Amherst : Junk Science + Junk Religion = Same Old Commies

The pages of the New Yorker magazine and other publications have for decades featured the final crisis of human civilization as farce. Cartoon images of religiously inspired ascetics carrying terse placards announcing the end time provide comic relief in a world full of real troubles by invoking our commonsense scientific rationality. But the quote from Rep. Shimkus illustrates something else in the pronouncements of some pundits.

Climate scientists, by contrast, use geophysics, measurement and continuous confirmation through time to model the speed and impact of global warming. They conclude that severe environmental consequences are imminent – not indefinite – byproducts of our carbon based and ever expanding consumer economy. In fact, there is not much time, perhaps a Biblical seven years, for policy makers to confront an urgently needed transformation of society if the worst consequences of global warming are to be avoided.

http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/208307/

It actually has nothing to do with science or religion. Just a new face of Bolshevism attacking capitalism.

About Tony Heller

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76 Responses to Amherst : Junk Science + Junk Religion = Same Old Commies

  1. A K Haart says:

    “byproducts of our carbon based and ever expanding consumer economy.”

    Yes, it is all about the evils of capitalism, about the servant class wanting to better themselves without the assistance of all-powerful leaders, about them flying cheaply to places that were once so exclusive – so much nicer you know than they are today. Good grief we can’t have that, they’ll want a better education for their awful children next.

    Capitalism gives them more than they deserve – so kill it off with a big myth. Frighten them into staying at home, into knowing their place. Frighten their children too, tell them how evil – no – suggest how evil their parents are for being consumers, for driving a car and using electricity, for being well-informed about the real world.

  2. NikFromNYC says:

    “A sustainable society will require fairness (equity) and justice locally and globally.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).

    “Preventing the collapse of human civilization requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant consumer culture.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).

    “Just because there a professor of something denying climate change does not mean it is not true, it just that the professor is in denial. This is why one must make use of the *preponderance* *of* *evidence* in science, the collective view.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).

    • Blade says:

      Yep, three quotes there leaving no doubt the stupidity of this kook.

      John Cook (aka Kook) is a certifiable commie.

      I say, Better Dead than Red.

    • Eric Barnes says:

      So “justice” would involve me sending money to bureaucrats in Washington whenever I wanted to heat my house or cook some food?

  3. Don McCubbin says:

    Hi,
    The science points to radiative forcing from anthropogenic sources of CO2, CH4, N2O, SF6, etc. leading to growing climatic changes.
    Just pointing to carbon is a little simple, but CO2 is the main anthropogenic climate forcer, so what exactly is objectionable to a statement that a rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon (i.e., CO2) is going to cause problems.
    There are lots of things that create externalities, and it is often efficient to put a price on these externalities that reflects their social cost. This is economics 101, not an attack on capitalism. Why give a free lunch to carbon users?
    Best regards,
    Don

  4. Andy Weiss says:

    When there is evidence that Gore, Cameron and other super rich of the same ilk are making genuine sacrafices and reducing their standard to living as a serious example to us peons, it might be an indication of a real problem Until that point, the entire matter is a hypocritical farce.

    • Daniel Packman says:

      Actions of the super rich don’t affect nature. Super rich people are more able to adapt to harsher conditions without changing their lifestyles.

      • glacierman says:

        So, are you saying that people having wealth is a good way to promote healthier, safer societies?

      • Daniel Packman says:

        The relatively few people in the world who are wealthy are able to ignore environmental problems in their own lives if they want to. They don’t need to live near a waste dump the leaks deadly waste. But they can still throw out dangerous material. But everyone can’t be so “wealthy” since pollution is now a global issue.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        Wait a few decades and see.

      • glacierman says:

        Then the governments should be trying to promote wealth creation, and quit reaching into my pocket and taking. It is interesting that most of the very rich are the ones that promote energy control through carbon taxes. Looks to me like they want to keep things the way they are, with them on top.

      • Justa Joe says:

        Can you just Consider me super rich even though I’m not so that I can be exempted from Carbon (everything) rationing?

      • DEEBEE says:

        Daniel, I am willing to wait for a few decades, if you can go silent. Otherwise the wait would be intolerable.

  5. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    Workers unite, or be killed. That’s the true face of what came about in Russia as a result of 1917. Having the workers in control wasn’t what it was. There was an elite. Every one else’s life stank.

    When you make people work for others there is no incentive to work. So they killed 10,000 to 12,000 every day —suddenly there was incentive to work while having the government confiscate most of your earnings.

    Yuri Maltsev, who was involved in Russian government, gives more details of what Russia really is.

    “Too Big Not to Fail: Imperial Governments from Moscow to Washington”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxKAzpGmVA

  6. Eric Barnes says:

    So justice would involve me sending money to bureaucrats in Washington whenever I wanted to heat my house or cook some food?

    • Daniel Packman says:

      It is a challenge to tie environmental cost (which is ultimately paid by all) to the initial consumption/pollution. An unregulated free market decouples the two.

      • It isn’t clear that there is any environmental cost to CO2. It may in fact be a net producer.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        Wait and see.

      • glacierman says:

        We have been waiting. Manhattan is under water.

        Sorry Steve, couldn’t resist.

      • DEEBEE says:

        Oh SHUUUT UUUP. You are spoiling my wait

      • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

        Daniel Packman says:
        May 27, 2011 at 3:30 pm
        Wait and see.

        PATHETIC. You are pathetic. It will always be wait and see with your crowd since every prediction you make doesn’t happen. You have to say wait and see, your next predictions will be right. And when they are wrong you will say wait and see. and when those fail—-repeat the process until the end of time!!!!!!!

      • Glacierman says:

        Don’t forget about the tipping points. They can explain that things will happen even when they are not happening. Then, it will be “worse then we thought”.

      • Eric Barnes says:

        Daniel,
        Wow, that’s a dandy answer! You obviously took quite some time polishing that turd. I’d suggest that the real reason that you think the answer to everything is more money for central government is that you are an egotistical troll who hates people (communist). If you sincerely cared about people *and* the environment, you’d be working on energy efficiency or alternative energy. It’s obvious your real goal is to subjugate the common man to make sure your communist brethren don’t go without anything. Why don’t you back to Leningrad and climb back in whatever hole you came out of?

      • Daniel Packman says:

        Thank you Eric for your well-reasoned, kind and profoundly insightful psychological analysis. I am sure that I will give it all the consideration it is due.

      • Eric Barnes says:

        No problem Daniel,
        Whenever you need help determining just how hypocritical and misanthropic you are just post here. I’ll spell it out for you gratis.

  7. PhilJourdan says:

    The warmist movement is a perfect fit for the communists. The former will get everyone use to less, and the latter will make it so.

  8. mkelly says:

    Don McCubbin says:
    May 27, 2011 at 10:16 am
    Hi,
    “The science points to radiative forcing from anthropogenic sources of CO2, CH4, N2O, SF6, etc. leading to growing climatic changes.
    Just pointing to carbon is a little simple, but CO2 is the main anthropogenic climate forcer, so what exactly is objectionable to a statement that a rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon (i.e., CO2) is going to cause problems.
    There are lots of things that create externalities, and it is often efficient to put a price on these externalities that reflects their social cost. This is economics 101, not an attack on capitalism. Why give a free lunch to carbon users?”

    You forgot H2O. This little rascal causes rust. It eats away at bridges, railroad tracks, cars, melts statues, kills people if in abundance, etc. And as we know more molecules of H2O are produced by them bad SUV’s than CO2. So Don since I have known externalities caused by H2O should we start a cap and trade system for it.

    • Daniel Packman says:

      Water vapor is part of a complex cycle that includes CO2. This is part of the reason you can’t run a pure radiative transfer program and expect to get a realistic understanding of the atmosphere.

      • Hour to hour variations in H2O contribute more to changes in the radiative balance than all the changes in CO2 over the last century.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        And because water vapor is so significant on such a scale are you making some leap of faith that CO2 is not significant? That is why complex models are constructed. You can’t draw simple conclusions from an incomplete characterization of the system. You seem to cast a jaundiced eye on current models. Fine, be skeptical. But you can’t substitute simple models that clearly don’t capture all the physics of the atmosphere.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        We disagree.

        • Every modeler that I have talked to tells me that chaos kicks in after 72 hours and makes modeling unreliable.

          Given that Hansen’s claims are based on feedback, modeling is necessarily iterative, and errors compound exponentially.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        If climate models were trying to model chaos, this would be true. What you are talking about is weather modeling. Analogous to calculating detailed flow vs evolution of some quantity like prandtl number.

        • I don’t see much difference between weather and climate models. They both model the same atmospheric processes. For example, you can’t calculate changes in albedo due to snow unless you can accurately and continuously forecast snowfall and temperature. That is what weather models do.

      • mkelly says:

        Dan, you missed the point of Don’s statement. Which as I read it was we should pay for externalities caused by CO2 it being a GHG that causes radiative forcing. I can identify externalities of H2O we put in the atmosphere I cannot find any for CO2. So does Don what a cap and trade system for H2O which we know is distructive?

      • Daniel Packman says:

        The thing to compare is the relative effects of human added H2O vs CO2. We know the global value of CO2 has increased since the industrial revolution by a large percentage and remains in the atmosphere for many decades.. Water vapor, on the other hand, is largely determined by temperature. If you increase water vapor above its saturated level, it rains out. This doesn’t mean that water vapor has no effect, but it is an immediate one. If we started to inject huge amounts of water vapor in a region, we would increase rain in the region. A much more detailed examination would be needed to see relative effects.

      • mkelly says:

        Again, you side step the issue. I have identified externalities caused by H2O. Don says that we should pay for externalities. So should we have a cap and trade system for H2O.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        The costs of H2O are certainly there as you have said: rust, etc. But calculating the relative cost of injecting more H2O in the atmosphere is much harder. Most of what you pump in will just quickly rain out and the cost of injecting the H2O is zero additional cost. You will have to deal with rust in any case, but won’t see any additional problems.

      • glacierman says:

        Dan Packman says: “You will have to deal with rust in any case, but won’t see any additional problems.”

        Isn’t the entire issue with CO2 based on feedback causing more H2O, which causes more heating…..until we hit a tipping point, or something like that.

        Are you saying the IPCC is wrong about the effects of CO2?

      • Daniel Packman says:

        Increasing CO2 affects the global water vapor in the air. Directly injecting water vapor in the air does not. It just rains out.

      • glacierman says:

        That’s all I need to see.

        CO2 really is the magical molecule.

      • glacierman says:

        I am going to patent the CO2 humidistat/furnace. Works great at increasing the water vapor in your house, and reradiates heat at the same time to keep you warm in the winter.

        My current humidistat is just getting me wet.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        Works great for houses that have no roof so the sun can shine in, are large enough for global circulation patterns, and have 70% of the surface covered in water.

      • DEEBEE says:

        Daniel Packman says:
        May 27, 2011 at 5:13 pm
        Increasing CO2 affects the global water vapor in the air. Directly injecting water vapor in the air does not. It just rains out.
        =====================
        WTF! So there is a CO2 water!

      • glacierman says:

        CO2 is the Chuck Norris of the chemical world.

        Here is a CO2ism:

        H2O doesn’t rain, until CO2 tells it to.

      • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

        Daniel Packman

        You should change your name to Tireless Propagandist.

    • glacierman says:

      Sounds good, as long as I can start the market.

  9. Justa Joe says:

    Mkelly, It seems like Dan is studiously avoiding your question.

    “CO2 is the main anthropogenic climate forcer,” – Anthropogenic CO2 is tiny relative to “natural” CO2 and CO2 hasn’t been demonstrated to be a global climate forcer. There is also a little matter of all of the “social” benefits of convetional fuels.

    a rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon (i.e., CO2) is going to cause problems.” – Cause problems for whom and how? Will there just as likely be off setting benefits? I never bought into the idea that a warmer climate is necessarilly all bad. The distribution of effects should be fairly mixed.

    “Why give a free lunch to carbon users?” – Are people getting carbon based fuels for free now (of taxes)? Where is it. I could use some.

  10. mkelly says:

    Dan says: “But calculating the relative cost of injecting more H2O in the atmosphere is much harder.”

    So how could you calculate the relative cost of more CO2 if you cannot for H2O that demonstrably does damage where CO2 does not.

    So you agree that Don is in error?

  11. glacierman says:

    I meant humidifier above. laughing too hard.

    • Mike Davis says:

      Some people just do not comprehend that H2O kills more people every day than CO2 has during the last two centuries. Human induced H2O increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere but without a cold system to interact with the warm moist air you are left with warm moist air which causes more health problems than warm dry air.
      I spent Summers living and working out side in temperatures over 105F with a RH of less than 10%. As the community grew the humidity also grew because of landscape and water features. I observed more people being affected by the “Heat Index” caused by the higher humidity. I currently live in a region with RH over 50% and must stay in a climate controlled area when the outside temperature is over 90F.
      Those that claim human induced additional H2O has negligible results does not know what they are talking about.
      DP: You may be a scientist or believe what the Chicken Little Brigade tells you but you need to spend more time studying water vapor in more regional conditions.

      • Daniel Packman says:

        I don’t dispute regional variations, particularly in the scenario you mention with a constant increased input.

  12. gofer says:

    IF CO2 remained in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, then the ppm would be what???? That would mean all the CO2 ever released since the country’s founding????????? Are you freakin’ serious??? And all these years, I thought I understood the CO2 cycle.

    If human contribution of around 3%, then that extra 12 or so molecules are SUPER CO2. Those are the ones that will cause cataaaastrooooophheeee!

    • Daniel Packman says:

      CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a result of the sum of sources and sinks. The mechanism of removal takes a long time. If we drastically reduced human sources of CO2 today, it still would be many decades before the level would return to that of the mid 1800’s. There are large natural inflows and outflows of CO2, but they are in balance. A relatively small increase by another source increases the level in the atmosphere significantly.

      • Justa Joe says:

        I don’t accept your claim that natural CO2 is “in balance”. Even Algore acknowledges that CO2 has fluctuated greatly pre-civilization. I’ve never seen an adequate explanation why nature, which doesn’t have a central control, requires a CO2 balance.

        What do we gain by suffering all of the privations and burdens that would be required to return CO2 1800’s levels?

      • Daniel Packman says:

        The balance between inflow and outflow isn’t perfect, but is relative to the human input. Variations in the past have been, as far as we can document from the data, over much longer time scales. There is nothing magical about nature finding an approximate balance given steady sources and sinks.

        Depending on what mechanisms you are considering that would lead to deprivations, I could easily imagine policies that would be worse than doing nothing. Considering the time constants and the huge difficulty in decreasing emissions, we are probably going to be dealing with the effects of increased CO2 for the next century or two even if global cooperation were achieved.

  13. Justa Joe says:

    Worrying over the rapidity of the variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration doesn’t seem to have any significance except as a vehicle for peddling alarmism.

  14. Justa Joe says:

    except for its utility as a vehicle for peddling alarmism.

  15. Mike Davis says:

    CO2 in the atmosphere is related to biological activity. Biological activity is related to temperatures. CO2 concentrations an be expected to increase and decrease with increase in decomposition and decease with plant growth. A warming world ALLOWS more growth and a cooling world RESTRICTS growth. Warming produces more H2O in the atmosphere due to evaporation but as CO2 does not produce warming it plays no part in water vapor concentrations.
    Sorry Daniel, there is no balance in nature. What is evident is the attempts to achieve balance that is never achieved. The only time balance can be achieved would be to stop all activity, The universe would need to end to find balance. Life is about adapting to nature as we have found we can not control nature but some fools still try, Like thinking that controlling the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere will make some difference in long term weather patterns.

    • Daniel Packman says:

      Your plausible connections of rates to temperature is at best a partial qualitative description of a complex system. There is no way to make conclusions based on such generalities, particularly ones that are incorrect. CO2 sources and sinks are not only biological. Your ideal of balance is not a useful concept in the real world. Balance is a measurable and sound concept within science. We can measure quantities over time and determine under what time constants and values we have a balance.

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