Tom Toles for June 03, 2013

Better to have real, true science. And if we can’t have that, better to have non, instead of false science meant to deceive!

Some folks would rather believe what they want to believe instead of the truth.

Don’t be silly. ALL folks would rather believe what they want to believe instead of the truth. Some are mature enough to know that’s not practical is all.

And Al Gore lives off the proceeds of promoting his false science to all the Chicken Littles out there.

So in 43 years there was a “climate change” of about +.6. And your point is? You are Chicken Little!

BTW: Where is Al (I am a big profiteer) Gore these days? Seems he made his BIG BUCKS and disappeared. Too bad for all the climate change people who believed in that schmuck!

Whether climate change is man made or cyclical, it is having financial and social ramifications on our neighbors locally, nationally, and worldwide. There are things man can do to slow it down, to lessen the consequences and/or severity, and to prepare for things to get worse as over 90% of scientists expect it to.Tornado season, fire season, and hurricane season are three threats to our economy, our neighborhoods, and our lives.At some point over the next ten years, evidence will become inarguable OR, if the skeptics are right, disproved in its entirety. However, if 9 out of 10 doctors warned me of a health risk, I would be not be inclined to listen to the 1 who tells me otherwise, especially if I find he is getting money from the company that is creating the health risk.Those who will inevitably accuse me of being a fool and easily duped by the “lies” being spread by those who, like me, believe that climate change is real AND man made, are not prepared to be prepared for the new future our weather will be giving us. I sincerely hope they are right, but the evidence I’ve seen, from sources I trust, make me a civil voice for action, and civility is the first requirement for a democracy to succeed. I hope those who disagree with my stand on weather will find agreement with the need for civility between neighbors.Respectfully,C.

The climate is changing naturally. Almost all scientists say we are accelerating the process. The prescriptions for dealing with it: efficiency, conservation, and diversification of fuel sources, are all good things to do economically and environmentally in a world of rising population, absent all concerns for climate change. So why are some people so adamant that the situation should be ignored? - They are afraid that the US will somehow be penalized for its use of fossil fuels: they will have to pay for the resettlement of Tuvaluans when their island country submerges, or pay reparations to the third world, or have to apologize to the world, etc. Seriously. I have heard this kind of thing. - They are afraid that accepting man’s role in the climate will enable radicals to put through a utopian anti-fossil fuel agenda that will wreck the economy and fail to produce viable substitutes for fossil fuels. Anyone who actually looks at the number knows that fossil fuels will be with us for the foreseeable future, there is no alternative. These are the “Chicken Littles” who think that if they admit the theory of man-made climate change might be correct, it will not only embarrass them, but will bring down the sky on their heads. Yet even Exxon-Mobil now admits that man-made climate change is real, their spin being (naturally) that man’s role is not all that large. They think a (small) carbon tax would be the best way to deal with it. You don’t have to buy into a radical agenda to admit the accuracy of the scientific analysis. Wanting to revolutionize the economy and wanting us to use are resources efficiently with as little harm to the planet we depend on are not the same thing.

there is no evidence that cigarettes cause cancer.

“But that doesn’t mean the seas are getting any warmer, it just means we have GPS.”.I truly hope you are being ironic. It would be frightening to think that anyone would actually believe something that short-sighted and ridiculous.We’ve had photography from space for 50 years; if a Northwest Passage existed 50 years ago, you somehow think they’d have failed to find it from space? That it is a recent occurrence, and combined with (in your own words) “Ocean-based temperature observations show a larger and more consistent statistically significant increase,” you truly fail to see that we are losing the Artic ice pack?Are you aware of the ramifications of such a loss? And how insane we would have to be to ignore our probable abetting of such a catastrophe?My god…

Galileo believed there were moons that when around Jupiter and it took 400 years for people to believe him, Today we have the same sort of people denying climate is changing, and if it is changing they say it not man who is causing, what does it take to make people believe in the true, it took 400 years for some to believe Galileo but we may not have 400 years this time around. Over 97% of the scientists who study climate believe it happen today, what does it take to make the general populace believe in the true. Many another 400 years but unlike last time we may not have 400 years left to wait to do something about the problem.

“Tom Toles is stuck on Stupid.”You are a case study of the Dunning–Kruger effect. I’d challenge you to explain what your factoid means in the larger sense of cause and effect or to at least show the data, but you don’t really care.

@onguard, is that the quantity of LSD you took in the 60’s? or perhaps it’s the dose of arsenic you’ll take today?

@onguard, @josefw, @PianoGuy24:Ninety-seven point two percent (97.2%) of climate scientists self-rating their papers endorse the consensus that global warming is real and human caused. Period. Debate over.http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/As for your comments presumably intended to counter the overwhelming scientific evidence:1. Al Gore is irrelevant. Referring to him does not help your cause.2. Yes, climate has gone up and down. We also know why. In addition to solar cycles, orbital cycles, and so forth, a critical factor is the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. In this case, the climate shift is NOT natural. If humans caused it, presumably humans can do something about it. If nothing else, when you are in a hole, STOP DIGGING.3. Yes, CO2 is “natural.” So is arsenic (an element!). Doesn’t mean it is good for you. I suggest NOT going into a room filled with it and lacking oxygen.4. CO2 is a small percentage of the atmosphere. But it is large enough to do damage through the greenhouse effect, and we now have record-breaking levels of it. High levels of CO2 are associated with higher climactic temperatures throughout Earth’s history. High CO2 then = high climactic temperatures; rising CO2 levels now = rising climactic temperatures. There are some inherent contradictions in your approaches to deny the reality that is anthropogenic global warming, too: claiming that climate change is natural while ignoring that CO2 is a contributing factor to past climate change, for example.You are not having an informed discussion; you are repeating slogans that are increasingly absurd in the face of the evidence. In fact, you are becoming flat-Earthers at just the time when astronauts orbited the very spherical Earth.I would simply feel sorry for you were it not so critically important that people be informed of what is going on, and to take what action we can, before the climate soars beyond what we can manage with our civilization.

Where’s the Donkey holding back nuclear power and American natural gas? Both of those would reduce CO2, but are being stalled by the dems.

Um, that could possibly be because the orbit of Mars is 140 million miles from the sun, while the orbit of the Earth is only 93 million miles from the sun.

What might just be more pertinent (and possibly a bit frightening) is that the Planet Venus has an atmosphere that is 96.5% CO2, and is only about 67 million miles from the sun. Total run-a-way global warming there makes the surface temperature of that Earth size planet to be some 864 degrees Fahrenheit (which astronomers have stated is far a higher temperature than Venus orbit alone is responsible for), which is hot enough to melt lead!!

Perhaps a little elementary astronomy might be in order here?

First no one should be disputing climate change. and that with all the carbon we putting in the air is helping. But it was going to happen. You need trees and plant to die and be compressed for years to make oil when you look at the countries in the middle east that have oil do you see a lot of trees?? Did you hear the news that they found plant were some of the ice flow are melting ? did the grow there under the snow ?? sorry chicken little is a good name for this people.

I intercepted the following message on my experimental ethereal receiver in the form of gravity waves, and thought I’d pass it on:.“Hi, Boss. I’m the Landlord for the star system in which Sol-III is located. I was on vacation for a short while (in God-Time), and now that I’ve come back I must say I’m really disappointed in those “primates” for which we held so much hope. Here I facilitated the disappearance of those nasty dinosaurs so they could develop into the dominant life form and look what they’ve done with the place..“It’s going to take a while to undo all the damage. Fortunately, there are natural mechanisms gearing up to repair it. Unfortunately, the primates will themselves probably not survive the process. .“Too bad. They were rather amusing and bright. But their hubris was astonishing: They actually thought they were the only sentient creatures in the entire Universe. Ha ha. They should tell that to the other three quadrillion intelligent life forms we oversee, most of them with better manners..“I am enclosing several website “Reader Comment page” examples for your entertainment. Pass them around among everybody at headquarter. But if you would, please store the complete musical works of one “J.S. Bach,” about the only achievement of theirs worth saving..“If you don’t mind, I think I will let the rodents, specifically the beavers, take their turn now running this place. It will be a while before things settle down here, but an otherwise nice planet is a terrible thing to waste.”

Gore Bane said, “If global warming was honestly established scientific fact, scientists wouldn’t feel such overwhelming compulsion to attack their members (and there are plenty of them) who disagree. Those who smell fraud are probably correct.”+My understanding is that there aren’t all that many real climate scientists who disagree. And maybe those (the vast majority) who think there’s a problem criticize the others because (a) they think the others are wrong, and (b) they are worried about the very serious consequences of climate change.

CEO of Exxon says man-made global warming is real. Governments around the world, military commands, civil engineering, international finance and and insurance firms all working on building defenses in preparation.But the US still has its die-hard pocket of deniers. Why do they bother? Maybe this:Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

josefw : Well, one can equivocate to defend “climate changes every day”, but it is to an irrelevant degree. Weather changes every day (and more frequently) to a relevant degree. It is the long-term change in climate that is significant and it is going up, and can be changed by humans, since humans caused the change beyond the usual cycles in the first place.As for what happened to Al Gore, my first suspicion is that it is the same thing that happened to the Green Party – the multinational corporations have ordered their wholly owned mass media never to mention them. It is a lot like being a “non-person” in the old Soviet Union.

I totally deserve that, Harley. Movies often reflect, or perhaps set the tone, for certain age groups. We have too many dark movies in my opinion. I prefer happier endings, where all the opponents team up to defeat a bigger threat. In that light, I saw Cowboys and Aliens last weekend. A little cheesey but was worth making the popcorn for.^Consider the possibility that movies depicting extreme examples of corporate pollution are based on stories of ACTUAL abuses. How many deaths without arrests or SEVERE penalties are acceptable. How many children whose mother carried them to term in wombs contaminated by pollutants are acceptable?How many millions in medical costs, sometimes unpaid to hospitals so paid by us, are acceptable?Brokavich was a nice Perry Mason story. But whether or not you feel the company was guilty, it will be easy to find another company that WAS guilty.Respectfully,C.

That is a pretty lop-sided view of the environmental issues when you get right down to it.…Besides the Republicans, the Democrats are also to blame, especially when they entertain all these notions that there is something we can do about global warming in the first place.…It’s bad enough when one side—the industrialists and the politicians who support them—“muddies up the waters” with their “junk science”, but when their opposition does it with what they believe to be “facts”, who are we to trust?…The facts are that we have had global warnining ever since Mount Mazama blew in what is now Oregon.…Mazama sent up so much debris into the atmosphere that it triggered the changes in climate and may have even ended the last Ice Age in doing so.…The Sahara and the Los Angeles Basin turned into deserts from Savannas while the forests of the Taiga advanced northward as the ice sheets retreated.…And ever since Mazama blew its top and became Crater Lake in the process, with a little Mazama inside it, there have been other volcanic eruptions all over this planet and some of them also changed the environment in the process.…Thera blew 4000 years after Mazama and it changed the world in the process, so did Krakatoa in 536.

“But there is NO proof that it is caused by man.”Wow, there is a blanket misstatement if I’ve ever read one. You may not care to believe any of the evidence, but it exists.And yes, the planet will change, but if we are contributing to the change we better ask ourselves this very important question:“Which will be easier, breaking away from fossil fuels, or relocating as much as 50% of the human population when their cities start disappearing below the rising seas?”And a secondary consideration, how do we feed everyone when droughts start destroying our croplands?

1. Oxygen is also a “minor” component in the atmosphere, and if you want to find out if it’s important, try doing some pushups on top of Mt. Everest, or for that matter must Mt Rainier or Mt Whitney which are only about half that elevation.

2. “Man can’t affect anything”- how much plastic was in our oceans, deposited by dinosaurs and wiping out the aquatic food chain? How much coal, oil, and uranium was being mined and consumed at the time of Columbus? How much land surface has been altered since that time? What WAS the population of the planet in 1492 vs the seven billion humans today,who of course have “no impact” with all their bodies and technology.

“The alarmists had to switch from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’, that’s how lame their consensus is.” Actually, it is evidence that scientists understand distinctions, accept valid criticism, and realize that dunderhead were misrepresenting the concept of “global warming” to mean that every single spot on earth was getting warmer, and at the exact same rate, which misrepresentation of the theory might easily be disproved. This is the common procedure of dunderheads. The theory that all life on earth is connected into one great family tree becomes “men are descended from monkeys.”

“Alarmists have the obligation to prove the case for AGW not nonbelievers.”Not true. In English common law (which, of course, the US legal system is based on) there is the principle in tort law of ‘Duty of Care’.This is the legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence.

If Colbert ever moves on, you should get the “Michael Shwme”.

Don’t worry. The southern Right wing will soon be sucked into the sky as the tornados get bigger and bigger and bigger and…. Another hurricane Sandy or two and we’ll all be standing the line at the Soup Kitches….oh yeah: There will be Soup kitchens, again. Maybe another Dustbowl or three.