HAS AL GORE BEEN TO CINCINNATI LATELY? Because I'm visiting my brother here and drove the last hour or so through heavy snowfall. It's freezing (literally) and it's April. Ugh.
Yes Insty?
Wow. That second post is, indeed, delightful.
Yeah, I read that Lambert thing last night and just guffawed. Also entertaining are the unquoted bits between the highlighted comments that exclaim how liberals are STUPID STUPID STUPID!
And I'm sitting outside in my shirtsleeves in northern England, and it's only April... WE'RE DOOMED, I TELL YOU! DOOMED!!!
It's bizarrely cold in North Carolina right now. 99 of 100 counties were under a freeze warning last night. On the upside, the farmers' market re-opened today. Fresh arugula! Fresh chard! Fresh bok choi!
Calling global warming "global warming" was a PR mistake.
Anthropogenic Climate Change sounds too much like a NYT Style section euphemism for hot flashes.
Global We're Fucked was my first choice, but you're still going to have the FatEnglishman in shirtsleeves problem. Global Weirdness isn't sufficiently specific to weather. It's a challenge.
What about Global You're Dead?
"Global You're Dead" is good but accuracy might favor "Global You're Dead, Poor Swarthy Dude" and that addition would undermine its political effectiveness.
Fair point. What about Global You'll Have to Live in Oklahoma?
And yet, while Unfogged gives Al Gore a pass even though there are individual cities with unseasonably cold temperatures on particular days you remain silent about the scandal female politicians visiting foreign countries! Appalling.
Lemieux is a temperaturist. Typical.
Scott's appearance here reminds me that it took a lot of will to resist this Althouse post. Read the comments for hits like Simon's insistence that Garance and Jessica planned the bloggingheads incident to get publicity for Jessica's book.
Althouse has some loyal defenders.
15 -- Din't someone mention that one in comments here in the past few days? I think I read it and there is almost no other way I would have clicked over to AA. That said it takes a will of steel to force oneself to spend any time at all on her comments section. A stronger will than I possess I must confess.
That Simon guy thinks he's on his way to getting in Althouse's pants. I can't figure out any other reason for his stalkerish slavish devotion.
Don't they, though? My relations with New Orleans bloggers have been fraught, to say the least. But hey, it is a stupid idea to rebuild Lakeview or NO East.
What about a complex public works project in Louisiana makes you skeptical? What's not to love, really? I feel bad joking about this, in a way, because it has to suck 2 b them, and if it were my city I'd want the old version back.* Still, there's a lot of water.
*This is a lie. I'd move.
It's easy to point fingers and laugh at Glenn (sp?) Reynolds. He often makes an easy target. And it's at some level satisfying. But here he's doing something very pernicious. He's minimizing the problem. Global warming is just about temperature. You'll just have to run your AC a bit more strongly. And, look, it isn't even very efficient in raising the temperature. So why get all het up?
Global warming isn't just about temperature. It's about floods and storms and water shortages and wildfires out of control and people dying in floods and storms and fires and losing their homes because of floods, storms, fires and water failure . . .. But if the people who will die or lose their homes think it's just about running the AC a bit more, they're not going to care until it's too late. Which is what Reynolds, and Reynolds's friends, want.
"Manitoba is the new Miami"?
We pass the assessment exam with lots of points to spare.
I agree about the risk flowing from the practice of Reynolds et al., not about their intentionality. People are always saying "But he's a law professor," as if that meant he couldn't also be crude enough not to see or remember or take seriously the ramifications of what he says. The result is to suppose he must be bent on a nefarious scheme, instead of that he's a dumbass.
Global warming is about the connections, the love. Global warming isn't about the butthole pleasures, the rusty trombone, the cincinnatti bow tie, the shit-stained balls...it's about the relationships.
"Global You're Dead"
I'd suggest "Global whatever you've learned to be good at ain't going to help any more". It applies to polar bears and penguins as well as people.
Simon's insistence that Garance and Jessica planned the bloggingheads incident to get publicity for Jessica's book.
And the thing is, while that's quite crazy it's rather less outlandish than the conspiracy theories of Simon's hero. I mean, at least point out that it was part of a larger strategy to set up a 3-way with Bill Clinton, after which they'd help with drug-running at the Mena airport. Some creativity here, people!
This is all about Vince Foster.
I wonder what the Garance-Jessica strategizing was like. "I've hypnotized Ann to fly into a freakish rage when she hears the code word. All you have to do is work the phrase 'breast controversy' into conversation..." I mean, doesn't Simon's theory presuppose Althouse's nuttiness?
We should start an all-Althouse blog, Scott.
start an all-Althouse blog
This isn't it?
No, there's also the swimming stuff.
It's the same role hockey blogging fills at LGM!
I think I heart Jon Swift.
Is this another remember info issue?
Although, as a new Unfogge-D-Name, I could do worse.
So google maps' directions feature will now tell one how to get from any location in North America to most of [qualified because I haven't done enough tests to be sure] Europe.
15:
Jesus christ. I hereby understand why the extraordinary annoyance with Althouse. I didn't get this before.
What's with her obsession with italics?
This is so distasteful that one wants to plant her butt down in front of a fire in the wilderness of the Yukon and say, "Look, you're fussing badly, it makes bad kinetic energy, and here, have a chunk of seared venison, and .. be quiet, really, I mean it."
Sorry, I just didn't really get the Althouse problem before.
Insty may look like an idiot... and he may sound like an idiot... but don't let that fool you.
Damn it, I just now spent 10 minutes at Althouse's site, and you know what bothers me most? The fact that she writes like a damn child. I mean, what kind of fifty-year-old-law-professor writes, nay, thinks "LOL," calls someone a "Loser," or the bizarrely redundant "it stays open all day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m."
38 -- does that == directions from your North American location to the nearest international airport, and from the nearest international airport to your European destination? Or are provisions made for transport by ship as well?
40 - The fact that his pose of idiocy may be politically and rhetorically advantageous doesn't prove that he's not, in fact, an idiot.
No, it looks like they just drew a connector from long wharf in Boston to le Havre France. So if you say Miami to Madrid, you go via Boston and France. Not actually useful, probably just an April fool's thing.
Also, dude, Insty's totally right. This global warming thing is a total hoax, which can be proved by the 8" of hot, throbbing snow we've gotten in Cleveland. They called off the Indians doubleheader! I'm going to go set some peat bogs on fire and think of starving polar bears.
Rode to an appointment this morning, properly dressed, and believe it's the coldest weather I've ridden in all year, and I rode frequently during the winter. Mid-twenties in Chicago this morning, strong NW wind. We might have another fire in the fireplace this year.
"Global You're Dead, Poor Swarthy Dude"
Nice.
It may be vile out, but at least I made an excellent dinner of excellent pizza and excellent salad.
First world wealth will keeps us in pizza and salad long after the last swarthy dudes and polar bears have starved.
I freak out about warming and cooling and tidal waves and ocean levels rising and all that, but the one that really, really scares me is desertification.
My parents just visited a friend who's living in Mexico's Sonoran desert. Apparently, the coastline along Baja used to have dense forests, but they were cut down some 400 years ago. All desert now. Scrub trees manage to grow a bit, and then people cut them down for fuel. Fertile soil gets washed off immediately to sea, without root systems to hold it into place. How the hell does one break that cycle?
54.--Frankly, I don't even see how killing a bunch of people would help an ecosystem re-establish itself. You'd have to kill a bunch of people and then install a bunch of sober, responsible technocrats to manage the replanting and, well, inflict violence on the people who interrupted your long-term plans. The lower-level management for the would-be eco-feudalists are these days not tending to stick around.
55: import topsoil, plant trees, remove people.
They're working on trying it in the gobi.
53: Also, the tropical bacteria, parasites, etc. moving up are going to make life (and death) more interesting.
(Once upon a time I met a shrink who explained his decision to get into psychiatry: He, as a newly minted MD, was being sent to the South Pacific in WW2, and had just attended a lecture on the parasitic worms he would need to diagnose and treat. Then they announced they were looking for people to get training in treating psychiatric problems. His hand shot up almost of its own accord.)
58: Do you remember the film from about ten years ago, originally shown to medical groups, then shown to the country on The American Experience, about the Battle of the Bulge?
Most terrible part was an old doctor remembering sending them back, frostbite, psych cases, again and again. He broke down on screen. I remember wondering if we'd ever live to see it again. I didn't think so, but now we know.
59: Yeah, I saw that one. We also saw some of it in Korea, and Vietnam, and now, and I don't think Iraq will be the end of seeing it. I try not to think of it too much 'cause I start wishing for that giant asteroid and get somewhat nihilistic in my driving.
The current hysteria is a symptom of displacement, a psychological mechanism that allows one to ignore real threats like Islamic terrorism, in order to focus on imaginary phantasms like Anthropogenic Global Warming. Part of the left's denial of reality, a symptom of a larger mass psychosis infesting much of the American electorate. The dementia of leftardo brain-death is evidently infecting this blog too.
a psychological mechanism that allows one to ignore real threats like Islamic terrorism
Don't even dare to open your mouth. It's your fucking Republican president who ignored Islamic terrorism and allowed 9/11 to happen. It's your fucking Republican president who let Osama bin Laden go, who hasn't been able to catch him after five and a half years.
Don't speak of denial, displacement, projection, and mass psychosis to me.
The dementia of leftardo brain-death is evidently infecting this blog too.
can that be the new mouseover text?
The current hysteria is a symptom of displacement, a psychological mechanism that allows one to ignore real threats like Islamic terrorism, in order to focus on imaginary phantasms like Anthropogenic Global Warming. Part of the left's denial of reality, a symptom of a larger mass psychosis infesting much of the American electorate. The dementia of leftardo brain-death is evidently infecting this blog too.
A masterpiece of reflexive meta-displacement.
65 -- Wow, Dave-in-Boca is The Waukesha Kid! This is almost too much.
Please, do not use the phrase "epistemic significance." It makes me ill.
if state of affairs S includes undesirable feature x, this isn't a reason to desire that S obtain.
I am feeling really stupid now, but could someone spell out for me exactly how GR's post assumes that teh opposite is true. I get the first one, but not this one.
The example which Labs was not making is the one that came to my mind first and caused me to misread the quotation. I mean, where exactly is Reynolds actually saying "Yay gloabl warming!"
If undesirable State of affairs S includes desirable feature y that is not a reason to desire S,/i>. I think that that must be bad logic, but basically what I'm saying is: it was nice to have a really mild December, but that was probably casued by climate change, and since climate change is bad for other reasons, we shouldn't be hoping for more of it even though we might enjoy the warmer Decembers.
Glenn Reynolds has a new GW post up:
Does this cold weather disprove global warming? Nope. And hot weather this summer won't prove its existence, either. For that matter, no particular spell of weather proves or disproves any climate theory -- something that press reports tend to miss. Hence the fun in posts like these!
He nails the thing that bugs me about media global warming reports (and blogging)... which is that:
(1) When the weather's hot, global warming is responsible, but...
(2) when the weather's cold, it doesn't mean a damn thing, you idiot! Only a fool would think that! Unless...
(3) when the weather's cold, it ALSO proves global warming, because it's not really "warming", it's "climate change".
By these standards, the only kind of weather that you can't pin on global warming is continuously, perfectly average weather. Which is probably unlikely to persist for any reasonably long period of time; there are always going to be ups and downs and outliers.
Thus, entirely apart from the question of how much of an impact our use of fossil fuels is having on the climate, it's possible to be displeased with the media's sensationalized, worst-case-scenario handling of the issue. But then, that's just par for the course, isn't it — weren't we all supposed to be dead from the global bird flu epidemic by now?
Gaijin, cite for me three news articles that tie short time-scale weather activity to global warming, without a disclaimer of the form "of course this doesn't prove anything". Hell, cite for me one such.
Thus, entirely apart from the question of how much of an impact our use of fossil fuels is having on the climate, it's possible to be displeased with the media's sensationalized, worst-case-scenario handling of the issue.
Well, it is undeniably the most important issue imaginable. I haven't seen any alarmism at all, except in the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker. The middlebrow media's attitude is "Yeah...climate change is occurring...someone oughta get on that, but I'm sure it won't get too bad. Smart people are in charge."
But then, that's just par for the course, isn't it -- weren't we all supposed to be dead from the global bird flu epidemic by now?
That's a really stupid thing to say. I think you should give scientific consensus the benefit of the doubt. Continual global surveillance has been going on for five years to detect the moment when this bird flu strain becomes able to be passed from human to human. It hasn't happened yet, but it still seems like it should, particularly since analysis of the 1918 strain indicates that it was, in fact, a humanized avian strain.
giijin's going under when global warming hits anyway.
OK, here's three MSM reports from a quick Google News search:
Link
Two ski resorts near Beijing have closed early this year because there wasn't enough snow, and the balmy weather has made it difficult for Mongolian families -- most of whom don't own freezers -- to store meat-filled buns and other traditional food.
Winter is under threat in many parts of Asia, and most scientists say global climate change is the cause.
Link
Greater Memphis hasn't experienced a hard freeze since about Feb. 18 -- more than a month earlier than the March 20 date of the average last frost of the season.
If not for the 1.54 inches of rain that fell on Saturday, the last day of the month, the area also would have experienced its second-driest March on record. As it turned out, the 2.82 inches of precipitation that fell -- barely half the norm for the month -- made it the 15th-driest March.
The balmy month followed a winter that, globally, was the warmest on record, according to a federal report that focused renewed concerns on climate change.
Link
IT WAS the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt.
We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
I see nothing inaccurate in those citations. Each of them applies not just to warm temperatures, but unprecedentedly warm temperatures.
GaijBi: Extreme weather events of any kind, taken in isolation, prove nothing. But global warming will produce extreme weather effects in increasing frequency, since you're adding energy to a dynamic system -- not much different than adding heat to a pot of boiling water, you end up with hot spots, cold spots, and increased turbulence -- so insofar as it's reasonable to assign causality to a weather event, global warming is as reasonable a cause anything.
Which is not to say it's reasonable, per se, but it makes just as much sense as ascribing something to "el niño."
It certainly speaks to the statistical illiteracy of much of the world that people talk this way, but it really says very little about whether global warming (or, for that matter, bird flu) is or isn't a real risk.
GB, undeniably there's some sensationalism in the press, a fair amount of confirmation bias in observers and some flogging of climate change among politicos who are concerned about and/or see political hay to be gained from climate change-oriented policies. These are to be expected, and were much in evidence in the lead up to and aftermath of our invasin of Iraq - surely you noticed.
We can always say that the press can do a better job, that people don't really understand the issues, and that politicians and special interests are trying to manipulate us. We should take all of these factors into account and beware of misguided/corrupt policies.
But in the case of climate change, unlike WMDs, there is not merely a good theoretical underpinning for climate change, but a growing body of real evidence that surely you must be aware of. Have you looked at the IPCC's two recent summaries? Seen Exxon's recent statement? Looked into NASA satellite data showing ice losses in Greenland to be three times that of gains from increased interior snowfall? Because of the random nature of climate it is impossible to attribute particular events or occureneces to climate change, but it is quite possible to paint an accurate big picture from multiple data points.
Climate change is a big issue and, unfortunately, is not one of the nature that can simply be ignored away.
This kind of wingnuttery is all about passing the extreme stuff with a front of respectability. Hence the "BIG PROMINENT LINK to KlanBlog's argument for Muslims to be turned into soap. Heh.
UPDATE: Obviously, this is out of the question" shtick.
It's like looking at child porn "for research".