Climate change?

[RAENORTH]

So, floods sweeping Asia have killed more than 900 people, washing away thousands of homes and destroying infrastructure in some of the worst scenes in living memory. Heavy monsoon rains have exacted the heaviest toll in northwest Pakistan, with 800 confirmed dead and the regional capital Peshawar cut off. The deluge has also killed another 65 people in mountainous areas across the border in Afghanistan.

View full article here

[mamapajamas]

Great comments.

Isn't it amazing? We had one of the snowiest winters on record, and people are amazed that the snow has melted, filling up the aquafers, and producing flood conditions because new rain has nowhere to go.

Of COURSE they're flooding! I predicted this last winter when I saw how much snow was falling all over the planet, and I'm not even remotely qualified in "environmentalism". It just took a while longer for the seasonal rains to affect Asia's overloaded aquafers than in the US (which had massive flooding in the spring/early summer).

My degree work was in anthropology. It may take a while for agenda-driven enviro-whackos to catch up with what I observe from human pre-history on. When the aquafers are full, floods happen. Ya think?

[Robert of Ottawa]

Oh come on there now, Richard. Get with the program.

Repeat after me:

Global warming will bring floods, droughts, earthquakes, oceans, weather, little insects we never saw before, dinosaurs will return to the Earth, planets will die, the fish & chip shop down the road will become a curry house. It is all demonstrated proof of AGW!

[RAENORTH]

Oh come on there now, Richard. Get with the program.

Repeat after me:

Global warming will bring floods, droughts, earthquakes, oceans, weather, little insects we never saw before, dinosaurs will return to the Earth, planets will die, the fish & chip shop down the road will become a curry house. It is all demonstrated proof of AGW!

I just get a little confused now and then ... I thought it was the turn for drought in the AF/PAK region.

[Guest]

mamapajamas: "Isn't it amazing? We had one of the snowiest winters on record,"

Don't forget along with all the snow, there was NO wind, the wind turbines those things that are supposed to generate all our electricity were at a standstill for a month, during the coldest period of the year.

[Guest]

Well it could always be worse, imagine instead of all that death and destruction there had been... a 1-2C rise in temperature. A truly terrifying thought.

[RAENORTH]

Well it could always be worse, imagine instead of all that death and destruction there had been... a 1-2C rise in temperature. A truly terrifying thought.

Except that no one is in a position to estimate what the effect of a 1-2 deg rise might be ... the result could be benign, in the region, in contrast to the effects of carbon dioxide reduction, the costs of which drive even more people into poverty and reduce their ability to respond to extreme weather.

[Rick Bradford]

One of the reasons that the Warmists seize on any kind of weather (hot, cold, wet, dry) as 'proof' of global warming is because they have made a large misperception as to the kind of people who oppose their shrill alarmism - i.e. the Skeptics, or Denialists.

They make, in fact, a fundamental psychological error known as the Pre/Trans Fallacy (PTF). [http://www.praetrans.com/en/ptf.html].

In simple terms, they classify people as either Green (good) or Non-Green (bad). But the situation is more complex than that. Non-Green actually includes two very different sets of people.

First, there are those I would call 'robber barons' -- a group of greedy capitalists who truly do not care for the planet, and are major exploiters of people and resources, and utterly careless of any damage they do to the environment. These days, you'll mainly find them in the developing world, in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia and so on.

Second, there are businessmen and other individuals who *do* care about the environment, but are realistic when it comes to a balance between development and environmentalism. In other words, they are sensible of Green concerns and indeed largely share them, and are capable of integrating those concerns into a business and development worldview.

These two groups would be called, respectively, pre-Green and trans-Green.

The problem of the Warmists is that they see all non-Green as pre-Green (a perfect example being their insistent caterwauling about Big Oil). Thus they perforce treat people who are trans-Green as though they were pre-Green, hence the name Pre/Trans Fallacy.

The Green worldview which mistakenly equates all non-Green with pre-Green (and therefore as primitive, evil and destructive) informs almost all the Warmist behaviour, including:

* demonization and vilification of skeptics
* inability to accept any part of skeptic argument, or enter into rational debate with skeptics
* dishonesty in the service of a 'noble cause' (defeating the primitive, evil and .... etc)
* persistent belief that they are the underdogs, heroically fighting the hordes of primitive, evil and ...)

Because Warmists see all skeptics as pre-Green, any means therefore becomes acceptable to 'win' against this dastardly enemy, which in truth, does not exist in the form the Warmists see it.

What's the answer? Time, probably. You can't force people to adopt a more inclusive worldview -- if you don't get it, you don't get it. The assertion that trans-Green is a more inclusive worldview than Green is supported by the steady trickle of Warmists who have moved to a more balanced take on global warming. It would be, I think, almost impossible for a skeptic to become a fanatical Warmist, as that would be a backward step in their psychological development.

So, what do you call a Warmist with self-awareness? A skeptic.

[Stephen Jenner]

the fish & chip shop down the road will become a curry house.

My local fish & chip shop became a Chinese takeaway.... But they still make fish & chips.

That must mean...

Proof.... At last!

[andyscrase2]

Rick Bradford-

Great analysis, thanks

[bennyboy]

Well. 0.03 degrees so far this year!.Thats why my tomatoes are doing so well

[Pericles]

Piers Corbyn offers an explanation of his methods to forecast weather. He has no truck with CO2 nonsense. S E Asia would do well to heed his warnings. Place not your faith in Mann & Jones et al. Watts up with that is where it's at!!

http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No27.pdf

[Mosquito]

One or two degrees? It's the difference between where I sit and the village up the hill about three miles away. It's the difference between now and an hour ago. It's like moving house to a hundred miles nearer the equator. It is nothing like as severe as, say, going to London for the day, all of 30 miles for me.

If you want a fair estimate of the climate change, look one or two hundred miles nearer the equator. What they have there now, you will get if and when the temperature rise occurs. Note that they probably do not have, today, all the wild weather events predicted by the alarmists, except inasmuch as they have always had them. That Cornwall is a wild place, I wonder how human life survives there at all.

[s]

Those promoting climate change as an agenda rather than science are turning from crass insults to more insidious methods-
From the Yale School of Environment and Forestry,
"This new way of thinking about — and some would say manipulating — behavior is likely to be an important tool for addressing environmental issues over the next few years. Behavioral economics is the theory behind a variety of measures now being promoted by environmental groups, power companies, and green businesses — from smart meters for cutting electricity consumption to the use of social networks to promote weatherization."
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2141

[mamapajamas]

mamapajamas: "Isn't it amazing? We had one of the snowiest winters on record,"

Don't forget along with all the snow, there was NO wind, the wind turbines those things that are supposed to generate all our electricity were at a standstill for a month, during the coldest period of the year.

Really? I hadn't heard about that! I'd heard that they weren't working "as advertised", but not that there was little wind there this past winter. Well, that really rains on their little parade, doesn't it?

Of course, I'm saying all this from the comfy glow of Florida heat, air conditioned by power from one of the last nuclear power plants built in the US before they cracked down on them. This is definitely the way to go.