An Amusing Look at the Difference Between Weather and Climate
There are lots of things in this world that have ceased to function properly, most notably a U.S. government of, by, and for the people. But there are still aspects of our culture that always come through, like the way nature takes its course when stupid people make asinine remarks, are subject to public ridicule, and, on a good day, lose their credibility.
Here’s a great example, where Texas Senator John Cornyn (pictured) tweets that snow in the Sahara is evidence that global warming is a hoax. He rightfully got his head handed to him. Hooray for this sociological system of checks and balances, and the enhanced speed with which it works by virtue of social media.
Either Senator Cornyn is unable to think clearly or he is lying for political purposes. Obviously it is easy to cherry-pick statistics and events to “prove” any point that one wishes to prove.
It is likely that as global warming progresses, while the average temperature of the world is increasing, some areas will become colder. In fact, the British Isles and northern Europe could become colder since they are quite far north and currently depend on the gulf stream to maintain their temperate climate. If global warming disturbs the gulf stream, which is likely, then areas which depend on the gulf stream to ward off the usual cold weather in the north will become colder.
Craig,
I think it’s unhelpful to gloat at Senator John Cornyn’s reaction to the snowfall in the Sahara Desert.
Consider how the media and some advocates seize on every weather event to solemnly announce confirmation of dramatic of global warming/climate change. Joe Public has grown weary of being lectured and is more likely to accept Senator Cornyn’s observation as a rebuke to finger wagging climate sensationalists.
I’m spend Christmas in the UK, while back home in Melbourne Australia, the city is enduring a record lengthy heat wave. I say record, because the usual suspects among the media and GW/CC advocate have seized upon the opportunity to bleat on about GW.
The ” record” is only a record for 40 years, and back in 1889, the city experienced a far longer an hotter Christmas heat wave.
Perhaps Australians are more cynical than most, since Australia was subject to a lot of Global warming advocacy much earlier, experienced devastating losses and tragedy as a result of listening to overexcited “Global Warming” advocates !
Despite your derision, Senator Cornyn’s popularity has risen in his constituency, in part I would surmise because of the rhetoric employed against him.
In the words of Pete Seeger & the Weavers:
“Oh when will they ever learn, oh when will they ever learn?”
That sentiment could equally apply to both sides of this debate….
Marcopolo,
It was quite reasonable for Craig to point out the illogical conclusion of Senator Cornyn’s position. The fact that he has so much support in no way makes him more reasonable. Rather, it is alarming proof of how illogical and thoughtless his supporters are. Such thinking could slow down the phasing out of fossil fuels to the detriment of the world’s billions of people.
The debate about climate change is about as illogical as the intent of Indiana to enact a legal definition of π to make it easier to remember. Facts are not determined by the opinions of people, even by majority opinions. It may be that weather records in Oz don’t go back very far, but in other places of the world they go back much more than one century. Even if the records did not go back for even 10 years, there is more than sufficient evidence to indicate that global warming is occurring, including the rapid shrinking of glaciers and the shorter periods during which bodies of water are frozen in many places. The fact that CO2 is a global warming gas was determined more than a century ago. Check this out:
http://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Tyndall/
The above article covers experiments which discovered how various gasses absorb radiant heat, a discovery made by experiments beginning in 1859.
Where CO2 emissions are concerned, Oz is not doing well. According to statistics which I have read, Oz’s per capita CO2 emissions are significantly greater than here in the U.S.
Frank,
Thank you for your earnest reply, however, I think you miss the point (or maybe unintentionally reinforce the point).
1) Are you seriously adhering to the school of belief that advocates no further debate or discussion into the scientific phenomena of climate change ?
Are you suggesting any further debate, research etc should be stifled and dismissed for fear of hearsay ? If so, that’s not science, but a weird new religion you’ve joined !
2) The point of my post to Craig was simple. Much of the information concerning the scientific basis for Climate Change has been lost in the public mind by a vast cacophony of claims and counterclaims, which lack any scientific knowledge but serve political/ideological purpose.
The media further confounds the problem with sensationalized bizarre distortions to create controversy.
The tone and vehemence of Craig’s rhetoric toward the Senator, is unhelpful. It reads like a political attack, thinly disguised as defending science.
Remove all the gratuitous vehemence and Craig’s message would be more effective. When you abuse the Senator, you also alienate his supporters. That’s not persuading, just yelling abuse and ‘Hooray for my side”, is hardly likely to foster understanding and co-operation from the general public.
My post was not relevant to the scientific basis of Climate change, but rather the danger of allowing science to get lost among all the rhetoric.
Alarmist advocates have done great damage, and actually provided credence for the opponents, with extravagant claims, later proven (sometimes disastrously) incorrect.
The actual science will remain the same no matter the ferocity of the debate, science has nothing to fear from dissent. What is debatable, is our interpretation and analysis of scientific information. This is an ongoing process of understanding and the nature of all scientific endeavor.
There are no “tablets of stone’ in science, no immutable laws. Even those concepts that seem so fundamental may one day be challenged or perceived differently.
Since the effects of climate change will effect everyone, and any mitigation is going to require the involvement of everyone, it’s only right that everyone should be as well informed and included as possible.
That’s not an easy process. Even in highly educated advanced societies information about climate change has become so distorted and politicized, to the extent the general public has grown distrustful of everything and inclined to apathy.
3) My reference to Australia was intended to illustrate the disastrous consequences of confusing advocacy with science.
Australia along with Germany had the largest and most politically influential ‘Green Party’ . In November of 2007, the Green’s formed and alliance with the leftist Labour party, and gained office in several state and the Australian Federal Government, replacing a long term centre-right conservative government.
The new government captured support and enthusiasm from the nations youth and set about instigating a series of well intentioned, but ultimately disastrous, ‘green’ initiatives.
Sadly, the initiatives once hailed globally as meeting (in the then PM’s overblown rhetoric) “the greatest moral challenge of our time” , created massive public debt, achieved very little, and resulted in a tragic loss of lives and huge property damage.
This is the legacy of allowing political rhetoric and zealous advocacy to confuse science with political ideology.
4) Thank you for your information on John Tyndall, a remarkable scientist to whom I’m distantly related through his wife’s family.
5) Australia per capita CO2 emissions are a matter of considerable conjecture, depending on how and what is calculated.
Attempts to reduce the dependence of coal fired power generation, even in small states has proved disappointing. South Australia’s heavy investment in Wind farms depend upon Victorian coal fired generation and have proved unreliable leaving the State without power on occasion.
Although the distribution system is often hit by storms, generation by wind farms has proved to be unreliable and less efficient than anticipated, as a result South Australia has lost several major industries and is in danger of losing more.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that my illusion to the recent claims by the popular press and the equally bizarre claims of advocates that the hot spell over Christmas in Melbourne are not an ordinary weather occurrence, but the result of global warming, are essentially no different in veracity from the claims by Senator John Cornyn.
Both have mistaken ‘weather’ for evidence of ‘climate change’.
Craig has chosen to only castigates Senator John Cornyn. In doing so, Craig’s message gets lost in the political implications.
Marcopolo,
Of course discussion on climate change should continue. That does not mean that discussion should continue on whether or not climate change exists or whether it is a problem; it is unquestionably BOTH. The evidence is sufficiently strong to be unassailable, just as that fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west is unassailable. Of course some could argue that the sun actually rises in the west and sets in the east. They are entitled to their contrary and silly opinion, but that does not mean that they should be taken seriously or lauded for their opinion.
There is much that we don’t know about climate change. For example, we do not know exactly what its magnitude is and how exactly it will affect different areas of the earth. There is also room for discussion about how best to reduce the CO2 emissions which are causing climate change and how to cope with the climate change that is already inevitable. Thus, there is plenty about climate change to discuss, but whether or not it exists and whether or not CO2 emissions are causing it are not worthy of discussion by adequately well educated and rational people.
It is Senator Cornyn whose message should get lost, not Craig’s. Where climate change is concerned, it is unclear how anyone could chose to do anything about Senator Cronyn except to castigate him. Anything else would be comparable to congratulating those in the Indiana legislature who advocated enacting a legal definition of π.
Frank,
Well you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but in reality when the general public sees two factions making the same error and an advocate only castigates one (and with considerable vehemence), the public correctly perceives political bias.
Climate change has been occurring since the formation of the planet. The effects of climate change and the level of contribution by human activity are certainly debatable.
Activist groups like CREDO and green energy companies like Clean Energy Choice, fund media outlets such as Inside Climate News’ etc, as part of a campaign ” to bring down Exxon”.
These organization have also been found to actively fund politicians like Eric Scniederman while covertly funding others and influencing RFA members to a more politically active role in funding political action.
This in itself is relatively harmless, except it’s inevitable that the science will get lost in all the political rhetoric.
As long as we take prehistoric carbon from deep in the earth, burn it, and pour 32 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly into our modern sky, we’ll see more energy in the air and oceans, more weather extremes of all kinds, and more acidity in the sea. The fact that we cause these effects must be firmly emphasized.
People need to replace the ambiguous and feeble phrases “climate change” and “global warming” with the far more accurate, evocative and impactful words “climate disruption.”
The word “change” leaves open the fraudulent interpretation that the disruption is natural, and the word “warming” ignores the severe consequences at both ends of the temperature scale, as well as with regard to volatile shifts in rainfall patterns (drought/flooding), and widespread lethal effects across the biosphere generally (crop failures, mass die-offs and extinctions of vital species, ocean acidification and rapidly expanding dead-zones, etc.).
Craig,
Over Christmas I was kept too busy to really consider your article.
However, in a quite moment, I discovered the UK Auditor-generals report on the cost of renewable subsidies being deliberately understated.
The UK Conservative government, like it’s Labour predecessor has tried to down play the high cost of Britain’s climate change policies.
The normally polite Auditor-general criticism is scathing by the describing Britain’s Climate and Energy Policy not just excessively expensive but dishonestly reported.
Former cabinet minister Peter Lilley MP followed the Auditor-Generals report with a dreport for the Global Warming Policy Foundation. on the . His report reveals the true cost incurred since the passing of the UK Climate Change Act 2008.
His conclusion summed up the past 8years, as “at best economic illiteracy and at worst deliberate deception” by government.
While theNational Audit Office criticized the government’s “lack of transparency and undermining accountability to parliament and consumers” a non-executive director of the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Tom Kelly, found a systemic underestimation in addition to “weaknesses in the original governance arrangements that were not rectified over time, a lack of transparency and a tendency to groupthink.” (DECC sat on the Kelly report for a year before releasing it).
Estimates put the costs of the Climate Change Actover £400 billion. Most of this money was simply wasted. Among other the revelations were numerous incident where government officials concealed and downplayed the cost of climate policies.
The Liberal-Democrats, who were the architects of this fiasco, concede the failures, and explain the lack of accountability as being justified in order to “save the planet”.
Their ideological convictions might be understandable, but it doesn’t why Conservative ministers failed to radically revise such policies when the coalition ended.
It’s these sort of inadequately monitored, wasteful policies, driven by ideological and political doctrines that destroys the credibility of legitimate environmental programs.
I could understand policy failures and cover-ups by a Labour-Left-green government, who seem to specialize in self-delusion, but for the conservatives to fail to disclose the size and extent of this disaster is doubly disgraceful.
Marcopolo,
I have suspected similar things for quite some time. The stated costs of renewables tend to exclude many important factors. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that eventually renewables, except in countries which have considerable hydro power and in niche situations, will be found to be impractical and that there will be a shift to nuclear power. Meanwhile, we will have wasted considerable time and money which will make it more difficult to reduce CO2 emissions quickly enough.
Frank,
You are correct. Only a few short years ago the UK was ripped apart by the bitter and often violent, campaign by the National Union of Miners and trade union movement to prevent the Conservative Thacher government closing down the coal industry.
The Guardian Newspapers, along with all the left media supported the Union with such headlines as “Keep Britain’s Lights On ‘.
Today, the same newspaper condemns any attempt to monitor renewable power costs, while accusing the government of wanting to revert to coal !
The same newspaper opposes Natural Gas production, insisting that Britain can supply most of it’s generation from solar! (one explanation could be that Guardian journalist is a ex-pat resident of Florida who seems to have forgotten the British climate !)
This is the problem when energy policy and science becomes entangled in political ideology.
The UK government and current Prime Minister Teresa May faces huge challenges in the years ahead. Disengagement from Europe should revive UK manufacturing. The policies of UK devolution need to be reversed, and the bonds of unity for all UK citizens need to be enhanced, not alienated.
With the passage of time, and the initial fear of the unknown recedes the British people are growing more confidant and support for Brexit is growing.
The report by the highly respected Auditor-General can’t be ignored. If anything, it doesn’t go far enough !
Industrial scale renewable power generation can only be justified by replacing reality with a bizzaro world of political-ideology.
A doctrine where economic analysis, and even simple math, is overwhelmed by inventing factors to produce an equation to suit a political-ideological doctrine.
The $500 billion of UK taxpayer money wasted on importing under-performing technology could have been invested in the well advanced UK nuclear energy industry.
Rolls-Royce is one of the worlds leading researchers and manufacturers of small advanced nuclear technology. The UK needs cheaper energy to retain employment and restructure it’s dilapidated infrastructure.
It needs cheaper power for social cohesion. Like America, there are two Britain’s. One is doing very well from the the advantages of the information revolution, the other is slowly sinking into misery and despair in depressing, decaying former industrial cities. These cities need real employment and more importantly, hope, for millions of citizens.
Only cheap energy will bring back industry and economic revival to those forgotten citizens.
The only technology that can provide that sort of generating capacity is advanced nuclear.
Interesting June 2016 article on the abolition of the DECC (and mentioning the creation of the BEIS (department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy):
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/15/decc-abolition-major-setback-for-uk-climate-change-efforts
Yes, that’s sad. Interesting that the author links “Euroskeptism” with climate skepticism. As demonstrated by the Brexit, the British have their own brand of ignoramuses, just like we do here.
I was going to use “ignorami” there as the plural; I’m glad I looked it up! Check this out: http://historymike.blogspot.com/2007/10/ignorami-versus-ignoramuses.html. Too funny. Sometimes we human beings think too much. 🙂
Craig,
I voted for Brexit, thank you for describing me as an ignoramus !
But that’s probably the sort of response I would expect from readers of the Guardian, the newspaper for Chardonnay socialists, whose UK readership has diminished by 2/3rds on ten years and loses £50m a year.
Since the Guardian’s readership seems unwilling to pay to subscribe and advertising support is evaporating faster than the proceeds from the Scott trust, the existence of the Guardian may not outlive the EU.
But it’s fascinating that you would link link ” “Euroskeptism” with “climate skepticism “.
Since the European Union is a creature completely created by political ideology, with no scientific basis and relies on adherence to those doctrines for existence, does that mean that your beliefs about climate change are also based more on political ideology than any scientific basis ?
I suspect there’s more than an element of truth in your Freudian slip.