[Gertie Keddle]

'Global warming? What global warming?' says High Priest of Gaia Religion

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: April 24th, 2012
Telegraph.co.uk
Excerpt:


"Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth", saith the Bible.

So let joy be unconfined that one of the archest of the world's arch Greenies – James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis and therefore, more or less, founder of the world's most powerful modern religion – has come clean and admitted that he got it wrong in his doomsday predictions about "Climate Change."

Well, come almost clean.

I can't say there has been quite as much wailing and lamentation and as breast-beating as I would have liked. Here's what he has said in his retraction in an interview with MSNBC.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

Presumably, Professor Lovelock will now be donating all his royalties from his earlier alarmist bestsellers to help fund those proper, principled, decent scientists around the world – Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, Tim Ball et al – whose careers have been blighted and whose lives have been made misery for having said precisely what Lovelock is now admitting, only much, much earlier.

Article



It's amusing to note the disconnect between the comments at Delingpole's article and those at the MSNBC link. My favorite of the MSNBC commenters (paraphrased): "so if change is occurring more slowly than believed, then correcting it will be slower as well - OMG, it's WORSE than we thought!"

This post has been edited by Gertie Keddle: 24 April 2012 - 06:29 AM

[Taggart Transcontinental]

Quote

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

We would say it's a complex system that's regulating itself to maintain at it's norm but of course lib's like this tard would say it's up to it's old tricks. I would say this tard is up to his old tricks of rallying his ideological base.

Quote

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

12 years is a reasonable time for a human to see a change in something we design or meddle with, a planet that measure's its lifespan in Billion's of years well 12 years is a millisecond. Only an arrogant ass like this man can expect such a complex design to come to a screeching halt because he thinks it's a reasonable time. Lovely, the arrogant ass is writing another book so he can tell his flock that it will still happen but not as fast. These moron's never get it. If you can't predict weather out past 5 days with accuracy how on earth can you determine what the overall climate is going to do past 1 year?

[De Oppresso Liber]

Careful there High Priest, someone might burn your house down...

[Scootaloo]

Gertie Keddle, on 24 April 2012 - 05:45 AM, said:

'Global warming? What global warming?' says High Priest of Gaia Religion

How nice. Stupidity is interfaith.

...That just sounds redundant.

[Maneck]

laziter, on 24 April 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:

If you can't predict weather out past 5 days with accuracy how on earth can you determine what the overall climate is going to do past 1 year?

Predictions over the long term (of an aggregate of many smaller variations) are quite different from predictions of short-term variations, and may be easier. Consider a restaurant manager: after measuring what is consumed by customers over a period of time, he can be quite accurate in predicting what he will need to order each week, but will have a very hard time predicting what customers will order at 11:03 this morning.

[Italian Biker]

Quote

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

He's still not being truthful. There was nothing that looked clear cut. It was all about creating a false environmental crisis to spur anti free market regulations. He is now merely trying to save his reputation by appearing humble admitting he was wrong.

[De Oppresso Liber]

Maneck, on 25 April 2012 - 06:00 AM, said:

Predictions over the long term (of an aggregate of many smaller variations) are quite different from predictions of short-term variations, and may be easier. Consider a restaurant manager: after measuring what is consumed by customers over a period of time, he can be quite accurate in predicting what he will need to order each week, but will have a very hard time predicting what customers will order at 11:03 this morning.

Now consider how he would predict what he needs to order in 5 years, or 10...now think about 100.

Still think he could be "Quite accurate"?

[Taggart Transcontinental]

Maneck, on 25 April 2012 - 06:00 AM, said:

Predictions over the long term (of an aggregate of many smaller variations) are quite different from predictions of short-term variations, and may be easier. Consider a restaurant manager: after measuring what is consumed by customers over a period of time, he can be quite accurate in predicting what he will need to order each week, but will have a very hard time predicting what customers will order at 11:03 this morning.

Your analogy is like arguing the difference between an apple and a Boeing 747. While they are both useful in their roles there are a wide array of complexities between the two.

First of all I am a pilot so I understand a bit about the climate. Enough to know that the baseline breifings we get about how the climate has acted in the past can only offer us a guess at what will happen in the future. For instance in Baghdad we were briefed that there was no snow possible during the winter months. That climatology has supported nothing lower than the 50's during the winter months. This was based on 50 years of climatological studies. Sadly no one briefed the environment which then saw the first snowfall in Iraq in about 100 years. So you can assume all you want but the assumptions will not even close.

So predicting in the middle term is a bit easier IF you accept the assumptions. The problem all along is our argument is not on the conclusions but the underlying assumptions. They assume carbon has a redundant effect and over time is going to increase while discounting the cooling effects that take place on the other side of the equation. Assumptions in a restaurant are much easier than assumptions made about the courses of action of an enemy, or the assumptions made on the effects of various elements in our atmosphere.

I will also tell you that my first job was as a Fast Food Assistant Manager. As an assistant manager there was only 1 variable I had to work with. The company mandated I buy their food, paper, and drinks. Electric and rent / insurance etc was all set by the region I was operating in and therefore those operating costs were also set. The only think I had to manage was employee numbers and hours. If I kept everyone under 40hours per week I saved on employment costs. Other than that all the rest of it is fixed and cannot be changed by me. Thus again your argument though reasonable sounding is just not anywhere near a useful example.

[Maneck]

Of course I admit the restaurant analogy is poor as it is a much simpler context (fewer factors) and at the same time more changeable over the long term (as De Oppressor Liber suggests).

I was just trying to point out that the argument "we can't predict the short term, so forget about the long term" is flawed logic. Let me stick to climate. Consider an expert in rainfall patterns armed with all the recorded data on rainfall for a given area. Ask this expert two questions:
a. How much rain will fall in this area next Monday?
b. How much rain will fall in this area over the next five years?
Surely this expert will answer question B with greater confidence, because short-term variations and freak events can be ignored.

So, just because weather predictions are very unreliable, this does not imply that scientists should give up on measuring and predicting long-term trends.

This post has been edited by Maneck: 26 April 2012 - 03:00 AM

[Hieronymous]

Scootaloo, on 25 April 2012 - 03:15 AM, said:

How nice. Stupidity is interfaith.

...That just sounds redundant.

look at you trying to straddle the fence. wuss

[ivanie224]

They are getting better at predicting the weather for at least on week at a time. So as far as Global Warming or Climate Change is concerned I still don't buy it. The Earth has been going through cycles since her very beginning, there will be more changes. "Weather" cooler or warmer, I'm sure we are all about to find out. I do believe we need to be kinder to our planet. It's the only one we have!

This post has been edited by ivanie224: 26 April 2012 - 01:20 AM

[Howsithangin]

Scootaloo, on 25 April 2012 - 03:15 AM, said:

How nice. Stupidity is interfaith.

...That just sounds redundant.

law, economics, politics, and now you're an expert on science as well?

wow, to have such unbounding genius... I'm so jealous

And, as usual, you don't retort the argument, you just namecall.



The short of the long of it all is that the entire "global warming"TM hysteria lacks geohistorical context. To take a mm-long section of time on a plot of Earth's climatic history several miles long and project in any significant fashion foward is downright silly.Any geologist worth his/her salt has to acknowledge it. Meteorologists can't even get the weekend weather right.

Further, for 99% of the time on this planet where there has been multicellular life, the climate has been warmer than now. To act like 2 degrees and the planet's in danger is laughable.

[Gertie Keddle]

Maneck, on 25 April 2012 - 07:09 PM, said:

Of course I admit the restaurant analogy is poor as it is a much simpler context (fewer factors) and at the same time more changeable over the long term (as De Oppressor Liber suggests).

Perhaps you can explain why climatologists have been unable to accurately model known past events? If their models can't recreate what we know happened, how accurate can long term predictions be?