19 Responses to “A Climate Plea From the Liberal Camp”

1. sharper00 says:

   June 14, 2011 at 5:19 pm

   Please stop mentioning recession when discussing the economy! Being in a recession causes many bad things but not every single job loss and business closure!
    
   Reality has a very annoying feature. It doesn’t stop because you get bored of it.

2. Jack Hughes says:

   June 14, 2011 at 9:38 pm

   Maybe Climate Change is the new Racism. This worked so well in the old days to end any debate on any subject.

3. Keith Kloor says:

   June 14, 2011 at 9:51 pm

   You mean the way calling someone a liberal today works the same way?

4. allen mcmahon says:

   June 14, 2011 at 10:10 pm

   @1 The difference of course is the effect of the recession is supported by evidence,  job losses economic slowdown etc. but with AGW the link to any weather event is tenuous at best.

5. kdk33 says:

   June 14, 2011 at 10:12 pm

   “Maybe Climate Change is the new Racism”

   But which side:  the republican-deniers or the alarmo-socialists (ie liberals).  BTW Keith, I think only the party OUT of power gets to play the victim.

6. lucia says:

   June 14, 2011 at 10:19 pm

   @4–
   Isn’t the recession just defined as the economic slowdown?

7. Keith Kloor says:

   June 14, 2011 at 10:21 pm

   @5

   Demagoguery is demagoguery, unless it’s from one’s own side, of course.

8. grypo says:

   June 14, 2011 at 10:32 pm

   Well, weatherdude doesn’t really capture the reason that tornadoes are brought up in relation to warming well and he overstates his case, but the point is taken.  He also doesn’t understand trends, if he thinks one more year will give him the freedom to call trend.  But liberals are all over the map anyway.  Some want to preserve the social democracy, other want to replace it completely.  He’s not going to herd cats with that rant.

9. allen mcmahon says:

   June 14, 2011 at 10:38 pm

   @4 or by labeling someone a ‘denier’. The terminology used typify s that  extremists at either end of the spectrum have highjacked  the debate.

10. Eli Rabett says:

    June 14, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    OK, rejectionist.
     
    But there are weather events that ARE related to human driven climate change in surprising ways,
    http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/06/eli-is-evil-bunny.html
    And, of course there are others who think that nothing is related to climate change in any way whatsoever.

11. Stu says:

    June 15, 2011 at 2:01 am

    Linking any kind of bad weather to climate change is really like a kind of marketing. Unusually hot day in the neighbourhood?  Think climate change. Tornadoes on the news? Climate change. Cold elsewhere? Isn’t it time you thought about climate change?
     
    The CC activists may just have beaten the tobacco companies at their own game.

12. allen mcmahon says:

    June 15, 2011 at 2:21 am

    @6 true but I don’t think semantics cut it with the people who suffer as a result of a recession.

13. Jeff Norris says:

    June 15, 2011 at 2:23 am

    @Tom
    What is the Danish Model?  Can it be replicated here or elsewhere?  I Cherry picked some numbers and without seeing some older history I don’t see any dramatic improvements by the Danes.  It does seem the US is making some  improvements despite a 40% population growth.
                 1980        1985   1990     1995   2003     
    BTU      168          160     150      168     165         Denmark
    Pop.      5.12       5.1      5.14     5.23    5.36
                 345           321    339       347    339          U S
                226 .9     237.5   249 .4   262.7  279.8
    http://gsociology.icaap.org/data/eia_gdp.xls

    Here is some other interesting comparisons
                                                            Denmark                   U.S.   
    motor vehicles per 100 p                     408                            765
    aircraft departures    per captia            20.35                      28.85   
    Air transport, freight      190.23 million tons/km  37,357.64 million
    TV receivers per captia                       574                       740 
    Cinema attendance per 1000             2,009.39                  4,804.99

14. Jeff Norris says:

    June 15, 2011 at 2:29 am

    @12 Wrong Thread

15. EdG says:

    June 15, 2011 at 3:25 am

    Weather dude’s message was about the limits to crying wolf. Credibility is already crumbling and this AGW causes everything story has become laughable and counterproductive. So for AGW proponents it is good advice… which will almost certainly be ignored.

16. Barry Woods says:

    June 15, 2011 at 9:15 am

    Any body seen the mess greenpeace and the ipcc have just gottent into, with respect to 80% renewables….
     
    Mark lynas and Steve Mcintyre are in agreement
     
    &reenpeace grey literature, reviewed by greenpeace lead author and direct renewable commercial veste interests thrown in!
     
    Even the &uardian’s Leo Hickman sees the problem,see Bishop Hill for his twittering.
     
    The IPCC seem to have learnmt nothing……

17. Pascvaks says:

    June 15, 2011 at 9:21 am

    ‘Oh, the sound of one small voice crying in the wilderness’, a true plea for reason, restraint, knows no side.  Has anyone else noticed that young people are really angry about just about everything today?  Something’s going to happen soon, no ’bout a’dout it.  Forget the climate of the Earth’s weather, the climate of man is changing far faster.  People are getting a little antsy.. OK real antsy. 

18. Keith Kloor says:

    June 15, 2011 at 9:28 am

    Barry, I was putting up a new post as you were commenting…

19. JohnB says:

    June 15, 2011 at 10:36 am

    The silliest part about the rukus is that there must be a connection.

    Nobody AFAIK is denying that the climate is changing, that is expected. Personnally I would be far more worried if it stopped changing as that would indicate a severe interruption in the climate system.

    Similarly few sceptics would deny that man has had some effect on the climate, either on a local or global scale.

    The main point of disagreement is in the size of the “A” in AGW.

    However if a sceptic is be honest, (and so long as they don’t think the value of the A is zero) we must logically conclude two things;

    1. Since global climate is the average of local climates, then man must have some effect on global climate. The effect may be believed to be small, but it must exist.

    2. Since climate is the average of weather, then a change in climate must mean a change in average weather. You simply cannot have the average change without the inputs changing.

    From these points it must be concluded that a “human effect” is present in any change in occurrence of extreme events. At the moment the value of that human effect cannot be quantified, but any logical sceptic must agree that it exists.

    I believe Gavin Schmidt made a similar comment recently about tornadoes and I totally agree with his take on it. The effect must be there, but putting a number on it is another kettle of fish.

    While weatherdude is correct in asking people not to blame everything on climate change he is also wrong. Climate change is the cause of changes in local weather, either from local human changes or from other changes in the global system. Nothing in climate is in isolation, it is all interconnected.

    The difference lies in what to do about the problem. Those who believe the “A” is large, specifically CO2, will want to do something about CO2. ie Concentrate on mitigation policies.. Those of us who think the “A” is small will want to concentrate on adaptation.

    My personal view is that adaptation is in fact the only sensible policy. Even if we magically change all civilisation to carbon neutral or whatever, the climate will still change and we will still have to adapt. If the climate naturally warmed to levels last seen at the Holocene Optimum, then the seas would rise by 2 metres or so and massive changes to rainfall and temps would occur. We would have to adapt.

    We are the first segment of civilisation in the history of our world that actually understands that the climate changes. Previously people thought that “what is always was” and stories to the contrary were just “Old Mans Tales”. Previous segments didn’t think further ahead than the next generation or two and climate change wasn’t something that entered into their thoughts.

    But we understand that the climate changes and we understand that we must factor this into our considerations for the welfare of future generations. We don’t expect our civilisation to fall, we expect that it will adapt and overcome and thrive.