Since my earlier post on Greenhouse Effect physics, I’ve come across a few more useful bits and pieces.
First, I’d like to say thanks to everyone who linked to it around the blogs. I’ve seen it turning up in some surprising places, and usually the context is complimentary. It’s very much appreciated.
Secondly, I’d like to remind people that it’s only the start of the story, not the whole thing. There are a lot of complexities glossed over. There is still a lot to argue with. But it is my belief that you can’t even start the proper debate until you understand your opponent’s argument. This confusion has been caused by the warmists, using a maze of conflicting and unrealistic explanations to sell the scare and confuse any challenge. But sceptics have done too little to clear the fog away.
In the original piece, I mentioned an IPCC-endorsed paper that describes the physics, but unfortunately it was behind a paywall. Well, here is a copy that’s freely available. Grab it while it’s still there.
Here’s another one on Venus by a familiar name from the past. I remember loving his TV shows as a kid. If I had known how much trouble his research was going to cause…
And Eli Rabbett (a prominent and sometimes condescendingly inaccurate AGWer) gave a link to an interesting set of climatology lectures by professor David Archer. You can find a lot of what I talked about in the second half of chapter 5, “Why It’s Colder Aloft”. It’s a big file, but if you have half an hour spare it’s worth a look. He covers a few bits I skipped, and although there are other parts where I didn’t think much to the clarity of his explanation, I thought that bit was a generally good treatment of a complicated topic. I plan to have a look at the rest later on.
It’s surely a scandal that it has been so difficult to find an accurate exposition on how this bit of physics, supposedly the basis of the greatest challenge of our generation and the justification for a global economic and political upheaval, is supposed to work.
It does sometimes feel now as if there’s not as much point in researching this any more – with Climategate and the turning of the tide in the British media, I almost feel as if it’s already all over. That we just need to sweep up the pieces. But it isn’t, and there are people over there thinking that if they can just ride out the storm until the public lose interest again, they can carry on with their schemes as before.
And we not only need to stop them, but we need to remember – to scorch the knowledge into society’s collective memory – so that when the next big scare comes along, which it will, it won’t have dropped down the memory hole again, like all the others, and we might actually have learned something useful from it all.
I’m afraid I’m of the opinion expressed by Lenin; namely, don’t waste your time debating with your enemies - get to power and you won’t have to. And that is the policy that the enemies of the west have adopted over the past 100 or more years. The climate warming socialists have been trying to propogate their ideology by the same marxist manual and it’s time to use it against them. Don’t debate with them, destroy them.
“so that when the next big scare comes along, which it will, it won’t have dropped down the memory hole again”
Which is, in essence, why I’m a sceptic. I’m old enough to remember that we’ve been here before. Many times, and in many formats.
Ben Golding (an individual I entertain periodic spasms of respect for) observed on R4 a few weeks ago that scepticism should be resisted as it allowed the majority of people an excuse to stick their heads in the sand and duck making unpalatable decisions (or words to that effect, I paraphrase).
He is plainly not old enough to remember that we have all been here before, and this is the generation that is most vulnerable to being hoodwinked by these pernicious bloody shysters.
Our greatest peril lies in the sad fact that the majority of our loathsome political class belong, broadly speaking, to the same group.
John,
As you say, Lenin was of the same opinion, and I’d like to think that we were better than him. Had Tsarist Russia been a freer society, perhaps he might have had more difficulty, as ComIntern did struggling to start revolutions in the West?
I would argue that when there is no liberty or open debate, direct action can be justified to bring that about, and to maintain/protect it. But once you’ve got the debate going, it really is the best and most effective method.
Especially because we could conceivably be wrong, too. Nobody is infallible.
PaAnnoyed, in a civilised world, I would agree with you but I truly believe that the socialist/ muslim conspiracy has destroyed any semblance of civilisation. We are on the threshold of the next dark age and unless we destroy the destroyers then we will plunge into the abyss. I am not a fighter, and I wish I was. But I hope that there are still enough of us, the English, who do possess the ability to defend this country against the forces of evil that are currently waged against us. Once they are destroyed then civilised debate can resume. But for now, atavism must reign. Unless, of course we want to submit to 1000 years of slavery to a satanic cult.
If you’re living in Pakistan, or Israel, then yes. But globally, we’re still far more powerful, and still about as civilised as we’ve ever been. There is absolutely no need for any extreme measures yet. We are militarily, economically, and culturally stronger. We can beat them without using force, without any great difficulty.
The fundamental problem is that so far we have chosen not to. We are ignoring the problem, or tinkering around the edges of it, refusing to acknowledge or even hiding what’s going on. We aren’t even properly debating it. At least, not in the mainstream, where the debate needs to be. The risk is that we let our culture decay by ourselves, through our complacency, without the Muslims doing a thing. The bigger problem is us.
So yes, we’ve got a serious problem with the left/muslim axis, yes, we need to do something urgently, and yes, what we’re doing now isn’t even beginning to address it. I think we should do something. But the problem is not that the tools of open debate are not sufficient, but that we’re not even using them. We delay and dither while the problem festers, but as things stand they don’t yet pose any sort of existential threat to us or our civilisation, and won’t for some considerable time yet.
That’s not to say they can’t do us any damage, serious even, and I’m of the opinion that we should do more to help those people living under their rule unwillingly, but what Kant said about revolutions applies there as well. Military force only ever buys you time and opportunity - it always comes down to inducing cultural change in the end.
Destroy them, by all means, but do so with trade and information and spreading ideas. It’s a lot more effective in the long run.
“But the problem is not that the tools of open debate are not sufficient, but that we’re not even using them. We delay and dither while the problem festers, but as things stand they don’t yet pose any sort of existential threat to us or our civilisation, and won’t for some considerable time yet.”
I agree in part with the above, and daily thank God for the technology we are using right now. A few years ago it was an editor’s whim which decided whether our opinions were heard. But apart from that, we here in NZ have a raft of legislation designed to suppress “hate speech” that is used to censor one side and advance the other side of the human rights argument.
The words “you can’t say that” really mean what they say.
That in itself, is a huge victory for the totalitarians amongst us.
…and a thorough going over the past and a look at the way ahead from Ian Katz in the Guardian, The case for climate action must be remade from the ground upwards..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/feb/08/case-for-climate-change-science