A comment in the NY Times with respect to the vaccine controversy – just as applicable to climate change:
Richard M
Los Angeles 2 days ago
Dear people who don’t believe in vaccinations, I have a quote for you from Philip K Dick, the eminent science fiction writer:
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
good quote.
No one doubts the climate is changing, as it has 10,000+ years .. well before Al Gore invented CO2 and other inconvenient myths.
The question that remains is what % does (wo)man influence of this climate ? 85% ? 50%? 12%? 1%? less than 1%?
Author
It takes about 30 seconds to find out: NOAA’s Global Warming Frequently Asked Questions – http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/global-warming-frequently-asked-questions
With respect to change over time:
Why is the current global warming trend any different than previous warming periods in Earth’s history?
Today’s global warming is different from previous warming periods in two key ways: the reason and the rate. Today, the reason Earth is warming is mainly due to the increase in heat-trapping gases that humans are adding to the atmosphere. And our world is warming at a much faster rate today than it did in the interglacial warm periods over the last million years. The transition from the last ice age to the current interglacial period is estimated to have spanned 5,000 years.[14]
Humans could witness the same magnitude of global warming within a span of about 110 years. In other words, if our world warms by as much as 7°F (4.1°C) from 1990 to 2100, as some climate models project could happen, then that warming rate is about 45 times faster than the warming Earth experienced when it emerged from the last ice age.[22]
As for other questions, if you really want to know, you can find out. In about 30 seconds.
And on the subject of vaccines, the reality is that if no one had balked in the late ’80s, early ’90s (when I did), the conversation about vaccine safety – what are they actually putting in our babies – would never have started. No one would know yet that additives are added to vaccines, that there is vaccine damage to the extent there is a funding source for compensation – indeed, the latter might not exist. This sort of thing would never have happened: http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228
And it’s my take that the now-considered-bogus study on the autism link was not the trigger for parents balking; that had already started.
The prevailing reality, no matter what the topic, is the predictability of human behaviour, which dictates that if those with power can get away with it, they will.
On global warming, as long as the conferences and jet-setting lifestyle being enjoyed at the expense of the dispute can continue, the dispute will be kept alive no matter how fake the data that either side trots out. And alongside that, as long as the income continues, no matter how toxic the outcome of the fossil fuel industry, the flow of oil will continue and the industry will do everything political, social, and legal that it can to sustain it.
And on city planning – well, I’ll make that comment on the Spaxman thread.
Global Warming is wonderful. Global Warming will save us. Much more land will become arable. We will grow lemons and papaya in Vancouver. They will grow sweet corn in the Yukon. Northern Russia will become the new breadbasket of the world. Cabernet grapes will flourish in Greenland. Canadians and the hundreds of millions in the northern climes will not require such massive amounts of energy to keep warm and alive. The balmy temperatures will mean open windows and fresh air year round. Less incubation of germs. Better health.
Time to invest in refrigeration. Quick, get in before Al Gore. The BBC had a wonderful story last week about a tailor in Calcutta buying his first fridge. The first in his family. This will mean more productivity for him and his wife and less food spoilage. Only one in four of India’s households has a fridge. As India’s middle class expands there is a massive market, 150 million households in India are in the market for a fridge. That’s a lot of metal, plastic and refrigerant gases.
Google: BBC – The village that just got its first fridge, for more on this uplifting story.
Meanwhile, car sales in India are picking up now that oil prices are down. Sales in 2015 will probably reach 2 million units. With world sales of vehicles in 2015 reaching a record 75 million units. In Canada, the record sales in November and December of cars, (up 10%) and light trucks (up 19% ,DesRosiers) look to be leading to a record 2015 in sales.
That too is a lot of metal, plastic and etc. My prediction is a big increase in the sales of sporty convertibles.
When Charles Kettering invented the electric starter motor for automobiles in 1911, a revolution began. Women were now able to drive without having to rely on men to hand-crank the engine. Women’s fashions changed to fit this new freedom. Flapper fashion in the 1920’s was completely different than the Victorian age just before. Hemlines rose from just above the ankle to just below the knee. This was the Roaring Twenties, jazz and the automobile.
In 1910 458,000 cars were made in the U.S. With the electric starter motor in cars, sales skyrocketed. In 1925 17.5 million cars were sold. (U.S. Census Bureau) The transition from a horse drawn society to a motorized one was quickly embraced.
Author
I don’t think the above is a parody, but it’s kinda hard to tell.
Gordon, I have some friends and business associates that have expressed concern about changes in the weather, I even know someone that sold one of their cars in a vain and feeble gesture of hope that they alone might assist in saving earth from disaster. Such vanity! It reminds me of acquaintences I knew decades ago that meditated and chanted to end war. Such indulgence!
The car superseded the personal horse and it will be around for a few decades to come. People like and need personal transportation. Urban design is an interesting and important subject for society but those that currently seem to hate the car are just plain silly.
The Global Warming meme has been heavily milked and is just about played out now. Time to move on to something else.
Tell that to Cypress, Grouse and Seymour.
The Thames in London used to freeze frequently, in the 17th century. No more, since Global Warming in the early 18th century.
Must have been all that horse dung giving off CO2.
It’s not the car, Ron. Don’t panic.
In 1742 Pierre Martel (1706–1767), an engineer and geographer living in Geneva, visited the valley of Chamonix in the Alps of Savoy. Two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of erratic boulders to the glaciers, saying that they had once extended much farther. Later similar explanations were reported from other regions of the Alps. When the Bavarian naturalist Ernst von Bibra (1806–1878) visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850 the natives attributed fossil moraines to the former action of glaciers.
The Swedish mining expert Daniel Tilas (1712–1772) was, in 1742, the first person to suggest drifting sea ice in order to explain the presence of erratic boulders in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions. In 1795, the Scottish philosopher and gentleman naturalist, James Hutton (1726–1797), explained erratic boulders in the Alps with the action of glaciers. Two decades later, in 1818, the Swedish botanist Göran Wahlenberg (1780–1851) published his theory of a glaciation of the Scandinavian peninsula. He regarded glaciation as a regional phenomenon. Only a few years later, the Danish-Norwegian Geologist Jens Esmark (1762–1839) argued a sequence of worldwide ice ages. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in Earth’s orbit. In a paper published in 1832, Bernhardi speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the temperate zones of the globe.
Plant your grapes now.
More here Eric:
World has not woken up to water crisis caused by climate change: IPCC head
http://news.yahoo.com/world-not-woken-water-crisis-caused-climate-change-130410305.html
Well said my friend.
I talked to a cabbie on my way from the airport and quizzed him on the many hybrids used as cabs in Vancouver. I wondered/asked him what the savings where. He stated: it is overrated, as the car costs about $5000 more and every two years he has to replace the large battery pack for $2500. He stated that a gasoline car is far more cost effective.
I then wondered where the toxic battery pack ends up. Not as green as advertised. I will ask Tesla about that. They ought to know.