USA Leads the world again

Free press with access to non-liberal sources is completely to blame for this.  Does your country get conservative talk radio?  Do you even get Fox news?

This was posted at WUWT.  The poll is telling.  From too much experience, Euro’s see the US public as ignorant, often the feeling is mutual.   We’re all people but the news sources in the US are more balanced in my opinion.  Look at the effect it has:

The United States of America leads the world in the belief that global warming is of natural causes.  Yes, every climatologist sees our public as stupid idiots, I feel the same contempt for many of the climatologists although I no longer wonder if idiocy causes the incorrect conclusions. Advocacy is the obvious culprit.  The difference between countries though is that nobody has ever proven the observed warming is anything other than natural variance — and look where the USA comes out!

47% natural causes.

I suppose natural causes could include the propensity to believe authority but?  …………………

Well, as our almost certainly doomed economy dwindles to nothing,  what does that percentage reveal.  I’ll explain it in one simple sentence which far too much of humanity hasn’t ever put into appropriate context.

How to reply?

I received this email today, not sure how to reply.  Any suggestions?

Hi Jeff,

I wanted to email you in regards in any possible advertising opportunities you may have with your website…I am looking to promote the C40 Cities project (Climate Leadership Group) and the work that they and their partner the Clinton Climate Initiative (Bill Clinton and Doug Band) have done to tackle the issue of climate change and global warming. Here’s their website : www.c40cities.org   ..their goal is to increase energy efficiency in large cities across the world.

Let me know if you’d be interested in working together, I look forward to hearing back from you.

Kori
xxxxx@gmail.com

UPDATE:

Taking Lucia’s and others suggestions:

Hi Kori,

It sounds like an interesting opportunity.  What do you have in mind.

Jeff

Examination of the Climate Change Strategy

By John F. Pittman

There have been some excellent articles and discussion at Dr. Curry’s site and others over the renewed calls for anything from Climate Change SWAT teams, to reorganizing the educational direction of scientists and advocates to convince the public. On Dr. Pielke, Jr’s site is an excellent analysis as to why these re-entrenching strategies will fail, in the sense that they have already won.  I have also discussed the work of Slovic and Fischhoff concerning the “Tell Process” versus the “Dialogue Process” on several blogs. In fact one of the interesting links and discussions was about Dr Fischhoff’s proposal to help with climate science communication at Dr. Curry’s site. For those unfamiliar with Slovic and Fischhoff, the “Tell” works well with high trust/ low concern environments, but not low trust/high concern situations. The humorous note by Fischhoff in “Communicating with Confidence: Preparing for Successful Community Dialogue on RMP” is this one: “The only improvement possible is doing the Tell Process” faster (slightly different wording by S&F, more often) or “louder.”” The “Tell” process is the process that the IPCC and Cap&Trade advocates have used. It made sense when information concerning the subject of Climate Change was low in the public’s eyesight. It did not make sense to continue this process for as long as almost a decade. The question is why has it continued, and why is more being proposed?

I think the reason is purposed and reasonable, even though the experts who have researched effective communication point out not only is this process, not recommended, but with “buyer fatigue” is likely counterproductive. Copenhagen and Climategate provide evidence of the public’s fatigue. Copenhagen also provides evidence for Pielke’s “Iron law” that mitigation activities must meet economic criteria, or will not likely become policy. However, why do the advocates such as IPCC continue to propose a solution that violates the “Iron law” in a process that is most likely to fail, after having convinced enough of the population that climate change is real and mitigation is at least part of the package for effective action?

The advocates have no choice.

I agree with Pielke about the “Iron law.” But this is where the problem lies and why the advocates are in this apparent lose/lose strategy. It is not about the law or rule itself. It is about the problem. Most readers of the climate blogs, whether for or against, have had a chance to see what the real problem is, and to discuss it indirectly. The problem is called the Tragedy or Problem of the Commons.

Reply to a Believer

Kim Oyhus commented on a YouTube video on line which Steve McIntyre highlighted a why climategate wasn’t a scandal repeating the excuses of the scientists involved which makes it somewhat interesting.  The video quoted them claiming that using certain techniques was the problem in the data.  Of course she completely fails to realize the purpose of the temperature data in a paleo-reconstruction is in fact to verify the data is actually temperature.  It seemed like several commenters on the YouTube thread were accurate in pointing it out to her, but as often happens, the stupidity of the thing and the false claims forced a comment from my bad side. While this fact is completely unambiguous and uncomplicated, like many ideologues, she accepted the explanation completely uncritically – and with near zero understanding.

Of course Steve McIntyre had me wound up about the Briffa Schweingruber series all the way back in 2008 when he finally got them to release the data – it was completely unavailable to the non-certified believer community prior to that time.  I wrote this post back then well before cliamtegate.   Now the scientists are looking straight faced into the public eye and saying it is acceptable to replace the proxy data with temperature data even though a key part of most every paleo-reconstruction is verification stats and correlation to temperature.  This verifies the result of the paper allegedly,  of course the maths used are as bogus as hide the decline in my opinion because the red noise present in proxies will always correlate.  Regression magic is another issue though which we’ve also beaten to death here.

Who is the Enemy of Whom

A news article recently caught my attention.

U.N. Prepares to Debate Whether ‘Mother Earth’ Deserves Human Rights Status

I suppose this is the official step for conversion of the global warming science group to the status of religion. The dangers of this stupidity should be obvious but leave me with a bunch of questions that have odd answers.  For instance, who will define damage to Earth? What are the remedies for said damage?   When Earth damages humans, does it also receive ‘responsibility’?

Ugh!

I’ve got to let off a little steam.   Currently, in the US, we have a government overspending their income by a gigantic proportion.   Those in charge have no chance of feeling the result of their own policy (while in office) and those who lose office didn’t have the power anyway so — who cares.

So we have this big tea party movement, you know the one which wanted to slash government.   What did we get from the biggest change in electorate in our lifetimes — something like 40 billion in spending cuts. The leftist (and fake conservative) media calls them extremists and mocks their intent, yet this is all we got.

Well I have to say that if you are Greece, Turkey, Venezuela or Iran, that kind of cut is a fantastic victory!!  But if you are the single largest economy in the world and you are overspending your income by nearly two times this FORTY BILLION amounts to precisely – 0ne week of overspending!! — Or for the less numerically inclined – one fart in the wind.  Two months of our deficit is the annual gross domestic product of Venezuela — go socialism.

Nobody will bail out a 14 trillion dollar debt.  Nobody could.    Our GDP is 14 trillion, only a small percentage of that is actual profit.  Just what do people think when they hear political hacks talking about not cutting ‘services’ when we’re overspending govt income by nearly 2 trillion per year?   This isn’t a simple matter of ‘tax the wealthy’, the wealthy don’t exist in those numbers.  This isn’t a matter of trim some spending, the trimming needs a chainsaw.

But the magnitude has the public educated public —- baffled, confused, bewildered.   Our tea party cut 40 billion ish — per year!!   yay!!!!

What about the ONE HUNDRED FIFTY BILLION PER MONTH!!!

Yet half of the public thinks Obama’s doing a good job.  Half want Pelosi back.  Hell a different half think John Boehner is doing a fine job because he’s just compromising in his position.  I’m in NONE of those halves. During the ‘budget’ negotiations I heard/read numerous media outlets saying ‘the public doesn’t want the federal government to ‘shut down’.  I kept wondering who they asked?  Screw em, shut em all down if that’s what it takes to get the morons to pay attention.

I’m a businessman, I know sometimes compromise is required but I also know when it is time to drive the stake in the ground and say enough.   We can tolerate no more government unions (an oxymoron on any other planet in this universe), no more insane spending levels on bloated federal government for programs which are not required.  A TOWN can manage its own education with 15,000 USD/student.   We don’t need the feds help for education –AT ALL — zero!  Health care has become nothing more than a profit center for lawyers and politicians.  Over-strict over-interpreted law has spawned massive corporations of bottom feeding Armani suits, yet we continue to feed it.

Why don’t people think of this on their own?  Why do I have to write it instead of the thoughtful and wise overpaid media?    Don’t comment that it wasn’t really 40 billion in cuts please.  I already know and the point is — it wasn’t even close so WHO CARES!

I wrote recently that I really fear for our children, someone commented back that all generations have that fear. My reply is that this time it is not fear of the unknown that is the problem.

Officially in Print

Sometimes you never expect it to happen.  I’m just glad to have a small part in correcting the record.

———

Dear Dr. O’Donnell,

We have completed the editorial process involved with your article, and have included it in the 15 April 2011 issue of Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, No. 8. You may find your article on pages 2099-2115. (Please note that this version may not be final.)

If you have any editorial questions concerning your article, please feel free to contact either Technical Editor Laura Klein via e-mail at xxxxx or Technical editor Linda Peterson at xxxxxxxxxxxx.

If you have questions about page charges or reprints, or other billing matters, please contact Christine Keane at xxxxxxxxxxxx

We thank you for choosing to publish in Journal of Climate and we hope you will continue to consider AMS journals for your future publications.

Sincerely,
Julie Fiorilla

the Unseen Load of Government

I’ve been trying to think of how to make this point.  The problem seems lost on the government educated of the US and despite starting to write it twice both posts came off as grumpy vents which isn’t what I was hoping.

E.M Smith has done a wonderful job explaining economics of the world and what it takes to make a successful economy, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Lesson of Egypt

Unfortunately, there are far too many who just expect the government to pull the right series of levers and all will be well when all that is needed is less levers.   My self snipped vents have taught me one thing – I am truly scared for our families over the next 50 years.

It’s the magnitude that is hard to ignore

Joe Bastardi on the recent AV post highlighted at WUWT.

H/T Reader Keith Grubb

Global Temperatures and Incomplete Rationale of My Own Skepticism

Ok I admit it!  Apparenlty I can’t quit blogging completely, but doing software calculations is way beyond the scope of my time abilities.   There is a detail which may interest some here that has too little discussion in the ‘climate wars’ .  It’s a matter of reason, again which doesn’t disprove AGW but which seems to me should be cause for pause in the alarmist message.

From this link:

Heat capacity of ocean water: 3993 J/kg/K
Heat capacity of air: 1005 J/kg/K

This is the number of Joules (energy) to raise temperature 1 degree Kelvin which is the same as 1 degree Celcius. Energy cannot be created or destroyed to my knowledge so these are physically knowable values.  Since they are in kilograms, we only need to look at kilograms atmosphere vs kilograms of ocean to make the following graphs.

From Wikipedia – The atmosphere has a mass of about 5×10¹⁸ kg

From Wikipedia – The total mass of the hydrosphere is about 1,400,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons (1.5×10¹⁸ short tons) or 1.4×10²¹ kg,

So multiplying out, the energy content of the atmosphere is – 1005 *5×10¹⁸ kg =5 x10²¹ Joules/Degree Kelvin

Energy content of the ocean is – 3993 *1.4×10²¹ =5.6×10²⁴ Joules/Degree Kelvin

Trouble with Thunderbird

I never thought to ask here but there are a ton of computer experts around tAV.   I have been using Thunderbird as an email client for my work emials.  The problem is that the search function doesn’t work properly and I have literally tens of thousands of emails and can’t do proper searches for keywords.   I use gmail for tAV and it works fine – don’t like the interface much – but every comment goes there as do all blog emails.   My gmail account has close to thirty thousand emails also right now.

What I want is a good search for Thunderbird (tried Eudora) or a recommendation for a better email client that has a simple interface and can import the TB/Eudora database.

Does anyone have any suggestions for which is the best client and how to switch from Thunderbird (or perhaps a search program upgrade for TB)?