Hard News: Fact and fantasy
628 Responses
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I suspect this comes under the heading of feeding the trolls.
Yes.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
You're welcome.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Sorry, that was a reference to the fact that we only have 30 years of satellite data, which is considered very reliable.
There is the thing about our short records. The climate rolls in a 60 year cycle where temperatures warm for 30 years then cool for thirty years, so getting 27 years of above average temperatures would be — not unusual.I'll leave it there. Clearly some minds are closed.
But you never know who is reading these things. There remains the possibility that there are open enquiring minds out there.
Absolute certainty is for the superstition brigade. -
one un-tips one's hat
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Farmer Green, in reply to
That is very gracious of you .
Mea culpa , mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
However I insist on keeping an open mind about it in the belief (sic) that science will prevail.
I guess it’s what one might call imperfect contrition. Can you ever forgive me?Excommunication does seem a bit harsh :-)
Perhaps Farmer Green could be granted an indulgence for consistency. It would have made no sense to have spent one's life setting the family farm up for the next ten generations while secretly holding the belief(sic) that hellfire was imminent. -
open mind
Yes well! you changed your mind about god so you just showed minds can be changed.
Farmer Green used to be a theist
don't presume
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Thank you for that. I won’t. Anyway enough apostasy already.
Back to the third report of the LWF.Farmer Green notes the calls for national standards for water, expressed by several of the participants here.
The LWF , while agreeing that there must be a national bottom line, believes that all water quality solutions should be tailored to individual catchments.
In effect this may well mean that the only waterways which will fail to meet the bottomline are the ephemeral water bodies within urban environments. If you disagree , go and take a look at one.
The Federated Farmers representative is quoted in the farming press thusly:-
“We know the way we farm will need to change” .
So it may be David Carter who is slightly out of step here. The differing modelling results from Horizons and Landcare Research have yet to be reconciled
But he(FF rep.) took issue with some regional councils rushing to set limits:-
“This fails to inform or involve the community in what will affect jobs, a community’s standard of living, or for that matter its makeup”Yes folks, there are still some communities in the rural environment in spite of the amalgamations and closures of the last several decades. Remember Taranaki and the Waikato when there was a village every 15 -20 miles, complete with school, dairy factory , bakery , butchery, IGA _AND_ 4 Square, two or three churches, a garage or two , a transport company. . . no you probably don’t remember . . . they all vanished progressively from 1965 onwards as the dairy factories closed.
Irrigation NZ believes that resource consents need to be for much longer periods, if we are to move to large storage dams as the primary water source(rather than rivers , bores and wells), while agreeing that “consents need to adapt in a timely manner to environmental limit changes”.
It looks all good . Will the political parties buy in? Surely we could have a cross-party consensus on this. The LWF managed to achieve one. -
“clearer rights to take and use water within set limits” makes sense (it also makes a nonsense of Mr Key’s ‘noone owns the water’). But while there are a bunch of recommendations (125 pages- I’ve only quickly read about 5!) fair and balanced (TM) allocation of water rights is not straightforward.
It’s also an interesting exercise to read the pasts on allocation substituting the word ‘gold’ or ‘cash’ for ‘water’ :) -
The climate change debate - I have found that those people that support the climate change phenomenon (formally known as global warming) - don't do too much about there conviction - except assert that they are right – I mean they still drive rather than walk to the shops.
When looking at the precious dispositions of others "it makes me wonder" what is the point of holding a view and doing Sweet FA – whereas a contrarian who holds a different perspective on say the climate change phenomenon (formally known as global warming) might well be more closely aligned in action to being green and pro environment than say a pseudo climate change supporter.
The troll label here is very Key like in hat it is uneasonable dismissive and I ask you "as we wind on down the road do we want our shadows taller than our souls".
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Sacha, in reply to
climate change debate
is much like the does smoking cause cancer 'debate'. ie: it isn't one.
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SteveH, in reply to
I submit extracts from recent letters to a NZ weekly , written by a very respected scientist :-
As others have pointed out, he is a respected physicist. There is no evidence that he has any more expertise in climatology than I have. Would you also accept his opinions on say neurology as relevant?
“The globally averaged surface temperature peaked in 1998, and has been on a slight downward trend since then. If recent history has any lesson, it is that this trend will not change until 2025, and maybe even later if the current low solar activity persists."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
Although Arctic sea ice is at a recent minimum, Antarctic sea ice is at a recent maximum. This is at a time when CO2 emissions continue to rise faster than ever; proof that man-made CO2 is at best weakly coupled to the climate.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-antarctic-sea-ice-intermediate.htm”. . . there is a significant challenge to the strength of the AGW hypothesis appearing in the mainstream scientific literature in recent months, in favour of the role of the sun.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm
Farmer Green has been keeping abreast of the emerging science and finds nothing to dispute in either of these excerpts.
You have not looked very hard at all if you have seen nothing to dispute those excerpts.
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SteveH, in reply to
The troll label here is very Key like in hat it is uneasonable dismissive
When someone rolls out tired and thoroughly debunked arguments it is hard not to suspect that they are simply trolling. Perhaps it is unreasonably dismissive. I think it is more simply frustration.
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SteveH, in reply to
Sorry, that was a reference to the fact that we only have 30 years of satellite data, which is considered very reliable.
There is the thing about our short records. The climate rolls in a 60 year cycle where temperatures warm for 30 years then cool for thirty years, so getting 27 years of above average temperatures would be — not unusual.One more. http://www.skepticalscience.com/loehle-scafetta-60-year-cycle.htm
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If you dig a bit deeper into many of the Kyoto-sceptics who favour emotion over logic - excluding single-issue ones like Bjorn Lomborg - their wider platform is either preserving the McMansion & Range Rover lifestyle at any cost, or parroting on about Perpetual War (obsessions with Muslim world domination plots and the 'death of the West'), or both (Middle East oil politics comes to mind).
Owen McShane was one of the more obvious examples during his lifetime, as is anyone aligned to the NZCPR.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Would you also accept his opinions on say neurology as relevant?
I am comfortable with his ability to read all of the relevant scientific papers and come to an informed opinion.It is really not so difficultonce one has mastered the terminology because science is largely an exercise in logic.
Taking the simple statement:" there has been significant global warming since 1998" , then disproving the null hypothesis should be a relatively simple matter if it is acceptable( as it seems to be here) to advance by argumentum ad vericundiam.
But which authority in 2012 made the above statement ? A search last night failed to turn up a single example, even from the IPCC. Puzzling.
Farmer Green is familiar with skeptical science.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
To say that "“The globally averaged surface temperature peaked in 1998, and has been on a slight downward trend since then"
is not to deny that global warming continues. Obviously. -
DexterX, in reply to
climate change debate
is much like the does smoking cause cancer 'debate'. ie: it isn't one.There are lot of reasons/benefits to stop or never stop smoking side from cancer.
Similarly there are raft of reason aside from "climate change" for why “we’ should pollute less or not at all.
I hazard a guess, as it is widely accepted, there are a lot of supporters of climate change stuck in traffic driving to and from work by themselves.
There are two path we can go down, however if one is going to believe in climate change then one should practice that belief, otherwise they are just become the voices of those who stand looking or sit looking stuck in traffic.
For me it is not a matter of wanting to be sure as you know sometimes words have two meanings. Also science is never absolute and it evolves.
It is what we do now that matters - so using the car less, riding a bicycle, using papers instead of plastic bags, taking public transports, using sacks, recycling are all things we can do as individuals.
People need to change their polluting behaviours now as in the long run there may not be time to change the road we’re on. It is what you do that matters not what you believe.
And it make me wonder
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David Hood, in reply to
To say that ““The globally averaged surface temperature peaked in 1998, and has been on a slight downward trend since then”is not to deny that global warming continues.
But it is a red herring. It focuses on one specific thing that, cited in isolation, suggests criticism of the overall model. It is exactly like saying "My grandfather smoked all his life and never got cancer"- there are individual variations within the overall system, and if you look at the effects of adding 40% more CO2 to the atmosphere (and then hydrosphere) the mechanics of that are even better understood than the finer mechanics of how smoking causes cancer. It is just that as not every person is affected in a uniform way by smoking (but on average it is bad) not every bit of the planet is being affected in a uniform way (at the moment I would describe the oceans as being the worst affected).
Damnit, I tried to stay out of this one.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
The trick of course is to listen very hard . . .
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Farmer Green, in reply to
, I tried to stay out of this one.
Why would you want to do that?
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Why would you want to do that?
Cos it’s kinda boring going over and over the same ground, round and round in the same circles.
Doubt is always possible, certainty is always elusive (and paradox stalks the hills!) But this ‘debate’ has been going on for thirty-odd years, and all climate deniers bring to the table is scepticism. That wears thin.
(Not that I’m labelling GF a climate denier- you seem to indicate hereit is greatly to be hoped) that the gradual warming since the end of the LIA continues unabated
that AGW is at least on-the-cards.)
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mccx, in reply to
There are two path we can go down, however if one is going to believe in climate change then one should practice that belief, otherwise they are just become the voices of those who stand looking or sit looking stuck in traffic.
Action on reducing emissions is not so simple as having the individuals who accept the reality of climate change changing their behaviour. The climate issue is fundamentally a social, political and technological problem. Reducing global emissions is a collective action problem. Behavioural changes will of course be a part of this, but a minority of individuals making moderate changes in their daily routine isn't a solution. Expecting that individuals to drastically alter their lives before we take the climate issue seriously is both counter-productive and misunderstands the nature of the problem.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Farmer Green looks forward to complete validation of the GCMs. Thirty years is a very short time in the life of a farm such as his where the fifth family generation now has its feet on the ground.
It would be so much easier to undertake the long term planning on 50-100 year scales if there was a little certainty.
Validation of the GCMs is a very important step (assuming that it proves to be possible). -
Farmer Green, in reply to
Global collective action is likely to remain elusive. It has never been achieved before : we have never even come close during so called world wars.
Farmer Green believes that change can come when individuals take the first steps: other individuals may follow. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
that AGW is at least on-the-cards.)
Only that which has been categorically falsified and rejected is not on the table.
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