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How Weather Influences Global Warming Opinions
An anonymous reader writes in with this story about how people's belief in climate change shifts with the temperature. "Last week's polar vortex weather event wasn't only hard on fingers, toes and heating bills. It also overpowered the ability of most people to make sound judgments about climate change, in the same way that heat waves do, according to a new study published in the Jan. 11 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers have known for some time that the acceptance of climate change depends on the day most people are asked. During unusually hot weather, people tend to accept global warming, and they swing against it during cold events."
It's all the same
"There's no global warming because I'm cold."
"There's no poverty because I'm rich."
"There's no racism because I'm white."
The very same logic is used to fashion correlation from coincidence the World over.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Global warming is exactly that- a global trend, not a local one. Locally, the effects have been most pronounced near the north pole, which is not exactly a place where many people live.
Global climate change seems to have resulted recently in a "warming" trend, but as we know from Al Gore's movie, if the North Atlantic current gets shut off we are in for a polar vortex on a much longer time scale.
I am not sure who coined the phrase "global warming"; is it a PR failure by the scientists involved or a reporting failure by the news media? To quote a well known meme: "why not both?"
Global warming propagandists would take any support — whether it comes from a heatwave-induced swing or real understanding of their theories.
Meanwhile, the inconvenient truth that those theories aren't really explaining the available facts , is explained only by lack of funding and failure to communicate...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
so just as N.America has its lowest temperatures for decades
Australia is doing some of its hottest with a rounded 50C for the first time last week
Monday -> 27C and the rest of the week's forecast is
Tuesday -> 43C
Wednesday -> 39C
Thursday -> 41C
Friday -> 40C
its all about extra energy making things more variable, but no single weather event can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change
During unusually hot weather, people tend to accept global warming, and they swing against it during cold events."
Of course they do because many people (most maybe) do not understand the difference between climate and weather. They have either a poor understanding or perhaps no concept at all that short term temperature fluctuations are merely data points in a longer term trend. It is just like how people overreact to a few worse than usual days in the stock market even though the long term trend for the overall market for the last 100 years has been upwards.
Weather = what is happening today
Climate = average weather over time
free the innocent stem cells
For a large area of the US, it was colder than normal in December
People turned up the heat (burning more natural gas and using more electricity
people drove their SUV's to work (instead of using a more efficient car, or walking
most linked pg. in history? http://www.globalresearch.ca/weather-warfare-beware-the-us-military-s-experiments-with-climatic-warfare/7561
This guy has the most informative debunking of BS on both sides of of the issue. His series of YouTube videos should be required viewing for policy makers and "armchair experts" alike.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Yes, facts and opinion can be manipulated. Nothing new. For example, auto, coal, and oil companies can create disinformation campaigns about traffic, pollution, accidents, and global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil#Funding_of_global_warming_disinformation_and_denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers#Fossil_fuel_and_chemical_industry_lobbying
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Call it what it is: Climate Change. Calling it global warming just skews the perspective and causes this problem. Of course someone who is not well versed on climate and climate change will say "global warming my ass, it's negative 40 out here!". Global warming by name alone implies warming, not cooling. Most of the general populace judges something they don't understand by name alone, unfortunately.
Please, show where this "sole end result being to hamstring legitmate businesses" is proven, I'd like to see it.
"A week ago it was so far below average temperatures here that even if the rest of the winter is normal we'll never make it up."
No, that is incorrect. Please don't make up your own data and then fail to show the data you made up to at least PRETEND you have proof of your claims.
"That destroys any global warming theories"
So CO2 isn't an absorber of IR because it's cold somewhere???
"Researchers have known for some time that the acceptance of climate change depends on the day most people are asked"
they are not entitled to be called people, since they have no brains.
All those articles really say is that the atmosphere may not be as sensitive to CO2 as previously thought.
Anyway, I really like this push for lower emissions. See, along with CO2, fossils fuels also emit CO, Nitrogen and Sulfur compounds, particulants, and a bunch of other nasty things that cause smog, acid rain and other things.
So, even IF Global Warming is a complete hoax created by a conspiracy of Illuminati Hippies, I welcome it so maybe, one day in my lifetime I can spend a Summer and enjoy the outdoors without coughing up my lungs.
That's why it should be called "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming".
Of course it confuses people. Why do you think the phrase "Climate change" keeps getting promoted now instead of "Global Warming"?
It take an analytical mind to understand the issues of climate change, and most people don't have one. Remember the 50% or more of your highschool classes that weren't all that into their coursework, and were striving for average? Those are the American public.
Also regarding Climatology in general: People don't remember that Climatology is statistical science, rather than a hard science. We have absolute solid mathematical and experimental proof of most things in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Modern Climatology is in its infancy and has very little proof and a whole lot of observation and statistics.
I find this ironic since the political AWG alarmism lobby deserves a lot of the blame for this. Remember the use of Hurricane Katrina splashed on Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" movie cover. And pretty much whenever there's a natural disaster you have AGW alarmists (not just trolling internet comments, but also occupying high places in government) stirring the pot some more.
Researchers have known for some time that the acceptance of climate change depends on the day most people are asked.
I don't doubt that this is true. I also don't doubt that the enthusiasm of researchers to jump on bandwagons follows the "weather patterns" of public funding availability. That's how Richard Lindzen of MIT describes it, and it seems to fit.
Its never night time because the sun is up right now. obviously
"There is no energy crisis because I can generate my own"
Right-wing, radical freedom and independence, states rights, end-of-the-world survavalists should be embracing generation of their own energy, if they are serious about independence from corporations, monopolies, etc. It's nearly impossible to create your own gas, but electricity is comparatively easy to generate.
The military is quite right-wing, but they are just practical when it comes to generating power.
https://www.google.com.br/search?q=solar+wind+power+site%3A.mil
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
And yet we are to believe things like Katrina and Sandy are evidence FOR Global Warming? Aren't those things just as much "weather" as the national cold streak (which, btw, I've heard Global Warming advocates cite as evidence FOR Global Warming)?
It seems that every "weather" event is trotted out as evidence FOR Global Warming by someone. According to the advocates, there appears to be no piece of evidence that can possibly be used against Global Warming, but it can all be used as evidence it is happening. Actions like this make the whole AGW movement seem more like a religion than science.
This study is exactly why people do not believe in global warming. If scientist get paid to do obvious studies like this, people who are not scientist say 'gee these scientists are not really soo smart. I could have told these scientists these obvious facts without conducting a 10 year multi-billion dollar scientific research study affiliated with Harvard or MIT. ' But scientist are doing it all the time. How many studies have been done to determine that people who live in sunny places are happier than people who are constantly baraged by freezing rain. People see this stuff, and they doubt the ability of scientists to understand and grasp complex ideas. They have a lot more faith in the scientific analysis of mylie cyrus's twerking affair, but the public can no longer put their blind faith in a group that conducts studies such as this. Then when the 'scientific facts' disagree with their own observations the field is ripe for controversy. Scientists have scietifically determined that Kimo dragons are not poisonous, and that steroids do not cause muscle growth. Both these casually obvious falsities have been proven scientific facts at various times. People just do not trust scientists anymore. If they would do real reasearch that might change. No longer are scientist trying to conduct research on particle physics, or genetics. Instead every single ground breaking scientific discovery in the last few year seems to have about some obvious peer reviewed study to determine something like drinking 5 gallons of diet soda a day for 20 years may (then again who knows) be bad for your long term health.
Never do scientist give you any data. It is all just a 15 second pronouncement from God on NPR or CBS that this blah blah blah is the new truth. You would have to be an idiot for putting your trust in people such as these.
The day that science depends on something as variable as human nature is the day you should give up hope for humanity's future. Oh wait...
Sorry, but none of that had anything to do with "the sun running in cycles", since solar output stayed pretty much the same throughout the entire period. Or did all the solar research labs of the 1970s conspire to hide the evidence? Go look at the data.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I wish the general public would learn that global warming isn't just about the temperature getting warmer as time goes on, such that "Winter will become a perpetual Fall season." Its about the increase of energy in the entire system which we call "global weather." This leads to more extreme and bizarre weather conditions.
Wow! Weather influences views about Weather.
Never would have guessed.
How refreshing to see a statement of the obvious as something profound.
Don't let the facts get in the way of coming to a decision.
LOL!!!
Short attention spans, simple!
Don't worry, greedy women are too busy accumulating money to shit out kids. So your #2 is fixing your #1.
The Church too is guilty of similar knee jerk reactions. I have seen press releases from them telling us atheists to 'expect more of the same' after an especially hot week.
It also overpowered the ability of most people to make sound judgments about climate change
Pretty sure Al Gore did that many years ago.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It would help that every time there's a hurricane like Sandy, Katrina, et. al. there WERE some global warming advocate on TV arguing that this was evidence of global warming.
Except that doesn't happen.
It doesn't matter if the cause of everything is global warming, it really ought to have been labeled "climate change" from the get-go. The general population just can't seem to understand that that a warming planet can cause severe cold in regions while other areas they don't live in become warmer. You need to dumb it down for them, as sad as that is. Shame all the good marketers are busy selling people cars and "body spray".
Account for the ICE on the South Polar region that's at it's peak for numerous years (a gain over when we started measuring, actually) during the SUMMER time down there (HInt: That's what happened with those climate scientists- they played the "there's global warming" card to go observe the LACK of ice and got CAUGHT IN IT...).
It's not a theory if you keep discarding valid measures that nuke the theory from orbit. And...it's getting goddamn old quick, folks.
How about polar vortexes in the past? say 100 years ago. Were these also caused by global warming?
I think he's probably pretty immune to things like facts and data..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
It is unfortunate that climate change first "broke big" into the public consciousness as "global warming". This has made having rational discussion about the situation much more difficult than necessary.
All the war, terrorism, oil and environment madness would seem to make it worth researching safe nuclear technology, thorium for example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
May I remind you that said idiots, by virtue of genetically being H. sapiens and breathing, have the same voting power as you and I?
In some elections the breathing requirement is reportedly optional.
and the official state religion is atheism.
Just being pedantic but a state religion cannot be atheism because atheism is by definition the absence of belief that deities exist. You can accurately say that there is no state religion or that theist religions are officially discouraged/suppressed. But atheism is not and cannot be a religion in any sort of conventional meaning of the term.
I'm not even a climatologist, scientist, or even a meteorologist, but I seem to understand something that most people don't seem to: The weather where you're standing is just a small part of the overall system of weather that spans the entire planet. The implication of global warming means that there is more total energy in that global system of weather, which causes it's overall behaviour to change.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
That's pretty obvious. The question is which has MORE influence. RECENT MEDIA COVERAGE or RECENT WEATHER? http://www.davidryfe.com/here/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/mccombsch03setting.pdf
If it was accurate then there would have been a consensus predicting these events.
I find in continually frustrating that proponents (and opponents) of addressing the risks of climate change bring up scientific consensus as an argument. I think Einstein said it best when reportedly responding to the book "Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)", by saying (roughly) "if I were wrong, one would be enough". If a model is correct and has predictive value then it is useful regardless of what the consensus might say. If it has no predictive value then it is wrong regardless of any consensus.
It is also possible that the phenomena is real and we simply have not developed a descriptive model yet. Relativity was real even before Einstein developed his model. So you have to ask yourself, how should we behave if there is a reasonable chance that this phenomena is real? Our ability or lack thereof to model the climate change is a separate issue from our ability to measure it. We KNOW that temperatures are rising globally because we are able to measure that even if we don't know for absolute certain why they are rising. So if they are rising what are the potential consequences and what should we do based on those potential consequences?
However, the fact that there is no consensus means that there isn't accuracy in the field of Climate Change
As meaningless as consensus might be, there does appear to be one regarding the existence of climate change. The only real debate at this point is regarding severity.
I am willing to accept carbon based climate change and accept the changes required for preventing future damage, but only if it is scientifically proven.
Well the data we have certainly seems to indicate that climate change is real so I'm not entirely sure what level of proof you are looking for. It's not the sort of phenomena you want to wait until after it occurs to say "yep, we proved it - look at all this damage". However, let's presume for the sake of argument that the data is inconclusive at present. Then the question becomes one of risk. Let's say there is 50% chance that climate change is real and that if it is real the consequences of it are that the planet no longer becomes compatible with human life. Is that a risk you are willing to take or do you think we should act on the risk knowing we might be wrong but playing it safe? Basically you are doing an expected value analysis.
And yet we are to believe things like Katrina and Sandy are evidence FOR Global Warming?
Potentially. They are data points. By themselves they are evidence of nothing. However if they, along with other storms, indicate that there is a change in the frequency, severity, locality, or duration of storms then they very well might be evidence of global warming. Remember that hurricanes are formed over bodies of relatively warm water. If the oceans are heating up (and our measurements indicate they seem to be) then we might reasonably expect to see more or larger or more severe hurricanes.
Likewise the recent cold snap results from an unusual disruption of the polar vortex. Changes in circulation patterns can cause unusual weather patterns. This cold snap is evidence of nothing by itself but if we measure an increased frequency of similar weather over time it may very well indicate the climate has changed. It is a data point that in time may add to the pile of evidence for (or against) global warming. Only time will tell.
It seems that every "weather" event is trotted out as evidence FOR Global Warming by someone.
Usually by idiots who are unable to put the event in context.
The concept that adding energy to the weather system can alter it in such a way that the weather patterns change and trigger things like polar vortexes is just beyond some peoples understanding.
Isn't that just the old "no true scotsman" fallacy?
Just like you argued that atheism can be a "means to consolidate power" without being intrinsically evil (it was just abused), Christians can argue the same for Christianity.
take a trip back in your wayback machine, and relook at sponsorship of the groups, RAF sponsored by CIA and IRA.
you forget the CIA sponsors who in the Syrian fight?
...the fact the climate change prophets keep changing their story?
First, it was "look, look, it's hotter than it's ever been!" And, after some record-breaking cold, they changed their story to "look, look at the extreme weather caused by climate change!"
It is logical to not wish to be railroaded again, the way we were on the subject of ozone depletion. Laws were hastily passed, whose main effect was to cost all of us more money, for no concrete purpose. I am NOT saying potential ozone depletion is not a concern. I am saying that good research, and a thoughtful approach to the problem are much better than sound bites and apocalyptic wailing and shouting.
A religion is any belief based on faith.
A religion is an organized collection of beliefs related to sacred things which may or may not include a belief in a god. Faith is a typical (almost ubiquitous in fact) but not required component of a religion. Something can be sacred without requiring faith though in practice this is unusual.
Atheism is a belief that no god exists, something that cannot be proven empirically, and thus Atheism is a religion.
The fact one believes in something that cannot be proven empirically does not make that something a religion. A religion isn't defined merely by the belief (or lack thereof) in a deity. A religion can (and some do) incorporate atheism but holding views of atheism does not make a those views a religion. You can be religious without belief in a god and belief in a god does not make one automatically religious. While it is common for theists to be religious and atheists to be irreligious the reverse is also true in some cases. The concepts of (ir)religion and (a)theism are orthogonal to each other. Much like debates between science and faith, people keep getting the concepts confused and arguing about the wrong things.
It's not an "absence of belief", that would be agnosticism.
It is not an absence of belief but rather a withholding of judgement. You can believe in the non-existence of a god while not denying the possibility one exists which makes you both atheistic and agnostic at the same time. Conversely you can believe in the existence of a god while being unsure of the actual existence of one which makes you both theistic and agnostic at the same time. There are other forms of agnosticism as well. Your definition is overly simplistic.
Atheism clearly meets the "Seven Dimensions of Religion", defined by Ninian Smart (a framework accepted by anthropologists and historians):
Looking them over I see no fit whatsoever with that framework and atheism because religion and theism as I've said before are orthogonal concepts.
Isn't it supposed to be about *average* temperature change?
ie: 17f colder in the winter,19f warmer in the summer, equals an average of 2f warmer, but is insanely miserable, year round?
Don't really know that much about it, but this makes sense to my tiny brain...
First, it's not phenomena, it's natural.
Do you have any idea what the word phenomena means? It's pretty clear from your argument that you need to look it up so I'll save you some time. It means "any observable occurence".
Second, how we should deal with it depends on whether you can prove that humans are the cause or not.
Wrong. How we should deal with it depends on the probability that humans are the cause. I won't disagree with you that the exact extent of our impact is still significantly unclear. However that is a separate issue from establishing whether or not we are having some amount of effect. There appears to be significant and credible evidence that human activities are having some amount of detrimental effect on the global climate. We also know for a fact what the sources of many of these activities is (cars, industry, fossil fuels, chemicals, etc). There are many actions we can take based on our current understanding of the global climate that are rational and appropriate. As we learn more we can refine our actions based on those findings. But saying we should do nothing until we know everything is just a stupid and dangerous argument.
Frankly the way we are behaving is somewhat like drinking a poison until it kills us before deciding whether or not it is toxic. It's not like we have another Earth we can go to once we've destroyed this one. I'd rather err on the side of too cautious than too reckless.
The Tigers and the INLA are both nationalist groups. Atheism is not a defining characteristic, and the vast majority of members were (respectively) Hindu and Catholic. Just being Marxist-Leninist, doesn't mean that they are automatically in all cases atheists.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The Tigers and the INLA are both nationalist groups. Atheism is not a defining characteristic, and the vast majority of members were (respectively) Hindu and Catholic. Having Marxist-Leninist leanings does not automagically mean atheism in all cases.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm pretty sure killing, kidnapping and raping is forbidden regardless of religion.
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. -- Numbers 31:15-18
I'm probably "not interpreting this correctly" or "taking it out of context" or whatever religious people say when confronted with their cognitive dissonance, but it seems the Bible is just fine with killing, kidnapping and raping.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It was -35C last week, and it is 4C today. ZOMG Climate Change must be happening!
A) People have been trying to predict the weather, for like forever. We have gotten better at it, but it is far from predictable.
B) Climate Change Weather. Climate Change is about a global trend in temperature over a very long period of time, not short term local variance.
C) It has been postulated that erratic or severe weather may be an eventual result of Climate Change, however I don't think I have ever seen it really proven in any way.
D) Regardless of if you agree with the idea of climate change, these are things not correlated (let alone any causation) in any meaningful way.
E) I am not sure if this is an article about human psychology, general ignorance, or the influence of political media (probably all 3).
...and the same as...
"Income inequality is bad because I'm not rich."
"Insurance should cover pre-existing conditions because I have (or might get) one."
"There is global warming because I'm hot"
"We should re-define the word 'marriage' because I'm gay."
"We should legalize {insert drug name here} because I want to use it."
There's nothing new in any of this; it's just basic human nature - and it affects ALL parts of the political spectrum
Warm weather in Scandanavia is no evidence of anything..... after all, "weather is NOT climate!" and "No single weather event can conclusively be linked to AGW"
Please cite the details of all the highly-calibrated thermometers, including their tracability certs and their locations, that were used to make all the global temperature measurements 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, etc. Please note that mud, tree slices, and sublimated ice cores do not qualify (they are not calibrated to any tracable standard, nobody observed their conditions at the time they made their "measurements" and putting their "data" points into a graph with tha data from real modern instruments is apples-and-oranges and not valid science). It does not matter how many PhD's you have if you do not follow even the most basic standards of science..... when you do this you are practicing religion.
are worthless to ask about scientific topics. News at 11.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- Educate girls and women solves this issue.
- It's more complex then that. AAn even year means the investor value doesn't go up. To tolve this issue you would need a cap on earnings(via a tax that scales to 100"%) as well as have ,companies create an agressive by back. Do able, but hard to get done.
- Agree in principle, but I would say stop being ignorant.
- Nope. The people he needs ot talk to, and the deals he needs ot get people to make need to come from a position the p[eople he deals with value.
Is it lame? yes. It's also how the world works.
You need to stop being ignorant about this and try to understand the realities.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When you hold a Gin-n-Tonic in your hand, the adult beverage stays at 32 Degrees (or thereabouts, based on many factors) until... that is .... all the ice melts. Then the whole glass warms up. Shouldn't we consider the ice pack at the poles in aggregate as our insurance policy - and not just the air temp around us? Once that ice is gone, what will a winter be? Its a bounded control volume. Consider the thickness of the air layer on the surface and the energy it contains, compared to the amount of energy it absorbs from the Sun, and compare it to what we are pumping into it, directly as thermal energy, as well what accumulates as we reconstitute the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses. We wont be affecting the core of the earth, but we could make the outer layers uninhabitable. adding 2 degrees a decade just makes it a matter of time. Business likes certainty. This seems to introduce uncertainty.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
The sad fact of the matter (irrespective of whether you're convinced for or against) is that the argument boils down to:
- Proponents argue that we should do a bunch of ecologically sound things because "for the good of the planet"
- Opponents argue that will cost large amounts of money
In the end, rampant greed puts us all in a world of hurt.
This is NOT a fight over science,
this is NOT a fight over modelling planetary weather/ecosystems/etc,
this IS a fight over "but I should be able to rake in literally trillions of dollars now, and FUCK THE CONSEQUENCES".
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The people he needs ot talk to, and the deals he needs ot get people to make need to come from a position the p[eople he deals with value.
And shouldn't he be using his power/influence to change that? Now _THAT_ would actually help.
People, if we have a cold snap, that's just weather, not proof of lack of global warming.
But if we get a heat wave, or a forest fire, or a tornado, that's proof positive that man-made global warming is real and will soon kill us all if we don't tax people more. Not just weather.
No, Europe is NOT experiencing the "warmest December and January ever"
We've only been measuring temperatures there with reasonably accurate instruments for a couple of centuries, and keeping good records for the entire region for a much shorter time. That region of the planet was almost certainly warmer when dinosaurs lived there. The Earth has been here for BILLIONS of years and you have good temp data for Europe for a couple of centuries (a statistical BLIP).
This planet gets cooler and cooler and cooler until it his the coldest day at the bottom of an ice age...... then it gets warmer and warmer and warmer until it hits the hottest point of an interglaciel period, at which time it starts getting cooler and cooler and cooler..... it's takes place over VERY LONG periods, and it's not a pure sine wave or saw-tooth (there are minor warming periods during the chill-downs and minor cooling periods during the warm-ups but the geological evidence is solid for the macro trends.
We are in an interglacial period, still recovering from the last ice age and we still have glaciers on our mountains and thick ice on both poles; it's possible we'll never get completely recovered from that ice age before heading down into another one. I'll start worrying when we begin a plunge toward the next ice age. With heat, we have lots of croplands, lots of energy, lots of water, and much of the planet is habitable and excess CO2 in the atmosphere just means lots of healthy plant life. In an ice age, much of the most-fertile land will be under a mile of ice, many of the biggest cities will be destroyed by the ice, we will be short on energy, most of the fresh water will be in ice form, with CO2 levels low crops will be poor etc. Fear the ice, NOT the warmth.
NASA has only existed since 1958. Their first successful WEATHER (not climate) satellite launched in 1960 (54 years ago) and the first satellite that could measure any temperatures launched in 1969 (45 years ago). There are, indeed, people at Goddard (A NASA facility which would have little reason to exist without continued funding to study the climate) who keep claiming congress needs to save us all from climate change by funding the employees at Goddard (who'd a seen that one coming?) but NASA has no ability to certify anything about climate before 1969 with any scientific accuracy....the agency has no records for anything before that which were generated by the agency (and which, therefore, deserve to be cloaked in the mantle of the rocket-science class precision, accuracy, and credibility that the stamp "NASA" is intended to convery to the public).
The politics of AGW have been gradually corruping all of science, and it's really sad to see NASA losing its credibility this way. No NASA employee measured ANYTHING related to climate-change before 1958, and the agency has no division that specializes in the other tools of the trade: tree ring analysis, mud studies, tarot cards, palm reading, chick entrail analysis, etc. As an agency that is always starved for funds, it's not suprising that it has turned to this popular (among activists and ploiticians who allocate federal funds) field as a way to keep a portion of the workforce employed, but it's still sad to see them on this instead of wind tunnels, flight testing of new airframes, etc.
"Creationists say the same thing about Evolution."
And now it may be starting to dawn on you.... one reason serious religious people (as opposed to the sort who watch televangelists and think the Earth is 6K yrs old) often question both Evolution and AGW is that they recognize that these two fields of "science" are not like the rest of science and are instead functioning like religious cults and using some VERY familiar arguments.
Unfortunately for you, the rest of your argument falls apart. What CO2, or CH4 or water vapor does in a test tube and its interactions with ANY or all of the electromagnetic spectrum is informative but not sufficiently useful to explain the Earth's climate. If things were that simple, all the current climate simulations would be dead-on accurate and would have easily predicted the current period of ever-increasing atmospheric CO2 with flat temperatures. Indeed, any truly correct climate model will not only accurately predict future climate, but also properly predict current conditions AND be verifiable by accurately winding backwards to explain all previous warm and glacial epochs. Any model that fails to do this is a HACK that has been rigged and breaks-down outside its rigged boundaries The Earth (as a whole) is such a complex system that nobody has a clue as to how to properly model ALL of it..... so all the "climate models" leave out nearly everything in the SYSTEM attempting to simulate just the things the researchers think are important and just to the extent they [a] understand them (not much) [b] think they are important (they could be QUITE wrong about WHAT matters and to what extent each thing matters) and/or [c] can lump a lot of discrete things together into a blob (like "the oceans" or "plant life" etc in place of specific populations of plants or animals and fine-grained analysis of the behaviour of ALL the water (which covers most of the planet))
There will be ice at both poles throughout 2014, last year saw a record low number of hurricanes and tornadoes and lightning strikes, and no cities will be sliding beneath the waves in this new year. Given that ALL of the current climate simulation models have currently been proven WRONG, the burden is NOT on the critics to prove them even more wrong.... oh no, my friend, .... the burden to prove the existsnece of the wolf is on the boy who has repeatedly cried "wolf" falsely and who (in this case) insists that hundreds of millions of people re-order their lives (often for the worse) to protect against some fabled future wolf attack that MIGHT impact people a hundred years from now (when THEY will have far better technology to deal with the issues and MIGHT be able to do so with NO negative impacts on their lives)
The people of Singapore live more comfortably and in better health than most human beings in world history have lived.... and if you packed the whole population of Earth together at that density, we would all fit inside of Texas. The Earth is capable of hosting a MUCH larger human population without misery. The problem is that most of human civilization is backwards and inefficient. The entire African continent is so rich in resources it could provide for its population with a high standard of living and still have bountiful surplusses to export..... but the place is populated by ignorant masses led by tin-pot dictators most of whom practice appalling crony-socialist economics enforced by mass-murder. Huge nations like Mexico are awash in resources but Mexico's political systems is so completely corrupt that a sizeable portion of their nation's GDP is cash transfers from illegal workers in the US. The United States, with all its problems, has an economy that looks good precisely because so much of the rest of the world is so screwed-up. Even at that, if the rest of the world would just get up to the economic standards (efficiencies of markets, production, consumption, etc) of the U.S. or Europe the world's population could comfortably triple and most people would be reasonably health and happy (better-off than most today). Advanced nations with the rule-of-law and modern production and trade systems provide better products and services to more people per ton of raw material than other nations and at better rates of improvement than the doom-predictors always estimate.
Paul Ehrlich and (Obama science advisor) John Holdren were simply WRONG. Hundreds of millions of people are not dying-off anually from starvation driven by overpopulation, the world is not out of oil or metal, the lands are not farmed-out and unable to feed people, the seas are not devoid of plankton and Soylent Green is simply NOT on the menu. The "let's scare people into behaving as we want them to by means of horrifying predictions of doom" crowd may have stolen that scheme from the fire-and-brimstone tent preachers of the 1950's Bible Belt, but the predictions are just as inaccurate as the predictions some preachers made for the date Jesus would return....
It's all about the money and power grab. It's about ushering in the nanny state that tells all of us that we have to ride skateboards to work and that we all have to get our carbon footprints down to the size of a postage stamp, unless our name is Al Gore. Global temps have been steady for the last 17 years and there has not really been an appreciable change in the weather since we exited the little ice age in the 1800. There has been some ice cap melting caused by particulate matter from Asia settling on the ice caps. Black / Grey absorbs heat and white ice caps reflects heat back out into space. You want to do something for mankind on this planet quit giving Asian countries from Pakistan to Japan a global pass on throwing up massive amounts of particulate into space. The only thing carbon does is fertalize the planet and we get greener grass and leafier trees. I know the climate change cool aid drinkers probably will hate me with this post but I don't really give a shit.
Paul E. Bahre
The /. community baffles me with its championing of science over religious fundamentalists and anti-vaccine folks, but seeming reluctance to accept the science behind climate change.
For you young folks and millennials... Back in the 70's the polar vortex was absolutely, positively, scientifically PROVEN to be the result of Global Cooling, and an ice age was coming, no doubt about it.
Last week in another thread I posted the exact words from Time Magazine in 1974 and 2014 regarding the polar vortex, allegedly from scientists. They completely contradicted each other, of course. I was, of course, engaged by passionate flame throwers who accused me of all kinds of crimes. Please, save your fingers, I was alive then, lived through it, and remember it well.
The point is that the whole "The Earth's Climate is Changing we must take action now" is older than you think... As is the bitter ideological debate between the sacred never to be questioned narratives of the left and the right. Do some research outside of your comfort zone, talk to a few older folks, keep an open mind, that's all I ask. I am, for the record, strongly in favor of clean air, clean water, and good environmental stewardship.
Murphy was an optimist
Some years ago, when Global Warming was becoming recognized by the scientific community, a scientist was asked in an interview how global warming (GW) would manifest itself (paraphrased). His reply was that instead of a steady increase in temperature he warned that GW would present us with lots of weather extremes. A warning if you will that although the USA in home to the most violent weather we would see increasing extremes with hot and cold spells, wet and dry, with an increase in strong tornadoes and hurricanes. . IOW we would see see hotter summers and colder winters at times, but the long term average would show a gradual increase. Eventually the coldest spells would not exceed the current average lows. So the current frigid weather, which isn't really all that cold in most areas if you're over 40 and is to be expected. It was forecast to be a part of GW quite a few years back. Contrary to news and comics, there is little irony in the current cold spell or the ship trapped in the Antarctic ice. It only shows the lack of knowledge of those calling it so.