tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85147151678626926132024-03-19T04:27:04.753-04:00mole in the groundA mole's-eye view of a mountain of greed and corruptionDocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-77207722536730658022021-11-02T16:58:00.007-04:002023-12-05T16:53:41.443-05:00Thoughts on Climate Change - Part 12: What is driving sea level rise?<p><span face="Raleway, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f8f8; color: #143150; font-size: 16px;">According to this graph, based on evidence compiled by the Hadley Center, NASA and NOAA, we see little to no sign of global temperature rise from 1850 through 1910, a period of 60 years: </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/fig1a-large.jpg?la=en-GB&hash=14D5026DA62ADB4652A18BA13758F84A" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="800" height="199" src="https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/fig1a-large.jpg?la=en-GB&hash=14D5026DA62ADB4652A18BA13758F84A" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Oceanic temperatures also did not begin to rise until roughly the same time:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/19418.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/19418.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Yet sea levels began to rise steadily from at least 1880 and probably sooner: </p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjiws-2iIxSbm-RWyKtdSQwiMJfqd_TTslk-WNcl7h_rFHWFqWm88oE7Gdk48Km0BOG5DKVau4o8S2v-M3gQhghXU2GYqv4Wwc_C8EpDEbW3vzT4b60HixYTZS3fm6FZATQ0IMDa_6hyzjmxTp68I0OBf_CdaQuKUyyfsR-8Pc05FnC7FgPWiweIQZz0c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjiws-2iIxSbm-RWyKtdSQwiMJfqd_TTslk-WNcl7h_rFHWFqWm88oE7Gdk48Km0BOG5DKVau4o8S2v-M3gQhghXU2GYqv4Wwc_C8EpDEbW3vzT4b60HixYTZS3fm6FZATQ0IMDa_6hyzjmxTp68I0OBf_CdaQuKUyyfsR-8Pc05FnC7FgPWiweIQZz0c=w458-h258" width="458" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">If this evidence is correct, then it’s difficult to see how sea level rise could have been a response to a rise in global temperatures that began at least 30 years later. It's difficult also to claim sea level rise is driven by warming produced by CO2 emissions when the rate of rise has remained relatively stable from 1880 through the present, while both global land and sea temperatures have risen and fallen at varying rates during this same period.</p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">I’m wondering, therefore, whether it's possible the rise in sea levels has little or nothing to do with climate.</p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">According to a recent study, </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">. . . the rapidly retreating Thwaites and Pope glaciers in particular are underlain by areas of largely elevated geothermal heat flow, which relates to the tectonic and magmatic history of the West Antarctic Rift System in this region. Our results imply that the behavior of this vulnerable sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is strongly coupled to the dynamics of the underlying lithosphere.” (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00242-3" target="_blank">High geothermal heat flow beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica inferred from aeromagnetic data</a> )</div></blockquote><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">A similar dynamic has been reported for Greenland (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19244-x)" target="_blank">High geothermal heat flux in close proximity to the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream</a> )</p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Could the steady sea level rise since the late 19th century be linked primarily to a gradual geothermally-induced melting of ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland? Such a notion seems more consistent with the evidence than the effects of climate change.</p><p style="background-color: #f8f8f8; box-sizing: inherit; color: #143150; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 12px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><br /></p>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-25058896779020447872021-05-13T12:45:00.005-04:002021-05-13T13:01:49.295-04:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- Part 11:Tamino's Trick<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The "hiatus" -- the period from roughly 1998 to 2015, in which the steady rise of
global temperatures, so strongly evident during the latter part of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century, appears to have leveled off, contrary to the expectations of "climate change" advocates, who've been trying desperately to explain it away for many years. At least 66 different <a href="http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/11/updated-list-of-64-excuses-for-18-26.html" target="_blank">explanations </a>for the hiatus were published by 2014 and many more have been offered since. My own personal favorite was proposed by blogger "Tamino" back in 2014 (<a href="https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/weak-sauce-from-climate-deniers/" target="_blank">updated</a> in 2018):</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">From <i>The Unsettled Science of Climate Change: A Primer for Critical Thinkers:</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">While investigators such as Rahmstorff, Hansen, Cook,
Cowtan, Way, etc. have attempted to account for the hiatus on the basis of a
re-examination of either forcing factors or methods of data collection, others prefer
to see it as some sort of illusion produced by misleading statistics. A leading
member of the second school is Rahmstorff collaborator Grant Foster, posting as
“Tamino” on his blog, <i>Open Mind</i>. On a
post of Jan. 2014, titled </span><a href="https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Global Temperature: the Post-1998 Surprise</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Tamino offers the following graph:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg?w=997&h=540" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="800" height="216" src="https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4_98.jpg?w=997&h=540" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The red line is what he calls the “forecast line,”
representing a hypothetical continuation of the warming trend indicated by the
preceding black diagonal. The blue horizontal represents “our estimate of what
we would expect if we had been given certain knowledge of no statistically
significant warming from 1998 through 2013 . . .” What is his point?</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s clear that <i>if we
expected a pause</i>, we would expect most of the following years’ temperatures
to be below the red forecast line, but about half above and half below the blue
forecast line. On the other hand, <i>if we expected continued warming</i>,
we would expect most of the following years’ temperatures to be above the blue
forecast line, but about half above and half below the red forecast line.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As he demonstrates, however, almost all the data points
from 1998 through 2013 are well above not only the blue line, but the red one
as well. Here are the lines juxtaposed with the Hadcrut4 graph:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg?w=997&h=540" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="800" height="216" src="https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hadcrut4.jpg?w=997&h=540" width="400" /></a></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">As Tamino explains,</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What actually happened is
that, according to the HadCRUT4 data, most of the data are above <b>both</b> forecasts.
Twelve of sixteen were hotter than expected even according to the still-warming
[red line] prediction, and all sixteen were above the no-warming [blue line] prediction.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">He continues, demonstrating that more or less the same
result can be seen using several other datasets, NCDC, GISS, RSS, and, not
surprisingly, Cowtan and Way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">He then goes on to crow a bit:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Does this mean we need to
launch a massive research effort to divine the reason for this sudden and
pronounced warming? No.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Careful Tamino. That “massive research effort” has been
chugging along for years, and still going strong. Do you really want to claim your
cli. sci. colleagues have been wasting their time? More important: do you
actually believe you’ve pulled a real rabbit out of your hat, rendering all
other “explanations” superfluous? Or is this simply an instance of cleverly
contrived statistical legerdemain? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s clever, I’ll give him that. But, yes, it’s a just a
trick, one of many examples of how easy it is to deceive oneself (and others)
with statistics. The basis for the trick is that old standby of magicians for
centuries: misdirection. Tamino’s red line tells us that, indeed, as no one
would dispute, the years between 1998 and 2013 were especially warm compared to
the period between 1979 and 1997, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>
is why most of the data points lie above the red line, because the red line predicts
absolute temperature, telling us nothing at all about the rate at which
temperature changes. As he himself states, “All sixteen years were hotter than
expected even according to the still-warming prediction [red line], so of
course they also were above the no-warming [blue line] prediction.” Yes.
Precisely. Because they were hotter. Not because there was no leveling after
1998. The leveling of the warming trend remains clearly visible on the Hadcrut
graph regardless of where those dots appear in relation to any red or blue
line. That red line serves a function analogous to the matador’s red cape,
directing our attention away from the actual hiatus toward the very different
issue of absolute heat. Literally misdirection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To properly demonstrate the existence of a hiatus, consider the following graph, also based on the Hadcrut4 data:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvlQNnuxlBq-KnF3UjqpWek-caFJipsOYRxauyrn78p5UFVUkRYNHKrs4aYP0NntHftx28V5CDuYCc3ztGfVpynC_IqXDSgPWsQQJfDggdKfaABjMf2LZCuxLvMLdWvMIDDRl7G1exGso/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="527" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvlQNnuxlBq-KnF3UjqpWek-caFJipsOYRxauyrn78p5UFVUkRYNHKrs4aYP0NntHftx28V5CDuYCc3ztGfVpynC_IqXDSgPWsQQJfDggdKfaABjMf2LZCuxLvMLdWvMIDDRl7G1exGso/w400-h266/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What’s pictured here is not simply a warming pause, but the
breakdown of the correlation between global temperatures (in red) and CO2
accumulation (in green). As indicated by the arrows, it’s the difference
between the two that produces the hiatus, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
the difference in overall warmth between two periods of time. Moreover, as
clearly indicated in the same image, there was no correlation prior to the late
70s either. The </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> period of clear
and consistent correlation was between the late 70s and ca. 1998,
roughly 20 years. Thus, despite the fact that the years between 1998 and the
present have been warmer overall than those preceding, the upward trend
required to maintain the correlation either halted completely or slowed to a
crawl during that time. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is the
basis for the hiatus.</span></p>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-7995671130223827262021-03-07T11:15:00.002-05:002021-03-07T12:33:47.475-05:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- Part 10: The Aerosol Excuse<p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Climate change advocates have been exceptionally ingenious
in devising various ways to “cook” the raw data in such a manner as to fit their
favored theory despite evidence to the contrary. For example, a common attempt
to explain away the mid-twentieth century temperature hiatus is the frequently
stated claim that an underlying warming trend was masked by industrial aerosols
(i.e. pollutants) emitted, ironically enough, by the same process that also
emitted large amounts of CO2.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The mid-century cooling
appears to have been largely due to a high concentration of sulphate aerosols
in the atmosphere, emitted by industrial activities and volcanic eruptions.
Sulphate aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate because they scatter
light from the Sun, reflecting its energy back out into space. (</span><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming/"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Climate
myths: The cooling after 1940 shows CO2 does not cause warming</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">The
effects of volcanic aerosols can be discounted as they are short-lived, no more
than a blip on a typical graph. As for the effects of industrial pollution,
they are indeed continuous -- but localized. Industrial aerosols are most
heavily expelled in highly industrialized areas and since their lifetime is
quite short, tend to remain in roughly the same area where they were released. The effects of CO2
emissions, on the other hand, are global. So if you want to argue that industrial
aerosols were responsible for the global cooling evident from ca. 1940 to ca.
1979, you would need to produce evidence of the alleged underlying warming in
undeveloped areas, relatively unaffected by industrial pollutants. Does such
evidence exist? Let’s take a look:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLWAEGNkG1ze0PllTcrh_2xYR7u_lMvW32VIXuDhP6s5TJd5pjm_lHdxZ6XZMiO_6d53Em6AIXzoP3Lc1SmXg4vKXlTn5XB5-z08i7zzwWNxBP0BFKe3pMl9v51FOFFF8X5-Cr48TNXEk/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="455" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLWAEGNkG1ze0PllTcrh_2xYR7u_lMvW32VIXuDhP6s5TJd5pjm_lHdxZ6XZMiO_6d53Em6AIXzoP3Lc1SmXg4vKXlTn5XB5-z08i7zzwWNxBP0BFKe3pMl9v51FOFFF8X5-Cr48TNXEk/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">No sign of underlying warming in the Arctic during the
period in question (1940-1979). Instead we see a steady cooling trend followed
by a brief period of stabilization. Not much sign of heavy industry in this
region I’d say.</span></p>
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrq1KldPuK7ZSmzfWAL8Gs6ehH1j7yM5v_vsV15PToMsiBh0XCgk65JfFmSclHECQ5vI0TM3AX2HKEjpH4VVxe3mjZBFBow3xGU5qRxPh8qMa75AKBW778PKam01-fhZpx9bvB-LEzAoE/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="506" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrq1KldPuK7ZSmzfWAL8Gs6ehH1j7yM5v_vsV15PToMsiBh0XCgk65JfFmSclHECQ5vI0TM3AX2HKEjpH4VVxe3mjZBFBow3xGU5qRxPh8qMa75AKBW778PKam01-fhZpx9bvB-LEzAoE/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gradual cooling in the Antarctic from 1945 through 1970. No
sign of an upward trend until the early 80’s.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_8" o:spid="_x0000_i1027" style="height: 175.5pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 5in;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0LzIONJaVsogVOxFEiKPZBBl2NGrz2wm2t3GKr0ytUOYODSVB-0E81zYapoI25oUVV2bNBI1Kb4WifVvcQgsz4V5Ut2CUPQblJBeVOOlo6Xt28Mqulz-jxKez5LmFuzPVCtoEess-1As/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="480" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0LzIONJaVsogVOxFEiKPZBBl2NGrz2wm2t3GKr0ytUOYODSVB-0E81zYapoI25oUVV2bNBI1Kb4WifVvcQgsz4V5Ut2CUPQblJBeVOOlo6Xt28Mqulz-jxKez5LmFuzPVCtoEess-1As/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Gradual cooling in Africa from the late 30’s til the late
70’s. Not much industrial activity on this continent during the same period.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_9" o:spid="_x0000_i1026" style="height: 262.5pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 387.75pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieON9MzsbuZ2Kwoo0x8pGFqKU3ruYyIJgeimYHUo-XbS0Bu-6VmvEUy0qhsHuhfs0Io36HG0YX2dFwMgBGUzjVpuooP9RU8NP1-wcsXLBjkK0-TVt9ELIn_i5aKpkaqNj9IKuDG2ZwMws/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="517" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieON9MzsbuZ2Kwoo0x8pGFqKU3ruYyIJgeimYHUo-XbS0Bu-6VmvEUy0qhsHuhfs0Io36HG0YX2dFwMgBGUzjVpuooP9RU8NP1-wcsXLBjkK0-TVt9ELIn_i5aKpkaqNj9IKuDG2ZwMws/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Following the red line representing Madagascar, we see no
sign of warming until the 80’s.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYvB-kCIyg8gdne1CE4JNre61woKnMaSWRA8GxKNt-n9s3D7vmA6m4zO5vPe06TKXCYc4l8EtQZdIVvHQFdwD-I48rkDtRZUX_nvvEy9wPaDm2i1MmgHgVZg2KBWYUD5g2KAXR3AdYudk/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="624" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYvB-kCIyg8gdne1CE4JNre61woKnMaSWRA8GxKNt-n9s3D7vmA6m4zO5vPe06TKXCYc4l8EtQZdIVvHQFdwD-I48rkDtRZUX_nvvEy9wPaDm2i1MmgHgVZg2KBWYUD5g2KAXR3AdYudk/" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_10" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 255.75pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 468pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Kirensk and Tura are located in Siberia, far from any
industrial activity. No warming trend in either during the period in question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVzRiaXo_B09xEGkfB0Equ9C-V1VgxN7pkhmcgstr-J_mMDm5Czk984BOF808n6gVBmOySU-f5IKIw555Enz10n3ZQbkd3p8IIh3H5FF122VybwBj68ZMnPrc7hzWlO3CuIt1lzGF8jWY/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="879" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVzRiaXo_B09xEGkfB0Equ9C-V1VgxN7pkhmcgstr-J_mMDm5Czk984BOF808n6gVBmOySU-f5IKIw555Enz10n3ZQbkd3p8IIh3H5FF122VybwBj68ZMnPrc7hzWlO3CuIt1lzGF8jWY/" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />Not much in the way of industrial activities in Afghanistan -- yet here too we see a clear cooling trend during the period in question.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQiM3bGuIe39ttIqS-g5MU2kU7UMiuwB3tLS8zOFKMqEZrWc_W9R7euFFqMYFfuaU_l-WH1SmTeTBoDbOVGRVaSQN-SwsTh43Yn-q3-Kxlhh-ks3UmXwttOmdW_eZ-3x932q2MzPG2RN0/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="879" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQiM3bGuIe39ttIqS-g5MU2kU7UMiuwB3tLS8zOFKMqEZrWc_W9R7euFFqMYFfuaU_l-WH1SmTeTBoDbOVGRVaSQN-SwsTh43Yn-q3-Kxlhh-ks3UmXwttOmdW_eZ-3x932q2MzPG2RN0/" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />More or less the same picture for Burundi.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnr8FuNd8DjpGYqxkWeQ-rT886Ai5xgtJRdCACbhua5SjqBVnLs-FOGSD4qNjjME9KQ9fDvaU5rTw3p_C__4EHONMNyzHEWgwZ9Ihh4IZ2hFd_t1sgnuaTjhcUyZsKCND4kig6CirXmI/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="879" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnr8FuNd8DjpGYqxkWeQ-rT886Ai5xgtJRdCACbhua5SjqBVnLs-FOGSD4qNjjME9KQ9fDvaU5rTw3p_C__4EHONMNyzHEWgwZ9Ihh4IZ2hFd_t1sgnuaTjhcUyZsKCND4kig6CirXmI/" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />Here's the data for Haiti.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8J9lRdlnR6zaiZxcScA364-KMlSMd47Mj8sZ2XhtyBvPSAUxhm02zm7BPAg9Nnj4y5qTYxdCvfZmO6DM2ME2FvXe_VRRR6PmcE68xcuoXJ3EXrCijFzUUxjzTEiNSlPCCH_v_FG3WxpA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="879" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8J9lRdlnR6zaiZxcScA364-KMlSMd47Mj8sZ2XhtyBvPSAUxhm02zm7BPAg9Nnj4y5qTYxdCvfZmO6DM2ME2FvXe_VRRR6PmcE68xcuoXJ3EXrCijFzUUxjzTEiNSlPCCH_v_FG3WxpA/" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />Not much different in Kyrgistan.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtFerRIpQQn4XnolAJkfUSKTZsrK2VPWxW0StKyG0rrxhE_fM1PI_p7rQ3PXl6VmhbQ40apQLLA_se79StrO92BVcQ6RhpFo5PFq3lQWayReo6Mul0-E0Kn_C9tvc-FOkVzG4syt-PF74/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="879" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtFerRIpQQn4XnolAJkfUSKTZsrK2VPWxW0StKyG0rrxhE_fM1PI_p7rQ3PXl6VmhbQ40apQLLA_se79StrO92BVcQ6RhpFo5PFq3lQWayReo6Mul0-E0Kn_C9tvc-FOkVzG4syt-PF74/" width="320" /></a></div><br />No warming trend in New Caledonia.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Need I continue?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">So! Where on Earth, pray tell, is all the warming that
“would have” happened were it not for industrial aerosols?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">. . . [F]or each accepted
explanation of a phenomenon, there is always an infinite number of possible and
more complex alternatives, because <i>one can always burden failing
explanations with ad hoc hypotheses</i> to prevent them from being falsified .
. . This endless supply of elaborate competing explanations, called
saving hypotheses, cannot be ruled out—but by using Occam's Razor. (</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Ockham" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Occam's
Razor</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> - Wikipedia)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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</div>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-51103093242741567682019-05-15T17:01:00.002-04:002019-05-15T17:16:37.641-04:00 Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 9: Even Worse Than We Thought!Latest climate change bombshell: Canada has been warming <i>twice as fast</i> as the rest of the world. If you don't believe me, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&biw=818&bih=574&ei=XmvcXIvUHIu4ggfGj4s4&q=canada+warming+twice+as+fast+as&oq=canada+warming+twice+as+fast+as&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l2j0i8i30.903538.909230..909493...6.0..0.227.1186.11j1j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i7i30j0i8i7i30j0i13j35i304i39.pHpZepwcw68" target="_blank">Google it</a>.<br />
<br />
Yes indeed. Just one report out of many, from the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47754189" target="_blank">BBC</a> itself,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Canada warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, report says</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The federal government climate report also warns that changes are already evident in many parts of the country and are projected to intensify.</blockquote>
But wait. As we're reminded time after time by climate scientists, the situation is actually MUCH WORSE. Because <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201804/04/WS5ac422bea3105cdcf6516245.html" target="_blank">China </a>is also warming twice as fast:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: #414040; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">China has been warming faster than the global average and has seen its coastal sea level rise over several decades, according to a report published by the China Meteorological Administration on Tuesday.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: #414040; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">From 1951 to 2016, the annual average land surface temperature in the country has increased by an average of 0.24 C every 10 years, nearly double the global average, according to the 2018 blue book on China's climate change.</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
It's even worse than that, folks, because, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/ipcc-europe-warming-faster-global-average" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, Europe is <i>also </i>warming faster than the rest of the world:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Since 1979, the land in Europe has been warming faster than the global average of 0.27 degrees Celsius (°C) per decade.</blockquote>
<a href="https://phys.org/news/2010-04-spain-faster-rest-northern-hemisphere.html" target="_blank">Spain</a> is warming even faster than Canada, according to <a href="https://phys.org/news/2010-04-spain-faster-rest-northern-hemisphere.html" target="_blank">this report</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Spain has warmed at a faster rate than the rest of the northern hemisphere over the past three decades, according to a study prepared for the environment ministry that was published Tuesday.</blockquote>
<br />
But hold the presses: according to <a href="https://www.popsci.com/australia-heating-faster-rest-world" target="_blank">Popular Science</a>, the prize will eventually go to the folks down under:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Australia will warm faster than the rest of the world,” Kevin Hennessy, a principal research scientists at CSIRO told the Guardian. The Environmental Protection Agency says the average global temperatures are expected to increase by 2 to 11.5 F (1.1 to 6.4 C) by 2100, placing Australia at the warmer end of the spectrum, and way above the United Nation's goal to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 F (2 C).</blockquote>
But but but. What about tiny <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/singapore-hot-weather-urban-heat-effect-temperature-humidity-11115384" target="_blank">Singapore</a>?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The recent spells of hot weather that Singaporeans have been experiencing may not be just temporary heatwaves. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The island is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world - at 0.25 degrees Celsius per decade - according to the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS). It is almost 1 deg C hotter today than in the 1950s.</blockquote>
:-)<br />
<br />
Shades of Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.<br />
<br />
<i>Full disclosure. The inspiration for this post came from a recent youtube video, </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3UftMrkqCwk/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3UftMrkqCwk?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<i>posted by Adapt 2030. He's the one who called it out. I just filled in some of the blanks. Couldn't resist. </i><br />
<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-41963575112901001472018-10-22T16:26:00.000-04:002020-01-08T01:17:54.170-05:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 8: A Tale of Two Graphs<br />
<div class="MsoHeader">
I will set before you two different graphs representing the
relation between CO2 levels and global temperatures: number 1:</div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
<br />
Global temperature vs. CO2 concentration<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSoq3VRHEfolkkj-3uKeekJ40KBPf21tgcP3m1JHsT3fI6NouPcTQ" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="267" height="226" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSoq3VRHEfolkkj-3uKeekJ40KBPf21tgcP3m1JHsT3fI6NouPcTQ" width="320" /></a></div>
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
[added 12-22-18]: Since the graph presented above tells us little about 21st century temperatures, I've decided to add this one, which represents the so-called "hiatus" from 1998 through 2015 much more clearly. (The spike we see for 2016 is due to an especially strong El Nino and does not reflect long-term temperature trends):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads/hadcrut4v5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="800" height="171" src="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads/hadcrut4v5.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
number 2:</div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7sfGJ4EDZ5qB8DYfunYeHZACTX-IDdiPuBc_8LZXFsLJZQ7c2PI9WYrWmepBRYSyDYSwrwCTBLJBTJDmVx6J63TMZY1z_a3bCVdpizFWkwHKyJAjoJoNskx9aVx9c5QD_43Sh0K_w2uY/s1600/Temperature+vs+co2+levels+-+scattergram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7sfGJ4EDZ5qB8DYfunYeHZACTX-IDdiPuBc_8LZXFsLJZQ7c2PI9WYrWmepBRYSyDYSwrwCTBLJBTJDmVx6J63TMZY1z_a3bCVdpizFWkwHKyJAjoJoNskx9aVx9c5QD_43Sh0K_w2uY/s1600/Temperature+vs+co2+levels+-+scattergram.jpg" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
(from a blog post titled <a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/03/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature.html" target="_blank">Does CO2 correlate with temperature?</a> by one Robert Grumbine.)<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader">
When I "eyeball" the first graph it seems evident,
as I've contended in the past, that there is NO correlation between CO2 levels
and global temps. during the entire 100 year period between 1880 and 1980. Nor
do I see any sign of correlation between<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>1998 and the present. I DO see a correlation between ca. 1980 and 1998,
but that represents only 20 years out of the last 138. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Graph number 2, a scattergram in which CO2 levels are
plotted directly against temperatures, presents a radically different picture,
where the two appear to be very strongly correlated. How is this possible?<o:p></o:p></div>
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(According to Grumbine "It's awfully hard to look at this and say that there's no correlation between CO2 and temperature.")</div>
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I scratched my head over this for some time before I
realized that the two graphs represent more or less the same relationship, only
presented in very different ways. Only when we attach dates to that second
graph does it become possible to see that both are essentially the same, only
with the time scale distorted in the second. After all, while graph no. 2 is a
scattergram and graph no. 1 is not, essentially the same set of temperature
data is represented in the vertical axis of both. For example, the year 1940,
when temperatures peaked after a long increase, corresponds roughly with a CO2
level of 310 parts per million, as represented in graph no. 2, which shows
temperature peaking at the same point; the year 1980, when temperatures began
to rise dramatically, corresponds roughly with a CO2 level of 335 ppm. where
the temperature begins to rise in graph no. 2 as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
No sooner do we begin to recognize the relationship between
the two graphs does it become apparent that there is in fact NO correlation in
graph no. 2 until it gets close to the 335 level, around 1980. Similarly, we see no
correlation after 370 ppm, the level reached around 1998, the beginning of the
well-known "hiatus," as represented in graph no. 1. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
The reason graph no. 2 appears to depict a correlation is
due to the time distortion produced by the fact that CO2 levels shot up so
rapidly from ca. 1980 to ca. 1998. [Correction: the previous phrase should read: "<i>temperatures </i>shot up so rapidly from ca. 1980 to ca. 1998."] Thus, unlike graph no. 1, which presents a
more or less accurate picture of climate history since 1880, graph no. 2
distorts that history to emphasize the relatively brief 20 year period when
both CO2 levels and temperatures were increasing at the same time.<br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
When both graphs are examined critically it becomes clear that there is no evidence whatsoever of a correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures, aside from the brief 20 year period at the end of the previous century, which all but rules out the possibility of a causal relationship, thus placing the entire human-caused "climate change" meme in serious doubt. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoHeader">
Anyone following the analysis presented above should better
understand why I'm so skeptical when it comes to the excessive reliance on statistical
methodologies when attempting to evaluate scientific evidence. As a wise man once said, "If you
torture the data long enough it will confess to anything."<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-46837281123138749442018-05-27T15:52:00.000-04:002019-08-12T16:11:08.342-04:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 7: The Climate Science MystiqueWhen I was in high school some of my favorite classes were science classes: biology, general science, physics, chemistry, etc. And I did really well in all of them. As far as math is concerned, I aced every single class, with a perfect score in each final exam, including the NY State Regents exams. If I hadn't fallen in love head over heels with music, I might well have decided to become a scientist of some sort: a physicist, mathematician, biologist, chemist, astronomer, etc. It never would have occurred to me in a million years, however, to become a climate scientist -- that was simply off my radar. Nor can I imagine any young person of my generation with both a serious interest in science and a real aptitude for it hankering to pursue a career in climate science. Maybe it's just me, but the prospect of doing that sort of research just seems too utterly boring for words.<br />
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So why are there so many climate scientists around these days? What is it about this field that appeals to them? Physicists choose physics because they embrace the challenge of exploring some of the deepest mysteries of matter; biologists choose biology because they are fascinated by all the complexities of life; chemists choose chemistry because they love staring through microscopes and performing dangerous experiments; astronomers choose astronomy because they are fascinated by all the mysteries of the universe around us. And climate scientists choose climatology because . . they like to go camping????? Well, they do actually get paid for camping out. Beats working as a forest ranger. I'll give them credit for being very brave and intrepid campers, eager to tackle the most extreme environments. Here's a photo of Richard Alley, dressed for Antarctica, I'd suppose:<br />
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Here's Stefan Rahmstorf, examining some sort of strange specimen of something or other:<br />
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And here is Michael Mann getting ready to scale some formidable looking mountain:<br />
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James Hansen is also no stranger to the great outdoors:<br />
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Eric Steig, with an equally intrepid companion, is preparing to drill a hole in the formidable looking ice of British Columbia:<br />
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Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's no reason to assume climate scientists are any less capable than anyone else of pursuing challenging tasks such as pitching tents, building fires, boring bore holes, measuring tree rings, taking rock samples, launching weather balloons, sniffing out traces of rare gases in the atmosphere, such as methane or CO2. Not to mention taking the temperature of the whole earth and determining the average level of all the world's many seas.<br />
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Of course I'm being facetious. Most climatologists (or those who aspire to that condition) do have some training in more intellectually challenging fields such as physics, chemistry and math. But their choice of profession does suggest that the more abstruse branches of science are not really their cup of tea.<br />
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What bothers me especially are not any doubts I might have as to the competence of these colorful folks when pursuing research in their own field, but the insistence of so many, along with their many ardent supporters, that their grasp of the more abstract issues associated with interpretation and meaning is on a par with that of the greatest scientific minds of history. It's not unusual, for instance, to see some supporter of the prevailing "climate change" paradigm to compare the findings of climate science to Newton's laws of motion (see the first post in this series, above), Einstein's theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, or even the law of gravity. "Isn't it obvious?" Equally common are comparisons with Darwinian evolution, as though resistance to the "certainties" of climate science is equivalent to denial of the long established tenets of natural selection.<br />
<br />
What, I must ask, gives them the right to make such comparisons? What is the source of the overweening hubris that leads them to claim that their grasp of what they so vainly refer to as "the science" (not any science, mind you, but <b>the </b>science) is so certain that there is no longer any point in questioning it. The science is settled -- and anyone who thinks differently is not only "in denial," but actually an enemy of the people.<br />
<br />
Well, why be unfair? Why be cynical? Why be mean? Everyone has a right to pursue his or her interests, and history is filled with the claims of "scientists," both real and pseudo, who insisted against all reason that they must be right and everyone else must be wrong. Ultimately, it's just an academic question, no? Scholars and scientists of all kinds argue endlessly, often over trifles, so where is the harm?<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, however, in this case there is an enormous amount of harm, because "climate change" has become an issue unlike any other in the history of western civilization. It's not just that a certain group of people are claiming to have made an earth shattering discovery, but they are also insisting that, based on this discovery, the whole world must unequivocally bend to their extremely stringent demands or, very literally, civilization as we know it, will come to an end.<br />
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Ordinarily this group would be easy to dismiss as just another nutcase doomsday cult. But we do not live any longer in ordinary times. One of our best known physicists, Michio Kaku, has recently come out with a book titled "The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth." This guy is actually contemplating the colonization of Mars, one of the wackiest ideas imaginable, but there you have it, he's managed to convince himself. (Gee, why not try to colonize the Sahara while you're at it, Michio?)<br />
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We are also living in an era where the head of one of the world's most successful companies, Amazon, is planning to deploy huge dirigible-based warehouses to hover over major cities, delivering items such as iphones, cologne, toilet paper, etc. by launching drones from his floating storerooms so folks will be able to receive their orders today rather than having to wait till tomorrow. I happen to be extremely skeptical of all the hoopla over self-driving cars as yet another sign of the same delusional thinking, but we need not get into that one here. What it all boils down to, as it seems to me, is an all but total breakdown in the ability of ordinary people to exercise even the slightest degree of critical thinking to embrace ideas so nutty and off the wall that the previous generation would have laughed their heads off at the very thought.<br />
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It wouldn't be so bad if the disease were limited to ordinary people with limited education, the sort who have gone gaga over the likes of David Koresh or Jim Jones. What's especially disturbing is the tendency for so many distinguished scientists, world leaders, politicians, etc. to buy into fantasies of every sort -- and as in the case of the "climate change" paradigm, toss all semblance of critical thinking to the winds in order to embrace what is all too clearly a crackpot theory.<br />
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My time is limited, so I'll provide only one -- rather devastating -- example. Here's an excerpt from a conference which pitted the well known physicist and science educator Brian Cox against Australian politician Malcom Roberts, a well-known skeptic. After Roberts expresses a demand for evidence, Cox produces the following graph, much to the delight of an enthusiastically partisan audience that clearly sees this graph as irrefutable evidence of some sort of drastic warming trend over the last hundred years or so. Obvious, isn't it? (You'll need to skip to 53 seconds in to see him presenting this graph and hearing the delighted reaction.)<br />
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I dearly wish I'd been present at this event. If so, this is what I would have said: "Brian, if you don't mind, please let me take a closer look at your graph." Here's a closer look at a very similar graph, for the benefit of those reading here:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now, Brian, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the abrupt temperature rise we see from ca. 1910 through the early 40's took place at a time when CO2 emissions were relatively modest and not likely to have had much of an influence on worldwide temperatures. This is not my opinion, but an observation widely shared by most, if not all, climate scientists. And as you can see, Brian, the following period, from about 1940 through roughly 1979, was largely devoid of any significant warming trend, and in fact began with roughly ten years of extreme cooling. This was the time when many scientists expressed concern about a possible coming ice age. Yet CO2 emissions were beginning to soar in the post-war years, from roughly 1950 on. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Note also, Brian, that the following 20 years or so is in fact the <b>only </b>period depicted on this map during which temperatures and CO2 emissions rose at a comparable rate. The 21st century is not well depicted in this graph, so let's check a different graph showing twenty first century temperatures in more detail:</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here we see an excellent example of how easy it is to produce whatever trend might be to your liking by selecting the "right" endpoints. We see two trend lines, one, from 1970 through what looks to be 2012, going straight up; the other, from about 1998 to 2012, that looks very nearly level, with only a very slight upward trend. Ignoring the trend lines, what is clearly visible to my eye, at least, is the rather drastic difference between the very steep increase in temperature from the late 70's through 1998 or so, and the far more shallow temperature increase that followed. There are, of course, other graphs based on somewhat different data, and more up to date, but the picture we see on just about all tells us that in fact there has been <b>no </b>long term correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures -- the only exception being the relatively brief period at the end of the 20th century when both temperatures and CO2 levels soared more or less in tandem.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So, as you can see, Brian, looks can be deceiving. And as a professional scientist you should know better than to be so deceived = and be so careless as to deceive others with a graph that tells us precisely the opposite of what you profess to believe. In fact this graph alone should be enough to sink the "climate change" dogma forever. But of course it won't because you and all the others captured by this rather extraordinary form of NewThink will never admit you could be wrong.</blockquote>
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All I have to say on this topic for now. Stay tuned . . .DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-83511505500063865892018-05-24T01:35:00.000-04:002018-12-07T10:02:18.302-05:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 6: Let Me Count the WaysThis post is going to be very simple, but also, I'm afraid, rather devastating. What follows is a list of some of the most serious problems with the mainstream "climate change" paradigm and some of the many attempts to shore it up. I won't attempt to argue any of these points in any detail, as they have already been argued at length either on this blog or elsewhere, but simply present them in as succinct a manner as possible.<br />
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<li>Contrary to the oft-cited claim, there has been no long term correlation between global temperatures and CO2 emissions over the last 115 years or so. Temperatures rose dramatically during the first 40 years of the 20th century, at a time when, according to most climate scientists, CO2 emissions were too modest to have had much of an influence. From 1940 through ca. 1979, temperatures either cooled or remained neutral while CO2 levels began to soar. From 1998 through ca. 2015, temperatures either cooled or rose slightly (depending on whose data you consult), while CO2 levels continued to soar. The only period when CO2 and temperature rose together at comparable rates was the last 20 years of the previous century. Since a cause-effect relation requires, at the very least, a clear correlation between the elements under consideration, lack of correlation in itself constitutes strong evidence of falsification.</li>
<li>Similarly, there has also been no long-term correlation between CO2 emissions and sea level rise. (See parts 3 & 4 in this series.) (See also <a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/06/the-clever-ruse-of-rising-sea-levels/" target="_blank">this </a>recent essay. )</li>
<li>The notion that the cooling/leveling of temperatures from 1940-1979 can be explained by the cooling effects of industrial aerosol emissions has been thoroughly debunked. For details, see parts 1 and 2 of this series, as posted above.</li>
<li>Al Gore's notorious attempt to demonstrate a high degree of correlation between CO2 and global temperatures based on a graph derived from Antarctic ice-core data turned out to be an embarrassment, since he failed to mention that the CO2 levels depicted on his graph <b>followed</b> the temperatures by literally hundreds of years, demonstrating that, in all likelihood, the warming produced higher levels of CO2 rather than the other way 'round. The many attempts by AGW proponents to reverse the clear cause-and-effect relationship depicted on the graph are, for me, prime examples of the sort of "saving hypotheses" discussed earlier on this blog. In any other field, such antics would have been rejected as absurd, but in the upside down, Orwellian world in which we now live, "climate change" has become everyone's sacred cow and can never be questioned.</li>
<li>The oft-quoted bit about all those years of the 21st century characterized by "record breaking" temperatures means little, since such records are to be expected once temperatures have reached a plateau, as they have since the turn of the century. With the exception of the period 2016-17, where temperatures rose dramatically during an unusually powerful El Nino, the "record-breaking" years broke previous records by the slimmest of margins, if at all.</li>
<li>In the spirit of Orwell's classic, where "war is peace," "ignorance is strength," "freedom is slavery," not to mention the equally notorious "greed is good," promoters of the AGW paradigm have attempted to convince us that "cold is warm," and "dry is wet" -- i.e., a long series of record cold temperatures coupled with record levels of ice and snow are all due to the warming of the polar regions, and droughts are produced by the same process that produces heavy rains and flooding. In other words, <b>all </b>forms of extreme weather now have the same cause: "climate change." As though extreme weather began with the industrial revolution.</li>
<li>The so-called "consensus" where 97% of scientists supposedly support the climate change orthodoxy is based on a <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024" target="_blank">totally fraudulent paper </a>concocted specifically to produce a pre-determined result. Actually only about 36% of the publications studied endorsed some sort of link, but the rest were tossed out because the authors failed to express an opinion in their abstracts. And the link the others endorsed was little more than some sort of agreement that CO2 was having a warming effect -- far from the extreme view favored by the promoters of the 97% figure. (For a definitive refutation of this paper, see <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9" target="_blank">Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change</a>, by Legates et al.) More recently, a <a href="http://petitionproject.org/" target="_blank">petition </a>has been circulated among individuals with scientific training, signed so far by over 31,000 who remain unconvinced. While this has been discounted in the expected fashion by the usual climate change zealots because most of these people are not bona-fide climatologists, it's hard to ignore the view of 31,000 people with scientific backgrounds. </li>
<li>Contrary to all the media hype we see on a day in day out basis, there is little to no evidence that extreme weather events have become more common than in the past. (See my previous post on this blog for details.) And the tendency on the part of so many "experts" to take for granted that extreme events allegedly produced by warming can be attributed to the nefarious influence of CO2 is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. No one on either side of this issue disputes the fact that temperatures are now, on average, higher than at any time in the last 100 years, so if you want to blame temperature blame temperature. What's central to the debate is not temperature rise per se (and its alleged effects) but what is causing it.</li>
<li>When push comes to shove, and certain self appointed "experts" find themselves with their backs to the wall, a common response is to fall back on "the physics," which apparently proves that 1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and 2. that the relatively low level of this gas in the atmosphere as a whole is compensated for by certain "feedbacks" that amplify its influence to the point that it has become a major "control knob" of global temperatures. The nature of these feedbacks has always been a bit of a mystery and the details can get very complicated very quickly, as illustrated in an especially thorough and clear analysis, presented in the essay <a href="http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/Publications/Roe_FeedbacksRev_08.pdf" target="_blank">Feedbacks, Timescales, and Seeing Red</a>, by Gerard Roe: "When the net feedbacks are substantially negative, the system response to a forcing can be well characterized even though the individual feedbacks may be quite uncertain. However, when the net feedbacks are substantially positive, a high degree of uncertainty in the system response is inevitable as a fundamental and inescapable consequence of the amplification by the system dynamics . . . Unfortunately, it is often the positive feedback systems (i.e., a large response for a small forcing) that are of most interest both scientifically and societally. In these cases, the most important implication is that, rather than trying to solve for the specific system response to a given forcing, it may be that characterizing the feedbacks and their uncertainties is the better and more tractable scientific goal."</li>
<li>[continued on 5-24] There have, of course, been a great many attempts to explain away most of the issues I've raised here by calling upon various "scientific" formulae of varying degrees of sophistication, but no amount of explanation as to why some expected correlation or other result is not corroborated by the raw data will not in itself produce the desired evidence. Thus none of the many attempts to explain the 40 year cooling/leveling of global temperatures during the previous century, or the more recent "hiatus" of the present, is actually capable of establishing the desired correlation. To establish a correlation one needs evidence of a correlation, not just an excuse for why an alleged correlation is not reflected in the data.</li>
<li>The especially frightening notion that the West Antarctic ice sheet could suddenly collapse due to the warming effects of "climate change" has been drummed into the public mind from a variety of sources, ranging from the most naive to the most "scientific" (e.g., the many youtube lectures presented by Richard Alley). In fact, the instability of this ice sheet was first identified by glaciologist John Mercer back in 1968, at a time when many scientists were worrying about a coming Ice Age. "In his 1968 paper, Mercer called the West Antarctic Ice Sheet a 'uniquely vulnerable and unstable body of ice.' Mercer based his statement on <b>geologic evidence that West Antarctica’s ice had changed considerably many, many millennia ago</b> at times when the ice sheets of East Antarctica and Greenland had not." (from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/antarctic-ice-sheet-20140512/#.VU0IGY5Vikp" target="_blank">The "Unstable" West Antarctic Ice Sheet: A Primer</a>, as published on the NASA website.) According to more recent research, it looks as though the source of the problem is the presence of a considerable amount of geothermal (i.e., volcanic) activity undermining the ice from below. (see <a href="https://phys.org/news/2014-06-major-west-antarctic-glacier-geothermal.html" target="_blank">Researchers find major West Antarctic glacier melting from geothermal sources</a>.) Permit me to add that no one other than a "climate change" fanatic seriously believes that this enormous sheet of ice is likely to collapse any time soon -- i.e., any time prior to thousands of years in the future.</li>
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DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-26618583654479295252018-05-12T01:39:00.002-04:002019-05-21T01:01:10.079-04:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 5:Still more "saving hypotheses"Still more "saving hypotheses" on the part of true believers.<br />
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But first a brief summary of claims I've already debunked:<br />
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1. The mid-twentieth century hiatus in global temperatures can be explained by the cooling efffect of industrial aerosols (see the second post in this series).<br />
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2. Sea level rise isn't correlated with CO2 emissions, because, according to blogger CCHolley, it's "highly variable about the mean level due to the hydrological cycle," and besides "sea level rise correlating to temperatures has nothing to do with the cause of the temperature rise," and besides "perfect correlation to temperature would not be expected because ice will not stop melting just because warming stopped, it takes time for the ice to reach thermal equilibrium. . ." -- none of which has the slightest bearing on the fact that it's impossible to claim a cause-effect relation if no correlation exists, <b>for whatever reason</b> (see also the third post in this series.)<br />
<br />
3. Evidence that sea level rise has actually declined over the last several years can be explained by the cooling effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, which masked the expected accelaration (see the previous post in this series).<br />
<br />
Now for some more examples:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><b>The ocean ate my global warming</b><br />
<br />
The notorious "hiatus" in global temperatures during the first 15 years or so of the 21st century is due to so much of the heat somehow winding up in the ocean.<br />
<br />
Response: as far as I can tell, no evidence has been offered as to why all that heat would suddenly be diverted to the ocean after 20 years of heating the atmosphere.<br />
<br />
Moreover,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
cold waters of Earth’s deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, . .
. leaving unsolved the mystery of why
global warming appears to have slowed in recent years. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Scientists at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, analyzed satellite and
direct ocean temperature data from 2005 to 2013 and found the ocean abyss below
1.24 miles (1,995 meters) has not warmed measurably. . . . [see </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n11/full/nclimate2387.html"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Deep-ocean
contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, by
Llovel, Willis, et al.]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Also, from a <span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mystery-of-ocean-heat-deepens-as-climate-changes/"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Scientific American</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
article</span></a></span> responding to the same study:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Sea surface temperatures over the last decade have essentially been at a
standstill, which is a problem, since the ocean warms from the top down. So, it
would appear, global warming has “paused.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">All those record breaking temperatures prove the "hiatus" is a myth.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider the following graph (from Spencer Weart</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm">The Modern Temperature
Trend</a> )</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">:</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<a href="https://history.aip.org/climate/images/temps_2014.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="600" height="143" src="https://history.aip.org/climate/images/temps_2014.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
Since eyeballing a graph can be misleading, let’s do the math. The numbers in the leftmost column represent degrees Celsius. Each one of the little ticks represents .05 degrees. Following the graph from the late 70s to the late 90s we see a rise from approximately minus .2 to plus .6, a temperature increase of .8 degrees. From 1998 to 2014, however, the rise is from .6 to .7 – an increase of only .1 degree. The “record breaking” year 2014 was only one tick warmer than the preceding record breaker: a mere .05 degrees. And every single one of those record breaking 21st century years were within only two ticks of one another: .1 degree. That is: one tenth of a degree Celsius. The late 20th century rise was thus 8 times greater than the rise over the last 16 years, any “record-breaking” years notwithstanding. This is the hiatus. Any claim pointing to broken temperature records in recent years that does not also remind us how narrow the differences are is, very simply: dishonest.<br />
<br />
<b>The "hiatus" is a myth -- just look at the latest trend line</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
As we can see from the following graph, from the <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php" target="_blank">Skeptical Science trend calculator</a>, temperatures peaked rather dramatically in 2016 (based on <span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">RSSv4.0 TTT)</span> :<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiimmI2vP-cE8ILB2hVKd1WI8Wd3A6WTRLoGD8FqJdkbgXuHyPV3DjSjcYRquHe6IKgxjtY3neyQiJ-97FW1jWL-aVnwvBzPjPUUdpP8imfqIJvPv5gLihIc3aS8dwpxOrvMeW4I0RXnmg/s1600/temps+from+1998+-+2018.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="560" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiimmI2vP-cE8ILB2hVKd1WI8Wd3A6WTRLoGD8FqJdkbgXuHyPV3DjSjcYRquHe6IKgxjtY3neyQiJ-97FW1jWL-aVnwvBzPjPUUdpP8imfqIJvPv5gLihIc3aS8dwpxOrvMeW4I0RXnmg/s400/temps+from+1998+-+2018.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
And as one might expect, proponents of the "consensus" view have pointed to the very clear upward trend so evident here, supposedly illustrating that the so-called "hiatus" was merely a temporary blip.<br />
<br />
Not so fast. Here's a graph from the same source, of global temperatures from 1998 through 2014:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZKBw6lL7XnLZtBfpigPDcUEPOuQUrWu8YZnBaWdOUyLSC3DGSQWQkX8XJfKZk4lq6ThhPcH_dBD3QBq3Z7uYJKVkQcWVP_u3jZMyhOLenbm0RCym5OnSx0zGyWiAASem7g1mIbGgdog/s1600/temps+from+1998+-+2018.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="560" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZKBw6lL7XnLZtBfpigPDcUEPOuQUrWu8YZnBaWdOUyLSC3DGSQWQkX8XJfKZk4lq6ThhPcH_dBD3QBq3Z7uYJKVkQcWVP_u3jZMyhOLenbm0RCym5OnSx0zGyWiAASem7g1mIbGgdog/s400/temps+from+1998+-+2018.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Note the slight downward trend.<br />
<br />
So what are we to think? As skeptics see it, the 2016 spike is an outlier, based solely on an unusually intense El Nino, and can safely be ignored as atypical. As climate change advocates see it, 2016 represents what they've been waiting for, the resumption of global heating after a 15 year period of "noise," and is therefore perfectly valid as evidence. Each side then accuses the other of "cherry picking" by selecting end points that support the favored theory. As I see it, what the discrepancy illustrates is the fact that statistics per se can be an unreliable basis for evaluating certain types of hypothesis. As should be evident, the calculated trend means little if we get significantly different results when different endpoints are selected.<br />
<br />
While "eyeballing" a graph has been condemned by some as "unscientific," it is in fact far superior in evaluating linear data than a statistical analysis based on arbitrarily selected elements. When we simply examine the most complete (topmost) graph by eye, the picture becomes quite clear: regardless of any "trend line" produced by a statistical analysis, if these figures are accurate then we see little evidence of any meaningful correlation between CO2 emissions, which soared during this period, and global temperatures, which seem to have either remained level or fallen for almost the entire extent of the graph. The sudden upward shift at the tail is hardly sufficient to make up for roughly 15 years of little or no warming. And as we know, the notion that 15 years can be discounted as "noise" in comparison with the claimed "long term" correlation between global warming and CO2 during the period preceding it, is simply a bluff, since, as I've already demonstrated, there was never any such thing.<br />
<br />
<b>The recent data "corrections," as published by <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-hiatus-disappears-with-new-data-1.17700" target="_blank">Karl et al.</a> demonstrate that there was never any hiatus in the first place. In fact, "as we now know," global temperatures have been steadily rising throughout the 21st century in a manner consistent with the steep rise noted during the last years of the 20th.</b><br />
<br />
Even a cursory examination of <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-hiatus-disappears-with-new-data-1.17700" target="_blank">the paper in question</a> (titled, revealingly, "Climate-change ‘hiatus’ disappears with new data") reveals the enormous difficulties involved in assessing global sea and land temperatures in the first place. Karl and his associates compile a long list of dubious practices and confounding inconsistencies involved in gathering temperature data from a host of different sources over long periods of time. Many of their attempts to "correct" this highly questionable data seem suspiciously arbitrary, and one cannot help but surmise that a different team might well have come up with a totally different approach, resulting in a totally different conclusion.<br />
<br />
What these researchers appear to have demonstrated is not so much the "disappearance" of the hiatus as the utter futility of any attempt to accurately assess global temperatures at all, at any time, and by any means. Regardless, any effort to reassess long accepted data in such a drastic manner sets an unfortunate precedent, since we have no way of knowing what future corrections along similar lines might produce at some future date, possibly leading to very different conclusions. As suggested by the paper's title, it looks very much like the authors were committed from the start to coming up with results that would make the thorny "hiatus" go away.<br />
<br />
Since Karl has been an outspoken advocate of AGW for some time, it's not difficult to see this effort as yet another "saving hypothesis" of the type we've already encountered, though more intensively researched than most. Confirmation bias is an ever present danger in all types of scientific research, even with the best of intentions, and as is well known, even the most careful researchers have been known to skew their results to favor a desired outcome. A reassessment of this sort would be a lot more convincing had it been conducted by a totally independent, unbiased team with no ax to grind.<br />
<br />
What should be of greatest concern to all the many climate scientists who have worked so hard to explain away the hiatus in the past, is the realization that the new corrections not only render their efforts superfluous, but reveal the confirmation bias at work in their own research, since, if Karl's team is right, their conclusions were based on faulty data to begin with, which nevertheless provided them with the results they desired.<br />
<br />
<b>The skeptics must be wrong, because so much of the evidence bears the unmistakable signature of AGW: the stratosphere is cooling; arctic sea ice is dwindling; extreme weather events have become more common.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Stratosphere</b><br />
<span class="skstip advanced" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span class="skstip advanced" id="skstip47" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-fingerprint-in-global-warming.html" target="_blank">reported </a>at the SkepticalScience website, "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Another human </span><span class="skstip advanced" id="skstip44" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">fingerprint</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> can be found by looking at temperature <span class="skstip intermediate" id="skstip45" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">trend</span>s in the different layers of the <span class="skstip beginner" id="skstip46" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">atmosphere</span>. </span><span class="skstip advanced" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Climate model</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">s predict that more <span class="skstip beginner" id="skstip48" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">carbon dioxide</span> should cause warming in the <span class="skstip intermediate" id="skstip49" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">troposphere</span> but cooling in the <span class="skstip advanced" id="skstip50" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">stratosphere</span>. This is because the increased "blanketing" effect in the <span class="skstip intermediate" id="skstip51" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">troposphere</span> holds in more <span class="skstip beginner" id="skstip52" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">heat</span>, allowing less to reach the <span class="skstip advanced" id="skstip53" style="border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0 , 68 , 64); color: #004440;">stratosphere." Unfortunately for the models, stratospheric temperatures have remained relatively stable over the last 22 years: "</span></span>until about 1995 the stratospheric
temperature record shows a persistent decline, ascribed by some scientists to the effect
of more and more heat being trapped by CO2 in the troposphere below. However, this temperature
decline ends around 1995–96, and a long temperature plateau has since then characterised
the stratosphere." (from <a href="https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/03/State-of-the-Climate2017.pdf" target="_blank">State of the Climate 2917</a>, Ole Humlum). Graph courtesy of <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/msu/time-series/global/ls/jul/ann" target="_blank">NOAA</a>:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijukdAqm-4jgoSsvsqdP2mJYqA6jh7WfhrJdpxZirr_gOn6PyC1uQ9KXE-8Bvb_DepKAgt654XpP87r31UvDO2Lzs3QS1pG9jN0FRuMBbX4OKuDIeCTs-MGWqxJUt-POYaqb31K6cwxMw/s1600/stratosphere+graph+as+of+2018.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="750" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijukdAqm-4jgoSsvsqdP2mJYqA6jh7WfhrJdpxZirr_gOn6PyC1uQ9KXE-8Bvb_DepKAgt654XpP87r31UvDO2Lzs3QS1pG9jN0FRuMBbX4OKuDIeCTs-MGWqxJUt-POYaqb31K6cwxMw/s400/stratosphere+graph+as+of+2018.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b>Arctic Ice</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">While it is true that Arctic ice extent has been dwindling for some time, Antarctic ice extent has been growing:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCKgLN_UqcSBV0px5uburT_tsgOpZHLMPlWbD09oT7HHaj9nDwC4Q6VGf6j7c3lIo3sch7A4LcpBGdzaea6LzEZ_7CRskLGA87KNgw36bUIZ4ffhwWJZNXQ1nJivkYy1Km49ywN-ms7l8/s1600/arctic+vs.+antarctic+sea+ice+extent-from+Humlum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCKgLN_UqcSBV0px5uburT_tsgOpZHLMPlWbD09oT7HHaj9nDwC4Q6VGf6j7c3lIo3sch7A4LcpBGdzaea6LzEZ_7CRskLGA87KNgw36bUIZ4ffhwWJZNXQ1nJivkYy1Km49ywN-ms7l8/s400/arctic+vs.+antarctic+sea+ice+extent-from+Humlum.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
(graph from <a href="https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/03/State-of-the-Climate2017.pdf" target="_blank">State of the Climate 2917</a>, Ole Humlum) "Figure 34 shows 12-month average sea-ice extents for the Arctic and Antarctic. The trends
are in opposite directions. The modern Northern Hemisphere trend towards smaller sea-ice
extent is clearly displayed by the blue graph, and so is the trend towards a simultaneous increase
of Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent." (Ibid.) The very recent, rather drastic, decrease in Antarctic ice can be attributed to the exceptionally strong El Nino of 2016, but the overall upward trend is clear.<br />
-----------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<b>Extreme Events</b><br />
<br />
To read most major media outlets, both online and off, we have entered an increasingly dangerous if not disastrous period of human history, the "anthropocene," in which extreme weather events, such as floods, storms, droughts, etc. have become "the new normal." "Isn't it obvious?" Can't we see it on television with our own eyes, all those floods, all the tornadoes, hurricanes, extremes of hot and cold?<br />
<br />
According to Roger Pielke, whose research on the topic is both widely known and, in some quarters, extremely controversial, "There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather."<br />
<br />
<b>Heat Waves</b><br />
<br />
If you prefer not to take Pielke at his word, then consider the following evidence on heat waves, courtesy of the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-high-and-low-temperatures" target="_blank">EPA</a>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/high-low-temps-figure1-2016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="800" height="253" src="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/high-low-temps-figure1-2016.png" width="400" /></a></div>
According to this EPA graph, the most US heat waves by far took place during the 1930's. As should be evident from "eyeballing" the graph, there is no sign of any trend, long-term or not.<br />
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<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<b>Droughts</b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
THE world has been suffering more droughts in recent decades, and climate change will bring many more, according to received wisdom. Now it is being challenged by an analysis that questions a key index on which it is based.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Predictions of megadroughts affecting Africa and the western side of North America may be wrong. We could even be headed for wetter times, says <a href="http://hydrology.princeton.edu/~justin/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #179cce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Justin Sheffield</a> of Princeton University.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This potential handbrake turn for climate forecasts hangs on the accuracy of our main measure of drought, the Palmer Drought Severity Index. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #179cce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2007 science assessment</a> cited studies using the PDSI to conclude that “droughts have become more common since the 1970s” as the world has warmed – a position we take to be true in this week’s cover story (see “<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628911-500-climate-downgrade-arctic-warming" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #179cce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Climate downgrade: Arctic warming</a>“). The report predicted droughts will increase with global warming.<br />The problem with the PDSI, says Sheffield, is that it does not directly measure drought. Instead, it looks at the difference between precipitation and evaporation. But since evaporation rates are hard to determine, it uses temperature as a proxy, on the assumption that evaporation rises as it gets hotter.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sheffield points out that temperature is only one factor influencing evaporation. He inferred evaporation rates using the Penman-Monteith equation, which includes factors such as wind speed and humidity, and found “little change in global drought over the past 60 years” (<i style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nature</i>, <a href="http://www.nature.com/doifinder" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #179cce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">DOI: 10.1038/nature11575</a>). His new calculations back up his <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2722.1" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #179cce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">own previous analysis</a> that the most significant of recent droughts mostly occurred in the 1950s and 60s, before global warming got going. (From <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628914.600-link-between-global-warming-and-drought-questioned/" target="_blank">Link between global warming and drought questioned</a>, New Scientist.)</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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<b>Hurricanes</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
According to <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011GL047711" target="_blank">a study</a> dating from 2011, by Ryan Maue,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE [accumulated cyclone energy] has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. </blockquote>
Figure 1 from this paper, as published in Geophysical Research Letters, charts the history of ACE worldwide from 1972 through 2011:<br />
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<a href="https://wol-prod-cdn.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/d98f6606-d723-431c-9bd3-8207b4647d60/grl28160-fig-0001.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="570" height="400" src="https://wol-prod-cdn.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/d98f6606-d723-431c-9bd3-8207b4647d60/grl28160-fig-0001.png" width="395" /></a></div>
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What's happened since? According to a September 2017 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/07/the-science-behind-the-u-s-s-strange-hurricane-drought-and-its-sudden-end/?utm_term=.0ba2cd2b7f91" target="_blank">article </a>in the Washington Post, "Before Hurricane Harvey, the continental United States had not been hit by a Category 3 or higher “major hurricane” for 12 years — dating all the way back to 2005’s Hurricane Wilma."<br />
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<b>Tornadoes</b><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image_thumb44.png?w=404&h=304&zoom=2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="304" data-original-width="404" height="240" src="https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image_thumb44.png?w=404&h=304&zoom=2" width="320" /></a></div>
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Strong to violent tornadoes 1950-2011, based on data from NOAA. Can you see a trend? I can't.<br />
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<br />
<b>Bottom Line </b><br />
<br />
As we've seen, there is no real evidence for any trend involving heat waves, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes. If you're enterprising you might be able to dig up more promising signs of increasing trends for extreme rainfall, floods, etc. And I feel sure you could find studies challenging many, if not all, the results I've presented above.<br />
<br />
Regardless, even if all the data indicated increasing trends for all types of extreme weather, there would be no reason to link any of that activity to CO2, emanating from fossil fuels or any other source. The world has gotten warmer, no one questions that. There was a significant runup in global temperatures from 1910 to 1940, followed, 40 years later, by another significant rise during the last 20 years of the previous century. CO2 emissions, as we've learned, were too low to have much of an effect on the earlier runup, and as we've also learned, there is little hard evidence that CO2 had much to do with the latter one either. All we know is that things have gotten warmer -- if ticks are headed north, if polar bears are finding it hard to hunt for baby seals, if "rain bombs" are becoming more frequent, if polar ice is in danger of disappearing, etc., etc., it's because of the increased heat, period. Whether CO2 had anything to do with that is another issue entirely. Yet whenever "climate change" or "global warming" is mentioned, not only in the popular media, but many "scientific" papers as well, the deleterious effects of human generated CO2 are simply taken for granted. In the public mind, therefore, any sign of an increase in the frequency of any extreme event that could possibly be linked to rising temperatures MUST be the fault of everyone's favorite scapegoat: CO2.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. </span>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-64654643348712836862018-05-08T01:55:00.001-04:002018-05-08T23:44:04.254-04:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 4:Yet another "saving hypothesis"Despite a significant amount of evidence that would appear to contradict the prevailing theory of "anthropomorphic global warming" (AGW), many activists either dismiss it as "lies" or attempt to explain it away with "saving hypotheses" of the sort we've already encountered in previous posts. I'll be providing several examples of such attempts to explain away the evidence, but since I've been discussing the topic of sea level rise, let's begin with a further consideration of that issue.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
I've already demonstrated that CO2 cannot possibly be held responsible for any significant degree of sea level rise at any time from the outset of the industrial revolution to the 1950's, when, as most climate scientists agree, CO2 emissions were too low to have had much of an effect. And because, from ca. 1940 through ca. 1979, we see no real sign of temperature rise, CO2 emissions could not possibly have made a difference, as temperature is by far the most significant "control knob" of sea level. What remains, therefore, is the period from ca. 1979 through the end of the 20th century, when we see global temperature, sea level, and CO2 emissions all rising simultaneously for a period of roughly 20 years. Could CO2 have affected sea level during this period? Let's take a look at the evidence:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level%2C_1880-2013.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="670" height="346" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level%2C_1880-2013.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The graph displayed above, based on research dating from 2011, shows a slow but steady rise in average sea level from 1880 to the year of publication. Note that there is no sign of any significant change in the steadily upward trend subsequent to the mid-century period of roughly 40 years (1940-1979) when temperatures were not rising. Note also that there is no sign of any acceleration of sea level rise that might reflect the sudden acceleration of temperatures seen during the last 20 years of the past century, or, indeed, any rise in temperatures during the 21st century.<br />
<br />
Note also that the period from 1998 - 2015 saw either a decline or only a very modest upward trend in temperatures (depending on the source), a significant contrast to the rapid runup during the previous 20 years. Here is one of many graphs charting temperatures during this period, this one from <a href="http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/09/uah-global-temperature-update-for-august-2016-0-44-deg-c/" target="_blank">UAH</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQNdSONOUScaUe_mvzDjqW_gCMLrh_QlAYZOXK22DdLsd5NF-LZhWO6sKnuu9uLBjQkTw4JSNAxM3EDaG0yeunKbDQCO4yhObT0wyq_kr-vAkYDDmEfwYrJxW7w0OxFnylVjBzdoOtq-k/s1600/UAH-v6-LT-with-2016-projection-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="961" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQNdSONOUScaUe_mvzDjqW_gCMLrh_QlAYZOXK22DdLsd5NF-LZhWO6sKnuu9uLBjQkTw4JSNAxM3EDaG0yeunKbDQCO4yhObT0wyq_kr-vAkYDDmEfwYrJxW7w0OxFnylVjBzdoOtq-k/s400/UAH-v6-LT-with-2016-projection-3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Discounting the three major El Nino events, we get an essentially level picture. Yet, as with the mid-20th-century "hiatus," sea levels have continued to rise at more or less the same pace as before.<br />
<br />
A more recent study dating from 2016, published in the prestigious journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep31245" target="_blank">Nature</a>, reports a surprising DROP in the rate of sea level rise. From the abstract:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;">Global mean sea level rise estimated from satellite altimetry provides a strong constraint on climate variability and change and is expected to accelerate as the rates of both ocean warming and cryospheric mass loss increase over time. In stark contrast to this expectation however, current altimeter products show the rate of sea level rise to have decreased from the first to second decades of the altimeter era. </span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;">And here we come to yet another example of essentially the same syndrome noted here previously: the tendency among so many climate scientists to add a complicating, ad hoc "saving" hypothesis, in violation of Occam's Razor, in an effort to explain away inconvenient evidence. As reported above, the raw evidence is clear enough. The rate of sea level rise appears to have decreased in recent years, which strongly suggests, along with all the other evidence cited above, that rapidly accelerating increases in CO2 emissions have had little or nothing to do with sea level. Is that a definitive result? No. Some other studies have supposedly claimed to find some degree of acceleration. But it's useful to consider this case, as it provides such a fascinating picture of how well meaning researchers can literally turn their results inside out in order to achieve a desired outcome.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;">Consider the sentence immediately following the quotation presented above: "<span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif; letter-spacing: 0.17px;">Here, a combined analysis of altimeter data and specially designed climate model simulations shows the 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo to likely have masked the acceleration that would have otherwise occurred."</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Seek and ye shall find. A result in line with expectations would have been uncritically accepted, with no need to look for some additional factor that might complicate, and possibly negate, the desired conclusion. But since the result was contrary to expectations, it then became necessary to cast about for some additional factor that might have "masked" the expected acceleration. And lo and behold, presto chango, the authors discover, of all things, a volcanic eruption.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;">Significantly, it is the speculative saving hypothesis, rather than the evidence itself, that gets enthusiastically picked up by the media, which reports a result 180 degrees out of phase with what the research actually revealed:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;">A sampling of headlines:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/volcano-hid-sea-level-rise-acceleration-20595" target="_blank">How a Volcano Hid the Acceleration of Sea Level Rise</a> Climate Central.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "lora" , "palatino" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.17px;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/09/22/mount_pinatubo_slowed_global_warming_and_sea_level_rise_but_only_briefly.html" target="_blank">An Exploding Volcano Slowed Global Warming. Briefly.</a> Slate.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www2.cgd.ucar.edu/climate-change-accelerating-sea-level-rise" target="_blank">CLIMATE CHANGE IS ACCELERATING SEA LEVEL RISE</a> National Center for Atmospheric Research.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Greenhouse gases are already having an accelerating effect on sea level rise, but the impact has so far been masked by the cataclysmic 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/climate-change-sea-level-rise" target="_blank">Volcanic eruptions can 'mask the true effects of climate change'</a> Wired.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2016/08/11/volcanic-eruption-affects-sea-level-rise/" target="_blank">Volcanic Eruption Affects Sea Level Rise</a> National Geographic.<br />
<br />
Could it be true? Could the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 have had such an effect on the vast ocean expanse that it masked what would have been a global acceleration of sea level rise? Such eruptions do in fact have a temporary cooling effect on the atmosphere, due to the thick aerosols they emit, which can block incoming solar radiation. And the researchers have gone to considerable trouble, wielding some very impressive statistical tools, in order to demonstrate the likelihood of their hypothesis.<br />
<br />
Which is where a dash of critical thinking becomes necessary. If we see NO sign of any significant slowdown in sea level rise in the wake of the precipitous downturn in world temperatures during the early 1940's, as revealed in the following very typical, graph,<br />
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<a href="https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/dn11639-2_800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="800" height="306" src="https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/dn11639-2_800.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
then how can it be claimed that a single volcanic eruption, causing a far less significant dip in global temperatures over a shorter period, could have significantly altered the average water level of the entire ocean, so very vast and deep? Statistics can be teased and tortured to produce all sorts of unlikely results, but critical thinking can provide a valuable corrective. As it looks to me, the authors of this paper have produced a clearly ad hoc "saving hypothesis" in a desperate effort to undo the otherwise embarrassing results of their own research. And the media, gullible as usual, have hyped their dubious theory to the max, because they too insist on seeing only what they want to see.<br />
<br />
And no, I am not a climate scientist nor am I a physicist. Just an independent, sometimes arrogant, gent unwilling to tolerate insults to my intelligence.<br />
<br />
From <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/evaluating-scientific-claims-or-do-we-have-to-take-the-scientists-word-for-it/" target="_blank">Scientific American</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/evaluating-scientific-claims-or-do-we-have-to-take-the-scientists-word-for-it/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Evaluating scientific claims (or, do we have to take
the scientist's word for it?)</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">:</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Scientific knowledge is built
on empirical data, and the details of the data . . . can vary quite a lot in
different scientific disciplines, and in different areas of research within
those disciplines. However, <i>there are commonalities in the basic
patterns of reasoning that scientists in all fields use to compare their
theories with their data</i>. . . <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In other words, even if I
can't evaluate someone else's raw data to tell you directly what it means,
I <i>can</i> evaluate the way that data is used to support or refute
claims. I can recognize logical fallacies and distinguish them from instances of
valid reasoning. Moreover, this is the kind of thing that a non-scientist who
is good at critical thinking (whether a journalist or a member of the public
consuming a news story) could evaluate as well. -- Janet Sternweddel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-58292531617577126792018-04-15T01:42:00.004-04:002018-04-15T12:30:58.033-04:00Thoughts on Climate Change -- part 3: Sea LevelViolations of Occam's Razor, along the lines examined already in my previous post, are in fact rather common in the "scientific" literature supporting the so-called "consensus" view of climate change. The following excerpt from the previously quoted Wikipedia article on Occam's Razor states the issue quite succinctly:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #15222b; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 13px;">[F]or each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there is always an infinite number of possible and more complex alternatives, because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified . . . (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Ockham)</span></blockquote>
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The widely accepted notion that sulfur dioxide aerosols from the burning of fossil fuels were responsible for the mid-20th century hiatus in global warming (see previous post) is only one of many similar examples I could provide. In this post, I will focus on a more fundamental issue, that of sea level rise.</div>
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Here's what I wrote on this topic in a <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/04/unforced-variations-apr-2018/comment-page-2/#comment-702066" target="_blank">recent post </a>on the RealClimate blog:</div>
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<a name='more'></a></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 16.2px;">
I just now discovered, via youtube, a very interesting brief lecture on sea level rise by Stefan Rahmstorf: </blockquote>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WQpv-yhEBoY/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQpv-yhEBoY?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 16.2px;">
His treatment of this issue is especially welcome because he delves more deeply into the problem of local sea level variation than is usually the case in presentations of this sort. I was troubled, however, by his apparent inability to see something in the graph he himself presents that seems obvious to me. I consequently added a comment, which I reproduce here for the benefit of my many “fans” on this blog:<br />
<blockquote>
“Thank you, Stefan, for your very illuminating comments regarding the variability in world sea level rise, an issue that needs to be addressed but is usually ignored. However, the graph we see at 2:32 <a href="https://youtu.be/WQpv-yhEBoY?t=2m32s" rel="nofollow" style="color: #335522;">https://youtu.be/WQpv-yhEBoY?t=2m32s</a> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_c_yxt7JE_ptrQWK3zFsC_5rOM2IhlLe-72SG0kwC8bCMWKJno34naR-9DfMFKy8u2OH34OxsyE6-TQNuyVZosfnUv1wuIEx_Cz8s2iL5Itol4w3AEuQVkdQRzBv7iwKoMUWhYVmxMA/s1600/Sea+Level+graph+from+Rahmstorf+video.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_c_yxt7JE_ptrQWK3zFsC_5rOM2IhlLe-72SG0kwC8bCMWKJno34naR-9DfMFKy8u2OH34OxsyE6-TQNuyVZosfnUv1wuIEx_Cz8s2iL5Itol4w3AEuQVkdQRzBv7iwKoMUWhYVmxMA/s400/Sea+Level+graph+from+Rahmstorf+video.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px; text-align: center;">suggests that the overall rise in sea level cannot be due to CO2 emissions as you would like us to believe. The relatively modest burning of fossil fuels prior to the 1940’s is considered insufficient by most climate scientists to have played a major role in either global temperature rise or sea level rise, as I feel sure you are aware. And during the period from ca. 1940 to ca. 1979, as is also acknowledged by most climate scientists, there was no significant warming of either the land or sea, despite the strong increase in the burning of fossil fuels during this period. Thus the steady rise from ca. 1880 through 1979, so evident from your graph could not possibly be due to CO2 emissions, but must have had some other cause. It is also possible, as your presentation suggests, that our ability to determine sea level rise globally is so distorted by local variations that the data now available to climate scientists like yourself is all but meaningless.”</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 16.2px;">
As always I feel confident that the experts prowling here will have no problem spotting my mistake.</blockquote>
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To better understand my point, let's compare Rahmstorf's graph to the following, drawn from the <a href="https://www.skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html" target="_blank">Skeptical Science</a> website, a comparison of global temperatures and greenhouse gas levels: </div>
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<a href="https://static.skepticalscience.com/images/co2_temp_broad.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="450" height="248" src="https://static.skepticalscience.com/images/co2_temp_broad.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
As depicted in the above, greenhouse gas "forcings" (in green) due mostly to the burning of fossil fuels, rose only slightly from 1900 through ca. 1950, after which time we see a very pronounced increase. Yet global temperatures (in red) soared dramatically during roughly the same period (from ca. 1919 through ca. 1945). The very gradual rise in CO2 levels during this era was too modest to account for much of the contemporary temperature rise, leading most climate scientists to agree that greenhouse forcings could not have been a major factor as far as temperatures are concerned. In view of the fact that global average sea level, as Rahmstorf himself explains, is to a large extent controlled by temperature, we can only conclude, therefore, that only a small part of the apparently steady increase in global sea levels during the first half of the 20th century, as depicted in Rahmstorf's graph, can be attributed to the release of CO2.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Moving to the period from ca. 1945 through ca. 1979, we see, first, a steep decline in global temperatures, followed by a period in which no trend in either direction is evident. Yet, if we once again turn to Rahmstorf's map, we see no discontinuity in sea level rise whatsoever. Sea levels apparently continued to rise steadily throughout the 20th century, apparently ignoring the long period of roughly 40 years during which there was no significant rise in global temperatures. Discounting for the moment the question of how such an increase would be possible without a concomitant rise in temperatures, it seems clear that CO2 levels, which were rising dramatically at the same time, could have had no influence on sea level rise during this period as well.</div>
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For almost all of his presentation on this particular video, Rahmstorf is impressively thorough and objective. Yet, as one might expect from his strong commitment to the standard "climate change" dogma, he winds things up by urging us to reduce "our greenhouse gas emissions," as though such a reduction could possibly make a difference of any real significance in controlling sea level. As a climate scientist, Rahmstorf is, of course, well aware of the evidence I've presented above, which tells us how unlikely it is that greenhouse gases (aka CO2 emissions) could possibly have anything to do with sea level rise, but since that would go against one of the most important sources of climate change hysteria, he must have felt obliged to make that pitch regardless.</div>
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Needless to say, my comment on the RealClimate blog was not greeted with enthusiasm. The longest response was from the same individual to whom I responded in my two previous posts: CCHolley. I won't take the trouble to quote his very long and labored "explanation" but you can find it <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/04/unforced-variations-apr-2018/comment-page-3/#comment-702144" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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Holley never actually responded to the argument I presented but, as I expected, complicated things with attempts at the typical sort of "saving hypotheses" so typical of "climate change" thinking generally, primarily by emphasizing the relation between the "hydrological cycle" and sea level, as though that had any relevance whatever to the issue at hand. I had the impression that he believes there is no relation between CO2 levels and sea level rise at all, as reflected in the following: "<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px;">The problems Victor states with sea level rise correlating to temperatures has nothing to do with the cause of the temperature rise. Nothing. Yes, one would expect long term sea level changes to follow temperatures. However, this correlation does not matter on what the cause of warming is." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px;">If he really feels this way, I suggest he take it up with Rahmstorf, who certainly does attach considerable importance to CO2 as the "cause of the temperature rise," which in turn produced the (alleged) sea level rise.</span><br />
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As I half expected my response to Holley along with others who dismissed my observations by recourse to totally irrelevant (but properly "peer reviewed") research, has been relegated to the Bore Hole -- which tells us a lot about the level of "scientific" integrity encouraged at the RealClimate site. Here it is:</div>
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<cite class="fn" style="font-size: 12.96px; font-style: normal;">1824 Victor</cite> <span class="says">says: </span><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-bore-hole/comment-page-37/#comment-702169" style="color: #335522;">13 Apr 2018 at 11:35 PM</a>101 in response to CCHolley et al. </blockquote>
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You can blow as much smoke as you like, folks, but that won’t change the fundamental facts and logic of my critique. It’s really very simple. The rise in CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels from 1880 through the 1940’s was not sufficient to have played a major role in the considerable global temperature rise that took place during that period — so if we want to presume that sea level rise is prompted by global temperature rise (along with concomitant melting of glaciers, etc.) then we can’t really attribute very much of the rise in sea levels during that period to CO2. Whether you prefer to attribute the temperature rise mostly to solar activity or a lack of volcanic activity is beside the point. </blockquote>
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Moreover, as is widely recognized, global temperatures from ca. 1940 to ca. 1979 either dropped or remained level during a period when CO2 levels were beginning to soar. And once again attributing that temperature drop to industrial aerosols or any other “forcing” is beside the point. Despite roughly 40 years during which there was no significant rise in global temperature, sea levels nevertheless continued to rise at roughly the same rate as before. And yes, the association between temperature and sea level is well established, but once again this relationship is beside the point as far as the influence of CO2 emissions is concerned. If you want to insist on the relation between temperature and sea level then it’s necessary to question the accuracy of our measurements of one or the other — or both. </blockquote>
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No amount of “research,” statistical legerdemain or modelling can change the basic logic of the above analysis. If you see a flaw in that logic, please enlighten me.<br />
Oh and by the way, CC, I’m still waiting for your response to my blog posts, parts 1 (<a href="http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #335522;">http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-climate-change.html</a>) and 2 (<a href="http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-2.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #335522;">http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-2.html</a>)</blockquote>
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DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-29570292381075918452018-03-28T20:44:00.001-04:002018-05-22T00:56:52.143-04:00Thoughts on Climate Change - part 2As I stated in my response on the RealClimate blog, the apparently very reasonable argument presented by CCHolley (see my previous post) raises epistemological issues that call for additional discussion and analysis. Epistemology, of course, is the philosophy of knowledge and the means by which we may attain it. While it is sometimes contrasted with metaphysics, if we take the literal meaning of metaphysics, i.e., that which is "prior to physics," into account then epistemology can be seen as a branch of metaphysics. It's not difficult to see that science must be grounded in certain basic principles that cannot themselves be subject to the usual sort of scientific testing, but must be accepted as "prior" to any type of scientific investigation. Among these, for example, is the employment of simple two-valued logic in the evaluation of any claim. Another example would be Occam's Razor, to which I'll be referring presently.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
Holley's argument is based on the drawing of an analogy between a basic principle of modern physics, Newton's laws of motion, and certain claims of contemporary mainstream climate science. Specifically, Holley claims that the cooling and/or leveling off of global temperatures during a roughly 40 year segment of the twentieth century can legitimately be explained by the cooling effect of aerosol emissions emanating from the same burning fossil fuels typically held responsible for warming the Earth via the emission of large amounts of Carbon Dioxide, known to be a warming greenhouse gas. When I questioned this notion as a "saving hypothesis" in violation of Occam's Razor, Holley countered by reminding me that Newton's laws could have been questioned in a very similar manner by someone testing them without accounting for the effects of drag produced by atmospheric resistance. In both instances, according to his argument, it's necessary to add a complicating factor to the mix, since "in a complex world, if observations seemly conflict with . . . scientific certainty, then looking for explanations is absolutely the right thing to do."<br />
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Holley's rejoinder does seem reasonable on its face. However, if we were to accept it uncritically then what of Occam's Razor, which forbids us from complicating an hypothesis that seems to be failing by shoring it up with the introduction of additional elements? Is this fundamental epistemological principle to be shunted aside so easily? Occam is not as easy to ignore as he might seem. According to an excellent online explication by F. Heylighen,<br />
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Though the principle may seem rather trivial, it is essential for model building because of what is known as the "underdetermination of theories by data". For a given set of observations or data, there is always an infinite number of possible models explaining those same data. . . . For example, through two data points in a diagram you can always draw a straight line, and induce that all further observations will lie on that line. However, you could also draw an infinite variety of the most complicated curves passing through those same two points, and these curves would fit the empirical data just as well. Only Occam's razor would in this case guide you in choosing the "straight" (i.e. linear) relation as best candidate model. A similar reasoning can be made for n data points lying in any kind of distribution. (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html)</blockquote>
An article in Wikipedia makes the same argument more straightforwardly:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[F]or each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there is always an infinite number of possible and more complex alternatives, because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified . . . (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Ockham)</blockquote>
The analogy drawn by Holley would seem to pose a problem for epistemology therefore, by calling into question our ability to distinguish legitimate complications, necessary to scientific understanding, from questionable ad hoc hypotheses whose sole purpose is to shore up a failing theory. How does one tell the difference?<br />
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For Holley, the claim that the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) theory requires the addition of cooling aerosols<br />
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is NOT simply collecting evidence to support a pre-conceived view, it is attempting to explain the world based on known physical laws. We don’t just throw out physical laws because of any little bump in the road, that would be an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas that prevents heat from escaping to space. That is a scientific certainty. . . . Aerosols like drag have an effect and cannot be ignored.
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Unfortunately, this sort of explanation could be offered for a great many attempts to account for an evidentiary gap by invoking what might seem to be sound scientific principles. It is not enough to claim that some complicating factor is based on solid scientific evidence but also to demonstrate that the insertion of this factor is not simply an ad hoc patch, but, to quote Occam, "necessary" -- thus capable of holding up under careful scrutiny in a variety of different circumstances. The accepted way to demonstrate that is to conduct experiments. The laws of motion were tested on the basis of carefully controlled experiments, conducted in a vacuum, which demonstrated their validity rather dramatically when a feather was found to fall at the same speed as a heavy weight as soon as the effects of atmospheric drag were eliminated. Unfortunately, there would not seem to be any way of conducting a similar experiment to test the effects of aerosol pollution in the very complicated real-world circumstances affecting climate change. The effect must be inferred from consideration of a variety of different so-called "forcings," which are, in many cases, not at all easy to measure or assess. Complication piled upon complication.<br />
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However. It IS possible to conduct a thought experiment which might shed some light on the matter. Let us assume that we are in fact able to very precisely measure both the amount of sulphur dioxide aerosols and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at some given place and time, and let us assume as well that the aerosols are indeed consistently found, after several strictly controlled experiments, to have a cooling effect sufficient to cancel the warming effect being claimed for CO2, which could indeed account for the cooling tendency we see for the period in question (ca. 1940-ca. 1979). As far as I can tell, such a result would conform quite closely to what most climate scientists now seem to accept more or less as a given.<br />
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Would such a result satisfy Holley and his colleagues at RealClimate? I wonder. As I've already noted on the RealClimate blog, once it's established that industrial aerosols produced from the same fossil fuel emissions as anthropogenically generated CO2 will either cancel out the warming effects produced by the latter or produce a net cooling effect, then it is no longer possible to claim the existence of a long term warming trend over most of the 20th century due to industrial CO2 emissions. If CO2 produced through the burning of fossil fuels does indeed have a significant warming effect on the atmosphere and if aerosols produced through the same process have a comparable cooling effect capable of cancelling the warming effect of the CO2, then no instances of fossil fuel burning at any time prior to the introduction of anti-pollution laws in the United States and Europe, during the 1960's and 70's, could be seen as producing any net warming at all.<br />
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I presented this argument at the RealClimate blog and it was greeted with various attempts to demonstrate that fossil fuel emissions did indeed function as warming greenhouse gases since the onset of the industrial revolution, based on what they considered solid evidence. Well, if this could in fact be demonstrated, well and good. But that would effectively nullify the claim that aerosols were largely responsible for the cooling effects seen from 1940 to 1979. You can't have it both ways. Either the greenhouse effects of CO2 emissions are strong enough to overcome the cooling effects of sulfate aerosols or not. If they are, then the explanation offered by Holley and so many others for the lack of warming over a period of roughly 40 years is clearly ad hoc and cannot be applied across the board (as can the effects of atmospheric drag). And if not, then a long term period of CO2 induced warming from the advent of the industrial revolution until the adoption of strict anti-pollution laws cannot be claimed.<br />
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There are other reasons for skepticism regarding this claim. According to Holley, the physics behind the AGW hypothesis are as solid as the physics behind Newton's laws of motion, so whenever the evidence seems to point in another direction it should go without saying that, as in the case of Newton's laws, the problem lies with the evidence, not the theory. This claim is easily refuted, since Newton's laws have been confirmed by controlled experiments of a sort not possible in the highly complex and often chaotic realm of real world climate, where results must be inferred on the basis of numerous sets of measurements, so tenuous as to require continual adjusting as new factors are discovered. Regardless, if we want to take Holley's claim seriously, it becomes evident that it is based on a circular argument. There is in fact NO evidence whatsoever of any temperature forcing stemming from the burning of fossil fuels during the entirety of the 40 year period in question. Certainly the existence of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere cannot in itself be seen as evidence that CO2 produces a warming effect of any significance. Climate scientists assume the existence of CO2 forcing on the basis of their certainties regarding "the physics" behind our understanding of greenhouse gases. So ALL the evidence for CO2 forcing during this period is based solely on "the physics." Yet at the same time, the claim of a long-term warming trend during the 20th century is seen as evidence that "the physics" is indeed correct. But such a trend can only be established if the standard interpretation of "the physics" is accepted ahead of time -- otherwise the 40 years of cooling and/or leveling must be seen as going counter to the so-called trend.<br />
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More evidence that Holley's explanation is strictly ad hoc stems from a source I've never before seen referenced in regard to this particular issue. It is claimed that the cooling effects of industrial aerosols were ultimately neutralized by the institution of pollution controls in the US and Europe from the 1960's on, which would explain the sudden turnaround beginning in the late 70's, when global temperatures soared, in what looked like a strong correlation with soaring CO2 levels. The warming after the 1940-1979 hiatus is indeed currently attributed to the relative lack of cooling aerosols in the atmosphere from then to now. Can this hypothesis be tested? Well, yes it can.<br />
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Thanks to a helpful link provided by someone commenting at RealClimate I was able to find some very interesting data relating to the worldwide distribution of sulfate aerosols. The paper to which I'll be referring, authored by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, is titled simply <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution" target="_blank">Air Pollution</a>. If you scroll down a bit you'll find a chart titled "SO2 emissions by world region":<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXVq1Zw-N7S4bvuBMC9DdqwRA4e-6OtpGAQB6pGCsbhe-9adJHUysVvaq0e9ZhmgpwXy3A0WWsfEA303kRwiknTnforKPmDBXFoEC8jh4H21HL8WNrKiGU14w3iCHO02i6i16hlyCtQnk/s1600/so-emissions-by-world-region-in-million-tonnes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="1600" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXVq1Zw-N7S4bvuBMC9DdqwRA4e-6OtpGAQB6pGCsbhe-9adJHUysVvaq0e9ZhmgpwXy3A0WWsfEA303kRwiknTnforKPmDBXFoEC8jh4H21HL8WNrKiGU14w3iCHO02i6i16hlyCtQnk/s400/so-emissions-by-world-region-in-million-tonnes.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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As is evident from this chart, SO2 emissions from the Americas and Europe peaked around 1979, which would be consistent with the theory defended by Holley. But the graph for Asia is totally different, as it shows a continual rise in SO2 emissions beginning in the 1940's and persisting till the graph's upper limit, 2010. Now it's important to realize that the scope of industrial aerosols is very different from that of atmospheric CO2. The latter is long lived and spread out in roughly equal portions throughout Earth's atmosphere, while the former is short lived (only a year or so) and highly localized. If SO2 aerosols indeed have a cooling effect strong enough to counter the greenhouse warming alleged for CO2 during the years 1940-1979, then we would expect the growing volume of such aerosols in Asia to continue the same cooling trend well into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Is that in fact the case? Let's look:<br />
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<a href="https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1674927810500029-gr1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="329" data-original-width="529" height="197" src="https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1674927810500029-gr1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The graph presented above is taken from a paper titled <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674927810500029" target="_blank">Comparative Analysis of China Surface Air Temperature Series for the Past 100 Years</a>, by Guoli Tang et al. It is labeled Figure 1 and depicts temperature anomalies for 5 different data sets measuring Chinese surface air temperatures. What we see looks very similar to the worldwide data that's been so widely disseminated. Clearly, temperatures in China have not abated due to the increasingly high levels of SO2 pollution produced by their many coal burning plants during this entire period.<br />
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[Added Friday, Mar. 30: When I completed the above post, I felt that what I'd written would be sufficient to make my point for anyone who'd been following my argument with any care. Reading over it again, however, I feel the need for a summary and also some sort of concluding statement. So here goes.<br />
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1. First of all, let's take a look at the data to which I've been referring:<br />
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<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/2016temperature.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="800" height="256" src="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/2016temperature.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The graph reproduced above is taken from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/climate-trends-continue-to-break-records" target="_blank">a 2016 article </a>at the NASA website and represents average temperature anomalies from 1880 through 2016. It was intended to demonstrate a recent spate of extreme warming, but the segment that concerns us here dates from the 40 year period from roughly 1940 through roughly 1979, where, as should be evident, no warming trend can be seen. The lack of a warming trend during this period has never been contested, but the cause is thought, by orthodox climate scientists, to be due to the cooling effect of pollutant aerosols due to the industrial burning of fossil fuels, the principal topic of discussion here.<br />
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2. Assuming that such aerosols actually neutralized or even overcame the warming that otherwise would have occurred due to steadily rising CO2 emissions during this period, there is no reason to assume that the same neutralizing effect would not have been present at all prior times, as pollution controls did not come into effect until the latter part of the century, meaning that CO2 emissions and aerosol emissions, created in tandem from the same fossil fuel burning process, could not have produced any net warming effect at all, not only from 1940 on, but from the beginning of the industrial revolution until the adoption of the clean air acts during the 60's and 70's. But this contradicts the long-held claim of so many climate scientists that there has been a significant long-term warming trend throughout the 20th century due principally to the burning of fossil fuels. The only alternative would be to drop the aerosol-cooling hypothesis -- but how could one then claim a correlation between global warming and steadily rising CO2 emissions in the face of a 40 year period during which CO2 emissions were soaring and temperatures either fell or leveled off for no known reason?<br />
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3. If "the physics" is sufficient to fully support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) hypothesis, as has so often been claimed, then no further evidence is needed, apparently. Yet gaps in the evidence that tend to undermine any correlation between warming and CO2 levels strongly suggest that there may well be something wrong with "the physics" -- which given the complexity of the worldwide climate system is not at all surprising. When attempting to account for such gaps, AGW supporters nevertheless use assumptions based on their understanding of "the physics" to develop theories, such as the aerosol cooling theory, intended to explain away these gaps. Since such theories are intended to produce evidence supporting the assumptions on which they are based, it's not difficult to see circular reasoning at work.<br />
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4. The abrupt and rather steep rise in global temperatures from ca. 1979 through 1998 (see the NASA graph above) has typically been attributed to the imposition of pollution control laws in the United States and Europe a decade or so prior. In the lessening of sulfate aerosol emissions from that time on, the "lid" was removed, and, as far as the climate orthodoxy is concerned, the warming effects of CO2 emissions were unleashed without any significant constraints. As I've demonstrated, however, the situation was very different in Asia, where pollution controls were not widely implemented during this same period, aerosol levels continued to rise at the same rate as before, and yet temperatures also soared, in tandem with temperature rises worldwide. Since pollution-based aerosols, unlike CO2 molecules, are short-lived and localized, it's very hard to see how the same cooling effect claimed for them during the 40 year "hiatus" we've been examining would not also have cooled Chinese temperatures during the last 20 years of the previous century, just as they had cooled worldwide temperatures during the earlier period.<br />
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The laws of motion referenced by Mr. Holley were corroborated by controlled experiments that supported them very convincingly. However, the notion that some underlying warming trend produced by CO2 emissions was masked by aerosol cooling has never been subject to experiment, least of all controlled experiments. But the evidence from Asia would appear to serve very well as a control, and the results are negative. Aerosols produced from industrial pollution are known to have a cooling effect, yes, but their failure to cool Asian temperatures in a manner analogous to the mid-century temperature dip tells us there is something wrong with the "science" behind the climate change orthodoxy. If no explanation can be found for what happened during that 40 year period, then no fossil fuel generated long-term warming trend can be claimed and the fabric of AGW becomes very thin indeed.]DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-86001718547515598542018-03-27T12:07:00.000-04:002018-03-29T00:02:00.700-04:00Thoughts on Climate ChangeHaven't posted anything here in a long time, so please forgive the sudden intrusion. I'm here now because I've decided to use this blog as a venue for freely and fully sharing my thoughts on the extremely controversial topic of climate change without having to worry over whether or not I'm taking up too much bandwidth on someone else's forum. For the last few years I've been posting comments from time to time on the <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/" target="_blank">RealClimate </a>blog, a gathering, for the most part, of hard line "climate change" advocates, who usually find me extremely irritating, but can't resist responding to my posts nevertheless. Typically I will post some thought or quote some source that they object to; they will offer what I often consider rather lame responses, so I feel obligated to set them straight, which in turn prompts more responses from them and so it goes until everyone gets either bored or annoyed or frustrated and either I wind up backing off or my posts start getting exiled to their "Bore Hole" (don't ask).<br />
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I recently decided that there was no longer any point in continuing a prolonged debate that was going nowhere and promised to cease and desist from further responses on that topic. After making that decision, however, I noticed that one of my most persistent critics had actually posted what appeared to be a sensible response to an objection of mine, grounded in a basic principle of Occam's Razor -- specifically that certain "explanations" offered by certain climate scientists to account for evidence that, on its face, appeared to falsify their theory, could be understood as what has been called "saving hypotheses," i.e., attempts to save a failing theory by pointing to additional factors that make everything "come out right." As I see it, the interjection of such factors violates Occam's Razor by introducing unnecessary complications for the sole purpose of rescuing an hypothesis that would otherwise be inconsistent with the evidence.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>In this instance, the evidence I was pointing to is the long period of roughly 40 years, from ca. 1940 through ca. 1979 when global temperatures apparently either declined or remained steady, while CO2 levels due to fossil fuel emissions soared. This, for me, as for so many others, is one of several instances where the evidence appears to falsify the AGW hypothesis, based as it is on the claim that global temperatures have been steadily climbing in tandem with CO2 emissions ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution.<br />
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The standard response goes something like this: in order to understand the complexities of the climate system, we need to consider ALL the various forcings that affect climate, and when we do we see that a major factor in holding down temperatures during the period in question was the emission of polluting aerosols due to the rapid and uncontrolled development of heavy industry after WWII. Since the source of these aerosols was the burning of the same fossil fuels held responsible for emitting all that CO2 in the first place, I have always regarded that explanation with extreme skepticism. It's always looked to me like a perfect example of a "saving hypothesis," as it appears to add complications whose "necessity" is only to explain away evidence incompatible with the favored theory, making it in violation of Occam's Razor, which states, essentially, that additional "entities" should not be attached to any hypothesis unless it can be established that they are necessary for a complete understanding of the totality of the evidence.<br />
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In responding to my objection on such grounds, RealClimate regular, CCHolley offered a reasonable sounding explanation that deserves further discussion. Here is his post in its entirety:<br />
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Let’s give a simplistic example for Victor on how science actually works.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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Let’s say an early scientist is interested in applying Newton’s Laws of Motion to ballistics. He uses the law to derive a mathematical model of the predicted path of a projectile given a know initial velocity, angle of launch, and the force of gravity. The mathematical model predicts a trajectory of a parabolic arc.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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He then sets up an experiment to confirm the results of his model. Instrumentation is used to measure the initial velocity. The launch angle is set and the projectile is launched. The distance from launch to landing is carefully measured. Unfortunately the landing point is well short of that predicted. Several more launches are made to make sure the initial result was not an anomaly. All the results are similar.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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He then goes through his model and cannot find any mistakes in the derivation. Does the scientist then declare Newton’s Laws falsified? No, that would be foolish because others have confirmed the laws through other experiments. It is already considered scientific truth. Physics is physics.</div>
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So the scientist must ask himself questions. What am I missing? What are the gaps in my knowledge? Could there be other unknown forces acting on the body of which I am unaware? This opens a new line of inquiry and he eventually hypothesizes the influence of air in the form of drag on a body in motion. His evidence of such was NOT simply collected to support a pre-conceived view. It was collected to support known physical laws.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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Likewise for AGW theory. The laws of physics are the laws of physics and the laws of physics allow us to make certain predictions. When evidence surfaces that might conflict with our predictions, we don’t consider the physics falsified, we look for gaps in our knowledge and hypothesize explanations. Those hypothesis must stand on their own merits. This is NOT simply collecting evidence to support a pre-conceived view, it is attempting to explain the world based on known physical laws. We don’t just throw out physical laws because of any little bump in the road, that would be an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 16.2px;">
CO2 is a greenhouse gas that prevents heat from escaping to space. That is a scientific certainty. In a complex world, if observations seemly conflict with that scientific certainty, then looking for explanations is absolutely the right thing to do. Explanations that are supported by evidence and conform to physical laws. Aerosols like drag have an effect and cannot be ignored. We don’t throw out greenhouse gas laws just because the effect of aerosols changes the outcome. Like the Newtonian Laws, we didn’t throw them out simply because we didn’t initially understand drag.</div>
</blockquote>
And here is the "response" I felt compelled to offer under the circumstances:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 12.96px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 16.2px;">
352 CCHolley<br />
In this post CC actually presents a very intelligent and reasonable response to some of the problems I’ve raised regarding violations of Occam’s Razor and the presentation of questionable “saving hypotheses.” Thanks for that, CC. Since I recently promised to back off on arguing any of these points, I won’t attempt a rebuttal here. Actually what is called for is not so much a rebuttal but a fresh consideration of certain very basic epistemological problems.</blockquote>
Because Holley's very well thought out argument deserves an equally well thought out response, based on a consideration of the epistemological issues mentioned above, I decided to move over here to this old blog I initiated several years ago to deal with certain political and economic issues, which will enable me to express my thoughts fully and freely without interference. In the <a href="https://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-2.html" target="_blank">following post</a> I will respond to Holley's objections in the light of my understanding of what the scientific method is really all about. Please stay tuned . . . (Comments are welcome at any time.)<br />
<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-8517264752506170992012-07-12T16:09:00.002-04:002012-07-12T16:09:47.281-04:00Consume Mass Quantities!<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Caught in the trap of life, man is moved by a field of attraction
determined by a flash point where solid forms are destroyed, where the
various objects that constitute the world are consumed as in a furnace
of light.</i> -- Georges Bataille</blockquote>
I've been thinking about the good Reverend Earwhigger's emphasis on the consumer as key to solving the present crisis (see previous post) -- but I've come up with a solution very different from what he's proposed. (He shouldn't feel badly, however. He was my inspiration!)<br />
<br />
It seems to me that what we need from the consumer is not a boycott (see previous post), but the exact opposite, i.e. exactly what the Gods of Capitalism created the consumer to achieve: consumption. Mass consumption. The consumption of mass quantities. In other words (the words of Bataille): Expenditure Without Reserve!<br />
<br />
Did you watch 60 Minutes recently? I'm thinking of the segment hosted by the ever-lovely, ever wise Lesley Stahl, the one on truffles. Did you know that a single meal featuring truffles in a top French restaurant can cost $1,000 or more? So why not go for it? Grab that credit card, hop a flight to Paris, preferably First Class, make your dinner reservation, enjoy your meal, and be sure to spend the rest of your stay in a first class hotel.<br />
<br />
Why, you say? Well, let's face it, the world economy is due for a total collapse, but the powers that be are doing everything in their power to delay the inevitable. Meanwhile, since the only arrow in their quivering quiver is spelled "austerity," it seems that their solution is to squeeze every last drop of blood from the 99% in order to protect the vast wealth of the 1%. If things continue along such lines for very much longer (and it looks like they will), then all us ordinary folk, workers, middle class, professionals, ne'er do wells, always do wells, under achievers, over achievers, college grads (with huge debt loads) and high school dropouts (with huge families) alike, will be forced into bankruptcy -- or worse (if you've racked up student debts they won't let you go bankrupt, you'll become their slave).<br />
<br />
The longer they kick the can down the road to preserve the "economy" for the banks and the super-rich, the worse it's going to get for the rest of us. So what is needed, if we want to survive, is some strategy to force their hand, i.e., to bring the whole absurd mess down around their necks, Sampson style, as soon as humanly possible. Only then will the spell of the Plutogarchs be broken; only then will society be free to pick up the pieces, recognizing that what is important is not money, but resources, both natural and human, managed by true representatives of the people, not the super-wealthy and their minions, whose wealth will have evaporated into thin air once the money mirage concocted exclusively for their own benefit and at our expense has lifted.<br />
<br />
So, who will be our Sampson? In some past posts, I've nominated the workers, and I still think a united international movement of organized workers, aided and abetted by sympathizers among the middle class, professionals, students, etc., could achieve a great deal. However, the Reverend H.C. Earwhigger ridiculed that idea as hopelessly outdated and perhaps he's right. For him, it is the consumer who is all powerful. And I have to admit that on reflection there is definitely some truth in that. But a consumer boycott won't work, because for one thing consumption is already down and for another, consumer boycotts are effective only when very precisely targeted, which means they can only have a very limited effect.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, there IS something we consumers can do to trash the "economy" and I'm not sure why I never thought of that before. What has brought our financial system to the brink of disaster has been reckless borrowing. And because we borrowed so much we are now very cautious about how much we spend and are reluctant to borrow much more. Nevertheless, because the powers that be are now in panic mode and not thinking straight, it is now actually almost as easy to borrow today as it ever was. Just check out those automobile commercials. No money down, easy terms, easy credit no problem. Same with mortgages, which are now selling for the lowest interest rates in history. Same with credit card debt, student debt, etc.<br />
<br />
So, we now have it within our power to resume the same destructive process that blew the last bubble, only this time, if we really gird our loins and try, we can blow the damned thing up literally to kingdom come. It will, of course, take organization. Don't try this at home folks, until you're sure you won't be alone. It will require the mobilization of consumers on a vast scale, for sure, in every corner of the world where credit is easily available (in other words, just about everywhere).<br />
<br />
Once we are organized, then hold onto your hats. We'll start buying everything in sight, en masse. Need a new car? Why settle for a Ford or Chevy when you can buy an Audi, BMW, or better yet, a Mercedes or Cadillac? Already own a house? Why not buy a summer place, preferably in the Hamptons? Think you can't get the loan? Well think again. The "market," especially the housing market, but also the automobile market, is as starved for attention as a teen age delinquent. Get out that credit card and if that isn't enough, head for your local bank. If they turn you down, try another, I can almost guarantee you'll find some bank eager to loan you just about whatever you want.<br />
<br />
Students, don't be shy. Step right up to that admissions office and sign yourself up for the biggest student loan you can get, preferably for the full four years, and at the most expensive Ivy League school that will take you. They'll be down on their knees with gratitude, because a great many of these hallowed institutions are now in deep deep trouble.<br />
<br />
If millions of us go on a spree all at once, all at the same time, borrowing to the hilt and buying whatever we damn please, spending like crazy and without reserve, we can send that bubble soaring into the stratosphere. All it will take will be a tiny pea from the tiniest pea shooter you can imagine to bring it down. And all the King's horses and all the King's men will NOT be able to put that damned phoney baloney "economy" together again.<br />
<br />
Amen!<br />
<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-30421803349149389872012-07-08T14:59:00.001-04:002012-07-08T17:18:37.516-04:00Getting Their AttentionMy old friend, the Reverend Earwhigger, considers my proposal of an international worker's action to be some sort of romantic pipe dream. As an alternative he's proposed a consumer boycott, which in his view would be much more likely to succeed. He writes, in part, as follows: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An organized consumer boycott? Difficult, improbable, but not exactly pie-in-the-sky. More and more consumers are beginning to understand that they are being
exploited. The significance of the fact that 1% control the 99% is
beginning to sink in. Unlike global warming, the 1:99 ratio is a "fact"
that is accepted by both political camps. People are angry. They might
be convinced that withholding their purchasing power could be a way to
express it. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Perhaps, just as the labor unions organized one
industry after another, consumer boycotts could – at least at first – be
targeted. For example, a boycott on buying music. Relatively painless,
but effective. A boycott on clicking on internet ads. Again, painless –
but imagine what it would do to the Nasdaq numbers. Or a boycott on
brand-name cereals in favor of super-market brands. Pretty painless, if
somehow the narcissistic brats to whom the stuff is marketed could be
induced to come aboard, but effective. . .</blockquote>
Though I'm in agreement with my friend on many points, I have problems with his consumer boycott proposal, because I seriously doubt that many consumers would be willing to participate, at least for very long. What he is recommending would be, at best, a very gradual process through which the 1% would hopefully get progressively worn down over time, as their profits on certain items, such as music, gradually eroded. But their profits are already eroding. And their solution would be the same as before: squeeze the workers, downsize, cut benefits, hire temps or "independent contractors," etc. In their minds there is no other alternative.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, as I see it, a call for a general work stoppage could go out very quickly, and if effectively organized could shut large sectors of the economy down for enough time as to make a clear statement that workers are not being fooled and are unwilling to cooperate in their own exploitation. My friend isn't buying it, however:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sorry, Doc G. Reviving the labor movement? Just a nostalgic pipe dream.
Neo-romantic economics. The plutogarchs need workers. Well, yes, but
there's no danger of
running out of workers. There are billions of potential workers, and
they are constantly spawning. Besides, technology actually has
diminished the need for labor. What they also need, and what there is a
danger of them running out of, is consumers: workers who not only are
able to, but are willing to, pass back to them the fruit of their labor. </blockquote>
Yes, this may sound romantic, but it has in fact been done in the past and has in fact worked, very effectively. Worker organization was at its height during the last depression, when there were a great many unemployed workers and when automation in the form of the assembly line was also enabling many companies to cut down on their work forces. It was not a pleasant process, because many employers would hire "scab" replacements, which was why the picket line was invented.<br />
<br />
I'm not proposing anything so drastic as unionization, however, at least not at first. A work stoppage of a day or even a week wouldn't give employers a chance to hire -- and train -- replacements, but it would put them on notice that their workers are no longer willing to suffer passively in the face of all these wonderful "austerity" plans that are supposed to solve all problems. I agree that the participation of many US workers would be questionable, given the resentment that's been fomented by movements such as the Tea Party, to which many working class people subscribe.<br />
<br />
But there is a whole new generation of younger, more educated workers in this country, the type of people we see every day slaving away in businesses such as Barnes and Noble, Whole Foods, Apple stores, etc., not to mention literally all of our Universities and Colleges, earning maybe if they are lucky, $10 an hour, or $2,000 per class, who might very well understand the situation and be willing to get involved in a movement of this sort. And I think a great many consumers, including students, would be more than willing to support them by boycotting such institutions during such an action. In such a context a consumer boycott would, I think, be effective, but only as a supplement to a worker-based action.<br />
<br />
As far as Europe is concerned, I would think the degree of social and economic awareness of most workers on that continent is much higher than in the States, and there have already in fact been several work stoppages and other such actions in Europe -- only they've been limited to individual businesses and/or countries, with no attempt at international coordination.<br />
<br />
Just think how utopian the Occupy Wall St. movement sounded prior to its first stunning successes. The key, of course, is organization. But if OWS could get organized, I don't see why a similarly "utopian" labor movement couldn't also get organized. Why not? The difference would be that instead of demonstrations having no immediate effect on the ruling class, we would have labor actions having a very real and immediate effect on their bottom line, something they cannot so easily ignore.DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-43439332367799460832012-07-05T10:38:00.000-04:002012-07-05T10:38:02.805-04:00Expenditure Without Reserve<span style="font-size: small;">From Federico Garcia Lorca, <i>Theory and Method of the Duende</i>: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">Those dark sounds are the
mystery, the roots that cling to the mire that we all know, that we all ignore,
but from which comes the very substance of art. ‘Dark sounds’ said the man of
the Spanish people, agreeing with Goethe, who in speaking of Paganini hit on a
definition of the <i>duende</i>: ‘A mysterious force that everyone feels and no
philosopher has explained.’</span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> So, then, the <i>duende</i>
is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old <i>maestro</i>
of the guitar say: ‘The <i>duende</i> is not in the throat: the <i>duende</i>
surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of
skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning,
it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.</span> </blockquote>
From Georges Bataille, "The Cruel Practice of Art":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Only a few of us, amid the great fabrications of society, hang on to our
really childish reactions, still wonder naively what we are doing on
the earth and what sort of joke is being played on us. We want to
decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or
these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence,
try to look through the cracks in the world. One of these cracks is the
cruel custom of sacrifice.. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Caught in the trap of life, man is moved by a field of attraction
determined by a flash point where solid forms are destroyed, where the
various objects that constitute the world are consumed as in a furnace
of light. </blockquote>
From <span class="reference-text">Georges Bataille, <i>The Accursed Share</i>: </span> <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I will simply state, without further ado, that <b>the extension of
economic growth itself requires the overturning of economic
principles</b>—the overturning of the ethics that grounds them. Changing
from the perspectives of <i>restrictive</i> economy to those of <i>general</i>
economy actually accomplishes a Copernican transformation: a reversal
of thinking—and of ethics. If a part of wealth (subject to a rough
estimate) is doomed to destruction or at least to unproductive use
without any possible profit, <b>it is logical, even <i>inescapable</i>,</b> <b>to
surrender commodities without return</b>. Henceforth, leaving aside pure and
simple dissipation, analogous to the construction of the Pyramids, <b>the
possibility of pursuing growth is itself subordinated to giving</b>: The
industrial development of the entire world demands of Americans that
they lucidly grasp the necessity, for an economy such as theirs, of
<b>having a margin of profitless operations</b>. An immense industrial network
cannot be managed in the same way that one changes a tire... It
expresses <b>a circuit of cosmic energy on which it depends, which it
cannot limit</b>, and whose laws it cannot ignore without consequences. <b>Woe
to those who, to the very end, insist on regulating the movement that
exceeds them</b> with the narrow mind of the mechanic who changes a tire.</blockquote>
From <a href="http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/Faculty/yangm_files/GlobalCapit.pdf">Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure</a>, by Mayfair Mei‐hui Yang: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What [Bataille] proposed in his enigmatic and mesmerizing
book <i>The Accursed Share </i>was that, in our modern
capitalist productivism, we have lost sight of this
fundamental law of physics and material existence: that
<b>the surplus energy and wealth left over after the basic
conditions for subsistence, reproduction, and growth
have been satisfied must be expended</b>. If this energy is
not destroyed, it will erupt of its own in an uncontrolled
explosion such as war. Given the tremendous productive
power of modern industrial society and the fact that its
productivist ethos has cut off virtually all traditional avenues
of ritual and festive expenditures, <b>energy surpluses
have been redirected to military expenditures for modern
warfare on a scale unknown in traditional societies</b>. Bataille
thought that the incessant growth machine that is
the post-World War II U.S. economy could be deflected
from a catastrophic expenditure on violent warfare only
by potlatching the entire national economy. <b>In giving
away its excess wealth to poorer nations, as in the Marshall
Plan</b> to rebuild war-torn Europe, the United States
could engage in a nonmilitary rivalry for prestige and
influence with the Soviet Union, that other center of
industrial modernity’s radical reduction of nonproductive
expenditure.14 Thus, Bataille wished <b>to resuscitate
an important dimension of the economy, nonproductive
expenditure</b>, that has all but disappeared in both capitalist
and state socialist modernity.</blockquote>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-65088789227053355042012-07-05T00:38:00.000-04:002012-07-05T01:00:04.474-04:00For Spain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/user/20/spain_finance_ap_img.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/user/20/spain_finance_ap_img.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
From <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/168716/deepening-spanish-debt-crisis#">The Nation</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Seville</i><br />
<br />
The early June performance by the Sevillian flamenco anti-bank protest
group FLO6x8 was a direct hit. Days after the announcement of a $23
billion public bailout of Spain’s third-biggest bank, Bankia, three
cantaora singers strode into the city center office of the bank and <a href="http://flo6x8.com/acciones/28-las-primas-por-las-nubes">began to bellow out</a> the purest, full-lunged <i>cante jondo</i>,
songs of grief, pain and protest of the Andalusian gypsies. Customers
looked on, surprised, then impressed. Security guards fidgeted
nervously. One singer, nicknamed Prima del Riesgo (Risk Premium, a term
on every Spaniard’s lips, as the spread on Spanish bonds rises to
unsustainable heights), pushed open the door to the bank manager’s
office. “Goirigolzarri! Tell us!” she sang, gesturing with her hands as
if money were flowing through her fingers. “Why did you retire? With all
the money you’ve spent, we could feed the world.” This was a reference
to the new Bankia CEO José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, brought out of early
retirement at 55 (on a pension of 3 million euros per year) to manage
the biggest government bailout of a bank in Spanish history. </blockquote>
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<br />
From Federico Garcia Lorca, "Theory and Method of the Duende": <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Pastora Pavon finished
singing in the midst of total silence. There
was only a little man, one of those dancing
mannikins who leap suddenly out of brandy
bottles, who observed sarcastically in a
very low voice: "Viva Paris!" As
if to say: We are not interested in aptitude
or techniques or virtuosity here. We are
interested in something else.<br />
<br />
Then <span style="font-size: small;"><span class="" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="La niña de los Peines y Federico García Lorca">La niña de los peines</span></span> got up like a woman possessed, her face blasted
like a medieval weeper, tossed off a great
glass of Cazalla at a single draught, like
a potion of fire, and settled down to singing
- without a voice, without breath, without
nuance, throat aflame - but with duende!
She had contrived to annihilate all that
was nonessential in song and make way for
an angry and incandescent Duende, friend
of sand- laden winds, so that everyone listening
tore at his clothing almost in the same rhythm
with which the West Indian negroes in their
rites rend away their clothes, huddled in
heaps before the image of Saint Barbara.<br />
<br />
The "Girl with the Combs" had to
mangle her voice because she knew there were
discriminating folk about who asked not for
form, but for the marrow of form - pure music
spare enough to keep itself in the air. She
had to deny her faculties and her security;
that is to say, to turn out her Muse and
keep vulnerable, so that her Duende might
come and vouchsafe the hand-to-hand struggle.
And then how she sang! Her voice feinted
no longer; it jetted up like blood, ennobled
by sorrow and sincerity, it opened up like
ten fingers of a hand around the nailed feet
of a Christ by Juan de Juni - tempestuous!</div>
</blockquote>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/t5mcWHyDeHU" width="420"></iframe> <br />
<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The arrival of the Duende always presupposes
a radical change in all the forms as they
existed on the old plane. It gives a sense
of refreshment unknown until then, together
with that quality of the just-opening rose,
of the miraculous, which comes and instils
an almost religious transport.<br />
<br />
In all Arabian music, in the dances, songs,
elegies of Arabia, the coming of the Duende
is greeted by fervent outcries of Allah!
Allah! God! God!, so close to the Olé"
Olé! of our bull rings that who is to say
they are not actually the same . . . </div>
</blockquote>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mjQ3jQtFu-k" width="420"></iframe> <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><b>In every country, death comes as a finality.
It comes, and the curtain comes down. But
not in Spain! In Spain the curtain goes up.
Many people live out their lives between
walls until the day they die and are brought
out into the sun. </b></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Capa,_Death_of_a_Loyalist_Soldier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Capa,_Death_of_a_Loyalist_Soldier.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
From George Orwell, <i>Homage to Catalonia</i>: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">The
Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution
was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the
beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the
revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England
the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It
was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working
class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been
seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and
black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer
and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. . . .<br />Except for a
small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed'
people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or
blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was
queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in
some ways I did not even like it, but <span style="font-weight: bold;">I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for</span>. . . .</span> </blockquote>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-61685230096491177442012-07-03T14:07:00.003-04:002012-07-03T14:11:49.461-04:00Oh Don't Ask Why -- more questions<b>Isn't the main problem unemployment? How would international work stoppages and strikes create more jobs?</b><br />
<br />
The exploitation of workers and unemployment go hand in hand. While the powers that be are continually lamenting the unemployment situation, it is actually in their interest to keep unemployment high. Which is why "austerity" is a euphemism for <i>both </i>low wages and massive layoffs. The more unemployment, the more competition among workers, thus the less influence the workers themselves will have over their jobs and their pay. Employed workers thus have an incentive to strike not only for living wages and decent conditions, but also to send a message that additional firings and layoffs are not acceptable. Moreover, since many among the employed are now being forced to work ever harder, at longer hours (in the interests of "productivity"), improved working conditions at fewer hours (thus lowering "productivity") will incentivize corporations to hire more workers.<br />
<br />
More generally, the notion that <i>jobs </i>are what is needed, rather than a decent, rewarding way of life for all, is in itself a perversion, more smoke and mirrors intended to confuse working people regarding their own needs and desires. No one needs a "job." What is needed is a meaningful and rewarding lifestyle. Most people are willing to work, and even work hard, in order to achieve such a lifestyle, but work (aka a "job") has never been an end in itself for anyone. The responsibility of government, i.e., society as a whole, is to work to ensure a meaningful and rewarding life for all those willing to make the effort to cooperate in the realization of such a goal. The key, therefore, is not work per se, but cooperation. If there are not enough "jobs," then there are certainly more than enough ways for people to contribute meaningfully to the society in which they live. Not everything need be measured in terms of work hours and money.<br />
<br />
<b>If we are to improve the lot of all people, by fighting for living wages and better working conditions, resisting the push for austerity, growth, productivity, and placing less emphasis on "jobs" per se in favor of a meaningful lifestyle, where is the money going to come from to pay for all this?</b><br />
<br />
We are living in an era of vast wealth, probably more than at any time in history. A recent issue of <a href="http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#p_1_s_a0_All%20industries_All%20countries_All%20states_">Forbes </a>magazine lists all billionaires now living, 10 per page, with 123 pages total -- 1,230<b> </b>in all<b>. </b>Highest on the list is Carlos Slim, who alone possesses 69 billion, more than the entire Lithuanian GDP. According to the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/22/u-s-has-record-number-of-millionaires/">Wall St. Journal</a>, the USA alone had 3,100,000 millionaires in 2010. There is more than enough money to cover the costs of an improved way of life for every man, woman and child in the world, but that money will not be made available for that purpose, unless those who control this vast wealth can be persuaded it is in their own interest to do so. In my opinion it is. But it will take some drastic measures to convince them, that's for sure.<br />
<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-2447540113758509572012-07-02T10:28:00.000-04:002012-07-02T11:04:36.248-04:00Oh Don't Ask WhyNo doubt the last few posts have raised a lot of questions. I'll try to answer some of them here:<br />
<br />
<b>Given the current fragility of the Euro zone, isn't there a risk that a European work stoppage could cause the Euro to collapse?</b><br />
<br />
Yes. Of course. That would be the point -- to bring it down, to force it to collapse. Why not? It's going to collapse anyhow, of its own weight. But the longer that takes, the harder it's going to be for workers throughout the zone. And every indication is that the leaders, who are after all part of the 1%, are going to draw out the painful process indefinitely. A Europe-wide united labor action would force the issue, thus freeing workers from the grip of an increasingly intolerable "austerity."<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>How can workers organize on a worldwide basis when the cost of labor varies so greatly from one part of the world to the other?</b><br />
<br />
Yes, third world labor costs far less than first world labor, and as a result European and American workers are finding it more and more difficult to compete with Asiatic, Middle Eastern and African workers -- which makes both groups increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by globally based corporations. If we look more closely, however, we will see that the differences are not as great as they may seem. While American workers earn far more in US dollars than Asiatic workers, Asiatic workers can buy a whole lot more with each dollar (or its equivalent) than Americans.<br />
<br />
Thus, Chinese workers, for example, have a far greater savings rate, a high level of home ownership, and far less mortgage debt. In fact they have very little <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/">debt </a>at all. I'm not saying they have as much spending power as US workers, because most Chinese still earn less than we do, and have far fewer choices as consumers. Nevertheless, the income discrepancy is not as high as it might seem. What makes them so competitive with US or European workers is the largely the discrepancy in the value of the Chinese currency compared with the dollar, euro or pound.<br />
<br />
So in principle the competition isn't really that great. It's largely the result of distortions introduced by a monetary system that favors "cheap" Asiatic labor and gives a huge advantage to large corporations capable of moving their operations anywhere in the world. The monetary system and the corporations work in tandem as part of a process through which all workers are exploited. So the goal of a united world workforce is to promote the collapse of that system, not cooperate in (futile) efforts to delay its (in any case inevitable) collapse. Once it collapses, a more logical and equible economic system, based on the production and distribution of resources, will be possible.<br />
<br />
(more later)DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-59807936037017215882012-06-30T10:15:00.000-04:002012-06-30T10:15:21.205-04:00Ritual of PurificationI visited Mexico City in 1997, and was immediately robbed, at the very impressive new bus terminal, almost as soon as I arrived. (The first-class bus I traveled in was excellent, state of the art, with air conditioning -- unusual at the time even on US buses -- and even a movie, just like on a plane.) While visiting with a friend, I noticed that all the streets in his neighborhood had gates, manned by security guards. This wasn't simply a "gated community," but an ordinary middle class neighborhood. Every single street was gated, as were many such streets in many other neighborhoods throughout the city. I'd never seen anything like it before, but for my friend it was, of course, nothing special.<br />
<br />
Overall, Mexico City impressed me. Much of it is very beautiful. I visited the University, the art museum and also a special museum devoted to the work of one of my favorite artists, David Siqueiros. And at my request, my friend and his father took me on an outing to Teotihuacan, one of the most spectacular ancient cities in the world. <br />
<br />
Though I enjoyed my stay in Mexico City, I couldn't help but notice the many signs of truly dire poverty visible all around me. What struck me especially were the large number of what appeared to be homeless boys roaming around the streets. I became fascinated by a group of boys working as windshield washers, a mode of "employment" one step removed from outright begging. I'd seen this sort of thing before in New York City, but never on this scale. What impressed me especially was the diligence of these boys, and the relation between them and the drivers. Unlike New York, they never forced themselves on anyone, never began to wash a windshield without a signal from the driver.<br />
<br />
This phenomenon deeply moved me. There was something very touching about the care these boys took to clean each windshield as carefully as possible, and something touching as well about the indulgence of the drivers and their patience with the boys. In New York, drivers are typically irritated when someone with a rag comes up to their car, but in Mexico the situation was very different, possibly because poverty was already so much of a fixture of everyday life that no one was any more bothered by it.<br />
<br />
I was moved but also deeply disturbed. On the surface, there was something truly beautiful about it, almost like a ritual, but when I tried to project myself into the mind of one of these boys, continually repeating the same delicate task over and over again for hours on end, it was almost impossible to imagine. On the one hand, there was something Zenlike about it, a form of meditation. On the other hand, it was imprisonment or even torture, a kind of self-flagellation.<br />
<br />
Obsessed by images I couldn't get out of my head, I decided to write about it, or more accurately, write my way through it, by producing a kind of poetic incantation. As I began to write what struck me was that, on the one hand, I was creating something almost like an avant-garde prose poem, a kind of minimalist poetry I suppose, but on the other hand, I was reporting as accurately as I could exactly what I had observed. I began with the intention of making this go on for many pages, to convey as real a sense as possible of what these boys experienced day in day out, just to survive. But I didn't get very far. Just writing it was too difficult, so imagine what living it was like. Here's as much as I had the courage to do:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The boy waited patiently for a sign. When the sign came, he lifted the bottle and sprayed. A soapy liquid appeared on the glass. The boy lifted his squeegee and patiently skimmed the soapy liquid off the glass. Patiently he held out his hand for the coin. When the coin appeared he tucked it into his pocket and said “gracias” and waited patiently for another sign. The sign came, but this time from the other side of the street. Traffic was heavy so he had to move quickly. Upon reaching the auto, he lifted his bottle and sprayed the soapy liquid onto the glass. Patiently he lifted the squeegee and skimmed the soapy liquid from the surface of the glass. When he was done, he held out his hand for the coin. But it slipped from his hand and he had to dive down between two cars to retrieve it. The light changed. Traffic began to move. He found the coin and quickly thrust it into his pocket. Patiently he waited for the light to change. A woman signaled him from a red convertible. She smiled. He smiled back at her, then lifted the bottle patiently and sprayed a soapy liquid onto her windshield. Then, lifting his squeegee, he skimmed the liquid from the glass, smiled again and held out his hand. She smiled and handed him two coins. She was pleased. He said “gracias” and smiled again, tucking the coins into his pocket.
Then he patiently waited for another sign. But the light had changed and the cars were moving. Quickly he slipped out of their way, looking down the line of traffic for another sign.
</blockquote>
Imagine repeating this same thing over and over again, with all the many variations the boy would encounter during a long day's work. Imagine writing it, but more important, imagine living it. Day after day after day for an entire childhood.<br />
<br />
I forgot all about the boys, and my truncated "poem," until recently when reading for the umpteenth time about the so-called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War">Mexican drug wars</a>, and it suddenly occurred to me: where are all these boys now and what are they doing? I wonder how many survived, and if so, how. When poverty of this depth and on this scale is accepted simply as a fact of life and <i>nothing </i>is done to alleviate it, then it seems to me this is going to have consequences for society as a whole. We see it now in Mexico and I see it coming in the USA. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVtu49Yn4kHkKmHcHNXR4Z9Susn0UH3Jvnv-b_2VfQVFWor8IKlT51AZJJlIzq8a_yg4WzFWx7r6bmJbSUNOvUByCJpZs4WIg37ExUGHAxq4N3D4-nR4Q_L6Cil0ZTVAwJOTzi3yzNAC8/s1600/david-alfaro-siqueiros-the-echo-of-the-scream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVtu49Yn4kHkKmHcHNXR4Z9Susn0UH3Jvnv-b_2VfQVFWor8IKlT51AZJJlIzq8a_yg4WzFWx7r6bmJbSUNOvUByCJpZs4WIg37ExUGHAxq4N3D4-nR4Q_L6Cil0ZTVAwJOTzi3yzNAC8/s640/david-alfaro-siqueiros-the-echo-of-the-scream.jpg" width="404" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
David Alfaro Siqueiros -- <i>Echo of the Scream</i></div>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-37692402455852887912012-06-29T15:23:00.001-04:002012-06-29T15:26:55.415-04:00Acting from a Position of StrengthI just now posted the following on the <a href="http://occupywallst.org/forum/acting-from-a-positon-of-strength/">Occupy Wall St. forum</a>. Since it's based on what I've been writing on this blog, I decided to post it here as well:<br />
<br />
Occupy Wall St. has done a great job of mobilizing support worldwide,
especially among the young, and making the world aware of the
debilitating effects of inequality on the social fabric. Unfortunately,
the powers that be (i.e., the oligarchs, plutocrats and the politicians
controlled by them) are not about to relinquish any fraction of their
power simply because a bunch of latter day "hippies" is upset.<br />
<br />
I learned myself, from bitter experience during the 60's and 70's,
that you can shame, blame and embarrass the ruling class as much as you
like, but that in itself will not have much of an effect on their
actions.<br />
<br />
If the impetus behind OWS seems now to be a bit stalled, it may well
be due to the sad reality that the 1% see no reason to either share any
of their wealth or give up any of their power, even in the face of
massive protests and embarrassing media exposure. Nor is it likely that
more aggressive, or even violent actions will make any real difference.
Despite the fact that they are hugely outnumbered by the 99%, their
power, economic, political, and military, is far greater than that of
all of us combined -- many times over, in fact.<br />
<br />
Was it Sun Tzu who wrote, in The Art of War, "never attack from a
position of weakness"? From years of bitter experience I know that to be
true. Which does not mean I lost my battles. Only that I chose them
carefully, and learned to act only from a position of strength.<br />
<br />
So. The question now is: how would it be possible for the 99% to act
from a position of strength rather than weakness? My answer: there is
only one force in the world, as far as I can tell, powerful enough to
stand up against the forces of greed, manipulation and exploitation, and
that is, very simply, the workers. The workers of the world, to coin a
phrase. Workers are the ultimate source of the wealth accumulated by the
oligarchy and also its secret vulnerability. It's only vulnerability,
as far as I can see.<br />
<br />
The workers of the world are a sleeping giant, though this is
something they seem blissfully unaware of, so we rarely hear from them
these days. They have been all too ready to accept the line handed out
to them, as today in Europe, that the so-called "economic crisis" is
largely their fault. They borrowed too much, demanded too many benefits,
high wages, pensions, their unions made too many demands.<br />
<br />
So now they are being called on to save "the world as we know it" by
accepting "austerity," a euphemism for crushing exploitation. And this
is true also not only for Europe but the entire world, the Americas,
Asia, Africa, the Middle East, everywhere. The world over, workers are
being duped into competing with one another for crumbs.<br />
<br />
If these workers could manage to organize, just as the great labor
unions organized early in the 20th Century, they would be capable of
acting from a position of strength that could rock the world -- and in
fact save the powers that be from themselves, since as should be clear,
despite all their frantic efforts, their precious "economy" is on a
downward spiral into the pit.DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-80546170311226746862012-06-28T09:28:00.003-04:002012-07-03T13:13:03.844-04:00A Day of RestTo summarize: The ultimate cause of the present crisis is not out-of-control borrowing, manipulative and dishonest lending, the US Federal Reserve, the bankers, the hedge funds, the housing bubble, the Euro, etc., though all were and still are contributing factors. The ultimate cause is the overdoing-it of the capitalist "free" market system in its efforts to maximize profits at the expense of workers by opening up a global labor market and thus instituting ruthless competition among workers from different regions of the world with very different modes of compensation. If that sounds confusing, I suggest reading it again, slowly.<br />
<br />
Of course the problem is very different depending on which side of the economic divide one is viewing it from. From the viewpoint of the workers, the situation is not all that new, because they have always been squeezed by their bosses -- what is new is the degree to which they are being squeezed, which is rapidly becoming intolerable. When it reaches the breaking point, which it will very soon, then there will no longer be any incentive to work at all. Better to just chuck that hairnet and go back to the farm.<br />
<br />
From the viewpoint of the capitalists, however, which is, of course, the only one we ever hear about, what's really important is that, thanks to their excesses in squeezing the last drop of blood from their employees in every corner of the world, they have themselves sown the seeds of their own destruction. Because workers are also consumers, and when consumers are squeezed dry, markets are squeezed dry, and when that happens, then out-of-control borrowing becomes the last resort. And when out-of-control borrowing is no longer possible, the whole system grinds to a halt.<br />
<br />
Is it really that simple? I think so. But the capitalists, aided and abetted by the politicians and the media, are unwilling to admit, either to the world at large or even themselves, that the exploitation of workers is the cause of their own downfall, which is why we are hearing so much about borrowing, lending, banking, bubbles and Euros and literally nothing about the role of the working class and its plight. Unable to grasp the root cause of the crisis, the capitalists and their cronies are attempting to solve the problem by doing more of what they have always done: squeeze squeeze squeeze the working class, which presumably has no alternative but to blindly obey. This is true, by the way, not only for those demanding "austerity," but also those pleading for "growth." In either case, the burden will be on the backs of labor.<br />
<br />
There <i>is </i>an alternative, however. Which takes us to where I left off in the previous post: "And what can they do to liberate themselves -- and us? Why, what they have always done . . ."<br />
<br />
Were you able to fill in the blank? The answer is: <i>organize</i>. And really the best name for the specter currently haunting Europe is not simply "the workers of the world," as I so thoughtlessly stated, but more to the point: <i>organized labor</i>.<br />
<br />
The only group that's remained passive throughout this whole fiasco is labor. Not surprising, since ever since the Reagan-Thatcher era, labor and unions have become dirty words, to the point we've arrived at today, where no one, even so-called progressives, wants to talk any more about the "working class." We have all now officially become "middle class." Well, congratulations, folks, you have moved up in the world. How does that make you feel?<br />
<br />
Occupy Wall St. seems to have fizzled. The upcoming elections in the US don't hold much promise. I'll be voting for Obama and the rest of the Democratic ticket for sure, but only because the alternative is too scary to contemplate. I've heard talk about forming a new political party, an <a href="http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2012/05/a-way-forward-a-modest-proposal/">international party</a>, which might, over time, develop some influence on the various national agendas, but that would take far too much time to develop, assuming it could work at all.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, an effort to organize workers on an international scale might be far less difficult and far less time consuming than it might seem. In fact the time seems ripe for it. We are living in the age of the Internet, after all. I would venture to say that there is hardly any industrial worker anywhere in the world without an Internet connection, either of his/her own or that of a friend,. Similarly, I have a feeling that the English language is now sufficiently widespread that communications in this language could be almost universally understood. Anyone who doesn't understand English is almost sure to have a friend, or child, who does.<br />
<br />
Where to begin? I think a general one-day work stoppage could be very effective, especially if it were international. Certainly a general "day of rest" honored by a significant portion of the European workforce might make a very effective start, a shot across the bow. I'd like to say we could include American workers, but the full brunt of the crisis is not yet being felt as acutely in the USA as it is elsewhere, so there might not be much of a response. And Chinese workers might be too easily intimidated to respond, I'm not sure.The one-day stoppage could then be followed by longer stoppages, with the ultimate threat of a complete shutdown by all workers everywhere. <br />
<br />
In the past, it might take months or years to organize actions of this sort, but the Internet makes it possible to organize very quickly, within a week or so I would think, given an efficient organizational base. Who would do the organizing? Well, OWS may have fizzled, but the people behind it are still around. And judging from their success in organizing all those rather spectacular actions last year, I would think these folks would be ideal. Assuming they are motivated to take this sort of action. I wonder . . .<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-4568941240902326482012-06-27T16:45:00.000-04:002012-07-03T11:47:14.263-04:00A Specter is Haunting Europe (Oh, you know why)No, not THAT specter. And not only in Europe. Read on and you'll see what I mean.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, before I continue, I want to make it perfectly clear (to quote an old adage) that I am NOT interested in hatching a new conspiracy theory. I am not saying the 1% or .1% or .01% got together and conspired to concoct some clever scheme to force impoverished workers into ruthlessly competing with one another by blowing a financial bubble so huge as to ensure the complete and total collapse of the world economy unless we all agreed to impoverish ourselves through the institution of appropriately harsh austerity measures. For one thing, they aren't smart enough. For another, they don't think like that, because they don't have to think like that. They have better things to think about, such as finding the next whiskey bar -- or the next little dollar -- or the next luxury hotel:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/X4IzqG7oP18" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
They don't <i>need </i>to plan a conspiracy because the "system" does the planning for them. And by "system" I mean, you know, that wonderful system of "free" market capitalism we all love so dearly.<br />
<br />
Also, before I continue, I would like to take back what I wrote earlier about economists who love to explain more than they like to think, because I just discovered a thinking economist, just today, by coincidence, God bless me. More on that presently as well.<br />
<br />
Oh and one more thing before I really get started, let's take a look at a fascinating graph, courtesy of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-profits-just-hit-an-all-time-high-wages-just-hit-an-all-time-low-2012-6">Business Insider </a>(June 22): <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Corporate Profit Margins as a Percentage of GDP: </div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://static7.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807feab8eaca7f00000c-960/corporate-profits-as-percent-of-gdp.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://static7.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807feab8eaca7f00000c-960/corporate-profits-as-percent-of-gdp.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Here's another, from the same source:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Wages, as a Percentage of GDP: </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807e69bedd095c000005-960/wages-to-gdp.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807e69bedd095c000005-960/wages-to-gdp.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The headline, appropriately enough, reads: <br />
<h1>
<span style="font-size: large;">Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low</span></h1>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
This from a <i>business </i>publication.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
OK, now finally I'm ready to continue from where I left off in my last post. But first, I need to correct what I just wrote, because, according to the thinking economist I referred to above, there <i>was </i>a conspiracy after all. Who is this thinking economist? Greg Palast. And who is the villain who concocted the conspiracy? A guy named Robert Mundell. In an article in yesterday's Guardian, Palast accuses Mundell of being the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/26/robert-mundell-evil-genius-euro?INTCMP=SRCH">evil genius of the euro:</a> </div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
The idea that the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/euro" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Euro">euro</a>
has "failed" is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its
progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and
planned for it to do. . . </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
That progenitor is former University of Chicago economist <a href="http://robertmundell.net/biography/">Robert Mundell</a> . . . [t]he architect of "supply-side economics" . . . </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
[Mundell] cited labor laws, environmental regulations and, of course, taxes.
All would be flushed away by the euro. Democracy would not be allowed to
interfere with the marketplace . . .</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
And when crises arise, [according to Mundell] economically disarmed nations have little to do
but wipe away government regulations wholesale, privatize state
industries en masse, slash taxes and send the European welfare state
down the drain.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
[Thus,] Mario Draghi, the (unelected) head of the European Central Bank,
is calling for "structural reforms" – a euphemism for worker-crushing
schemes. They cite the nebulous theory that this "internal devaluation"
of each nation will make them all more competitive. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
Monti and
Draghi cannot credibly explain how, if every country in the Continent
cheapens its workforce, any can gain a competitive advantage. But
they don't have to explain their policies; they just have to let the
markets go to work on each nation's bonds. Hence, currency union is
class war by other means. </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
So. It's nice to learn I'm not the only one. A bona fide economist with real credentials is saying more or less the same thing. But what I'm not yet hearing, from him or anyone else, is any idea of what to do about this disturbing and disheartening situation.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
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Occupy Wall St. did its bit, and I supported them. But now they've run out of steam and little wonder. If their sort of passive resistance isn't the answer, then what about outright armed rebellion? Sorry, that won't work either. With respect to any conflict, it is always better to avoid attacking from a position of weakness, best to attack only from a position of strength. That's how the Vietnamese beat us back in the 70's and it holds true today. We aren't armed, and even if we were, the powers that be are far too powerful for armed rebellion to achieve any real and lasting success. Look at what's happening now in Syria, or even what happened in Egypt, when what looked like victory was turned into defeat, because the real powers in that country, the oligarchs and plutocrats, have the army on their side. Why not, they pay it well.</div>
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Besides, armed rebellion is always a bad idea, imo, not only when it's futile, because even when it succeeds, too many innocent people get hurt or killed and there are too many things that could go wrong, too many chances for the cause to be betrayed or co-opted.</div>
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So, what is to be done? Well, before I answer (I <i>always </i>have an answer), I have to fulfill my promise and explain what I mean by the title of this post. What is the "Specter That is Haunting Europe" (and not only Europe)? The unknown, unsung, routinely ignored, denigrated, chronically underestimated workers of the world. And what can they do to liberate themselves -- and us? Why, what they have always done . . . </div>
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(to be continued)</div>
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<br /></div>DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-58271628396879196992012-06-26T15:53:00.000-04:002012-06-26T15:58:13.515-04:00Workers of the World . . . (oh, you know)Economists the wide world over are turning themselves inside out trying to explain what's going on. It would be nice if they tried to understand it first. Sure, everyone, poor folk, rich folk, banks, investors, cities, states, whole nations, borrowed much too much, often on outrageously manipulative terms -- and now the debts have multiplied to the point that they can never be repaid. Sounds simple enough. Only no one ever seems interested in figuring out why it was necessary for all these people and all these institutions to borrow so much in the first place. <br />
<br />
I've already tried to explain it by using a single word: "immigration." But of course this too is misleading, because the immigration I've been writing about, both literal and figurative, isn't the root cause either. And "immigration" is now a politically charged term, with all sorts of ideological resonances that have little or nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make.<br />
<br />
So let's dig a little deeper. What we see time after time in literally all the reports and all the analyses coming from literally all points (though at the moment Europe has become the focus) is over and over again the same idea, expressed in a variety of ways, but always with the same (unstated) meaning: words like "austerity," "growth," "productivity," "competitiveness," phrases such as "budgetary discipline," "moral hazard," "growth-enhancing reforms," "market reform," pretty much any call for "reform," reform this, reform that.<br />
<br />
When we look more closely and more critically at all these terms, pushing aside the fog of obfuscation, what all the rigmarole amounts to can be encapsulated in the following question: how can we squeeze the absolute maximum amount of blood from our workers at the least possible cost without them figuring out what's really going on?<br />
<br />
The root cause of the so-called "economic crisis" was neither banking nor the Euro nor monetary policy, nor fiscal policy, nor the Fed, nor Goldman Sachs, nor J. P. Morgan Chase, etc. (though all the above contributed mightily to the depressing outcome), but the relentless ratcheting up of that age-old resource of the wealthy and privileged: the ruthless and relentless exploitation of labor. Only this time, vast new resources became available via the economic miracle known as "globalization." Capitalism has always had a hard time with competition, which is why so many companies collude with one another to fix prices and control markets -- but competition among workers, why that's another thing, no problem there. The more competition along those lines the merrier. So when all sorts of fresh "human resources," from the remotest corners of the globe became available for exploitation, what better way to exploit them then to force them to compete.<br />
<br />
The only problem was that workers are also consumers, so by cutting worker pay to the max, the oligarchs were depriving them of the ability to purchase goods and services. How could manufacturers, home builders, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, universities, investment houses, entrepreneurs, banks, etc., survive without a steady stream of purchases and investments from the very workers whose paychecks were being steadily eroded? Then suddenly out of the blue, a brilliant "innovation" emerged in the form of: easy credit. Let them borrow what we need for them to have so they can pay us through the nose even when they can't afford it (because we've shaved their incomes down to practically nothing).<br />
<br />
Thus was born the magical housing market, where ordinary people at all income levels were persuaded that they could afford a mortgage because the value of their house could only go up up up. And for a while, it all worked marvelously. Until the bubble burst and those values started going down down down.<br />
<br />
The oligarchs have overdone it. And now they are in trouble because the world financial system on which they depend is about to collapse thanks to all those bad loans, based on their absurd attempt to milk their victims at both ends. And the only solution they can think of is: austerity, aka "productivity," aka labor reform, market reform, employer "flexibility," etc. And what it amounts to is the squeezing of the labor force far beyond anything ever attempted before. And lo and behold: they are buying it! The workers of the world are buying it. They've been convinced that this is the only way to go and that they have no other recourse, because the only alternative would be the collapse of this mythical beast they've been taught to revere: the <i>economy</i>.<br />
<br />
(to be continued . . . )<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-84690066545960196652012-06-25T22:57:00.001-04:002012-06-25T22:59:05.786-04:00Interlude<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5iAIM02kv0g" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Nzudto-FA5Y" width="420"></iframe> <br />
<br />
<b>"Which Side Are You On?"</b><br />
<br />
by Florence Reece<br />
<br />
Come all you good workers<br />
Good news to you I'll tell<br />
Of how the good old union<br />
Has come in here to dwell <br />
<br />
Which side are you on boys? <br />
Which side are you on? <br />
<br />
My daddy was a miner<br />
He's now in the air and sun<br />
He'll be with you fellow workers<br />
Until the battle's won <br />
<br />
Which side are you on boys? <br />
Which side are you on? <br />
<br />
They say in Harlan County<br />
There are no neutrals there<br />
You'll either be a union man<br />
Or a thug for J. H. Claire <br />
<br />
Which side are you on boys? <br />
Which side are you on? <br />
<br />
Oh workers can you stand it? <br />
Oh tell me how you can<br />
Will you be a lousy scab<br />
Or will you be a man? <br />
<br />
Which side are you on boys? <br />
Which side are you on? <br />
<br />
Don't scab for the bosses<br />
Don't listen to their lies<br />
Poor folks ain't got a chance<br />
Unless they organize <br />
<br />
Which side are you on boys? <br />
Which side are you on?DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514715167862692613.post-68554460796931432352012-06-25T17:39:00.001-04:002012-06-25T17:46:26.768-04:00It's the Workers, StupidNo, it's NOT the "economy," stupid. I'm not even sure what that word means. Huike asked Bodhidharma to pacify his mind, to which the great sage replied: "Bring me your mind and I will pacify it." By the same token, we might ask all those wishing to save "the economy" to first tell us what it is, and where it is, so we can go there and rescue it. As I wrote in an earlier post, with respect to the Euro zone, "the whole dog and pony show of recapitalization, austerity, growth,
default, EFSF, ESB, TARGET 1, TARGET 2, etc., etc. is nothing but a huge
misdirection, intended to confuse the workers of the world as to the
true nature of what is taking place."<br />
<br />
The liberal version of this charade: A bunch of greedy bankers decided to make loads of money by foisting questionable mortgages on naive victims who couldn't afford them. One thing led to another, a huge financial bubble formed, which then inevitably burst, threatening the world "economy." The conservative version: a bunch of do-gooder liberals decided that all citizens, regardless of whether they could afford it or not, should own their own home, and then pressured the banks to make "low interest" mortgages available to them. When, inevitably, they started to default on these loans, the whole banking system tanked, due, "naturally" to government interference.<br />
<br />
On the European front, the most popular version goes like this: a bunch of European politicians cynically decided to garner votes by instituting "welfare states," hiring lazy bureaucrats, offering outsized pensions, and generally cow-towing to the unions. When it became clear that all the "entitlements," along with union demands were unaffordable, they decided to borrow their way out of their problem, and when these loans ultimately had to be repaid, an "economic" crisis developed.<br />
<br />
In my opinion, all of the above interpretations are "correct," while at the same time not only completely off base but oddly deceptive. The real problem at the heart of this fiasco is the one thing no one wants to talk about: an old old story -- the exploitation of the working class.<br />
<br />
"What," you ask? "Working class? What's that? Gee, I thought we were all middle class."<br />
<br />
(more next time)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DocGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.com0