Gunner's Status

Gunner, glad you made it, and are back to make sure the liberals don't have free reign. Some of us aren't blessed with your vocabulary ;)

Skeptical means "disbelieving". That's a bit different from "not convinced but willing to be." A few didn't "suffer fools well" but most of them didn't make a point of behaving thusly. Hell, they suffered me quite cheerfully -- still do!

Me too. Point is, we ignore the urge and it quickly passes.

Oh yeah! Especially when they're shivering outside a door when the windchill is -30.

Well, then, Don, it's likely that you're not a fool. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 15:41:18 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

Ed, I follow the skeptics because they've uncovered the dirty laundry of the GWk scientists. The incomplete and skewed models (I dare you to find anyone say that he climate models are complete and totally trustworthy. If you can find one to say that, have them track it back through our history as a test. Betcha they can't do it.) are only one part of the vast scam they're trying to pawn off on us.

Meteorologists will be the first to agree, since they can't even use the models to tell us whether or not it's going to rain next Friday with any certainty. Every year, the climatologists add more and more parameters to the models in an attempt to tweak 'em, to make them more reliable. And they're getting better, but they're still not there. Alarmists use the worst case scenarios. The IPCC has reduced their warming figures every single time they've updated their climate reports as a result, showing that the alarmists were wrong from the start.

CO2 is 0.038 percent of the atmosphere. Could the alarmists possibly be overlooking other facets (that miniscule other 99.962%) of Mother Nature which are in effect? Another anomaly is the timing of the warming. Ice studies show that warming and CO2 rise happened at different times, with CO2 showing up AFTER warming. Little tidbits like this fascinated me. For more info, read _The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism_. For a wider range of good news, Read Bailey's _Earth Report 2000_. Their notes and biblios can be a good follow-up.

-- Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys. -- Gail Pool

GWk...I love it!

I have no idea. Because there aren't that many who don't agree with the skeptics, and their arguments are easily dismantled, maybe?

Were those the Doctors of Herbology, or the quantum mechanics?

I'm glad you're convinced. Now you can leave me alone about climatology.

Good grief. I gave you the links then. You mean that you lost them AGAIN??

I think it fizzled. People read his book about the buckeyballs, or whatever they were, that swarmed like mosquitos, and realized he was just telling an extended joke.

Listen to him on a news/talk show sometime and you'll realize he's a smart and knowledgable guy. Why he writes the way he does is an open question.

I think it gives me some insight into your research. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

I guess I just know the bedwetters.

Actually, that isn't what I meant at all.

You may actually be on something...

Larry, what makes you think you know the implications of any of that? Because someone told you so? Or have you run the numbers yourself? Or what?

As I said, neither you nor I is going to understand what all of the numbers mean. I'm a little surprised that you think you can reach conclusions from reading popularized accounts of some very complex science.

-- Ed Huntress

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 22:40:00 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

It's about time you agreed that the skeptics are right. (Reread your statement, Ed. )

Full gamut, just like yours.

Why are you going on about this one?

If I viewed them whenever you purport to have given them to me, then I wasn't impressed. AAMOF, I must have been so unimpressed that I forgot about it altogether. ;)

He got me interested. The rest is RCM history.

So were Carter and Clintoon, but...

You could tell I spent a whopping 2.175 minutes on the two subjects at Wikipedia? Thot so. :-)

-- Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys. -- Gail Pool

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 21:38:51 -0500, the infamous "Buerste" scrawled the following:

Yeah, I can be lazy, can't I? Wait, I meant to say that I'm saving keystrokes and the resultant energy used and reducing the planetary warming from having those extra characters on a CRT screen. Yeah, that's it. ;)

-- Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys. -- Gail Pool

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 23:07:57 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

My choices are fluid and I change my position on a subject when I find overwhelming evidence to do so.

Ed, I'm a little surprised that you haven't. For nearly 4 decades, people have been dying around the world from the bad decisions leaders (starting in this country and going global) have made concerning the environment. From DDT bans, to choosing coal over nuke, to the use of ethanol. I stand with the side which would stop that, wasting trillions on a loose "maybe". I'm for _sane_ actions. Why aren't you?

What have the Wars on X (drugs, poverty, terror, GWk, etc.) cost the world? Entire -countries- are now opting out of the pursuit of controlling their waste because it's too costly to get every last ten-billionth of it according to the Gospel of the EPA and other such idiocracies. Something about that seems wrong to me. You?

-- Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- George S. Patton

Id be surprised of ol Ed even had an odd feeling about the whole thing, as idologoically hitched to the Leftist bandwagon as he is.

"Not so old as to need virgins to excite him, nor old enough to have the patience to teach one."

Well, that's good.

Yeah, things are rough all over. Now, how are you determining which actions are sane? We know you have a general distrust of government. But do you have the same distrust of science? If so, why do you believe some scientists over others?

What is it you think is wrong? The science, or the politics?

I'm curious about something you said above, which I let pass the first time, but maybe it's become relevant. You seem to feel it's important that CO2 makes up only 385 ppm or so of the atmosphere. Crichton said as much in his book, which I recognized as evidence that he either didn't understand the gas greenhouse effect, or he was being intentionally misleading. Do you understand it? It's nothing like the principle on which a conventional greenhouse operates; the physics are entirely different. The gas greenhouse effect was discovered around 170 years ago so it's not new science. They have it nailed down to the level of quantum mechanics today.

It's important because it's essential in sorting out a lot of the propaganda. Again, do you feel that you understand it? I'm not asking you to demonstrate it, only if you feel you understand the implications, for example, of raising the CO2 level in the atmosphere from, say, 270 ppm (what it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution) to 400 ppm, which it will be very shortly.

-- Ed Huntress

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 11:11:11 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

Logic. Got a better idea?

Si!

Primarily, I trust scientists, but, yes, too many are apparently seeking funding so they can do what they want to do. It's -they- who have abandoned science for politics and funding.

Because of the things they have overlooked or settled for. I don't feel that the models they're using are worthy of anything more than predicting general trends, and I'm hesitant to go even that far from what I've read and heard from people in the niche. I feel they're just tools, not God's word, as some scientists feel. It's times like these when I wish I'd kept a log of who said what, and when, so I could present it to you. Luckily, Lomborg, Horner, and Tucker all have pretty good reviews of all that in their books.

The politics presenting "bad science", e.g. Algore's movie. Also, the use of the worst case scenarios (unfounded, usually) in combination to create an even worse outlook which is then taken up by the media to scare us even more.

Wasting everyone's money in the pursuit of non-issues, while people die as a result, is wrong. Peter Huber puts that facet in context in _Hard Green_. Highly recommended reading.

I'm sure that I do not have a full understanding of the physics. I'm relying on scientists who do and have made their similified data available.

Well, that's disputable. On one hand, the alarmists say it's a linear thing, where x amount of increase in CO2 gives you x effect. On the other hand, the skeptics say it would take an order of magnitude more gas to make the same incremental effect. Then we have the possibility that CO2 is merely the indicator, not the cause. Hmmm, what to do?

Additionally, I believe the skeptics when they say that not all of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) have been researched fully, i.e. we weren't measuring global water vapor way back when, and it makes up the vast majority of the GHGs.

The discussion and "crisis" would be moot if the PTBs would simply let everyone generate power via nuclear fusion, recycle the fuel rods, etc. Electric cars will become the main transpo for local driving, coal will be abandoned (removing the worst pollutant used by man today) and everyone would live happily ever after.

Finis. ;)

-- Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- George S. Patton

--------------- I would be a *LOT* more impressed if the global warming fanatics weren't playing "Yes, but."

Every proposal to limit or reverse co2 emissions is beaten down except for us to stop having kids and go back to subsistence farming, i.e. do it their way. This is just the 60s counter culture with lipstick on.

A few specific examples:

(1) Wind power -- Yes but it ruins the view and might hurt a bird.

(2) Wave power -- Yes but we never did it before and it might hurt a fish.

(3) Hydroelectric power -- Yes but it drowns farmland and might hurt a fish or stop wildlife from migrating.

(4) Reforestation -- Yes but we just don't like it and it might not work.

(5) Adding iron to areas of Open Ocean to promote algae growth -- Yes but it might hurt the fish and it might not work.

(6) Nuclear -- Yes but we tried it once and didn't like it.

And on and on and on.

You can't come up with a solution that they do not "yes, but."

As long as we have had humans we have had the "yes buts," back to the people against fire, animal husbandry and agriculture. [It's not natural and it's dangerous...]

It is one thing to identify a problem, it is another to "yes but"

*EVERY* attempt or suggestion to solve the problem. Try asking how much money/prestige they are making {Nobel Prize anyone} and how "yes but" keeps their grift going. Also what these people would do if the problem were magically solved. [I.e. on to the next cause]

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Screw the fanatics. How about the climate scientists? Are they part of "these people"?

-- Ed Huntress

Your logic escapes me, Larry. In fact, I think it escapes logic. If you were to boil your position down to a series of five statements, I'll bet you the next right-wing book you want to buy that I can find four logical fallacies in them. I'll spell them out in Latin or English, as you prefer.

Are we on?

How do you know this? Did some unhappy scientist tell you? Maybe it was the Cato Institute? A fiction writer, perhaps?

I won't ask which people, because you've already told us which "niche" it is that you're reading. Actually, you're reading half a niche, and I think you could save yourself a lot of money if you used your duck call and just lured the quacks in.

So do scientists. Who told you otherwise? Your favorite book authors?

How do you know this?

Are they all you read, the antis?

A "Manichaean sump of bad faith and Potemkin science," says Tom Gogola. I guess that blurb didn't make it onto the book jacket, eh? d8-)

Did you like the passage in which Huber extolls the wonders of free markets with his example of starving African children picking the undigested morsels of corn out of human excrement? Now, THERE's a no-holds-barred free-marketeer for you. Did he include traditional recipes?

Could you try a partial understanding of the physics? Because if you can, you'll see what's driven the research and how the antis are doing an end-run around the basic science. Again, it's clear that Crichton either didn't understand it, or he was pulling a fast one on his audience.

I have no idea where you heard that, but no climatologist worthy of the name is going to say any such thing.

What to do is to study the basics of it. You'll see what the argument is about, and where the skeptics are simply denying the science. Again, this is nothing new. It's been understood in principle since at least the 1920s. The antis are just playing a shell game on you.

I'm not suggesting that you try to understand the scope and depth of climatology. Just look at this basic, deterministic bit of physics and look at what a mess the antis have made of the facts. You don't have to solve the complexities, which are enormous. You don't have to engage chaos theory or fluid dynamics. It won't solve the net-radiation equations for you. It won't hand you a conclusion about whether we're getting hot or cold. But it will give you a better idea about whom to trust.

How can you "believe" that when you don't even know how the gas greenhouse effect works? It isn't chaos theory. Jesus. Is this your idea of "logic"??

What does that have to do with the science of global warming? Are you just going to punt?

Sheesh. d8-)

I'm good for the book, BTW, if you care to take on my challenge.

-- Ed Huntress

Thanks, Grumpy. Most of the people I really know, face-to-face, seem to feel similarly.

It does look like a strong argument, considering what *is* known about the greenhouse effect. Unfortunately, the basic idea exists in a sea of complicated interrelationships and chaos, so the full case is over my head.

You may have noticed that the global-population activists are on the march again:

I won't try to tackle that one, especially because trends are going both ways at once. But the declines in the developed world (Italy is the extreme example; their birthrate is below sustainability) appear to be overwhelmed by growth in the undeveloped world. When they get enough food, they multiply.

-- Ed Huntress