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Comment by Jan Carter on January 24, 2015 at 11:32

Has anyone tried this?

Comment by Jan Carter on January 20, 2015 at 18:54

ROFLMAO!

Leave it to Mark Twain to state the obvious

Comment by James Cole on January 20, 2015 at 18:14

Ladies and gentlemen.  For your amusement I present the following.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

By the way global warming is passe', it's now climate change.

Comment by Jan Carter on January 19, 2015 at 19:24

I am for that!

I'm not sure if that makes me a global warming alarmist or a denier. I tend to fall  in the "In the last fifty years I've heard so many theories about global warming, global cooling, nuclear winter,  steam house effect, etc, that I don't think anyone really knows what is happening and the extremists need to stop screaming at me" camp.

Comment by Tobias Gibson on January 19, 2015 at 10:54

Being in the health science filed (not the energy science field) I can only give you an anecdotal perspective.   That perspective is Scientist also have agendas and in many cases, that agenda in academia is to do ground breaking research that turns the accepted theory on its heals.   Often, scientist will ignore data if it does not support the outcome of the grant they are working on.  They will manipulate date, change the sample size, change the survey period, etc in order to get the results they wanted or expected.  And if they can't get the results then they will use terms as inconclusive or increase the  margin of error in the study.    They do this all in the name of funding and tenure and legacy.   And one needs to remember that the pockets of Big Government are much deeper than those of Big Business.  So if the EPA wants a regulation that will force businesses to pay more taxes, they can offer grants to scientists to support that regulation.

Comment by Tobias Gibson on January 19, 2015 at 10:44

What has happened is we have created artificial islands of heat known as big cities where heat sources did not exist before.  These have caused some minor disruptions of local weather patterns.  This is one reason why the city of Chicago moved its official reporting temperature from Midway to OHare Airport.  20 years ago, the temperature at Midway was always warmer than that at Midway.  Now as the urban sprawl of the city has grown even more, the temperature at Ohare is also goign up in the winter.  Yet as you get away from the city, the temperatures remain more constant.  Do you see a pattern?  It isn't so much that the global temp is rising it is a sign that our cities are getting over-crowded and more built up causing little heat islands.    And yes this does cause minor disruptions of weather patterns.

I'm not sure if that makes me a global warming alarmist or a denier. I tend to fall  in the "In the last fifty years I've heard so many theories about global warming, global cooling, nuclear winter,  steam house effect, etc, that I don't think anyone really knows what is happening and the extremists need to stop screaming at me" camp.

Featured Comment by dead_left_knife_guy on January 18, 2015 at 20:15

Thanks, Steve!  And I'm really not into hateful name calling either -- it really tends to shut the discussion down & make it all about the names.  

There's a moderator on one of the knife forums that advertises itself as providing intelligent knife discussion, which it really can -- but it does not advertise the blatant bullying that this particular moderator engaged in.  I tried to complain above his head but that person was the forum owner & was impossible to reach.  So I left the forum -- because it was impossible to predict if I'd be able to engage in a civil discussion there.  

The folks here just don't seem to be into bullying, & I've had nothing but warm welcomes so far, & I've gotta say that I really appreciate that!  

Thanks, y'all, for being so nice!

Featured Comment by Charles Sample on January 18, 2015 at 15:51

Dead_Left_Knife_Guy, is it alright if I just call you DLKG or Guy?  (And I am sorry if I stepped on your toes by asking that.)  Your whole handle is a lot to type out.  And I, like a lot of us here, can't type very well.

And no you didn't overstep any boundaries.  I like discussions like this.  The only boundaries are for keeping this a family friendly and cordial site.

I can't help being skeptical of some of this data.  I guess I am somewhat of a scientist.  I am, or was til I retired, an electrical engineer.  I had to be precise and had to have precise data.  I helped build and maintain nuclear and coal fired power plants and electrical distribution systems.  I couldn't take old data that I wasn't sure about its accuracy and use it in my calculations.

When scientists say their data shows a fraction of a degree average change over a long period of time and that proves warming or cooling, I am dubious.  There were far fewer data points at the beginning of that long period of time and probably less accurate.

I don't doubt that the temperature of the earth varies.  It obviously does.  I jokingly tell my friends when discussing global warming with them, "Thank God for global warming or we would still be in the ice age!"   And man had nothing to do with the cooling off before or the warming up after the ice age.

Another thing that makes me skeptical is that not really that long ago scientists were predicting just the opposite of global warming.  I remember the headline on the cover of I believe it was the Readers Digest, "The Coming Ice Age."  And by no means do all scientists agree that we even have global warming.  There is a prominent NASA scientist here in Huntsville AL that says no.

I think I have read where the data for the last few years actually shows a slight drop in temp.  And how many of the greater number of sensors that we have now are in cities that create their own heat islands where the city air heats up more than the surrounding country side.

And I think the science has become tinged with political hues.  The government is run by politicians and a lot of the research money comes from the government.  And I am sure at least some scientists would be careful about putting out data that they think might get their funding cut off.

In my mind the debate over whether we are heating up or cooling down hasn't been definitely decided.  Which ever we are doing will continue until we switch and do the other.  And sooner or later we will.  And I don't think man can stop or change that.

All of that said I am not against protecting the environment.  I am an avid outdoors man and hunter.  I want all wildlife to be abundant.  I want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.  But I also want to heat my house in winter and cool it in summer. (I live in Alabama.  It gets hot.)  I want to cook my food.  I need gas for my car.

I am reminded of a comic strip I once saw.  In the first frame was a hippie type fellow holding a sign that said "No Nukes."  In the next frame a woman was holding a sign that said "No Coal."  The third frame had someone with a sign that said "No Hydro."  The fourth frame was black with a speech bubble that said "What happened to the lights?"

Featured Comment by dead_left_knife_guy on January 18, 2015 at 11:55

Sorry, I hope I didn't overstep any boundaries here -- I'm new, & not interested in stepping on anyone's toes.  

But it appears there is a very odd thing that comes into play whenever we start to talk about things such as global warming / climate change.  The cause is inherently part of the discussion, because we know that if it's happening, we might be better off trying to stop it & reverse it, given the potential effects (some people say it's natural, but that's not an argument for allowing it to happen anymore than allowing forest fires to ravage settled areas when they're set by lightening, the most common cause of forest fires).  

But there's even denial that such warming is happening.  The scientific data comes into question.  The reliability of the verifiable facts comes into question.  

The same thing happened when Galileo said that Venus has phases.  No one cared about whether Venus had phases, & they did not argue about Venus having phases.  What people cared about was that if Venus had phases, that meant Venus revolved around the sun, which made it far more likely that Earth revolved around the sun & not vice versa.  It meant that we were not, in fact, the center of the universe.

And maybe that's an unsung part of the global warming debate -- whether out energy needs are more important than the needs of other creatures, or frankly the needs of many other (poor) people who will likely get the shaft when certain things end happening (e.g.:  Katrina causing flooding that exploited weaknesses in the levee systems protecting New Orleans, leaving those well off enough to get out while the poor, the elderly, the others without any other alternatives had to flounder & fend for themselves for the most part).

So this discussion is core to survival discussions overall.  It's just unfortunate that the same science that leads us to understand how to make fire & how to nourish our bodies long term & how to build reliable structures is questioned when it comes to greater science that has become tinged with political hues.

Featured Comment by dead_left_knife_guy on January 18, 2015 at 11:36

Every winter here in Minnesota I hear at least a couple comments about how cold it is & that this serves as proof that global warming is not occurring.  Charles Sample, you have a really good point in the questionable accuracy of data from over a hundred years ago, but people putting these models into play are going to take such things into consideration.  

Individual scientists tend not to have as strong an agenda as others with stronger voices in the media, and they spend millions upon millions attempting to influence public policy (laws & other governmental regulations) -- scientists are too eager to have their projects funded to be spending money the way energy industry giants do.  

And I'm no scientist, but I know that air moves like any other fluid, which is to say that while one place may be exceptionally hot, another may be exceptionally cold -- anyone who boils water knows this.  Measurements of temperatures in two places at any one point in time does not reveal the same information that measuring the temperatures of many places multiple times over a period of time will.  

I guess when it comes down to it, I'd rather be conservative & make the safe bet as to who has the more accurate data -- scientists with verifiable methods, as opposed to big energy companies with with profit-motivated interests in the outcomes of the studies (& let's face facts, it's pointless to rely on facts provided by politicians or mainstream media).

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