Well, we have had bit of nasty weather and I have already heard that the snow and cold is caused by climate change caused by manmade global warming... I got to thinking and remembered a letter in the Tennessean I responded to last summer.... said summer was dry and very hot so naturally it was caused by manmade global warming.
I have long felt that the best way to understand what people are
writing is to carefully deconstruct something they have published. Such is the
case of Pam Jones who has a lengthy opinion piece in the Tennessean.
First, let me note that we have no knowledge of Ms Jones’ background.
She may be a highly educated scientist or she may be just another person with a
cause and time to spare.
Jones writes: The atmosphere is changing — not just the one that
creates our weather, but the one in which we’re talking about climate change.
For years, fossil fuel interests made global warming such a charged political
issue that people avoided the topic. But as the effects of a warming planet
multiply, the freeze on climate conversation is thawing as fast as the
glaciers.
Jim replies: Right off the bat she mixes climate change and
manmade global warming in a manner that shows she wants to mislead us or else
she is unaware that climate change has happened since the earth was created.
The issue is MANMADE global warming, or, as was claimed in the 70’s and 80”s,
manmade global cooling.
As for her erroneous claim that people have avoided the subject
I guess she has never heard of Google. Well, I have. I Googled “global warming”
and received 270,000,000 hits. Perhaps someone will call and tell her. Perhaps
not.
As far as those fast thawing glaciers, well she seems to have
never heard of Vinland and the Medeival Warming Period.
And then we have this:
“The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology
earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming. ……….
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain
ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing
two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature
article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on
anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on
the mountainsides around them”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html
Jones writes: This summer, I’ve overheard more people
discussing climate change than ever before — in restaurants, coffee shops, and
grocery store lines. You can see a change in the media coverage, too. Stories
aren’t just reporting weather catastrophes; they’re making the connection to
our fossil fuel addiction. The June Associated Press story entitled “This U.S.
summer is ‘what global warming looks like’” actually ran in a newspaper in tiny
Cullman, Ala. You wouldn’t have seen that a year ago.
Jim
replies:
I suppose
if the Culman News reported the Second Coming Ms Jones would be on I65 heading
south.
But that
aside, she makes the mistake of thinking something in the popular press is
actually real.
Jones
writes: The reason for the shift, of course, is that the dramatic effects of
CO2 emissions have become part of everyone’s personal experience. Here in
Nashville, we’re still talking about the searing 109 degrees we hit on June 29
— along with 3,214 other U.S. communities that broke or tied their
high-temperature records that month. The conversation among Tennessee’s farmers
is about the devastation of this year’s corn crop from the drought that has now
spread to two-thirds of the country.
Jim
replies:
Uh,
Ms Jones. We now know that global warming isn’t caused by CO2.
Jones writes: This is what a 1-degree Centigrade increase in
global temperatures feels like. As the climate conversation develops, we need
to focus on how to avoid even hotter temperatures in the future. Scientist warn
that we must act now to keep the increase to only 2 degrees — beyond which we
would be facing conditions we don’t want to think, much less talk, about. This is what a 1-degree Centigrade increase in
global temperatures feels like. As the climate conversation develops, we need
to focus on how to avoid even hotter temperatures in the future. Scientist warn
that we must act now to keep the increase to only 2 degrees — beyond which we
would be facing conditions we don’t want to think, much less talk, about.
Jim replies: No, what is being talked about is called weather.
Anecdotal observations that it is hot and dry. Wow. What powers of observation
we do have here. James Taylor says it better:
"Every few months or
so, global warming alarmists revise their talking points and march like
lemmings off a cliff with a new media catch phrase. The Official Global Warming
Catch Phrase of Summer 2012 is “This is what global warming looks like.”
Illustrating the reality that the entire global warming movement contains only
enough intellectually productive brain cells to create but a single sentence
that all the so-called big brains can remember and recite…… Global warming
alarmists point to wildfires in the western United States and say, “This is
what global warming looks like.” They are right. This is what global warming
looks like. According to a recently published paper in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
wildfires in the western United States are currently at a 3,000-year
low…….. Global warming alarmists point to drought in the western United
States and say, “This is what global warming looks like.” They are right. This
is what global warming looks like. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) reports, “A number of tree-ring records exist for the
last two millennia which suggest that 20th century droughts may be mild when
evaluated in the context of this longer time frame.”
Jones
writes: Climate activist Bill McKibben has documented how much more CO2 we can
pour into the atmosphere if we want to stop at 2 degrees: 565 gigatons. The
fossil fuel industry holds assets that, if burned, will emit 2,795 gigatons —
five times that maximum. One thing’s for sure: The oil, natural gas and coal
industries are not interested in leaving those assets in the ground.
Jim
replies: Best I can tell McKibben is a prolific contributor to the magazine,
“Rolling Stone.” Now that is a source that I am sure we would like to use for
something like… say.. What pop culture hoodoo is interesting…. But not the life
and or death of modern civilization.
Jones
writes:ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has admitted the reality of global warming
and what’s causing it, but glibly says we just need to adapt. He said this the
very week Nashville cooked at 109 degrees and Colorado Springs lost hundreds of
homes to a fire fueled by drought- and insect-ravaged trees.
Maybe
he can explain that to Tennessee farmers whose corn has been ruined. That’s a
conversation I’d love to hear.
Jim
replies: I know some farmers and the ones I know are very intelligent
hardworking people. They’d laugh at the nonsense Ms Jones is spewing. But I
digress.
The
fact is that Tillerson is not an expert and he is news worthy now because of whom
he is, not what he knows or his education. And that he agrees with the hoaxers.
Jones
writes: What I’m talking about now — at work, in the bookstore, and over the
fence when it’s finally cool enough in the evening to water my surviving tomato
plants — is how putting a price on carbon can stop global warming. A carbon fee
and dividend that returns revenue to the public would wean us off fossil fuels
without damaging our economy.
It’s
an idea that’s gaining support even among conservatives, notably former Reagan
economic adviser Arthur Laffer and former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis. Perhaps our
senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, should have a chat with them about
this common-sense solution.
And what of the fossil-fuel companies who will
howl that a carbon fee will hurt them? Maybe they should start their own
conversation about how to adapt
Jim writes: Ah, now we come to the real reason
for her claims. Like most Left wingers she
want s a tax to modify behavior.
And like all Left wingers she thinks that you can take money from the
economy, give it to government, etc….
The question is, how much should we take and
what will it cost?? Should we increase the tax on gasoline by a dollar?? That
would sure slow down drivers. Should we charge a 30% tax on our utility bills?
Well, that would cause to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
But, would it stop global warming? No. That is
not something we can do.
As I started this deconstruction I noted that
I did not know anything about Ms Jones.
What I do know is that she is the President of the local chapter of an
organization that 99.999% of Americans know nothing or little about yet she
thinks she should lecture us?
I don’t think so Ms Jones. Please “fly away home.” Your children are
overheating and shouldn’t be alone.
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper
“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine
