Sure, it might make more sense for James to slap a blanket Memetic Prophylactic Recommended label on the whole LJ. But I believe that he still nurtures the intent someday to post a 100% wholesome entry, free of any reference or link to the fecklessness and folly of our species.
I say it could happen, and... what? No, I'm not a betting man.
I certainly hear that climate was exactly the same up until 20 or 30 years ago, when things began getting amazingly hotter in a way which has never happened before, ever. So any reports of bad weather in the 1930s were just that, weather, not climate change.
In the same way, the recent storm that hit New York and the rest of the east coast is said to be caused by climate change; the great storms that hit New York in the 1930s, and there were several, were just regular storms.
Well, the model of climate change that I've been seeing is that human-driven climate change started a while before the Industrial Revolution, and the current crisis is a result of accumulated effects and acceleration.
I'm not seeing actual scientists saying that any one particular storm is caused by climate change: I'm seeing a discussion about trends, the shape of things, statistics, frequencies, overall effects.
But you may in fact be hearing all manner of things from whoever you listen to.
It appears from the work of John Smol that the earliest signs of global warming appeared in arctic lakes in the 1890s. Now, this is still not something that is commonly agreed in the climate community, but Smol published this about fifteen years ago and has since dealt quite reasonably with various objections. Unless someone comes up with a good counter-argument soon, I'd say that Prof Smol has made his case.
That's funny. Every time I hear a climatologist interviewed during a great storm, the climatologist says "Well, I can't tell you one way or another about THIS storm, but the overall trend is..." What reporters and men on the street say is not the climatologists' fault. I have never heard anybody, activist or climatologist, say that the whole thing started 20 or 30 years ago. It's a long slow climb, not a cliff.
The issue is what's happening in the large numbers, not what's happening in individual instances. Great storms have always happened; see the Galveston Flood*. The climate change issue is that the models predict, and have predicted for some time, that the frequency of large storms is rising, and the data bear this out.
* My father used to say that my untidy bedroom looked like the Galveston Flood.
To be fair, the doctrine was formulated during a high-rain period in the Midwest/West, when it really did seem like everywhere they started farming the rain would increase for a while.
Have you by any chance heard this one: "You can catch a bird by shaking salt on its tail." (Courtesy of Grandma Opal) Some people have and some haven't, but there doesn't seem to be much geography to the divide.
The history of the Nebraska State Forest is diagnostic - unfortunately I can't find a link right now, but as I was told it, someone around the turn of the last century planted a fairly extensive area of mixed-grass prairie in the vicinity of the Sand Hills with trees, on the assumption that this would bring the rain.
They're still there. Never did bring much rain, though.
A point, in a way - deniers point to geologically-earlier periods of warming such as the Paleocene blip and ask where were all the SUVs that caused that therefore no anthropogenic climate change plus those scientists are in it for the big grants.
"In it for the big grants" is just the cover-up for a much larger wealth transfer. What the AGW conspiracy really wants is to cripple US economic growth and give China, India et al a free pass to race ahead.
Note that this version gets extra mileage if the believer already resents affirmative-action policies. It's the biggest such program EVAR!
Your fault. I had to go there and read random pages till I found this:
Using population estimates, we know that about 300 million people existed in the world at the time of Christ, and extrapolating backwards yields only one family in the year 3300 B.C.
"What is conservapedia, really? Is it a homeschool project?"
In short, yes. Phyllis Schlafly's son, Andrew, who is just as much of a Wingnut as his mother, put it together with the help of a bunch of homeschooled teenage kids. Cf http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Newcomer's_Guide
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Gaagh, mobile safari broke the link i pasted. <a href＝"http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Newcomer's_Guide"> try this</a>
I like the technique of taking a simple mathematical model and extrapolating it backwards in time, to a humorous end.
I understand that if you did this to one of the Meadows' models (from Limits to Growth), you found out that the world's population was infinite a couple of centuries ago.
Mostly not to be a pedantic dick (OK. That is a lie. However, there is a small nugget of desire for increased knowledge buried within the seething, hateful mass that is my desire to be my pedantic dick), I thought that the dust bowl really wasn't a climate change phenomena. My understanding was that the dust bowl was a combination principally of drought plus ill considered farming techniques. Excluding folks who box themselves into deeply stupid arguments and don't know how to back down, it isn't my sense that climate change deniers deny that human beings can affect the land. Although that may have changed...
Granting that this is 15+ years gone, but certainly most anyone in the small farming town I grew up in who had an opinion on the subject a) didn't really believe in global warming but also b) thought the dust bowl was an epic example of human stupidity. These were mostly the middle aged farmers, guys I met when I was tagging along with my Dad (who acted as field man for his processing company).
On reflection though, it was another time. While they were reflexively both socially conservative as well as deeply suspicious of environmentalists[1]. But they were also mostly college educated at least to some extent and on really good terms with the OSU Ag extension office. It was their much better provided children who were already drifting into a Limbaugh influenced proto-Tea Party world view.
Huh. So really, this whole comment is much about nothing, but I'm pleased to have thought about it.
[1]For reasons both fair and specious, the then extant Oregon environmental movement had a habit of really pissing off farmers. UofO really went in for a quantity over quality strategy in hippy production, in those days.
As far as I know, periodic nasty droughts in the mid-West have been happening for as far back as the climate proxies can be measured; the Dust Bowl is an example of inept adaptation to climate change.
Which clearly worked, as very little of America's farmland is owned by farmers anymore, but is instead owned by corporations which are in turn owned by large numbers of shareholders, and if that isn't collective I don't know what is.
Funny how the word "collective" isn't used when applied to corporations, but only other forms of shared ownership…
Hmmm. When I look at the Wikipedia page for Palliser's Triangle, it suggests that entire Western Prairie was considered Palliser's Triangle while for some reason I had thought it only referred to a much smaller subsection of the Brown soil zone.
The dust bowl was a groundbreaking exercise in geoengineering, demonstrating that people can control the environment! In the future, dust inputs to the oceans, carrying iron, will be used to enhance ocean productivity and sequester CO2.
Is this a case of context being for the weak? Why do climate change deniers need to have a position on the Dust Bowl? It's not like droughts were unheard of before the twentieth century, or before the industrial period. Is there current speculation that the drought of the 30s was human-caused in some way?
The story I first learned about the Dust Bowl, back in the days when (almost) nobody was talking about greenhouse gases or anthropogenic climate change was that there was a drought in the 30s, the agricultural effects of which were made worse by poor farming practices that led to accelerated soil erosion. Is that controversial?
Some of them might wish to deny that it happened, or that Big Government and pointy-headed proto-environmentalists found remedies. Though it was neither global nor climate change, still it's a case of human practices causing an environmental and economic disaster. Can't admit that kind of precedent.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2012-11-18 07:56 pm
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I actually saw this somewhere recently. Hoyt's commenter? Anyway, wherever it was, it was your fault.
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I say it could happen, and... what? No, I'm not a betting man.
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In the same way, the recent storm that hit New York and the rest of the east coast is said to be caused by climate change; the great storms that hit New York in the 1930s, and there were several, were just regular storms.
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I'm not seeing actual scientists saying that any one particular storm is caused by climate change: I'm seeing a discussion about trends, the shape of things, statistics, frequencies, overall effects.
But you may in fact be hearing all manner of things from whoever you listen to.
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(Anonymous) 2012-11-20 03:08 am (UTC)(link)William Hyde
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The issue is what's happening in the large numbers, not what's happening in individual instances. Great storms have always happened; see the Galveston Flood*. The climate change issue is that the models predict, and have predicted for some time, that the frequency of large storms is rising, and the data bear this out.
* My father used to say that my untidy bedroom looked like the Galveston Flood.
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It didn't last, of course.
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(Anonymous) 2012-11-19 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)They're still there. Never did bring much rain, though.
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(Anonymous) 2012-11-19 03:29 am (UTC)(link)no subject
Note that this version gets extra mileage if the believer already resents affirmative-action policies. It's the biggest such program EVAR!
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Using population estimates, we know that about 300 million people existed in the world at the time of Christ, and extrapolating backwards yields only one family in the year 3300 B.C.
In an introductory article on world history.
Why do they have homework answers as wikipedia articles?
What is conservapedia, really? Is it a homeschool project?
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In short, yes. Phyllis Schlafly's son, Andrew, who is just as much of a Wingnut as his mother, put it together with the help of a bunch of homeschooled teenage kids. Cf http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Newcomer's_Guide
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I understand that if you did this to one of the Meadows' models (from Limits to Growth), you found out that the world's population was infinite a couple of centuries ago.
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Granting that this is 15+ years gone, but certainly most anyone in the small farming town I grew up in who had an opinion on the subject a) didn't really believe in global warming but also b) thought the dust bowl was an epic example of human stupidity. These were mostly the middle aged farmers, guys I met when I was tagging along with my Dad (who acted as field man for his processing company).
On reflection though, it was another time. While they were reflexively both socially conservative as well as deeply suspicious of environmentalists[1]. But they were also mostly college educated at least to some extent and on really good terms with the OSU Ag extension office. It was their much better provided children who were already drifting into a Limbaugh influenced proto-Tea Party world view.
Huh. So really, this whole comment is much about nothing, but I'm pleased to have thought about it.
[1]For reasons both fair and specious, the then extant Oregon environmental movement had a habit of really pissing off farmers. UofO really went in for a quantity over quality strategy in hippy production, in those days.
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See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
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(Anonymous) 2012-11-20 06:23 pm (UTC)(link)Funny how the word "collective" isn't used when applied to corporations, but only other forms of shared ownership…
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The story I first learned about the Dust Bowl, back in the days when (almost) nobody was talking about greenhouse gases or anthropogenic climate change was that there was a drought in the 30s, the agricultural effects of which were made worse by poor farming practices that led to accelerated soil erosion. Is that controversial?
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--Dave, big rock candy mountain-building