lostjumper

I think this is my favorite line in the article.
Climate evangelism is exactly what it is. Maybe we'll see the athiests bail from the movement now

lostjumper

Apparently they do not patters, as they have retracted this section of the report.

patsfan13

I give Patters his due, notice non of the other lefties who 'believe' will show up on a thread like this. Patters has the integrity to show up, and do his spin to support his position, no matter what.

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"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

Patters

Let me ask you something. Suppose your local Boy Scouts returned from their 10th annual trip to Wachusett Mountain, and said to you that each passing year appeared to have less snow than the preceding year, what would think:
(1) they were liberals masquerading as innocent Boy Scouts?
(2) they were corrupted and led astray by a liberal Eagle Scout?
(3) they were suffering some sort of collective memory lapse?
(4) they were pathological liars incapable of telling the truth?
(5) they were ACORN members who infiltrated the Boy Scouts?
(6) that the snow in Bennington, VT seemed to be getting less and less every year?

In my opinion, the last choice is not only reasonable, it is coming from a more than likely an unbiased source. I think mountain climbers and mountain guides are worthy subjects to report on an issue like this.

MrSparkle

We listen to mountaineers and boyscouts but when it's Foxnews...

it must be lies and propaganda...

__________________
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. - Albert Einstein

When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil. - Thomas Jefferson

patsfan13

I would think they were children and had no historical context. I wouldn't think their impressions had anything to do with planetary climate analysis.

I certainly wouldn't think they could predict how much snow there would be in the backyard in 2035. I wouldn't spend trillions of dollars on their observations they are children after all.


Now if I found out that some of the boy scouts were excluding some of the measurements of the other boy scouts and I found out that they were excluding some of their own observations that didn't support what they claimed to be seeing I would tell their parents and hope they were sent to bed without dinner and have their allowance taken away for telling lies. I would also ignore their findings.

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"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

Patters

So, how would you go about determining after the fact if the snow had been melting at an increased rate? Rely on data and build a model? But, what if there had not been a weather station there and no detailed measurements of precipitation and temp had been made?

Harry Boy

Go to bed, Mother Nature will take care of things, she always does.......

Example
This is dedicated to Do-Gooders throughout the world, I have always said that “the biggest enemy an environmental do-gooder has, is Mother Nature”. The little story below that I dreamed up while watching the tide come in bears me out on this profound fact. By God.

A group of hand wringing, pasty faced, Liberals strolling the shoreline found a large seal on a beach down in Cape Cod Massachusetts, the Seal was old, sick and very tired, experts said the Seal beached itself to die, they say it wanted to die. Somehow the "Blubbering Sobbing Save The World Activists" got their little hands on Mr Seal, they slaughtered some little fish and fed him, they all stood around sipping their white wine and pouring sea water over his body and patted him and told each other what a great thing this was that they were doing, they said God was smiling down on them. They all kissed and hugged each other. After spending about $15,000 on Mr Seal and taking photos, they decided it was time for Mr Seal to return to the sea. (all Mr Seal wanted to do was die).

They came to the conclusion that this seal would be better off if released in the colder northern waters. Another $10,000. They took him somewhere up near Iceland, they also brought several cases of White Wine, Cheese, and a lot of Cameras. The big day finally came, “Pop The Corks”, “Cut The Cheese”, “Load The Cameras”, Jesus this was great, some in the crowd were becoming sexually aroused. Mrs Twittlebaum was the leader of this group of a$s holes so she was given the privilege of opening the cage. (Mrs Twittlebaum always boasted that she once touched Jimmy carters arm at a Spotted Owl Convention)
Mrs. Twittlebaum proudly posed for the cameras then opened the cage. Out waddled Mr Seal, the Granola Eating Kooks were all singing "We Shall Overcome", then several of the squealing wacko’s started crying. Mr. Seal finally realizing that these babbling morons were not going to let him die in peace swam off, then it happened, JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY, a Killer Whale the size of a two story building came up out of the water and grabbed Mr Seal by the head and started to thrash, chew, and chomp, blood and guts were washing ashore, Mr Seals head went flying fifty feet in the air, Mrs Twittlebaum urinated in her polyester shorts then passed out, the a$s holes stopped singing, the Orgasms stopped, one of the Winos, wearing a “Vote For Gore” tee shirt was running up and down the beach waving one of Mr Seals bloody Flippers and screaming “call 911”, many more had fainted, they were lying in the mud with the wine, cameras, cheese and seal guts. Then, silence.

Off in the distance, the killer whale was happily frolicking in the waves; this was a great day to be a whale.

MOTHER NATURE HAS TO SHOW THE POLITICALLY CORRECT LIBERAL DO-GOODER WHO IS BOSS EVERY NOW AND THEN.

__________________
Harry Boy (Genius)

In The Absence Of Law And Order Society Will Surely Destroy Itself

PatsFanInVa

As we know, your initial point has to do with a small amount of evidence for glacial melt coming from anecdotal sources.

These sources, along with a massive body of other knowledge, comprises the IPCC data on the subject.

First, let's establish what's wrong with the Fox story. This will not be difficult.

1) The two are not mutually contradictory. Were I to put 1000 pounds of ice around my apartment, then fill my ice trays and put them in the freezer, I could, by the logic Fox employs, state "Ice is expanding in much of South Patsfanistan, contrary to the public belief that global warming is melting the Patsfanistan ice cap," with South Patsfanistan signifying the freezer, and the Patsfanistan ice cap signifying my apartment.

Much as global warming does not necessarily predict a particular temperature range for Logan Airport, the significance of the statement "the ice cap is melting" is that, in the aggregate, more ice is turning to water in Antarctica than is amassed there.

This story does not in any way counter said statement; it just asserts local variety in different bits of the continent.

2. Then the Fox story says that even though "parts of" Western Antarctica are melting, "Parts of" Eastern Antarctica are not (including, we learn, the part claimed by Australia, which is utterly irrelevant.)

3. Here's a precious Foxism: "East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling."

My kitchen is four times the size of my dining room table. And parts of it are cooling. (Never mind that I have piled let's say 10 10-pound bags of ice on my dining room table, and the only cooling ice in the kitchen- the ice trays-are a fraction of that volume.)

We have defined "East" and "West" for no apparent reason other than to purposefully confuse the issue, talked about "parts" of them, and made no effort to talk about the total effect.

4. We wrap up by a statement regarding the South Pole - a specific point in Antarctica, which in our metaphor pretty much equates to a particlar point of frost on top of an ice cube in my freezer. Within this report, there may be 30 localized descriptions of warming and cooling. Yet because "the South Pole" in a very broad sense is used interchangeably with "Antarctica," in Fox-land this must be very convincing.

Unfortunately, nothing in the quoted article does what it purports to do, which is to shake the scientific orthodoxy to its foundations with shocking new data. What it does is rephrase unremarkable but common knowledge, vis., that every point on the globe, or one continent, will not behave as a microcosm of the aggregate effect.

Now, as I understand it, the IPCC has done something you feel is comparable, which is to include anecdotal evidence in their report. The trouble is that your Fox article -- or articles, plural, if you pile up all the wilfull distortions and plain old lies Fox and its allies are shoveling out at us -- have no actual data backing them up. They only have the large body of actual knowledge from IPCC or other actual scientists, from which occasional "gems" can be extracted -- in other words, they are serving as gadflies, which is somewhat useful, but certainly do not represent a serious challenge to acceptance of, for example, all evidence of glacial melt.

As to how the IPCC ended up with data -- data that, were it from the sources we're used to seeing from the deniers, would be considered the height of scientific rigor -- in their latest report, here's a somewhat less over-the-top observation of the same phenomenon.

RealClimate: The IPCC is not infallible (shock!)

In addition to the "shock" in the article title, "shockingly" there is still quite a bit of data out there not in any way linked to the bits we're discussing ad nauseum here.

For instance, from the article, here's an image snapped with a no-doubt anecdotal camera, of a glacier below Everest:



Of course it is also valid to say that's one glacier, near one very famous mountain; hence the phrase, "for example."

Now then, having established that the anecdotal can have illustrative uses, the question is, what is the sum knowledge we have of glacial melt?

My understanding is that, in aggregate, there is less glacial ice, and we are losing it (even though it snowed this weekend where I live.)

PFnV

wistahpatsfan

Don't pretend there aren't "evangelists" on both sides of the issue. The entire environmental movement is a grass-roots response to the power of the corporate polluters. Corporate polluters have marshalled their power to organize the "anti-environmentalist" movement for no other reason except to protect their position in the marketplace. There is no patriotism or altruism involved in their effort. The lemmings they have been able to assemble rival the numbers of people dedicated to the protection of the environment. The environmental movement is the only reason there are any controls on these corporate pigs who, without those populist controls, would be perfectly content to continue to ***** where we (not them) eat.

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