay the Borg more of our wealth.
At least in the USA the judicial system is so bent it will not even prosecute well documented straight theft or other injustice if you are registered as a republican. This is why Heartland could not go after Peter Gleick, the courts would not allow it.
This is the type of thing you can expect.
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against IRS From Targeted Group
This does not even get into the possible political ramifications for the 2014 election.
What this means in the USA is if you bribe the right party with donations you never have to worry about ending up in court no matter what laws you break. However if you support the wrong party they will go after you with the IRS and any other regs they think they can use to harass you. I left Boston MA after 11 visits within a year from various town inspectors. People who donated to the Tea Party candidates report they got IRS audits….
The real use of Regs is destruction of those who disturb the plans of The Borg. I doubt there is very much difference from country to country. James Delingpole documents a hideous example in the UK.
10
Uh-oh …
Bad news for 97% doomsday predictions, e.g.: Could El Nino derail monetary policy? (theage,2015)
~ ~ ~
‘Beneficial rains’ prompt double upgrade to Australian wheat crop (agrimoney.com)
“Australia’s wheat crop followed France’s in receiving two upgrades in one day, as worst fears over weather setbacks prompted by El Nino recede, although some concerns remain over regional dryness.
Separately, National Australia Bank, which had forecast the potential for a sub-20m-tonne crop, said that “better conditions” in New South Wales and South Australia currently suggested a harvest of 21.6m tonnes.”
Late winter rainfall dramatically improves Western Australia’s wheat yield prospects (ABCrural)
~ ~ ~
It gets better …
Great news: Fears that El Niño would leave India without much-needed monsoon rains prove false
“El Niño was expected to bring dusty danger to India this year by stopping the country’s annual monsoons, which many of India’s 1.3 billion people rely on for their food to grow.
Happily, the climate predictions were wrong, and India is getting its much needed rains, as Bloomberg reports
It’s excellent news that fears of a crippling shortfall in India have proven ill-founded. Millions of people won’t go hungry, millions of parents will be able to pay school fees for their kids.”
~ ~ ~
> All this rain in Australia; WA, SA, West Victoria, NSW …
Rain bolsters regional water security (ABC)
. . .
2015 Hottest year Evah?
Drought-breaking La Nina made the continent cooler (TheAustralian)
In 2011, the La Nina and heavy rainfall acted like an evaporative cooler for Australia,” said bureau climate change spokesman David Jones.
“The year 2010 was relatively cool in recent historical context and 2011 was cooler again.”
100
One trusts that most people are aware the Nino/Nina oscillations are not evidence of some enhanced climate change brought on by the evil Dr Coal and his henchmen
There is hard geological evidence (mostly from drill cores of near-shore sediments) that these oscillations are at least 11,000 years old
Of course, with the slightly higher temperatures that an evaporative El Nino brings, that fact won’t hinder the CAGW propaganda. It hasn’t hindered the BOM recently
60
“Crop pests outwit climate change predictions”
What else needs to be said?
110
What else needs to be said?
“Crop pests outwit climate change predictors”
🙂
90
“Crop pests outwit climate change scientists”.
(as well as does everything else).
50
The Scientific Method has not failed but I am keen to understand exactly what failure has occurred to allow huge numbers of scientists to fail to apply it and believe in Global Warming, contrary to the evidence and even believe in computer models that have no predictive power whatsoever.
I think there could be a PhD in that for anyone looking for a topic, although you might be hard-pressed to find an appropriate supervisor or referees/examiners.
70
For warmists their ‘science’ is fraught,
With fears that it’s worse than they thought,
That some bug won’t survive,
Yet for eons could thrive,
Shows how modelling ‘science’ is taught.
150
In the contest between the beetle and the climate change pest, bet on the beetle.
110
I have pointed this out discussing “extinctions” for children. Animals that were thought to be extinct “suddenly” are found. They were never extinct. We just could not find them. Not the same. Animals are remarkably adaptable. Those which are not—well, read Darwin.
Most alarming is virtually all the articles I found while researching have to add “These animals are at great risk of extinction today”. Really? We had no idea they even still existed and suddenly because we know they do exist, these animals are at great risk? How could humans be any more arrogant?
70
Evil little bugs! How dare they defy computer predictions! We ought to stamp them all out. That’d teach ’em.
60
Circular email sent to UWA alumni trumpeting their research prowess.
Right in the centre of the “poster” graphic is the Nobel Prize awarded to a UWA researcher; a scientist who didn’t think much of the consensus in the field.
30
In Colorado we grow potatoes at high altitude in the San Luis Valley and at Gunnison. Both of these locations can reach -40 during the winter. You’d think that someone would do a little research on the Colorado potato beetle before making such ridiculous prognostications.
70
it is simple so , good insecs will die bad ones will thrive such as potatoe beetle
10
Is that along the lines of ‘only the good die young.’
10
The title includes the phrase “ … in a Warming World.”
The report investigates adaptation to cold.
I must have gotten out of the wrong side of the bed today!
40
Quote from a famous Beatle…
As Paul McCartney once said …. “Let it be”
So the planet is getting warmer , maybe? I will be glad when all these predictions of extinctions and a looming catastrophe stop, and we can all go home.
As John Lennon once said
Give “heat” a chance… 😀
30
A skink, a snake and some birds hold up the biggest coal mining project in Australia.
‘BirdLife Australia has written to Hunt warning that the mine will push the finch “to the brink of extinction”, urging him to reconsider his approval of the project.’
Guardian
40
CO2 the life-giver. We need more, not less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qVNK6zFgE&feature=player_embedded
30
I would like to see 1500 ppm to 2000 ppm.
It amazes me that someone actually has a video called “The CO2 Plant Food Crock”
Perhaps he needs to be put in an isolation dome with no CO2 and CO2 scrubbers in the air circulatory system and told to grow his own food…
20
I seriously wonder how many people these days realise that plants need CO2 in order to grow? Do they teach this stuff in school any more?
40
The late and lamented British humourist, Alan Coren, caught a newspaper article about Colorado Beetles, in (I think) the Liverpool Echo.
OK, I’m doing this from memory and it was nearly thirty years ago, but I think this was how it went: “Anyone finding one of these beetles (the adults have yellow and black stripes) should be put into a matchbox and taken to the nearest police-station.”
40
Only if a redhead.
30
el gordo –
yes, the black-throated finch has been added to the yakka skink and the ornamental snake as being under threat by the Carmichael mine.
6 Aug: Guardian: Oliver Milman: Coalition may change environment laws after Carmichael mine setback
A change that would give Hunt immunity from future legal challenges is being considered, with Labor’s in-principle support. But no deal has yet been made between the parties.
It appeared that the Coalition and Labor had agreed retrospective legal immunity measures at the start of last year, only for the legislation to be dropped.
The changes would have made the environment minister immune from legal challenges if he or she ignored conservation advice provided by the department.
A spokeswoman for Mark Butler, Labor’s environment spokesman, said: “Labor would have supported the government’s amendments to the EPBC Act, as they were drafted in 2013, had they been presented to the Senate.”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/06/coalition-may-change-environment-laws-after-carmichael-mine-setback
switched on 4BC for local news update this morning, only to hear Alan Jones FURY over Labor’s Mark Butler saying they’ll pass legislation, to amend the law, apparently to remove the word ALL, which is ALL it took to stop the mine. Jones knows ALL Australians won’t stand for this! someone with access might post the full quote from The Australian below:
Labor looks set to OK loophole blocking huge Adani mine
The Australian-9 hours ago
Mr Hunt intends to reassess the proposed mine within two months, … A spokeswoman for opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler …for a minster to demonstrate consideration of ALL conservation reports…
in the age of CAGW, “environmental” lawyers & well-funded NGOs are so much more sophisticated & able to make ridiculous challenges to ALL economic activity, so something has to be done to restore some balance.
30
not so adaptable!
3 Aug: Politico: Kalina Oroschakoff: German winds make Central Europe shiver
Concerned about the stability of their own grids, additional costs and the ability to export their own power, the Czechs, for example, are installing devices to block the power from 2016 onwards.
Poland is also working on the devices, known as phase shifters, and expects to have some operating this year. To the west, the Netherlands, Belgium and France have also installed phase shifters to deal with the flows…
The struggle shows how the drive toward more renewables, combined with outdated infrastructure and inconsistent cooperation within the EU, is having unintended consequences.
“In the past, with coal and nuclear power plants, the power system was extremely predictable. Now, with ever more renewable energy coming online, the system isn’t as predictable anymore, which can cause challenges also for the single market debate,” said Joanna Mackowiak Pandera, a senior associate with German think tank Agora Energiewende.
“We have been telling that to the Germans, ‘Increase your transmission system, or we will shut you off’,” an EU diplomat said at a briefing in Brussels recently…
The simplest solution, he said, would be for Germany to build up the necessary links. But that will take time. Alternatively, Germany could simply shut down wind power on highly productive days. But the country’s current policy stands in the way.
“It’s an uncomfortable problem and has to do with Germany’s irrational priority dispatch policy under which you cannot shut down renewables,” Boltz said…
http://www.politico.eu/article/strong-winds-in-germany-a-problem-in-central-europe/
30
Another Ian –
it would be great if Jo could do a thread on the Letts BBC radio program.
much more at RTCC, including BBC’s almost instant response to RTCC re “balance”, plus a link to the program:
6 Aug: RTCC: Ed King: BBC lost at sea as Radio 4 mocks climate change science
Science drenched with a water pistol as sceptical MPs and weathermen line up to bash Met Office
This was the week when the BBC took the piss out of the biggest scientific peer reviewed study produced on climate change.
In the space of 28 minutes it managed – with some elan – to pour scorn on the work of thousands of scientists involved with the UN’s IPCC climate science reports in 2013 and 2014 and rubbish their work, without offering an opposing view.
It did this rather effectively, masking what was a sustained assault on mainstream science and its warnings of the potentially catastrophic impacts of soaring carbon emissions with a spot of humour.
The half-hour show in question, presented by Quentin Letts, a Daily Mail columnist and occasional climate sceptic, was expertly produced and edited…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/08/06/bbc-lost-at-sea-as-radio-4-mocks-climate-change-science/
30
the link:
BBC Radio 4: What’s the Point of…? The Met Office
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06418l5
30
6 Aug: Bloomberg: Democrats’ Walkout Fails to Stop Measure Blocking Obama Climate Rules
by Laura Curtis & Mark Drajem
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe corralled Republicans from his committee Wednesday to meet off the Senate floor, and they approved the bill without Democratic support…
While the Obama administration has pledged to veto any of these bills, Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax, said he will continue his fight and seek the Democratic votes to override a veto.
“You gotta try,” Inhofe told reporters. “Whether we pick up enough votes to do that, I don’t know.”…
During consideration of Capito’s measure, Democrats introduced amendments about climate change, which the regulation is aimed at combating. One would have stipulated that the climate is changing and humans are the main cause. It failed in a party line vote…
Climate change “is debatable,” Inhofe said. “We’ve had hearings on this. The science is mixed.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-05/democrats-exit-senate-hearing-on-bill-to-stop-epa-s-climate-rule
22 June: Bloomberg: Maciej Martewicz: Polish Opt-Out From EU Climate Pact? Lets Talk, Says Naimski
Poland’s leading opposition party is seeking to negotiate exemptions from the European Union’s rules on reducing carbon emissions because the nation’s energy security and economic development depends on coal.
Law & Justice, which opinion polls show winning October’s general election, has vowed to toughen Poland’s stance on climate issues to protect the $526 billion economy, which relies on coal for about 90 percent of its electricity…
“The strategy that we’re planning for the economy rejects the dogma of de-carbonization,” Piotr Naimski, in charge of preparing energy policy at Law & Justice, said in an interview last week…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-21/a-poland-opt-out-from-eu-s-climate-pact-lets-talk-says-naimski
20
former BBC CAGW alarmist, Richard Black, who then set up the non-profit organisation ECIU (The Energy & Environment Intelligence Unit?), which acknowledges the support of the European Climate Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the Tellus Mater Foundation, and, from financial year 2015-16, the Climate Change Collaboration, weighs in on the Letts’ program:
***LOL LOL LOL!
5 Aug: Guardian: Richard Black: What’s the point of BBC guidelines when it comes to climate change?
Fact checking? Based on sound evidence? The latest Radio 4 episode of What’s the point of … the Met Office? not so much ignores the editorial guidelines as burns them to cinders.
After more than a decade reporting on climate change as a BBC science and environment correspondent, I became rather familiar with the guidelines. They are basically common sense: people should be treated fairly, programmes should be factually accurate, children should be protected, while allowing room for journalism and creativity to flourish.
The makers of this week’s What’s the Point of… do not appear to have visited the relevant pages, which is odd given the surfeit of banana skins obviously strewn before them, notably an institution (the Met Office) that has been used for years as a political football and a presenter who describes solar panels as “hideous” and is far more a man of wit than watts per metre squared (and to be fair, some of the wit was pretty good). Extraordinary, too, that Radio 4 bosses did not lend a closer ear before broadcast to a programme which, as it turned out, has not so much ignored the editorial guidelines as burned them to cinders in a joyous coal-fired conflagration…
***Climate change has always been a difficult subject for the BBC. The science is complex, with messy uncertainties, and the political stakes are high. As I saw at first hand during my time there, the corporation comes under sustained pressure from various quarters, particularly well-connected contrarians for whom undercutting scientific institutions such as the Met Office is a time-honoured tactic. Nevertheless, the BBC generally does a excellent job, with news correspondents, current affairs presenters and science documentary makers who excel – many of whom would doubtless have helped the makers of What’s the Point, had they been asked…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/05/whats-the-point-of-bbc-editorial-guidelines-climate-change
as The Guardian doesn’t disclose anything about Richard Black’s BBC past or his ECIU NGO:
ECIU Advisory Board includes MP Richard Benyon (Fairfax’s “leading Tory MP), Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, Sir Crispin Tickell etc etc
http://eciu.net/about/advisory-board
20
Off Topic: A comment posted on Andrew Bolt’s blog at the Daily Telegraph today, Friday;
Dr Brian replied to DT
Fri 07 Aug 15 (12:27pm)
The new little ice age myth has been repudiated by the scientists who actually did the research.
The “best” arguments “skeptics” can muster are all myths and distortions:
The no warming for 18 years myth (Mr Bolt is now adding essentially).
The models have failed myth. The correlation coefficient with actual temperature is better than 0.95.
The hockey stick myth. Even Jo Nova is endorsing them these days.
The climategate myths. There was no attempt to hide a nonexistent decline in temperatures.
00
If Dr Brian is an actual medical doctor, I wouldn’t let him practice medicine on a potato bug given that level of blind trust in every fad that passes by.
60
He probably has the double pass bachelor degree: MBBS.
10
My question to you is, ‘What is the optimal temperature for the Earth?’ Did you know that the greatest explosion of life on the planet occurred during the Cambrian Period (around 500 million years ago) with an average temperature close to 22 degree Celsius or 7 degrees hotter than the current average temperature for the Earth. Do you ever think in a 4,500,000,000 year history for the Earth, the chance that the year 2015 be the optimal temperature for the Earth. What are the chances of that 4.5 billion to 1. Where I live is on average 7 degrees hotter than Sydney and I love it, and to that most in Europe would find Sydney hot (because it never snows).
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Ho hum
It wasn’t a decline in temperatures that was deliberately hidden. It was the increasing and significant discrepancy between actual modern thermometer-based temperatures and those predicted from the chosen proxies (ie. the proxies were useless in matching modern instrument-based temperature readings – so why should they be considered useful for past records ? This question remains completely unanswered and even the chestnut “we are working on it” is no longer used. The “hide the decline” episode is rightly infamous)
This is a common bit of deliberate deceit practised by AGW activists and as such is of the “ho hum” variety. What IS annoying though is the sheer stupidity of those who aspire to scepticism but don’t know this either … these people are truly a useless load
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ianl that’s a fair point but I’m sure you know why skeptics nonetheless refer to it as a “decline”.
It’s because they were Phil Jones’ actual words.
I’m sure you know that already, but we do sometimes get blow-ins and lurkers who never comment but do read the site because they are new to the whole issue (hi lurkers!) and so it’s sometimes necessary to make explicit the things we know as common knowledge.
I sometimes wonder if Global Warming has reached social saturation point yet. Has everyone that is ever going to take any interest in digging into it already done so.
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