[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote: Btw, Paula, have one more go at your denialism thing and then that's it. The term 'denialism' only confuses and polarizes the debate. You are never going to convince the skeptics by throwing insults at them. May I remind you that skeptics make up the majority of the population in countries such as the UK - see this recent opinion poll http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8500443.stm. That's it for now. Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote: once again, keep in mind that the problem is climate change, not global warming. Climate change has been around for billions of years. It cannot be eliminated, though future generations might be able to control it to some extent. In the meantime society should expect phenomena such as the 1 degree C cooling experienced in the Bolivian highlands over the past 5 decades. My point is that in a rationally organized society such phenomena would not have the impacts they have today. Note that the author also says the Bolivian highlands are poorer than the lowlands. I suspect poverty, and not the change in temperature, is the underlying problem - otherwise we'd have to conclude that what the poor of the Bolivian highlands need now is more global warming! Words to note: THE FOUR CONSECUTIVE WARM SUMMERS OF 2002 2003, 2004 AND 2005 ALMOST COMPLETELY ELIMINATED THE GLACIER. Noted, but remember that glaciers have been retreating and disappearing for thousands of years. One main reason is surely natural global warming - what you'd expect in an inter-glacial period such as the one we are living through. But the Chacaltaya story shows us that, paradoxically, cooling can also contribute to the process. The question then is whether human activity adds anything to the natural and inevitable patterns of climate change, and if so how much and with what consequences. That question is very difficult to answer. In brief, the drop in winter temperatures is offset by a rise in summer temperatures. Paula, in the future when you are trawling for factoids to support a denialist perspective, at least take the trouble to read your material more carefully I'm afraid it's you who should have been more careful. Andersen's article on Chacaltaya does not say that the drop in winter temperatures is offset by a rise in summer temperatures. What it says is that summer temperatures have also dropped, but *less so* than winter temperatures. The article does not tell us at all *why* 2002-2005 were warm summers, but the wikipedia page does say that 'The final meltdown after 1980, due to missing precipitation and the warm phase of El Nino, resulted in its final disappearance in 2009'. For those interested, the Andersen article on Chacaltaya is at http://www.inesad.edu.bo/mmblog/mm_20090323.htm. The wikipedia page is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacaltaya. Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula paula_ce...@msn.com wrote: Climate change has been around for billions of years. It cannot be eliminated, though future generations might be able to control it to some extent. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/markalause%40gmail.com ...and laughably unserious. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula wrote: Climate change has been around for billions of years. It cannot be eliminated, though future generations might be able to control it to some extent. In the meantime society should expect phenomena such as the 1 degree C cooling experienced in the Bolivian highlands over the past 5 decades. My point is that in a rationally organized society such phenomena would not have the impacts they have today. I have no idea what you mean by a rationally organized society. For me, that means curtailing the production of greenhouse gases. Since you think that water vapor might be problem, I can only assume that you are indifferent to air conditioning in Phoenix, families owning one car per member, etc. But more to the point, it is impossible to understand what you propose because you are a master of evasion except fighting against poverty or some other platitude. Noted, but remember that glaciers have been retreating and disappearing for thousands of years. One main reason is surely natural global warming - what you'd expect in an inter-glacial period such as the one we are living through. But the Chacaltaya story shows us that, paradoxically, cooling can also contribute to the process. The question then is whether human activity adds anything to the natural and inevitable patterns of climate change, and if so how much and with what consequences. That question is very difficult to answer. Difficult perhaps for you, Spiked online and Alexander Cockburn. Btw, Paula, have one more go at your denialism thing and then that's it. Frankly, I am really wondering what your purpose is here since you only surface periodically to argue some point held by virtually nobody on the list except Paddy. At least he would have no use for your ideas about imperialism. To be blunt, you have the typical behavior of a troll and I don't think it is worth our time to answer you on an ongoing basis. My guess is that if you collected your denialist thoughts and put them up on a blog, they'd get about 3 visits a month. So Marxmail allows someone with bizarro ideas to have a ready-made audience. I can put up with this for a few days, but then it grows quite tiresome. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis posted a 2007 article on Bolivia's Chacaltaya glacier. He complains that I am uninformed, but does he realize that glacier finally disappeared in 2009 - with no catastrophic effects? Moreover, it isn't even clear that its melting away was caused by global warming. You can all inform yourselves about it at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacaltaya Paddy wrote: It is time for some deep thinking; proper discussion of history and science ... [clip] This whole question needs serious discussion - not ad hominem attacks ... Paddy, I agree with you. Let's hope one day the left can discuss this issue in a rational and civilized way. Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula wrote: Louis posted a 2007 article on Bolivia's Chacaltaya glacier. He complains that I am uninformed, but does he realize that glacier finally disappeared in 2009 - with no catastrophic effects? Moreover, it isn't even clear that its melting away was caused by global warming. You can all inform yourselves about it at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacaltaya If there is some other explanation for the shrinking of this glacier, I am open to it as long as it is understood that it is based on a global warming model rather than a climate change model. For example, it states that a lack of precipitation might also be the cause, but that begs the question of what is causing this drop. But you should be aware that the author who this wiki article relies on for an alternative explanation has written this (once again, keep in mind that the problem is climate change, not global warming.) http://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/5092.html This paper analyzes the direct evidence of climate change in Bolivia during the past 60 years, and estimates how these changes have affected life expectancy and consumption levels for each of the 311 municipalities in Bolivia. Contrary to the predictions of most general circulation models, the evidence shows a consistent cooling trend of about 0.2°C per decade over all highland areas, slight and scattered evidence of warming in the lowlands, and no systematic changes in precipitation. The estimations indicate that the 1°C cooling experienced in the already cold highlands over the past five decades likely has reduced consumption possibilities by about 2-3 percent in these areas. Since the much richer population in the lowlands have benefitted slightly from recent climate change, the simulations suggest that recent climate change has contributed to an increase in inequality and poverty in Bolivia. Poor and indigenous peoples in the highlands are among the most severely affected populations. No statistically significant effect on life expectancy was found. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula wrote: Louis posted a 2007 article on Bolivia's Chacaltaya glacier. He complains that I am uninformed, but does he realize that glacier finally disappeared in 2009 - with no catastrophic effects? Moreover, it isn't even clear that its melting away was caused by global warming. You can all inform yourselves about it at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacaltaya Yes, let's inform ourselves. It says: In Figure 2 above, we see that winter temperatures have fallen more strongly than summer temperatures (the average winter anomaly is -0.9ºC while average summer anomaly is -0.4ºC). Since winter is the dry season in this region, colder winter temperatures will have little effect on the glaciers because temperatures are already well below freezing. In contrast, warmer summer temperatures can have a dramatic effect. It was the unusually hot and dry summer of 1998 (the Mega-El Niño) which caused the permanent closing of the Chacaltaya ski-resort, and the four consecutive warm summers of 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 almost completely eliminated the glacier. Words to note: THE FOUR CONSECUTIVE WARM SUMMERS OF 2002 2003, 2004 AND 2005 ALMOST COMPLETELY ELIMINATED THE GLACIER. In brief, the drop in winter temperatures is offset by a rise in summer temperatures. Paula, in the future when you are trawling for factoids to support a denialist perspective, at least take the trouble to read your material more carefully. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There have been scientific teams measuring and filming the melting of glaciers, the polar caps, the permafrost on all angles for many years. Quibbling about this or that study or this or that glacier (based on misinformation, mostly) is simply an excuse to ignore the undeniable fact of global warming. In fact, there's no reason to think the deniers here actually care enough to get anything of it right. It's sophomoric argument for argument's sake. It's one thing to miss the big forest for the trees, but these people are focusing on a pixel that's not green and postulating a conspiracy that trees are actually blue. Frankly, the patience of the moderator with all of this (I hope it's amusement as much as anything) astonishes me. This entire discussion reminds me of a student who brought her mommy in with her to complain about getting a failing grade on the paper. Mom hadn't actually read the paper, so I asked her to read the first paragraph. It explained how Columbus forced the Indians to get on the boat with him, took them forcibly to America, and treated them very badly once they got here. Mom was taken aback for a milli-second, but, without skipping a beat, began insisting that her darling had hit all the main points--Columbus, Indians and America--and the rest were merely details over which I was being arbitrarily picky. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shawn Redden wrote: The thing to worry about is the relationship between bogus science and racism. Measuring the size of skulls in order to establish intelligence is about as scientific as ... ... as what's happening at the University of East Anglia. And yet, that doesn't even give you pause. Here, btw, is a good analysis of the hanky-panky at East Anglia: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/527017/climate_science_under_fire The Notion Climate Science Under Fire posted by Maria Margaronis on 02/05/2010 @ 4:59pm The drizzle of allegations that climate scientists have fudged data, drawn on dodgy sources, withheld information and frozen out dissenters has now become a downpour. Just before the Copenhagen summit there was the damaging leak of documents from the University of East Anglia's influential Climate Research Unit, revealing less than honest research practices there. In January the UN's International Panel on Climate Change was forced to retract its claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 after a piece in the New Scientist revealed that it was based on a single interview, given by one glaciologist to the science journalist Fred Pearce in 1999. The IPCC has said it regrets the error, but its chairman Rajendra Pachauri at first dismissed questions about the claim as voodoo science. This week, in an extensive Guardian investigation of the CRU emails, the same Fred Pearce (who was as surprised as anyone to find his old article taken as gospel, or at least peer-reviewed science, by the IPCC) has reported serious holes in a 1990 research paper by Phil Jones of the CRU and an American colleague, Wei-Chyung Wang. That paper, another key source for the IPCC, claimed to prove that urbanization's impact on warming is negligible, using data from 84 Chinese weather stations. But Jones and Wang have been unable to say where most of the stations are, and at least 18 are know to have moved during the study--possibly from the outskirts of a sweltering city to the breezy countryside. So what's going on? Are these revelations part of an evil conspiracy by the deniers of man-made climate change to discredit climate science? Or do they show (as my learned colleague Alexander Cockburn argues) that anthropogenic warming is just one big snow job? Science is a way of asking questions, but policymakers demand instant answers. On a subject as politicized as this, it's not surprising that scientists have been found guilty of hoarding data, smoothing a graph or two, shutting each other's work out of peer-reviewed journals; the same goes on in far less controversial fields, where what's at stake is only money and careers. On this topic there's pressure from both sides--from campaigners and politicians who believe that climate change is the most pressing threat to humankind and from sceptics (or deniers--all these words are loaded) who think it's a left-wing fantasy, or a threat to the oil industry, or a mere misguided manufactured panic. Many of the CRU emails have a beleaguered tone, as if the scientists clutching secrets to their chests were protecting their work from misuse or unscrupulous attack--as they well may have been. Why, they might ask, do they have to be Caesar's wife, always and impeccably above suspicion? Unfortunately that response isn't nearly good enough. Their sloppy use of data and fudging of evidence has set back efforts to understand climate change and harmed the wider cause of sustainable development. We know that the earth is warming; the evidence convincingly suggests that human activity plays a significant part in this. (Take a look at the blog www.realclimate.org for informed, accessible commentary on what we know so far.) But whoever released the CRU documents just before Copenhagen knew what they were doing: nothing makes people angrier than the feeling that they've had the wool pulled over their eyes. Every research paper and data set produced by climate scientists or cited by the IPCC is now fair game for the fine-toothed comb, whether it's wielded honestly or with malicious intent. Nit-picking takes the place of conversation. Some campaigners have called for a purge at the IPCC and heads may be sent rolling, but I'm not sure that will help, or even if it should. The deeper problem has to do with how science is practiced--not collaboratively but competitively, not following questions but seeking profitable answers--and with its skewed relationship to politics. As Professor Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia wrote in a Guardian forum, The scientific process offers a wonderful method for probing, critical and fearless inquiry into the way the physical world works. But scientific knowledge
[Marxism] glaciergate climate denial
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=1647utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed:+climateandcapitalism/pEtD+(Climate+and+Capitalism) By Simon Butler Climate Change Social Change, Feb 4, 2009 (clip) Among climate scientists there is no debate about the reality of global warming any longer. The research of many hundreds of scientists has proved that climate change is real, that greenhouse gases released by human activity cause climate change, and that climate change represents an immense danger to human civilisation as we know it. But there are reasons why a political space for climate denial remains open. The first of these is that climate deniers have it easy. Climate scientists are required to deal skeptically with facts and measurable data before drawing firm conclusions. Climate deniers have no such constraints. They don't have to prove or justify anything, but merely have or throw enough mud in the hope some of it will stick. This gives deniers an advantage in public debates. NASA climate scientist James Hansen explained something of the problem in his recent book on the science of global warming Storms of my Grandchildren. (clip) A paragraph in the IPCC report said that chances the glaciers would disappear . by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high. On January 20, the IPCC announced this particular prediction was wrong after leading glaciologists drew attention to the mistake. However, it said: Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century . This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment. The loss of meltwater from retreating glaciers could affect the water security of up to one-sixth of the world's population. But this hasn't stopped deniers from seizing on this one small error to allege the whole 938-page IPCC report is fraudulent and the entire science of climate change is bogus. Full: http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=1647utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed:+climateandcapitalism/pEtD+(Climate+and+Capitalism) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == G8 nations burn greenhouse gases that raise the temperature in the Andes. In exchange for air-conditioning in Phoenix, Dallas et al, the people of Bolivia will have to pay for water sold by some multinational. No...but few here can even conceive of an alternative. I suppose Louis is answer is get rid of air conditioning, he proposes, after all, nothing to alleviate either the Bolivia's predicament caused by climate change nor the fact that if AC stopped being used, the death rate among the very young and old will climb tremendously. Of course it's a false choice: water for Bolivians vs use of power in the U.S. for whatever reason. We should totally reject such false counter-positions. On Bolivia's glaciers...they have been retreating for centuries but the *rate* of increase as they get thinner has accelerated like most glaciers around the world. If climate change is human caused, or even mildly effected, it needs to stop. But suggesting the typical we use to much is hardly the answer. David Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Greg McDonald wrote: Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science, studied these craniometric works from a historical perspective in The Mismeasure of Man (1981). He claimed that Samuel Morton had fudged data and overpacked the skulls with filler in order to justify his preconcieved notions on racial differences. Thank you for confirming my observation. Scientists do not fudge data. Charlatans do. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote: The president of Bolivia has called attention to the possibility that the melting of Andean glaciers will rob his people of drinking water. It does not get more disastrous than that. Really? So the *possibility* of glaciers melting away in the future is more disastrous than the *certainty* of widespread poverty and exploitation in Bolivia today? A very convenient argument for the president of Bolivia, I'm sure. But if he's really worried he should ask glacier-free Australians how they get their drinking water. After all, the Bolivian glaciers could melt away for entirely natural causes, just as glaciers have been doing for thousands of years. Then what would 'his' people drink? Mark wrote: But if they say something about it, it's rejected as merely anecdotal. Anecdotal evidence can back up just about any case. It should not be rejected, only accepted for what it is - no more than anecdotal evidence. Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula wrote: Really? So the *possibility* of glaciers melting away in the future is more disastrous than the *certainty* of widespread poverty and exploitation in Bolivia today? A very convenient argument for the president of Bolivia, I'm sure. But if he's really worried he should ask glacier-free Australians how they get their drinking water. After all, the Bolivian glaciers could melt away for entirely natural causes, just as glaciers have been doing for thousands of years. Then what would 'his' people drink? I honestly don't know how to reply to such a breathtaking display of stupidity. The revolutionary upsurge in Bolivia that helped to put Morales in power was tied directly to the availability of water. The people of Cochabamba rose up over the privatization of water. The same issues are involved with the potential loss of water from the Andes, but on a global scale. G8 nations burn greenhouse gases that raise the temperature in the Andes. In exchange for air-conditioning in Phoenix, Dallas et al, the people of Bolivia will have to pay for water sold by some multinational. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0725512820070608 Reuters Global warming melts Andean glaciers toward oblivion Thu, Jun 7 2007 By Monica Machicao and Eduardo Garcia CHACALTAYA, Bolivia (Reuters) - Global warming will melt most Andean glaciers in the next 30 years, scientists say, threatening the livelihood of millions of people who depend on them for drinking water, farming and power generation. Small glaciers are scattered across the Andes and have for long been a crucial source of fresh water in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, thawing in summer months and replenishing themselves in winter. But global warming has driven them into retreat. The glacier on Bolivia's Chacaltaya mountain -- which means cold road in the local Aymara language -- used to be the world's highest ski resort at 18,000 feet above sea level. But the glacier is now only 10 feet thick on average, down from 49 feet in 1998, and glaciologist Edson Ramirez says it will disappear this year or next. This is a process that unfortunately is now irreversible, he said, adding that industrialized nations are doing too little and too late to slash carbon dioxide emissions. Even if they were to take measures now, it will take many, many years to replenish these glaciers, because unfortunately the damage has already been done, he said. Most of these glaciers are similar to the Chacaltaya and that makes us think that those small glaciers could disappear in 20, 30 years. Over 2 million people in the La Paz region depend heavily on the thawing of Chacaltaya and neighboring glaciers for tap water and, indirectly, for electricity supplies. At least 35 percent of the drinking water comes from melting glaciers, and about 40 percent of the electricity, said Oscar Paz, the head of the Bolivian Climate Change Panel, a government task force. WATER SHORTAGES Water is already scarce in El Alto, a sprawling lower-class satellite city north of the country's administrative capital La Paz. Almost 1 million people live in El Alto and most homes lack running water. Daniel Cuencas, a father of four, walks several blocks every day to fetch water from a stream and is well aware of what will happen when the glaciers disappear. This right here is ice melt. That is where the drinking water comes from, from the mountains. So we know that there isn't going to be enough water, he said, fetching water with a rusty tin can from the stream. Water needs will only increase in coming years with the population in the La Paz region expected to double by 2050. Ecuador's capital Quito, with 1.5 million people, and the Peruvian capital Lima, with 8 million people, also rely on melting glaciers for water and energy supplies. About 80 percent of the Andean glaciers are similar in size to Chacaltaya at under 1 square kilometer, and experts say they are similarly doomed. Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru have started drafting plans with scientists to mitigate the negative effects of melting glaciers and experts say they will need to make large investments to find new water and energy sources. Paz said rich countries should create a global fund to compensate poor nations for the effects of global warming. We're the victims of climate change, the underdeveloped countries like Bolivia, which are suffering the effects of shrinking glaciers, Paz said. Earlier this year, Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales also blamed pollution from rich nations for the floods, droughts and hailstorms that pounded the poor South American country for three months. The extreme weather was triggered by El Nino, a weather phenomenon believed to be aggravated by
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: Greg McDonald wrote: Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science, studied these craniometric works from a historical perspective in The Mismeasure of Man (1981). He claimed that Samuel Morton had fudged data and overpacked the skulls with filler in order to justify his preconcieved notions on racial differences. Thank you for confirming my observation. Scientists do not fudge data. Charlatans do. Mildly witty on your part Louis, but If I were you I would not be so quick to whitewash the historical relationship between science and racist theories. Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race, was on the National Research Council Committee on Anthropology. Only after years of concerted effort did such icons as Franz Boas and his students succeed in driving people such as Grant out of the halls of academia. Unfortunately, some of them are still there. Greg McDonald Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Greg McDonald wrote: Mildly witty on your part Louis, but If I were you I would not be so quick to whitewash the historical relationship between science and racist theories. The thing to worry about is the relationship between bogus science and racism. Measuring the size of skulls in order to establish intelligence is about as scientific as believing that crystals can cure cancer. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 9:10 PM -0500 2/5/10, Louis Proyect wrote: The thing to worry about is the relationship between bogus science and racism. Measuring the size of skulls in order to establish intelligence is about as scientific as ... ... as what's happening at the University of East Anglia. And yet, that doesn't even give you pause. Shawn Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Ya know, the guy who first recognized that the bones in the La Brea Tar Pits as prehistoric rather than the remains of contemporary animals that just strayed into them was an Englishman named William Denton. He was a spiritualist and a psychometrist...that is, someone who discerned the nature of an object by feeling it. I think his evidence wasn't worth smilodon doo-doo, but it didn't mean he was wrong. In this case, you have corporate apologists jumping on the fact that overzealous scientists here and there tossing bits of bad evidence into a vat of irrefutably sound evidence. The public relations and advertising firms engaged in this concerted denial of reality are some of the same people who successfully blew smokescreens for the tobacco industry for years...decades, really. I'm flabbergasted that such corporate apologists find cothinkers among would-be radicals. OK, I confess. I'm not really flabbergasted. I decided to say that I am to emphasize a point. I honestly wish I would be flabbergasted, but I've lived so long on the Marxist left that I've learned to expect it. : - ) ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sorry, my previous message (see below) was sent under the wrong subject line. Louis wrote: It is instead about the *basic* question whether climate change is being impacted by greenhouse gases to disastrous effect on people and other living beings. I can't answer that question unless you specify what you mean by 'disastrous'. It's one of those flexible words. Do you mean more disastrous than poverty, war, unemployment, discrimination, lack of pensions and healthcare? How would you or anyone else prove that? Tom said: But we still trust science overall. I do too. But, overall, science does not justify the overblown catastrophic claims we are hearing from some environmentalists. Shane wrote: Yet Paula gets her knickers in a twist denouncing Lester Brown for making the perfectly accurate statement that In recent years, Himalayan glaciers have been retreating at rates ranging from 10 to 60 meters per year. I did not denounce Lester Brown at all, and I was not referring to that statement. I was referring to Brown's phrase 'As the glaciers disappear'. Kindly untwist your own knickers. Darrel asked if I agree with Monbiot on this (for example): On the other side of the debate, people are in denial not only about the science of climate change but also about manipulation and deception by other climate change deniers. They stoutly ignore far graver evidence of falsification and fabrication by their own side, even when there is smoking gun evidence that their champions have secretly taken money from fossil fuel companies to make false claims. They make no attempt to hold each other to account or to sustain any standards of truth at all. Since you ask - I don't agree with Monbiot that there are two sides to the debate. I don't agree with his misleading and insulting label 'climate change deniers'. On this issue there are many shades of opinion. But I do agree with other things Monbiot says. I don't feel myself obliged to absolutely agree or disagree with any one article or writer. Shane wrote: Don't you realize that for Real Scientists (like Paula and the Murdoch press) anecdotal evidence doesn't count? Quite right, anecdotal evidence cannot settle this issue. And it's truly embarrassing to see the right pose as the champions of public skepticism while the left dangles from the environmentalists' coat-tails. Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I see. Scientists measuring the retreat of the polar ice, the melting of permafrost, and the retreat of glaciers. Photographers and filmmakers document the process. But if they say something about it, it's rejected as merely anecdotal. Very clever. At least someone had attended the sophistry sessions of the Spart new members' classes. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Anyone following this and other related 'climategate' scandals should take a look at the UK's Guardian, traditionally an environmentalist-friendly newspaper. The coverage there right now shows how far the tide is turning. This article on the behind-the-scenes behavior of the so-called climate experts is jaw-dropping: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review And even George Monbiot is asking for resignations at the University of East Anglia: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails#start-of-comments Read the comments that go with the articles if you have the time - and note the number of recommendations that go with each one. Shawn wrote: To my eyes, it's not a world that the 'Global Warming issue addresses in any meaningful way. I agree with this, and I believe it's the most important point for the left to emphasize. Humanity's greatest and most urgent problems have to do with poverty, war, and political exclusion, none of which are caused by global warming. For an example of the real catastrophes already in place, look no further than Haiti. With that sense of perspective in place, the global warming debate is still of interest, because it touches on important issues, such as the conduct of science, the public's right to scrutinize and question the work of experts, etc. 'Climategate' shows how easily science can be corrupted in our society, unsurprisingly in one sense, but nevertheless something socialists should condemn. Mark wrote: The point is evaluating what they argue. This is precisely what you don't do about the articles Darrell passed on, because, you say, they're too old to bother with... Mark, I was being generous. I was assuming Lester Brown wrote his article (the most recent one of the three that Darrell passed on) before he heard about 'glaciergate'. Otherwise I find it difficult to believe that he would have included the following paragraph [highlighting mine]: The glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau make up the largest body of ice outside the poles and provide water to Asia's major river systems, which supply water to over 2 billion people. This water is vital for drinking and for irrigating the wheat and rice crops in China and India, the largest in the world. In recent years, Himalayan glaciers have been retreating at rates ranging from 10 to 60 meters per year. As the glaciers disappear, the dry-season flows of river systems that depend on them may decrease by up to 70 percent, making them seasonal rivers. River systems at risk include the Yangtze, Yellow, Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Monbiot has been sayiing these things for months. I saw him do it on TV. I fiind this whole affair unsurprising. All sorts of skullduggery goes on in science, and peer review can be a racket. These are capitalist institutions after all. But we still trust science overall. And the fact that most sceptics have no peer reviewed publications still says something. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula, Do you even bother to read the articles you reference? Are you counting on people simply accepting your characterizations of them without reading them for themselves? If your jaw dropped because of the Guardian article, you should see a doctor or a physiotherapist. There is nothing surprising in it to anyone who has any political/movement/activist experience. It makes no, I repeat, NO claims that undermine the case for global warming. As for the Monbiot article, here is his final few paragraphs: Damaging as some of this material is, at least people on this side of the climate science fence are able to confront the problem. Both stories - the glacier error and the revelations about the Chinese weather stations - were broken by the brilliant reporter Fred Pearce, who is possibly the world's longest serving environmental journalist, and has spent decades explaining and championing climate science. The IPCC's glacier claim was actually drawn from an article of Fred's, published in New Scientist in 1999. But it was he who exposed the mistake the panel had made. On the other side of the debate, people are in denial not only about the science of climate change but also about manipulation and deception by other climate change deniers. They stoutly ignore far graver evidence of falsification and fabrication by their own side, even when there is smoking gun evidence that their champions have secretly taken money from fossil fuel companies to make false claims. They make no attempt to hold each other to account or to sustain any standards of truth at all. In fact, as Fred Pearce has shown, even their claims about the material in the hacked emails are almost all false. The vast body of climate science still shows that manmade climate change is real and that it presents a massive challenge to human survival. But those of us who seek to explain its implications and call for action must demand the highest possible standards from the people whose work we promote, and condemn any failures to release data or admit and rectify mistakes. We do no one any favours - least of all ourselves - by wasting our time promoting false claims. So, enquiring minds want to know; Do you agree with Monbiot? or were you running a bluff? Darrel -- From: Paula paula_ce...@msn.com Anyone following this and other related 'climategate' scandals should take a look at the UK's Guardian, traditionally an environmentalist-friendly newspaper. The coverage there right now shows how far the tide is turning. This article on the behind-the-scenes behavior of the so-called climate experts is jaw-dropping: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review And even George Monbiot is asking for resignations at the University of East Anglia: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails#start-of-comments Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Arguments from authority may be correct or incorrect. The point is evaluating what they argue. This is precisely what you don't do about the articles Darrell passed on, because, you say, they're too old to bother with And so it goes. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shawn Redden wrote: To my eyes, it's not a world that the 'Global Warming' issue addresses in any meaningful way. Am I the only one who loses my mind when I see 'people' like Chevron or BP 'talk' about carbon footprints? Once, early in the disgusting campaign, I sent an e-mail asking about THEIR carbon footprint ... just to decompress. I would pay less attention to Chevron public service announcements on PBS than to this: New Left Review 61, January-February 2010 by Mike Davis WHO WILL BUILD THE ARK? What follows is rather like the famous courtroom scene in Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai (1947). [1] In that noir allegory of proletarian virtue in the embrace of ruling-class decadence, Welles plays a leftwing sailor named Michael O’Hara who rolls in the hay with femme fatale Rita Hayworth, and then gets framed for murder. Her husband, Arthur Bannister, the most celebrated criminal lawyer in America, played by Everett Sloane, convinces O’Hara to appoint him as his defence, all the better to ensure his rival’s conviction and execution. At the turning point in the trial, decried by the prosecution as ‘yet another of the great Bannister’s famous tricks’, Bannister the attorney calls Bannister the aggrieved husband to the witness stand and interrogates himself in rapid schizoid volleys, to the mirth of the jury. In the spirit of Lady from Shanghai, this essay is organized as a debate with myself, a mental tournament between analytic despair and utopian possibility that is personally, and probably objectively, irresolvable. full: http://newleftreview.org --- The Moment Of Truth By Fidel Castro 18 December, 2009 Cuba.cu The news from the Danish capital gives a picture of chaos. After planning a conference with about 40 thousand people in attendance, the hosts find it impossible to honor their promise. Evo, the first of the two presidents of ALBA-member countries to arrive, stated some truths derived from the millennium-old culture of his people. According to press agencies he said that he had received a mandate from the Bolivian people to oppose any agreement that does not meet the expectations. He explained that climate change is not the cause but the effect, and that we all have an obligation to defend the rights of Mother Earth vis-à-vis a capitalist development model; to defend the culture of life vis-à-vis the culture of death. He also addressed the climate debt that the rich countries should pay to the poor countries and the return of the atmospheric space taken from the latter. full: http://www.aclimateforchange.org/profiles/blogs/fidel-castro-the-moment-of --- Jose Maria Sison: End Monopoly Capitalism to Arrest Climate Change Jump to Comments The following statement, “End Monopoly Capitalism to Arrest Climate Change” by Jose Maria Sison, Chairperson of the International League of People’s Struggle: Human societies have created the bases of our survival, sustenance and advancement through the use of our natural resources in production with rudimentary tools and rising levels of science and technology. Yet in no time in history has environmental destruction been systematically brought about in most parts of the world. The people of the world face today global poverty, economic wars and environmental crises. They are confronted by an escalating, more rapacious and vicious campaign of plunder by monopoly capitalism. This aggravates the already devastated and polluted natural environment. The massive dumping of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere by the operations of monopoly capitalist firms in the energy industries, manufacturing, transportation, industrial agriculture, mining, construction, etc. is now generating climatic changes that are causing massive devastation and loss of human lives around the world. full: http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/jose-maria-sison-end-monopoly-capitalism-to-arrest-climate-change/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 10:37 AM -0500 1/31/10, Louis Proyect wrote: Shawn Redden wrote: To my eyes, it's not a world that the 'Global Warming' issue addresses in any meaningful way. Am I the only one who loses my mind when I see 'people' like Chevron or BP 'talk' about carbon footprints? Once, early in the disgusting campaign, I sent an e-mail asking about THEIR carbon footprint ... just to decompress. I would pay less attention to Chevron public service announcements on PBS than to this: Why? As much as I wish they were, these voices - Davis, Castro, Chavez, etc. - aren't driving the debate. In fact, they're fighting a rearguard action against the 'global warming' ideologues. Especially Chavez, whose remarks on Cophenhagen are especially noteworthy. Asserting one should ignore the very mouthpieces of this agenda - those who use 'global warming' to articulate a program of austerity for the masses - that Chavez _fought_ in Denmark (as illustrated by Castro's speech) is akin to the coach of a professional sports team saying that scouting the opposition is a waste of time. The hip-hop group dead prez have a great tune with a chorus that beings: know your enemy; know yourself - that's politics. The 'cap-in-trade'/air privatization agenda must get blown up, and the eco-gangsters must be brought to account. That's the bottom line, and anything that does otherwise on this issue is diversionary. I love Mike Davis and thank you for sending along the essay: it will be subway reading this week. I just finished using an essay he wrote in 2006 on Dubai in my class, and in the past have used selections from Late Victorian Holocausts and Dead Cities as well as an interview he gave to Socialist Worker on the climate. So his work isn't foreign to me. But the fact that Mike Davis thinks that capitalist development has screwed the world doesn't in any way encourage me to disregard the major new story that the major scientific mouthpiece for the 'global warming' agenda has an e-mail log to hearkens back to Enron. Solidarity, Shawn Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sorry - I can't make any sense of this paragraph. What major new story? What is the reference to Enron meant to suggest? - Bill Shawn Redden wrote: But the fact that Mike Davis thinks that capitalist development has screwed the world doesn't in any way encourage me to disregard the major new story that the major scientific mouthpiece for the 'global warming' agenda has an e-mail log to hearkens back to Enron. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Jan 31, 2010, at 10:37 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: New Left Review 61, January-February 2010 by Mike Davis WHO WILL BUILD THE ARK? I take no issue with Mike Davis's well-reasoned diagnosis of the desperate Anthropocene climate crisis. But, off topic, as a (perhaps imperfect) Wagnerian I cavil at this phrase: the Wagnerian hyperboles of Albert Speer in the Third Reich. There was nothing Wagnerian at all in the architectural monstrosities of Hitlerism. Almost all of the action in Wagner's operas takes place in the open air, with a few scenes in a natural cave (Venusberg in Tannhauser, Nibelheim in Das Rheingold) or in modest structures like a Sea-captain's home (Der Fliegende Hollander) a monastic refectory (Parsifal) a parish church (Die Meistersinger) or a forest hut (Siegfried, Die Walküre). The most notable building is the Erzburg Tonhalle (Tannhauser). Wagner's own home, Haus Wahnfried, is exceedingly modest, as is the Festspielhaus in comparison to all other 19th and 20th century opera houses. So the Wagnerian hyperbole must refer to Valhalla--which, of course, Wagner explicitly presents as the epitome of Machtdunkel (power blindness), useless, futile, paid for with stolen and accursed gold, and (like the Third Reich itself) doomed from the outset to fiery destruction. Or to Klingsor's illusory tower. In his madness Hitler imagined himself a Siegfried. He was nothing but a wannabe Klingsor. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark wrote: Yes, people are warning about disasters now, but other people warned about disasters earlier and they didn't come to pass. So the different people warning about disasters now are wrong. That's not how it should work. Each claim needs to be examined separately, on the basis of its own evidence. The more dramatic the claim, the more careful that examination ought to be. Had the IPCC followed this approach they would have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment. Les wrote: but clearly the Himalayan melting was NOT a consensus view, some jerk stuffed it into the IPCC report without properly checking the statement. And it's good that we finally know this, because it means the glaciers are going to be around a lot longer than we were told. Gary wrote: The price of the climate deniers being wrong is much greater than the price of the global warmers being wrong. The classical example of this kind of reasoning is Pascal's Wager: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager Now your point about the 75 scare is hardly relevant. The debate at the present time is generally being conducted by the global warmers at a much more serious level that one gets in an article in a trashy journal like Newsweek. If this report from Times Online is correct, then the behavior of the IPCC chief on the issue of the glaciers is far worse than trashy: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 1/30/2010 7:45 PM, Paula wrote: And it's good that we finally know this, because it means the glaciers are going to be around a lot longer than we were told. a total #...@*#*@#...@!!! waste of time Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting method that deserves replication. Don't let the scientists fool you or all those people who've spent years measuring the filming the retreat of glaciers. It's all done with photoshop and bad science. But why believe it just about glaciers? Why not all the old Sparts that used to be around and have apparently disappeared. There's no reason to believe that they haven't moved onto Paula's glaciers, where they are shivering in record numbers, passing resolutions denouncing Pabloism and condemning the rest of us for not having led any general strikes.. There's as much reason to believe one as the other. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Every article I've read at timesonline.uk on the issue of global warming has been on the same junk science level as Creationism. For something more reliable, Check these out. Darrel On melting ice: http://www.grist.org/article/ice-melting-faster-everywhere/ Anti-global heating claims - a reasonably thorough debunking http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/ How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 1/27/10 6:21 PM, Paula wrote: The point of the article is that the 2007 IPCC report misled the public into thinking that global warming since the 1970s has made natural disasters worse. The IPCC was also wrong to claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt almost completely by 2035. Altogether, the lesson for us is that the so-called 'consensus view' should not be accepted uncritically. but clearly the Himalayan melting was NOT a consensus view, some jerk stuffed it into the IPCC report without properly checking the statement. and when someone who knew better looked close (it was a small part of the report) the whistle did done blew. and there is some evidence in the models that natural disasters could get stronger in intensity, a la Emanuel, etc., so i don't see the general statement that the IPCC report misled. and i don't see you take up the debatable evidence for such an effect. on the IPCC reports: the IPCC aims to be a clearing house for the results of AGW research efforts. is it the best/optimal way to bring the mass of results to the public's attention? not sure ... i am hoping that the East Anglia CRU email debacle convinces climate scientists that they are better off confronting political issues directly, openly, and outwardly, rather than by the rather cowardly behind the scenes shenanigans with journals and such. Recognizing uncertainty - not witch-hunting one's critics - is the right approach for science. the climate modelers responsible for developing and running the GCMs have for years talked about uncertainty, to the point where they attempted to quantify it by ensemble runs. i think you have the identification of the witch-hunting all screwed up, lets remember who originally got hunted. and then, Paula, there are the kooks like Cockburn's recent second-law-of-thermodynamics cronies. let's speak bluntly: they didn't have the guts to try to publish their stuff in the mainstream climate research journals, so they go off and find some off-the-climate-beaten path to publish their ground-breaking trash, and then having it published in such a peer-reviewed journal, the deniers then take it as gospel tested truth. Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I wrote: 'But there is a problem in this whole debate and that is the consequences of the parties being wrong are not the same. If we global warmers are mistaken, there is no big deal ... [clip] ... But if the Global Warming Deniers are mistaken, then humanity is finished'. Paula replied: Gary, the problem with this logic is that we would always have to act in accordance with the most alarmist claims. Remember the 1970s, when many people were concerned about a coming ice age? Of course, they had a valid point - we are living in an interglacial period that will be eventually followed by a glacial one. But what if we had heeded the most extreme claims? A 1975 article in Newsweek warned about all sorts of disasters being imminent - famines, droughts, tornadoes, freezes, - blamed politicians for not taking action, and suggested alternative schemes to warm up the planet. Luckily those schemes weren't feasible at the time. My reply to Paula's reply. Hi Paula Not so at all. I did not say we would have to follow the most alarmist forecasts, but we should always weigh the consequences in any clash of views. There is a very real problem in this climate change debate and you do not address it. I will repeat it once then no more. The price of the climate deniers being wrong is much greater than the price of the global warmers being wrong. Paula that is a serious thought, and one you side step. Now your point about the 75 scare is hardly relevant. The debate at the present time is generally being conducted by the global warmers at a much more serious level than that one gets in an article in a trashy journal like Newsweek. Please!! I hesitate to mention this but It is worthwhile to apply the cui bono criterion or even the Nietzschean/Foucauldian test of discourse and power to the deniers, especially here in Australia where the Murdoch press is heading the denial team. comradely regards Gary Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paula wrote: Recognizing uncertainty - not witch-hunting one's critics - is the right approach for science. Who are those critics? Alexander Cockburn? You? Spiked online? I have no idea why you are being so evasive. Whether or not the IPCC report made unwarranted conclusions about hurricanes and global warming, there seems to be little doubt that it *will* result in catastrophic weather change. New Left Review 61, January-February 2010 Mike Davis WHO WILL BUILD THE ARK? What follows is rather like the famous courtroom scene in Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai (1947). [1] In that noir allegory of proletarian virtue in the embrace of ruling-class decadence, Welles plays a leftwing sailor named Michael O’Hara who rolls in the hay with femme fatale Rita Hayworth, and then gets framed for murder. Her husband, Arthur Bannister, the most celebrated criminal lawyer in America, played by Everett Sloane, convinces O’Hara to appoint him as his defence, all the better to ensure his rival’s conviction and execution. At the turning point in the trial, decried by the prosecution as ‘yet another of the great Bannister’s famous tricks’, Bannister the attorney calls Bannister the aggrieved husband to the witness stand and interrogates himself in rapid schizoid volleys, to the mirth of the jury. In the spirit of Lady from Shanghai, this essay is organized as a debate with myself, a mental tournament between analytic despair and utopian possibility that is personally, and probably objectively, irresolvable. In the first section, ‘Pessimism of the Intellect’, I adduce arguments for believing that we have already lost the first, epochal stage of the battle against global warming. The Kyoto Protocol, in the smug but sadly accurate words of one of its chief opponents, has done ‘nothing measurable’ about climate change. Global carbon dioxide emissions rose by the same amount they were supposed to fall because of it. [2] It is highly unlikely that greenhouse gas accumulation can be stabilized this side of the famous ‘red line’ of 450 ppm by 2020. If this is the case, the most heroic efforts of our children’s generation will be unable to forestall a radical reshaping of ecologies, water resources and agricultural systems. In a warmer world, moreover, socio-economic inequality will have a meteorological mandate, and there will be little incentive for the rich northern hemisphere countries, whose carbon emissions have destroyed the climate equilibrium of the Holocene, to share resources for adaptation with those poor subtropical countries most vulnerable to droughts and floods. The second part of the essay, ‘Optimism of the Imagination’, is my self-rebuttal. I appeal to the paradox that the single most important cause of global warming—the urbanization of humanity—is also potentially the principal solution to the problem of human survival in the later twenty-first century. Left to the dismal politics of the present, of course, cities of poverty will almost certainly become the coffins of hope; but all the more reason that we must start thinking like Noah. Since most of history’s giant trees have already been cut down, a new Ark will have to be constructed out of the materials that a desperate humanity finds at hand in insurgent communities, pirate technologies, bootlegged media, rebel science and forgotten utopias. full: http://newleftreview.org Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 1/26/10 5:44 PM, Paula wrote: The IPCC runs into yet more trouble. From the Sunday Times, 'UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters'. and just last week Kerry Emmanuel from MIT, who had become a champion of the climate change deniers, came out in support of a model indicating fewer but larger more destructive hurricanes, though he has in the past not accepted this. from this: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/5693436.html and this: ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/Emanuel_etal_2008.pdf to this: see attached, below, the article is now behind a pay-for-it but we get none of this depth from Paula or the timeonline etc, who simply scan the heavens for gotchas. and there will be plenty more to deal with. Les Published online 21 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.24 News Most powerful hurricanes on the rise Global warming could lead to fewer but more-intense storms. Quirin Schiermeier The number of major Atlantic hurricanes per year may almost double by the end of the century in response to global warming, according to a new study. A team of hurricane researchers suggests that damage from a larger number of very strong — Category 4 and 5 — hurricanes is likely to outweigh a projected decline in less-intense storms1. In 2008, a group led by Thomas Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, New Jersey, projected a marked reduction in the overall number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the western North Atlantic Ocean2. That result, based on a simulation of Atlantic hurricane activity in a warming world, came as a surprise. Seeking an explanation, the team hypothesized that the western Atlantic Ocean might become less favourable for storms if rising sea surface temperatures further south attract storms from the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent regions. However, at a resolution of about 18 kilometres, the models that the team used for their initial simulation were too coarse to resolve individual storm systems. When they repeated their efforts with a model with much higher resolution, the scientists found a shift in the distribution of storms. The finer-grained simulation confirmed the decline in the overall number of storms, but it also showed an 80% increase in the frequency of the most intense storms — Category 4 (210–249 kilometres per hour) and Category 5 (faster than 250 kilometres per hour). The study, led by Morris Bender, an atmospheric scientists at the GFDL, used the same 18 global climate models as the previous study, along with four other models, to simulate sea surface temperatures and Atlantic storm activity under an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change moderate-future-emissions scenario for the twenty-first century. They then zoomed in on any storms, generating a more detailed picture of them with a hurricane model used by NOAA's National Weather Service, and oberved their behaviour over five simulated days. [ snip very cool graphic showing projected new storms Click for a larger version. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA] Downscaling the models revealed details such as hurricanes' rain-bands, vertical motion and eye-wall structure, says Bender. We think that increased vertical wind shear in a warmer climate will prevent many storms from growing to hurricane force. But in small sub-regions of the Atlantic the effect may not come to bear, and storms tracking across those spots are likely to get more intense. This is important because, for example in the United States, 80% of the damage is done by storms of Category 3 and higher, says Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Modelling uncertainty Wind shear — spatial change in wind direction and speed — is predicted to get stronger in a warmer planet and inhibit the cyclonic rotation of winds, an effect that some scientists think might outweigh the effect of rising sea temperatures. The projection that there will be fewer but more intense Atlantic hurricanes is in agreement with results of other groups that have used high-resolution climate models to study hurricane activity. Emanuel, for example, has focused on the amount of energy that storms release to project changes in hurricane activity. Some of the models he used projected a large increase in hurricane power in the Atlantic, consistent with the most recent findings by the GFDL team. But Knutson adds a note of caution. One of the four other models the team used for their simulations shows a decrease in all hurricane categories — which he says must still be considered a plausible solution. What
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 'India turns up heat over 'Glaciergate' http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LA21Df05.html Plus a fascinating article about how 'Climate change catastrophe took just months' http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earth-environment/article6917215.ece Paula Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] glaciergate
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 1/22/10 8:17 PM, Paula wrote: 'India turns up heat over 'Glaciergate' http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LA21Df05.html perhaps Paula or others would like to mull over the details; from the introduction at http://web.hwr.arizona.edu/~gleonard/2009Dec-FallAGU-Soot-PressConference-Backgrounder-Kargel.pdf An expert team has been assembled to build the case and buttress statements by Kargel that the glaciers will not disappear by 2035, but that they are melting rapidly in some areas and responding differently to climate change in other areas of the Himalaya/Hindu Kush (including some glacier advances). pages 39-43 have a summary of the issues. on page 41 they critique the India's Ministry of Environment and Forests report on the Himalayan glaciers: A discussion paper of the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests speculates that observed fluctuations of large Himalayan glaciers may be in response to the climate of as long as 6,000-15,000 years ago. Glacier response times are obtained in the discussion paper by dividing the length of the glacier by a typical ice velocity. For example, for Siachen Glacier, about 74 km long, an ice velocity of about 5 m a^-1 leads to a response time of 15,000 years. Although some observations in the paper appear to be reasonable and accurate, this speculation about response time is in error and could seriously confuse the media, the general population, and policy makers if not corrected. on page 39: Many glaciers are rapidly retreating and in eastern Himalaya many glaciers will be much diminished in the next few decades, regardless of carbon emissions, aerosol emissions, and global warming trajectory. These glaciers are already out of equilibrium with existing climate due to late 20thCentury emissions. Further emissions increase disequilibrium. Some glaciers may undergo periods of comparative stabilization of length or even growth in mass. Long-term overall trends across South Asia indicate glacier retreat. Some may simultaneously retreat at low elevation and thicken at high elevation as more precipitation falls due to (1) increased evaporation of the warming sea, (2) shifting convergence of Indian monsoon and Westerlies, and (3) the Elevated Heat Pump. The EHP might shrink some glaciers, but might grow others in special topographic circumstances. Influences of deposited soot/dust also appear important in shrinking glaciers. on page 42: The near future effect of a sharp increase in melting rate of glaciers is to increase water supplies. Sometime this century, as the lowest elevation parts of glaciers melt and disappear, the melt rate will decrease, and the decrease of this source of water will decrease supplies. However, that may be balanced or exceeded by increased overall precipitation related to the warming sea surface. The NASA press release’s proposed “Elevated Heat Pump” effect, if validated by further research, would tend to shift precipitation from the Indian peninsula northward to the Himalaya and Tibet. It is not immediately clear whether in some areas this influence might not actually slow down the shrinkage of glaciers due to enhanced snowfall. a letter from this group appears in Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/326/5955/924#12949 Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
