Comments on: Global Warming's Pause For Thought

By: George Carty

George Carty — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:45:21 +0000

The Chinese dust cloud probably started in the 1980’s and cannot explain the 1940-970 cooling.

I was talking about the post-2000 cooling, not the 1940-1970 cooling…

By: Editors

Editors — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:02:10 +0000

Alex,

Kingsnorth (versus Monbiot) was the subject of a post back in August.

http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/08/folie-a-deux.html

Needless to say, we think he’s silly, even by green standards.

By: Alex Cull

Alex Cull — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:59:05 +0000

There are some quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which also seem reasonably apt:

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time… Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”

On the subject of putting the technological genie back into the bottle and returning to a more basic mode of existence (or preparing for it, chiefly by writing poems and novels about the general theme, as you do), has anyone had a look at Uncivilisation, i.e., Paul Kingsnorth and his Dark Mountain Project?

Some interesting reading here:

http://www.dark-mountain.net/about-2/the-project/

And here (comments as well):

http://www.dark-mountain.net/wordpress/2009/08/18/observations-on-apocalypse/

And a rather thoughtful essay by Josie Appleton here:

http://www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk/magazine/features/josie-appleton–towards-human-species-consciousness

More about the Appleton essay here, with comments by Paul Kingsnorth:

http://artsandecology.rsablogs.org.uk/2009/10/05/environmentalism-towards-civilisation-or-uncivilisation/

Being someone who Paul would probably describe as a spiked! gang-type techno- and futurephiliac myself (the future I’d like to see has humans colonising the solar system and billions living in orbiting space habitats, as per The High Frontier by Gerard K O’Neill) I’m puzzled by the Uncivilisation concept. Even George Monbiot makes sense by comparison. What am I missing here? What is the vision? Or is that the point – there isn’t one?

By: geoffchambers

geoffchambers — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:21:15 +0000

Stefan #11
No, I don’t think everyone else knew all this was connected. I think we all rely on each other to make connections…
Just as your reading of back numbers of the Ecologist renders a service to us all. (It’s a crap job, but someone’s got to do it).
I loved this:
“its surface or biosphere has been seriously disturbed by two events giving rise to tendencies which, if unchecked, could transform it into a lifeless waste. The first of these events was the agricultural revolution …”
Too right. Growing things makes things die.
or to quote the peer-reviewed Ecclesiastes:
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again… also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets..

By: Stefan

Stefan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:25:11 +0000

Kinda fascinating to go back and read an issue of The Ecologist from 1970 (they all seem to be available as nice scans on their web site!)

“In what are, in evolutionary terms, very recent times, its surface or biosphere has been seriously disturbed by two events giving rise to tendencies which, if unchecked, could transform it into a lifeless waste. The first of these events was the agricultural revolution that occurred some 10,000 years ago…”

Perhaps some would argue that native tribes are humanity’s only “sustainable” form of life on the planet…? (Purple in SD terms).

By: Stefan

Stefan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:06:20 +0000

Incidentally, has anyone read “The Way” by Edward Goldsmith? I used to have a copy on my shelf but never got round to reading it.

Look at his Wikipedia entry and there’s a lot of “anti-human” potential on there (relevant to the other thread–perhaps as founder of The Ecologist is is indeed true that the “real core” of environmentalism is anti-human).

Funnily enough it ends with mentioning a spat with Monbiot. Apparently Edward can seem a little too far-Right, which maybe has something to do with his nephew Zac becoming a green Conservative, as seen on Newsnight recently (yet another thread).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Goldsmith

Is it just me that’s woken up? Did everyone else here already know this was all connected?

I really should have got round to reading that book–instead I think I gave it away of Oxfam.

By: Blaggarde

Blaggarde — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:17:33 +0000

Great article. But I’m entering:

“…The research that shows that decade-long periods of static/declining temperatures are to be expected against the background of a warming trend (see the Spiked article above) makes no claims that such natural variation could account for the much longer post-war slump…”

for the gobbledegook awards in the Plain English campaign.

By: JamesG

JamesG — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:53:42 +0000

A perfect summary Douglas. I wonder if a 3rd party review might have fixed it. There are times when you get a weird modeling result and you can’t find the problem so you rationalize it or add a fiddle factor. Only later do you see where the mistake was. Also sometimes throwing money at a group to investigate a problem can fail due to an over-riding need to justify the money and claim more of it.

By: PeterK

PeterK — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:39:19 +0000

Up at Realclimate, they dismiss Svensmark because – as far as I can make out – he only submitted one set of data. Does anyone understand the issue here?

By: Douglas Hoyt

Douglas Hoyt — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:38:52 +0000

The climate modelers introduced a large upward trend in global aerosols because, without them, their models ran too hot, predicting a global warming of circa 2C in the 20th century, as opposed to the observed 0.6C warming.

As I have pointed out, there is no evidence that the claimed global trend in aerosols existed. At best there were a few regional aerosol clouds covering less than 1% of the globe.

The proper solution to their problem would have been to lower the climate sensitivity to 1C or less. In fact. Lindzen has a convincing paper out recently showing the climate sensitivity is about 0.6C for a CO2 doubling.

The scientific solution to the problem: No large global trend trend in aerosols and low climate sensitivity.

The political “solution” is: Unsupported claims of large aerosol increases which allows the fiction of the a high climate sensitivity to be maintained, leading to alarming and false predictions of catastropic future warming.