Climate Reality

It is an interesting interview, but I can not agree with you, or your guest for that matter. Count me as a skeptic. It may be an objective fact that the planet has warmed in the recent past, or even that some warming is now continuing. The question is whether this is a natural, or man made process. Skeptics say it is most likely natural. Skeptics say that the warming may be a recovery from cooling in a relatively recent past. Skeptics say that 1000 years ago temperatures were equally as high as they are today. The alarmists are claiming that present times are unique, and recent developments show they may have been massaging the data to make it look so. Skeptics also say, that if you calibrate relatively primitive models, which have co2-water vapor positive feedback loop, under an assumption that all of recent warming is man made, you get unrealistic warming in the future, which will not happen in reality. Your guest may be right, that **if** current warming trend continues, oceans will rise and cause damage to coastal habitation. But the trend may not continue. Changes in climate occur on timescales that exceed human lifespan, and one can easily make erroneous catastrophic predictions by extrapolating a trend that will not continue.

Skeptics say, finally, that if all or part of the warming is a natural fluctuation of the climate system, there is at least one driving force of that system that we do not understand, and models that do not have this missing element are entirely useless.

We had quiescent sun for couple of years now. Should this trend continue for couple of decades, we will get another data point as far as influence of the sun on the climate system is concerned. I personally hope not, because last time the sun was quiescent for extended period of time, the cooling period was pretty traumatic for human civilization, at least in the northern hemisphere.

We should observe, learn more, and adapt. The state of science does not warrant the great economic upheaval that is being advocated for in Copenhagen.

geez george

its becoming a foundation fest. i mean really...have you read any of the leaked emails and pdf docs?http://www.climate-gate.org/ for crying out loud...have you no shame. do you think your listeners vibrate at such a low frequency that you can pass this swill to us without a response?

Congratulations, George! EP is starting to get nasty bumpersticker trolls such as connie.

You've made it! :-)

[She's well intentioned. Connie's been around here for quite some time. But this is exactly what I mean about the harmful effects of people such as Alex Cockburn giving legitimacy to climate skepticism. g.]

Hi George,

I enjoyed listening to your interview of Orrin Pilkey and think that it's a good idea to occasionally consider what's actually happening to our environment as a consequence of human stupidity. Of course, we know that the shrewd crooks have cornered the markets in the oil and coal businesses and that the consequences of such conquests have been a rapid depletion of important natural resources for no particularly good end.

Surely, there have been historically significant fluctuations in temperature, sea levels, tectonic plate movements of various magnitudes. However, there is little doubt that the exploitation of fossil fuels has made a discernible contribution to the contamination of the earth's atmosphere over the past 100-200 years. From a simplistic point of view, one might surmise that an awful lot of resources are daily converted from a rich mixture of hydrocarbons to CO2 for no particularly good purpose. Furthermore, the deterioration of government as a result of the political influence of the wealthy owners of the oil, gas, coal, etc. have contributed to a pimp-class of politicians who do nothing other than facilitate further contamination of the atmosphere.

For a fine example of the unhealthy nature of the air in major metropolitan areas, one only has to live in one such area in the state of TX (as I recently did for over 10 years); there is virtually no way to get the regulatory commission of TX to act in a manner to protect average citizens of that state. (To the best of my knowledge, the EPA is ineffective in TX.) An argument that the climate change which is clearly observable in the polar and mountainous areas of earth may, in part, reflect consequences other than those which are man-made may be theoretically correct (we will have to wait quite a while to know). However, it has already been convincingly demonstrated that recovery and consumption of fossil fuels has caused extensive damage to the environment; damage which is so great that even attempted recovery efforts may be too expensive and/or ineffective to justify.

There are so many potentially positive and constructive ways to use fossil fuels other than to simply burn them to produce heat, it is unfortunate that we only seem to think they should be converted to CO2. It would be in the national interest to quit waging wars, facilitating the drug trade and focus this country's efforts on trying harder to popularize alternative approaches to recover utilizable energy. This is only one of the reasons why Dr Randall Mills' Blacklight Power efforts, as well as various photovoltaic- and wind-transduction research & developments, are so important for the future of the USA.

George, your show is very good and this episode I found much more agreeable than the NPR On Point coverage of climate-gate which was a bit condescending towards skeptics.

Here's the thing: if you are an environmentalist, naturally you'll be somewhat taken in by global warming, but there are some important questions going on. The coverage here on computer modeling was very significant. Orin agrees that this is overblown or uncertain.

I looked at this time lapse of arctic ice for the past 30 years. To a layman, it appears not particularly significant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j8SGs_gnFk

The real concern however in all of this is why is the UN so concerned about climate change, yet there are a host of other environment related problems that get ignored in comparison from toxic chemicals to GMO foods etc. The significance of this is also in this Cap and Trade thing which I heard on democracy now that Goldman Sachs is in favor of and that Al Gore would make some millions or billions off of cap and trade. Conspiracy theorists are saying that the UN wants to set up a carbon tax which is a move towards some sort of world govt. The thing about carbon being declared a dangerous waste seems to be that potentially farm animals, pets and so on could be considered things to be taxed and regulated. I am even wondering what would this mean to someone who has a wood stove or wants to build a campfire? If the result of this could be that corporations, banks and so on make money off of cap and trade and everyone else gets taxed or monitored and spied on to see if they are creating carbon, poor people get poorer and so on, that is what concerns me. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but judging by other global bodies such as IMF, World Bank, WTO, Nafta and so on. I have no real cause for optimism on that. My mother thinks that under our current scheme of industry only cap and trade can work, but I am not at all convinced it will do anything and I am suspicious that it's a big scam for reasons I just said.

Alex Jones says that oil companies actually favor cap and trade because it will help kill the coal companies which is their main competition. He says many things that on the surface sound crazy, but I have found often that when I look into these things, there is some truth to what he is saying, but I am not sure on that one thus far anyway. I have not looked into it.

I have been down to the outer banks on many surfing trips. I don't know that coastal erosion there could be due to just the fact that the outer banks is just a big sand bar with shifting sands, but I agree wholeheartedly that coastal development is a problem due to storm potentials and the like. I only recently became a skeptic after hearing about climate-gate, but I will have to research more on the claims of sea level rising. I heard that J. Holdren science czar made some exaggerated claim on sea levels.

[Thanks, Larz, for your comment. I agree, cap and trade is a terrible idea, pushed by people who want to scam society. Infinitely better would be a simple carbon tax. g.]

well intentioned bumpersticker troll....nice. if you liked derivatives, you're going to love carbon taxes.

[Connie, if you have the time you might like to read through this discussion at Slashdot — and ask yourself if you're really ready to believe that your opinions are likely better than peer reviewed science. Maybe they are, but regarding anthropogenic climate change I'm betting that they're not. g.]

Connie & George,

Great discussion from this morning:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/15/cap_trade_a_critical_look_at