Atlanta and the hysterics of global warming
It was unseasonably, strangely warm yesterday, hitting a reported high of 68 (69 at the airport) in the middle of December. That’s 12 degrees warmer than the average Atlanta high for Dec. 9 of 56 degrees.
Now, if I were to adopt the debating technique of certain global-warming skeptics, I might seize upon yesterday’s freakish heat as proof that the scientists are right and that global warming is real. Just as deniers use an odd snowstorm in Houston to scoff at claims that the planet is getting hotter, I could do the same:
“Look how warm it was yesterday! Almost 70 in mid-December! How can you claim that global warming isn’t real?”
But of course, that would be wrong. It would be foolish. One day’s temperature is a matter of weather, not climate. One odd day, month, season, year or even a series of years tell us little about long-term climate trends. In addition, data from Atlanta or any other single monitoring station don’t tell us anything about trends globally.
As I was perusing the December record-temperature data at weather.com, though, I noticed something unusual.
The oldest record I could find from Atlanta goes back to 1880, giving us a temperature database of at least 129 years. Logically, daily record-high temperatures ought to be distributed fairly equally over that time period. Yet they’re not.
Of the 31 daily record highs in December, 24 have been set in the last 25 years, far more than logic suggests. Let me put that another way: Seven record daily highs for Atlanta were set in the first 104 years of record-keeping; 24 record highs have been set in the last 25 years. (Looking at the other end of the gauge, only 3 of 31 daily December lows have been set in the past quarter century, which is about what you’d expect in a normal distribution.)
Startled, I looked at January records. Nine of the 31 record highs that month have been set in the last 25 years. That’s a lot fewer than in December, but statistically, it’s also two or three times more than should be the case if all else were equal.
Now, even that does not constitute proof of global warming. At most, you can say that it is consistent with climate change — climatologists do warn that warming would be most noticeable in winter months. But even that claim might be stretching things too far.
As climate researchers would tell you, a lot of that apparent warming might be explained by the growing urbanization of Atlanta. The city has become a heat island of concrete and asphalt, which makes it complicated to compare today’s temperature records with those of 100 years ago. So researchers use various “tricks” to correct for that change — they have agreed-upon methods to account for the effect of heat islands, and they adjust the data accordingly.
In other words, it is not a simple matter. And given the complexity of the science, there would certainly be an opportunity for researchers to give the data a slight little finagle here, a tiny bit of exaggeration there, and — voila!! — global warming!
That’s roughly the version of reality that many global-warming skeptics are now asking their supporters to accept. Having largely lost the argument about a scientific consensus on the issue — the consensus is too solid to dismiss any longer — they now argue that the consensus itself is a fraud.
“At worst its junk science and it’s part of a massive international scientific fraud,” as U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., claims. Sensenbrenner is former chairman of both the House Science Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, and is now the ranking Republican member on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Of course, the narrative pushed by Sensenbrenner and others would require you to believe that smart people all over the world — most of whom who have wanted to be scientists all their lives and have worked hard to achieve that goal — have somehow gotten together to collude in this giant fraud. Depending on the day and the skeptic/theorist, the researchers were motivated to join that conspiracy by a lust for government research grants — although private industry would pay more for the opposite conclusion — or by some secret desire to promote socialism or even one-world government.
Since the late ’70s, as the story goes, scientists in the United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, France, Korea and many other nations have been perpetrating this silent fraud, and as young scientists emerged from universities they too have been secretly initiated into the priesthood. It’s a story right out of the books of Dan Brown, requiring the skills of a Robert Langdon to unravel.
Either that, or global warming is real.
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691 comments Add your comment
Normal
December 10th, 2009
4:01 pm
Headed out…check in later, to those I’ll miss…have a great night.
Citizen of the World
December 10th, 2009
4:01 pm
Citizen of the US — you are right about the scientific method having been around longer than I thought, although it has evolved and changed over the centuries, and our tools have become more sophisticated. And it is, indeed, a process whereby the frontiers are continually pushed back and every scientist stands on the shoulders of those who came before.
Still, you seem to have made the choice to “believe” less widely held conclusions while dismissing more widely held conclusions. The question is why?
jessejames
December 10th, 2009
4:02 pm
“In climate science, uncertainty arises from a variety of sources, such as the inherently unpredictable nature of both the physical climate system and the human factors driving climate change”
-micheal Mann-
basically Mann says that climate and human factors are unpredictable. so how can he say there is a scientific consenses if it is not based on scientific fact? It is all a guess.
These so called scientists over at east anglia, NASA are making it up. they changed the code(the model) when the new data inputed was not meeting their hoped theory. The emails are damaging but it is their manipulation of the code which is lie. Gore…………YOU LIE
THERE HAS BEEN NO PEER REVIEW PROCESS.
but there is this. For those of you who say there are not credible scientist that disagree with AGW.
http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/
Clearbrook
December 10th, 2009
4:07 pm
Georgia Conservative, you make me laugh! No. I don’t have a Piled Higher and Deeper BS degree, like you do. I don’t need it to do my job! Are you one of those ivory tower specialists, or do you actually do something with your degree? I am glad to know you have one, though. It makes me feel safer knowing even a snob can strive that high, and succeed! It is just sad that it is a point for you to try to make as if it makes your opinion so very important. It doesn’t.
I just happen to be willing to search for the truth honestly. There may be a global warming trend. But it is not the Hockey Stick that was doctored up by dummied data, though. In the 1970’s, we were all SURE that we were heading into a nice little Ice Age. That proved the “Scientific” community was trustworthy, didn’t it? Why shouldn’t we believe them now, despite evidence they were “cooking the books” to make everything look favorable to their position? Make an Axiomatic statement and admit you cannot prove it! It is THAT simple! You say that Jay Bookman’s article is scientifically sound. Really? And is that based upon the sharpness of his sarcasm? I can really get quite a bit more personal if you think it will help me be persuasive. I might even have fun with it!
Jess
December 10th, 2009
4:11 pm
Georgia Conservative,
You have not looked at the raw data used for current modeling. This data is not open to the public, or even to other scientist in the same field. There are currenly suits being filed to force sharing the data. There was a really good article on this subject in the Wall St. Journal Dec. 8.
LA
December 10th, 2009
4:13 pm
Pelosi to propose raising debt ceiling
Legislation to be included in defense spending bill headed to floor
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121002575.html/?hpid=topnews
science man
December 10th, 2009
4:15 pm
the simple fact of the matter is is that there is no conspiracy. for those of you that are not scientists, I will say that being a scientist is daunting and not rewarding. these are people. they need to make a living and make a name for themselves. but, at the end of the day, they are just people. unfortunately, the saying is true, people are smart, a lot of people are dumb.
Question: show me the one experiment performed that is in accordance with scientific principles that proves that man is causing global warming. The truth is, you will not find one because our system is so complex, it is impossible to know all inputs, be able to really simulate it, keep all inputs except for one constant, and scale up the experiment.
What scientists are doing is correlating data. They are saying that because two things appear to be tracking with each other, that there is a connection. Unfortunately, not only has the data been shown to be wrong (almost half of the climate stations in the US are out of calibration and setup incorrectly), the “value added” data has had to be corrected three times because of simple mathematical errors in the value addition.
That is why there are now more scientists that do not believe in man made global warming than those that profess it to be true. Yet, you do not hear this stuff because it does not fit within the agenda of the media and the current government belief system.
What I find to be particularly troubling is that all of this global warming discussion has taken the focus away from what we really should be thinking about, and that is cleaning up our environment.
Jake
December 10th, 2009
4:16 pm
True unemployment (U-5) is 11.2% so people have quit getting benefits and looking. U-6 is a staggering 17.6% just by adding in part-time workers that want full-time work. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
Scout
December 10th, 2009
4:18 pm
HEADLINE (ABC): Obama Speech Channels George W. Bush
Analysis: “In Subtle and Nuanced Speech, President Makes Much The Same Case About the Legitimacy of War as did his Predecessor”
Well, well, well ……… and he didn’t even learn to fly a fighter aircraft.
Citizen of the World
December 10th, 2009
4:19 pm
Maybe the only reason scientists were wrong about the Little Ice Age to come in the `70s was that they weren’t yet aware of the climate changes that would be wrought by greenhouse gases.
Maybe they were right, and if it weren’t for all these greenhouse gases we’re spewing up into the atmosphere, we would be coming into a Little Ice Age.
Citizen of the US
December 10th, 2009
4:21 pm
Citizen of the World
Geoscientists track sea level changes over time. It’s easy to identify glacial versus interglacial periods via sedimentation. The degree of sea level can be determined using single cell marine organisms known as Foraminifers and Calcareous Nannofossils. The degree of glaciation is directly related to sea level, therfore the extent of the ice is relatively easy to calculate. This science is very mature and degree of glaciation can be very accurately estimated. This is certainly not difficult science.
Scout
December 10th, 2009
4:23 pm
HEADLINE: TIMES SQUARE (WABC) — “Police pursuing a suspect shot and killed a man who they say fired on them in the Times Square area.”
How the heck did this happen? I thought New York City law prohibited anyone from having guns in the city limits? Oh, maybe this guy didn’t get the word.
LA
December 10th, 2009
4:24 pm
Scout, Chicago too but that city has so many gun problems it’s ridiculous.
Citizen of the World
December 10th, 2009
4:32 pm
And can’t scientists, by the same token, take core ice samples dating back eons and determine CO2 levels and correlate those with warming trends? And can’t they also see how quickly or slowly these trends occurred and conclude that our current levels are historically high and our current trend is happening exponentially fast?
I can’t say that I understand climatologists’ methods — I am not a scientist — but unlike others on this blog who aren’t scientists, I’m not going to dismiss the views of, again, the majority who have determined that global warming is real and we are the cause.
Jay
December 10th, 2009
4:33 pm
ScienceMan writes:
“That is why there are now more scientists that do not believe in man made global warming than those that profess it to be true. Yet, you do not hear this stuff because it does not fit within the agenda of the media and the current government belief system.”
I have seen nobody make that claim. On what basis do you offer it here? Every single national or international scientific body now accepts anthropogenic global warming, yet scientists who reject the theory outnumber those who accept it?
ScienceMan, that’s nuts.
Scout
December 10th, 2009
4:33 pm
To LA:
But I thought if you passed a law like that everyone obeyed it? What’s going on?
Logic
December 10th, 2009
4:34 pm
I used to buy the global warming shtick until I realized it had been cooling over the last 11 years going totally counter to all the predictions of climate theoretical models. Follow the money! Real scientists change their view when new information comes to light. This has become religion with doctored data to cover for failed forecasted warming and chicken little screeming “the ocean is rising, the ocean is rising” “we must act NOW!” “the debate is over!” “all smart people agree with us…everyone else is a flat-earther”. Do people really believe destroying the us/world economy with carbon taxes will really change the temp at all??? Really? The big burning orb in the sky has far more to do with the temp than people and animals exhaling. But go ahead circle the wagons.
DAVID
December 10th, 2009
4:36 pm
GLOBAL WARMING in Atlanta will have to wait til the hard cold winter has passed…Talk about Global Warming in the spring……2010.
Scout
December 10th, 2009
4:37 pm
I remember when I was in Jr. High (we’re talking the 1950’s here) that our “science & health” textbooks said to rub snow on frostbitten fingers, hands, etc. to help warm them up.
Science changes ……………………..
LA
December 10th, 2009
4:37 pm
Scout, LOLOL! I don’t know and I don’t think anyone in Illinois could explain it either. Jesse Jackson comes out against white people and race but I have never heard him come out about the black on black gun violence in Chicago.
Scout
December 10th, 2009
4:39 pm
It’s all about politics …………. not science.
science man
December 10th, 2009
4:40 pm
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
31,000 in the US alone. ouch. nothing like facts to get in the way of a good story, huh jay.
Linda
December 10th, 2009
4:43 pm
Southern@ 3:45, In the ’90’s the fed govt REQUIRED Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac to reduce their lending standards in the name of Affordable Housing, another social engineering program. Mortgage companies make almost all of the conventional loans. They have no deposits & sell their loans on the secondary market. Even tho Fannie was buying only a little over half of them, almost all secondary lenders used Fannie’s guidelines to underwrite them. Therefore, Fannie set the trends & rules. No one wrote junk loans before Fannie did–to borrowers who had no jobs, no down payment & bad credit. Fannie & others bundled junk loans with prime loans & sold them on Wall St. & all over the world.
Since the collapse, the fed govt has nationalized Fannie & Freddie (which had been quasi-govt. agencies), bailed out the investment banks who bought the bundles, the banks who originated the loans, AIG who insured the loans & homeowners who borrowed the money.
The main Rep. Frank & Sen. Dodd are still pushing Affordable Housing as we speak.
You paid for it.
AmVet
December 10th, 2009
4:44 pm
PLL? Is that phase lock loop? Jeez, I haven’t dealt with those since the late 70’s…
I’m just not down with all the new psychobabble and politicolingo, I guess.
atat has LA disease – speaking for others. But being stuck in the past and stuck on stupid, her’s is both chronic and terminal.
Yosarian, thank you for that response.
And yes as you can see, this forum has it characters and its total a$$hats too!
Your take on this problem is VERY reasoned. And very reasonable.
I concur that man’s part of the phenomenon is hard to calculate. No, make that well nigh impossible to exactly calculate.
But inane denials and sheer aversion to facts by the intentionally ignorant based on outdated political worldviews that revolve around little more than loathing all things liberal – including academia and science – fits into that category of me not suffering fools gladly.
With that said though I rely in experts and lean heavily towards acceptance, even I am not completely convinced of AGW yet. At least in all of its ramifications and projected results. And when confronted by intelligent possibilities I do listen. As when Paul, Bruno and a few others, who have studied the science in detail, speak. But you’ve seen for yourself here, that much/most of this hullabaloo and blustering is just the unread and uninformed trying to feel better about themselves. On both sides of the issue.
I do know that in the US alone we pump about 12,000,0000,000 tons of toxins into the dumping ground called our atmosphere every single year and that the current (unending?) addiction to fossil fuels is both short sighted, geopolitically suicidal and very, very risky.
Green energy is coming. And those opposed cannot stop it. I advocate for it and believe now is the time to end subsidies and corporate welfare for BIG oil and BIG coal.
I do depart from many of my pro-environment friends in that I also support nuclear energy. (how the hell are we ever gonna get to Star Trek if we can’t handle nuke plants?)
I also look forward to any information you have to share, no matter how inconvenient!
science man
December 10th, 2009
4:45 pm
and jay, please quit touting that every single scientific body accepts global warming. that is not true. these bodies are nothing but a small group of people that claim to speak for the entire body. they are all membership organizations, which means a lot of people belong just to belong. the only people that are active are those that sit on the boards.
here, i suggest this as a story. go to one of these “bodies” and do an investigative report on how they actually work, on how they profess to speak for the members, and how member input is really not taken into account.
along with being a former scientist, i am also an attorney. i belong to the ABA but I will tell you that I disgree with pretty much everything the ABA has said or endorsed for the past 10 years. but, i still belong because it is expected of the public and of my peers to belong.
Southern Comfort/ABM
December 10th, 2009
4:45 pm
LA @ 4:37
That’s because stories like that don’t equate ratings for newscasts. That’s the same reason you don’t read about the good things too often in the papers. In this instant, up-to-the-minute society we live in, no one wants to hear the good things.
LA
December 10th, 2009
4:48 pm
AmVet writes: atat has LA disease – speaking for others. But being stuck in the past and stuck on stupid, her’s is both chronic and terminal.
AmVet, I’m sure you know all about diseases. “Me love you long time” is what you probably remember best in your service in Vietnam. LOL!
Linda
December 10th, 2009
4:48 pm
Southern@3:51, Yes the fed govt has been involved in CEO salaries, etc. Remember AIG? The Dems rallied unions to rent buses & protest in front of the senior executives’ homes. Come to find out there was a provision added to the economic stimulus bill in 2/09 that guaranteed the bonuses. Chris Dodd initially denied it & later admitted it. His wife had an interest. Google the details.
Citizen of the US
December 10th, 2009
4:48 pm
Citizen of the world.
The last glacial period (Pleistocene) ended roughly 15,000 years ago. We’ve been in an interglacial since. Yes ice cores can be taken and trace gasses tracked, but that isn’t going to give you any more or any better analysis of sea level change (the basis for interpreting paleo climate) than the fossils already being tracked. THere have been times when the gulf of mexico extended up the middle of the country all the way to Canada and times when the coast of Louisiana was 100 miles furhter south. The only constant is change.
Jay
December 10th, 2009
4:50 pm
The discredited Oregon Petition? Featuring a fraudulent “peer-reviewed” paper?
Hah!
You really aren’t a “science man,” are you. Because no self-respecting scientists would point to that canard as proof of anything.
Again, all those scientific groups, with boards and voting members, all without exception accepting AGW as valid, and you counter with the Oregon petition.
Ok then.
LA
December 10th, 2009
4:50 pm
AmVet, I’m sure that most of the CO2 emissions in Atlanta come from your mouth. You do spew a lot of hot toxic gas from your pie hole.
Simon
December 10th, 2009
4:54 pm
You need to read about the “Atlanta Heat Island”
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/Landsat/atlanta_heat_background.html
then visit http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
and locate rural stations and see the temp has remained the same over 100 years.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m12d10-Problems-with-surface-station-climate-records-easy-to-find–even-for-a-sixth-grader
science man
December 10th, 2009
4:56 pm
one of the best scientists, who I do not doubt believes in what she speaks about, is Dr. Curry at GT. She engages skeptics, not deride them. If this was the attitude from the beginning (instead of this pompuous, algorical is right, the science and discussion is over), more people probably would understand and believe in man made global warming. but scientists do not have the people skills necessary to do that, nor do the politicians that profess this (they probably just do not care).
If you are a skeptic, like me, email Dr. Curry and start a discusion
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/a-climate-scientist-on-climate-skeptics/#more-11377
AmVet
December 10th, 2009
4:58 pm
science man, is that the same ABA, chock full of Republican lawyers, that said that the serially impeachable outlaw (my words) George Walker Bush was so appalling that they organized former counsel to the CIA, the National Security Agency and the FBI, among others, to produce detailed reports and resolutions assailing the Bush government for repeatedly violating the constitution in numerous ways?
Just curious…
http://www.abanet.org/media/releases/news072406.html
Kamchak
December 10th, 2009
5:00 pm
I used to buy the global warming shtick until I realized it had been cooling over the last 11 years going totally counter to all the predictions of climate theoretical models.
Ho hum here we go again…
Myth of Cooling Globe shattered by AP-sponsored ‘blind’ test
Berenstein (okay, “the AP”) gave the data to four statisticians and asked them to analyze the data. The result:
the experts found no true temperature declines over time.
Without knowing what the data referred to, one statistician called it “cherry-picking” to assert that there was any sort of statistically meaningful ‘cooling trend’.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
The statisticians’ basic point: the starting date is key. If you play games and have 1998 as “the” starting point, there is a minor cooling in the intervening years. (Actually, not a cooling but a slight retreating, writ large, from very high temperatures.)
Southern Comfort/ABM
December 10th, 2009
5:00 pm
Linda
I’ve noticed that Fannie and Freddie are quite often the target when it comes to the mortgage meltdown. At the greatest involvement, how involved were the two in subprime mortgages? From what’s been said, the subprime mortgages were central to the collapse, right?
If you wish check out this report here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/…/ChomPennCross.pdf
Check out page 9. They list the top ten originators of subprime loans. I don’t see either listed there. Maybe it’s because they did not originate those loans, or they did not originate as many as other companies did. Countrywide, on the other hand, is on a few of those list and no longer exists. I wonder why they went out of business? Did Freddie or Fannie or even the Government force them to write those mortgages. Nope, it was pure greed. They saw a market and sought to exploit it. However, it came back and bit them in the a$$.
Southern Comfort/ABM
December 10th, 2009
5:04 pm
Linda
You also missed my point on the CEO’s. If they were really concerned about the American worker, why do they bring in foreign workers? Why do they continually shutter plants and jobs here and ship them elsewhere? Why don’t they take 1-2% of their salary and use it to fund jobs at their company? Wouldn’t that boost their productivity if they have more workers to perform the job?
Jay
December 10th, 2009
5:04 pm
Science man, I agree with Curry (and Mike Hulme). Most scientists are neither comfortable nor skilled at public engagement, and the challenge of translating scientific theory into political action has indeed pushed some into mistakes. No question there, and the leaked emails do reflect that.
Taxpayer
December 10th, 2009
5:06 pm
science guy,
Here’s a little extra info regarding your 31,000 strong “proof”.
Citizen of the US
December 10th, 2009
5:08 pm
Jay
The global scientists don’t have to be in collusion. It’s funding research that drives the theory, follow the dollars. There are dollars available for global warming research, not research to refute global warming. It’s unforunate, science should be the pursuit of truth, unfortunatley that’s rarely the case.
Taxpayer
December 10th, 2009
5:12 pm
Citizen of the US,
If you need funding to get the word out that global warming is not happening, then contact Exxon or Koch, to name but two that will be more than happy to back whatever you got that sounds even remotely credible.
xhefi
December 10th, 2009
5:12 pm
Hello Dear friends,I am from Kosovo if you heard about my country is a new country in Europ,I want only to give my opinion on global heat is one thing that should be considered by every man in the bot, is one thing to be careful we all in this.Hi to you all.
Iran is Right
December 10th, 2009
5:17 pm
129 years of weather data is not a lot for a planet that is over 3 billion years old. Any cycle longer than 130 years would not be present in the data. Al Gore is a Fraud, imho.
Scout
December 10th, 2009
5:21 pm
Science Man:
May I remind you the libs. have to have a cause. If if wasn’t the climate it would be something like popcycles and fudgecycles aren’t as big as they used to be.
By the way, do you know what worries most liberal scientists? The earth is two thirds water but they don’t know how it got here. Oh, they will tell you the prevailing theory is it all came from from meteors that hit the earth. However, secretly they know that is a mathematical impossibility because the earth would have to be millions of times its own size in the weight of meteors that each brought one droplet of water. It’s a real quandry for them.
But, alas, I digress ……………..
AmVet
December 10th, 2009
5:25 pm
Hello xhefi.
Welcome to this forum!
What’s for dinner tonight the neo-con husband asked his wife?
Same as every other night, dear. Red herring soup and straw man pie…
Fang1944
December 10th, 2009
5:31 pm
What Jay may be pointing out here is that, while dumb people like their medical science, their modern conveniences and their easy jobs, they still resent and mistrust the people who are a lot smarter than they are.
Logic
December 10th, 2009
5:32 pm
Okay kamchak but where is the hockey stick that is in all the models? where is the 20′ ocean rise that Al Gore told me was coming in “an inconvenent truth”? And say AGW is actually going on do you really think a cap and trade carbon tax/credit system would make any difference? I just think before we radically transform the whole system we ought to generally agree on why and that the “solution” will actually work. Currently I’m freezing in Houston,TX but realizing I’m cherry picking Dec 10th
LA
December 10th, 2009
5:52 pm
xhefi, LOLOL!
AmVet, Beetle Bailey much?
LA
December 10th, 2009
5:54 pm
ACORN Document Dump: Citibank Jeopardizes Customers for ACORN
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/10/acorn-document-dump-citibank-jeopardizes-customers-for-acorn/
Kamchak
December 10th, 2009
5:54 pm
Currently I’m freezing in Houston,TX but realizing I’m cherry picking Dec 10th
Well stop the presses. It gets colder in late Fall.
LA
December 10th, 2009
5:56 pm
Memo to President Obama: Man up and lead. You took this job! NOW LEAD!
Bush Deficit Hurting Obama: Reports
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/obama-grappling-with-fall_n_387121.html
LA
December 10th, 2009
5:57 pm
Kamchak, you’ve obviously never been to Houston, TX. No, it’s nowhere near Canada.
mmm, mmm, mmm, Barack the Liar Obama
December 10th, 2009
5:59 pm
Instead of wasting time on a fictional problem, try these:
Worst government spending projects of the year?
According to a list released by two Republican congressmen on Thursday, these are the 11 worst:
1. $1.9 million for a water taxi to Pleasure Beach, Conn.
2. $3.8 million for an urban art trail in Rochester, N.Y.
3. $3.1 million for upgrades to an 88-year-old canal boat museum in New York
4. $3 million for bicycle racks in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown area
5. $1.5 million for a streetscape project around a Detroit casino
6. $578,000 to fight homelessness in Union, N.Y., a town that reportedly has no homeless people
7. $550,000 for a skateboard park in Pawtucket, R.I.
8. $500,000 for fish food for Missouri fish farmers
9. $400,000 to renovate a vacant building in Jal, N.M.
10. $380,350 to encourage West Virginia landowners to grow ginseng and shiitake mushrooms
11. $90,000 for a shared kitchen for food service entrepreneurs
Source: Republican U.S. Reps. Tom Price of Roswell and Mark Kirk of Illinois
LA
December 10th, 2009
6:00 pm
Another reason I am growing tired of President Obama. Not 10 months ago did President Obama say he was going to end the war in Iraq. Does this mean that Bush is vindicated?
Obama: All nations must follow standards for war
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091210/D9CGERT80.html
Scout
December 10th, 2009
6:08 pm
To LA at 6:00pm
As someone posted the other day, the only thing that remains to be seen now is:
…. when will the anti-war violent street protests start
…..when will Congress cut off funding for the war
…..what will the Afghanistan Memorial on the Washington, D.C. Mall look like
…. and how many names will be inscribed thereon ?
Linda
December 10th, 2009
6:12 pm
I happen to have a degree in science but high school Earth Science & common sense is all that’s necessary to understand the global warming debate.
Global warming & environmentalism are not the same. CO & CO2 are not the same.
The globe has been warming & cooling for billions of years. Warming is caused by greenhouse gases because, without them, the globe, which has an average temperature of 57 degrees F, would be a minus 2 degrees F. Humans contribute to the amt of greenhouse gases but the current ppm’s are not harmful. The greenhouse gas which is the subject of debate is carbon dioxide, CO2, which is a good, clean, scarce, non-toxic, harmless, natural, pure, colorless, odorless gas & is essential to life on earth. Without it & without enough of it, we will die. It is not a pollutant & has never been under the Clean Air Act or named as a pollutant by the EPA until Monday, coincidentally the opening day of the Kyoto conference. (EPA’s science is also under question.) CO2 is pumped into real greenhouses to promote plant growth.
The National Academy of Sciences broke Mann’s hockey stick 3 yrs ago & his “science.” If the CRU had nothing to hide, why did they cook their books? They were one of the main research centers whose data the UN & IPCC used for the Kyoto Protocol. The investigation has just began.
Why did Obama just scrap the completed Yucca Mt. nuclear waste site that we’ve spent 30 yrs. & $13 B developing & 25 yrs taxing ratepayers for? The feds have paid out over $600 M & will pay out another $11 B in legal settlements to prevent opening it, making it the biggest waste of taxpayer $ in history. There’s 60,000 T of nuclear waste at 104 nuclear power plants, growing at a rate of 2000 T per yr., stored in pools & above-ground concrete containers, a danger to the American people. Not only will we have no more nuclear power plants, but existing ones will need to close. Why? Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most reliable alternate source of energy & therefore it can’t be “capped & traded!”
If global warming alarmists are so alarmed about global warming, why are we no closer to viable alternative sources of energy today than we were 20 yrs. ago when all this started? Shouldn’t we have alternative sources of energy in place before we are punished, taxed & regulated? Cap & trade caps existing emissions, decreases our sources of existing energy, trades around emissions & merely ENCOURAGES new energy, maybe. Our electric bills will “skyrocket” as well as every single solitary good & service we buy. Politicians can NOT control the climate!!!! It’s the greatest scam in the history of the world.
LA
December 10th, 2009
6:13 pm
Scout, yeah, like I suspected 10 months ago, this administration is more of the same. It’s a very hypocritical administration full of double-speak. The president looks more and more naive and incompetent every single day. I cringed when he was handed the Nobel Prize and hoped that he would say thanks but no thanks. Instead, he looked like a buffoon in front of the people who gave it to him because of his “peaceful” speeches. What a joke.
And no, there are no war protesters on the left. If President Bush had been a democrat we’d have never heard a peep from Code Pink etc…..
Bottom line: This is a one term president and he may go down as the worst president since Jimmy Carter. I believe that he has already vindicated President Bush.
LA
December 10th, 2009
6:15 pm
Linda, I’m finally happy to see someone on the blogs with a science background. None of the above liberal hypocrites hold a degree in any such field. If so they’d have said so by now. Be careful, because you will get attacked by 3-4 different liberal attack dogs. It’s not that hard to fend them off and fight hard if you have to.
I have your back.
DAVID
December 10th, 2009
6:24 pm
Every 5th grader knows Global Warming is a Giant Hoax……A Giant Sham
Kamchak
December 10th, 2009
6:25 pm
Kamchak, you’ve obviously never been to Houston, TX.
Actually I have–mid Oct. 2002. Stayed at the Holiday Inn on Holcombe Rd. near Rice University.
I had a relative that spent the past Thanksgiving holiday in southern Florida–she was there a week. When I picked her up at the Atlanta airport the local temp was 50 degrees. The entire ride back from the airport, she complained that she was freezing. Of course she was cold. She had just spent a week in 80 degree weather.
LA
December 10th, 2009
6:25 pm
DAVID, not the ones being forced to memorize and sing songs about it.
Kamchak, did it snow when you were in Houston? NOPE!
Taxpayer
December 10th, 2009
6:29 pm
Actually, LA, you made it quite clear that, in your opinion, a person’s educational background, yours in particular was no one’s business. Also, I noticed that another person did proclaim to have a PhD a little earlier today. Did you not notice that for yourself. Further, Linda’s diatribe is hardly indicative of a person with a degree in the physical sciences or engineering. Finally, I have yet to see you post anything of substance on the issue of climate change, with links or references, for discussion. The bottom line is that you have nothing to offer beyond your boring claims of fending off attacks, etc.
Kamchak
December 10th, 2009
6:37 pm
LA
Did snow in mid October of this year in Houston?
Linda
December 10th, 2009
6:38 pm
Southern@5:00, Fannie & Freddie were government-sponsored entities (GSE’s) meaning they were partially owned by the feds, quasi-govt. agencies. They were not lenders. They bought loans from lenders. Almost all conventional loans were written according to Fannie Mae guidelines, whether Fannie actually bought the loans or not. They were chartered by congress to buy, hold & guarantee loans, given special privileges (lower interest rates & money), had implicit govt guarantees, etc. There were huge scandals with them in the ’90’s. One of the top executives with Fannie, Herb Moses was shacked up with House Finance Chr. Barney Frank for 7 yrs. They spent our tax $ lobbying Dems & caused another scandal. Over an 8-yr period the #1 recipient was Dodd & #2 was Obama who was only there 2 yrs. There were accounting scandals. They were MANDATED by congress to issue subprime loans, given quotas which they exceeded.
I thought everyone knew what happened. Google it. It’s enlightening reading. Without Affordable Housing, there would have never been an economic collapse.
WhoEver
December 10th, 2009
6:41 pm
You need a much larger data set. There have been what, millions of days since North America has been a land mass. 100 or so years is a drop in the bucket. This warming could be normal. It could of course be our own doing, but we can’t really do much on such limited data.
saywhat?
December 10th, 2009
6:45 pm
LA, I have a science background, and I find the sheer ignorance of the bulk of the AGW deniers to be appalling. We might as well be arguing whether smoking cigarettes causes lung disease. While I am sure you can find 31,000 “scientists” somewhere that say it doesn’t, that doesn’t change the fact that it does.
Apparently the deniers think “consensus” means something other than what it does. It does not mean, for example, that if every single scientist in the whole world doesn’t agree with a particular scientific theory, then there is no consensus. It does not mean if you find a website that says AGW is not real, then there is no consensus.
The attempts by posters here to refute AGW with wild claims of “what if…?” or “what about…?” are laughable at best because of the depth of the ignorance they reveal in the posters. That such laymen can seize onto certain facts (or made up “facts”) with the assumption that up until now they have been completely unknown to the scientists who actually study climatology full time exemplifies stupidity. Why not just remind an actuary that they have to carry the 1 when adding 27 and 34, as if they will slap their head in amazement and shout out “That’s what I have been doing wrong all these years! Thank you for setting me straight!”
LA
December 10th, 2009
6:53 pm
Kamchak, ????????? Drinking early today are we?
LA
December 10th, 2009
6:53 pm
saywhat?, ok.
Linda
December 10th, 2009
6:53 pm
Southern@5:04, I don’t know the concern of CEO’s re: American workers. Jobs are being out-sourced for 2 reasons: cheaper labor & taxes. CEO salary is usually set by the BOD. Salary belongs to the employee. It’s not charity. I’m not a CEO & have never made an exorbitant income or lived in an area where a tiny apt. costs $5000 per mt. but I believe in the free enterprise system. I don’t fault the rich or the highest paid people in America as long as they contribute their fair share to our hospitals, colleges & universities, places of worship, the arts, etc.
“Wouldn’t that boost their productivity if they have more workers to perform the job?” If the job only requires one worker, having more workers is a waste.
If I was deliberately trying to cause further unemployment, I would do exactly what this adm is doing.
Liberals are morons
December 10th, 2009
7:04 pm
Global warming or man made climate climate change is a complete and total FRAUD!!!
Jesse_Jacksonville
December 10th, 2009
7:10 pm
Ooh, ooh, ooh
I fell my temperature rising
Help me, Im flaming
I must be a hundred and nine
Burning, burning, burning
And nothing can cool me
I just might turn into smoke
But I feel fine
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Get a life people!!
Linda
December 10th, 2009
7:11 pm
LA@6:15, A science degree or background isn’t necessary. When I listen to politicians claim they can control the weather, I crack up. Al Gore & that whole bunch in Copenhagen remind me of watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. I just can’t believe how gullible some people are. It took Climategate for people to wake up. You know who I trust with the climate & weather, who is never wrong, who can’t afford to be wrong, who has no political motive? The typical American farmer. Do you know what his source is? The Farmer’s Almanac.
Thanks for your back.
vince gollee
December 10th, 2009
7:17 pm
That’s the problem, Jay. Leftism is your God, and you stop as soon as you prove your pre-conceived hatred of civilization and America. I, however, being much brighter than you, went one step further and looked at Athens Ga records for 1985-2009 and found only 8 record high temperatures. And I quit there, because I know that temperature sensors are subject to heat islands, and that big cities are heat islands, and that Atlanta has grown up a lot since 1880. The truth is, that this issue is just a power grab by your leftist buddies, like that America hating Obama, going all over the world trashing America and stabbing out allies in the back. You people must be stopped, before we are all told what to think. Since no one reads your newspaper, I don’t know why I even wrote this.
Linda
December 10th, 2009
7:21 pm
Taxpayer@6:29, I swear on the Bible that I have a Bachelor of Science degree from one of the largest universities in the Southeastern US. If you disagree with any of the points that I made, I welcome you to address me directly rather than refer to me to LA. If you are really a “taxpayer,” give me an idea what sacrifices you are willing to make per year, both financially & with your freedoms, for what I truly believe to be the greatest hoax in history.
Scout
December 10th, 2009
7:24 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcYsO890YJY
vince gollee
December 10th, 2009
7:25 pm
Hurricane Expert Rips Climate Fears – http://amadcow.org/?p=255 and http://climatedepot.com/a/4369/Hurricane-Expert-Rips-Climate-Fears-There-has-been-an-unrelenting-quarter-century-of-onesided-indoctrination
Heat comes from the sun. Hot air comes from Big Government leftists like you Jay.
LA
December 10th, 2009
7:41 pm
Linda, I WROTE THAT SAME COMMENT ABOUT THE FARMERS ALMANAC AND AMVET AND A FEW OTHERS MADE FUN OF ME.
LOLOLOLOL
TGT
December 10th, 2009
7:47 pm
“Just as deniers use an odd snowstorm in Houston to scoff at claims that the planet is getting hotter, I could do the same:
‘Look how warm it was yesterday! Almost 70 in mid-December! How can you claim that global warming isn’t real?’
But of course, that would be wrong. It would be foolish.”
As foolish as Harry Reid, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D, Calif.), CBS News, CNN, etc. claiming that Global Warming caused the California wildfires?
As foolish as John Kerry blaming the Feb. 2008 storms in the south on Global Warming?
As foolish as Al Gore alluding to Global Warming in the wake of the 2008 Myanmar cyclones?
As foolish as Time magazine, the Boston Globe, ABC News, (etc., etc., etc.) linking Global Warming to hurricane Katrina?
The AGW apologists have a significant lead when it comes to hyping their belief due to current weather events.
number1ninja
December 10th, 2009
7:49 pm
Blah blah liberal hooey blah blah. You people sound just like Ahmadinejad and his wacko supporters blaming the “leftists” for all their troubles. Funny since Obama is closer to a conservative than any republican in fifty years. Which is why he sucks.
Linda
December 10th, 2009
8:21 pm
LA@7:41, Maybe I stole your idea. Since there’s now 2 of us, maybe we’ll receive some credibility.
Jesse_Jacksonville
December 10th, 2009
8:22 pm
You people are educated beyond your intelligence. Millions are out of work and hungry and all you do is dribble over a warm day in December.
Thousands have died in a nonsensical war and you worry about the thermometer being up or down one degree.
Taxpayer, Linda, stop trying to impress us with your intelligence and pedigrees. If you are as smart as you think you are, figure out a way to stop our young men and women from being slaughtered by orders from our new “Nobel Peace Prize” recipient.
El Nino – Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
debreuil
December 11th, 2009
7:29 am
It has been warming (very) slowly since the little ice age, nobody wonders about this. And of course on a long trend, since the end of the last ice age, a short 15000 years ago (ice receded, civilization started). The real question is “who gives a crap”.
Oh ,and to be clear, you are saying it is laughable there could be a world wide conspiracy to rig the science, and yet in the same breath you are saying that all those who doubt it are part of a worldwide conspiracy. Spoken like a true journalist.
And please go on the record saying you are certain that the ‘hockey stick’ graph is accurate next article — and why not add your predictions for ocean levels in 10 years,
two questions we’d love to have more info on for the next article:
What percent of the the IPCC predicted warming is explained by ‘physics of CO2 as a greenhouse gas’ alone? (that should be easy, because it can be measured in a lab (and has been))
Do the stick and the blade part of the famous IPCC hockey stick graph plot the same information?
Seriously, you should find those answers – I don’t mean find them in a press release, I mean find them the same way everyone other than journalists seems to find them.
David Smith
December 11th, 2009
9:33 am
The narcissists are true believers. Only man can change climate. Please ignore 4.5 billion years of earth history.
JDW
December 11th, 2009
9:40 am
Interesting that we who don’t believe in the cult of AGW are called hysterics. You’re the idiots flailing your arms about proclaiming the death of the planet if we don’t do something “right away”. You’re the magician-eyed zealots with “tipping points” and “dates of no return”. You’re the people demanding trillions of dollars for your prognostications and damning anyone, usually the calm-headed in the group, who call you out as group-think, collectivist tools. There is very little difference today between the idiot religious nut on the corner with “The End is Nigh” sandwhich board sign and you people genuflecting over a fat, phony former Vice-President and his $300 million investment into “green strategies”. At least the religious nuts admit they have no idea when Armegeddon will go down. But you people? “In less than two years there is no turning back.” Yeah, but we who are dubious are the hysterical ones. Oh, your local temperature is 28 degrees.
The Iconoclast
December 11th, 2009
10:04 am
You assume that Atlanta is a proxy for the world. You neglect the Urban Heat Island effect. Find the temperature record for a small town of less than 10,000 and look at its temperature history. It will be flat.
Most of the temperature stations in the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) do not meet their own siting guidelines, which are intended to keep their results from being biased by things like air conditioning exhausts, parking lots, etc. Check out surfacestations.org for an independent audit conducted by scientist Dr James Watts.
DCW
December 11th, 2009
10:07 am
Jay – My interpretation of your column is that AGW is a scam. If so, well said. This is, without a doubt, the biggest scam ever perpetuated against the human species. It is solely about wealth transfer. Those who stand to gain, are part of the religion. All the rest of us should wake up. Clowns like Al Gore are not going to give up.
UGA87
December 11th, 2009
12:09 pm
Global Warming is a lie being told to the world, and it is being perpetuated by a government that lies to its own citizens on a daily basis. Furthermore, I despise the title of “scientist” that is used over and over by the media. The term is intended to convey authority, and it implies that the PhD researchers are all knowning and possess a secret knowledge that the average man or woman could not possibly comprehend. It is almost like some ancient civilization where the priests held the secrets to the temple and the Gods, and would only allow glimpses of their knowledge in order to maintain their power and sway over the masses. This is exactly what is happening with the non-sense known as Global Warming! Don’t believe a word from the media or Al Gore who endorse it with their heart and sole. Al Gore does not even possess a degree in any kind of hard science. He has a degree in political science, plus a year in theology school and a year in law school, but he presents himself as an expert of climate change or variations as if he does! He did not complete either one of this post graduate degrees! Global Warming is sham! Joseph Geobbles, the head of propaganda for the Third Reich would be proud of the way that this BIG LIE has been sold to the masses! Dont’t believe a thing that this government or the UN tells you!
John
December 11th, 2009
1:01 pm
Many stopped arguing, or even using the pharse global warming over the las decade. The scientists (there are a couple besides the “hoax” ones) have never claimed certainty, that is what media and the general public wants because they don’t really understand uncertainty, or risk…imo
I look back at the Stratospheric Ozone program…a real success story when the scientific consensus got behind the issue….and SO2 cap and trade has been a good program also. But they were easier to assign
If I look at all the smart people here saying it is a fraud and hoax (how is a concern a fraud ??), they are proposing it to be a conspriacy….which I find much less likely than climate change concerns being real.
YOu are saying a world wide conspriacy exists…do you know how silly that sounds ???
John Q Public
December 11th, 2009
2:28 pm
Remember when the Motley CRU explained away the “trick” and “hide the decline” comments as being taken out of context?
Not so fast, Johnson.
Hero of the free-thinking world, Steve McIntyre, has reconstructed the IPCC, Mann, and Briffa data coverup from combing through the Climategate email. The IPCC instructed the scientists how the data should be modified and presented THEN the scientists created the graphs.
Absolutely mind-blowing.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick
Steve
December 12th, 2009
7:57 pm
The point of the AWG theory is not that the weather is hotter now than it was 100 years ago. It is that the cause of the hotter temperatures is the extra CO2 released by fossil fuels. How does your article support the AWG theory in any way?
Cold? It would be even colder if not for global warming | Jay Bookman
January 5th, 2010
12:06 pm
[...] made a similar point in a column last month, noting that 24 out of the 31 daily record highs for December had been set just in the last 25 [...]