3/17/2015

The science is settled

"The science is settled" is a political slogan. I think it tends to be believed by people who don't understand how life works.

 Gore and former IPCC chief Pachauri  
showing off  their Nobel Peace Prize awards

This can be demonstrated simply by pointing out that even the experts lack agreement on the amount of global warming we will experience. The fact that this doubt or uncertainty exists is quite uncomfortable to those who prefer their science in black and white. What I call the sloganeers like Gore,  Oreskes, and McKibben. 

Some sloganeers are incredibly full of shit:

Bill McKibben:  ¨….summer sea ice in the Arctic has mostly disappeared, and at the South Pole, scientists in May made clear that the process of massive melt is now fully under way, with 10 feet of sea-level rise in the offing.”


“We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  
Chris Turney, leader of trapped Antarctic expedition


Michael Mann: “Yet I have done some calculations that I think can answer those questions now: If the world keeps burning fossil fuels at the current rate, it will cross a threshold into environmental ruin by 2036.”

Naomi Oreskes: “We’ve already had several climate-related extreme weather events, but so far those have not moved the political needle very much.”

Al Gore: “for hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans, that moment has already been reached. And for millions of people in Africa's Sahel, that moment has already been reached with the disappearance of Lake Chad.”

New Orleans dike breach. This  dike design
 is one of the crappiest I have ever seen.  

The Dutch know how to build real seawalls.

Gore´s Lake Chad claim was quite controversial. A search for information about Lake Chad yielded dozens of irate blog posts discussing this claim. Which happens to be sheer bullshit. As it turns out, the lake is extremely shallow, has very large historical water volume swings, population is increasing, and it´s possible rainfall is increasing in the Sahel,  read this paper, refer to Figure 2 on page 16 . If you want more information, just search using "Lake Chad water basin precipitation". 

And then there's the "science" involved in transitioning from fossil fuels (got to, we are going to use them up). I don't think Gore, Oreskes, or the “experts” we get pinhead advice from, have really given that problem a lot of though. Or maybe they have and they prefer to sidestep it.

I read a lot of faulty material about transitioning, a lot of really bizarre conspiracy theories, and material which seems to be written by an emerging renewables business lobby (let's not forget that American corn ethanol emerged largely thanks to the Archer Midlands Daniel Corporation lobbyists).

This world seems to turn better on half truths and pablum.

McKibben quote

Michael Mann quote

Naomi Oreskes quote

New Orleans Sea Wall Breach

Ice Expedition trapped in anomalous ice conditions



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