[glebe digital]

The 'nail in the coffin' came out in June:

Observed data is the top left square, all the others are the main climate models used by the IPCC.

Richard Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT.

I love that our Great Leader [the cyclopean Mr Brown] has come out calling me [and half the UK population] 'flat-earthers'........that just takes the biscuit!
.....[Kinda like Maddof calling me a charlatan].

[JDHill]

The flat-earther thing is a little humorous. If anything, it was the so-called 'settled' science that generally stood behind the most backward theories...the ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, et al. were were predictably declared to be incorrect and heretical by the establishment.

Firstly, I hope that I am making it clear that I completely support the idea that we all need to take care of our environment; but then, I would assume that to be the obvious goal of any reasonable person. I just happen to think that the global warming movement has nothing to do with accomplishing this. Remember that while organized religion has always claimed to be for the benefit of mankind, in reality, it has often produced the opposite: massive oppression and devastation. Point being, just because a movement claims to be for the good does not make it so, and I wish more people were inclined to regard this movement with the same level of skepticism that they might apply to others.

It's also interesting that Micha specifically mentions atmospheric nuclear testing, because that instantly brings to my mind a specific scenario which demonstrates exactly the issue I have with global warming theory, and our (meaning, our scientists) inability to take all unknown factors into account. Look up 'Castle Bravo'; if you are unfamiliar, this was the US first test of a workable hydrogen bomb, and the scientists who designed it failed to identify all of the factors involved. The result was that, rather than having yield of about 5 megatons, as they expected, the bomb produced somewhere around 15 megatons (still the largest ever detonated by the US, I believe), and resulted in much unexpected and harmful (to say the least) radioactive fallout.

If scientists can fail to identify the necessary variables in a system as small and well-defined as a single bomb, why should I have faith that they will do better with a system as large as the entire solar system? If they were willing to put thousands of people's lives at risk in order to conduct their dangerous nuclear experiments, why should I believe that they will be more responsible in conducting experiments which stand to affect all of humanity? Why should we grant them such an unprecedented level of trust? Are they not just as mortal and fallible as anyone else? We would be wise to proceed with caution and to regard alarmists who would rush us into action with skepticism.

Where I have little faith in the pushers of this theory, however, I have great faith in regular people like us, and the fact that we care about our environment for our own sake, and for the sake of our children. Unlike green government, which loves power, green science, which loves green government, and green business, which loves to exploit the fear and guilt which is now being generated by these other two, it is only us little people who have nothing special to gain from environmentalism and conservation, other than making sure that we continue to have a good world to live in.

(note: I hope my simplistic treatment here of government, science, and religion does not unintentionally create too much offense; entire books can be written on the complex relationships which exist between these entities in the modern era, so I refrain from going too far into that here.)

[glebe digital]

Firstly, I hope that I am making it clear that I completely support the idea that we all need to take care of our environment; but then, I would assume that to be the obvious goal of any reasonable person.

+1.

[tokiop]

I think, we shouldn't ignore, that our life style is a problem for future generations. Last I have seen this film:

http://www.home-2009.com

Just to mention that the film "home" was produced by the biggest french companies, which's aim is to push our life style toward superficiality and consumerism.. The first image with all these companies' logos merging into the word "Home" is pretty cynical in my opinion.. if they wanted to "help the planet" they would have used this money to restrict their own activty.

JDHill, I find your point of view on religion and green washing / green gov / green science interesting, even if for me green is better than oil or military gov / industry / science.. but it must not become a new religion / manichaeism.

In france a saying says : "L'enfer est pavé de bonnes intentions" - Hell is paved with good intentions, meaning that the worst is always justified by "The Good" (who's good? ).

Regarding future and children, i hope that we'll have something else to eat than gold and weapons, because they don't do a very good meal

For now big buisness is restricting access to water, food, natural seeds, bees are dying..

[Micha]

Interesting for me is also to think about, that scientist says, a little bit ... is no problem. But at the end, we have to much a little bit everywhere that make us and our environment sick. A little bit toxin in the foot, a little bit in the water, a little bit in the air, a little bit warmer than normal, a little bit more acid in the rain, a little bit unhealthy food, a little bit ... and at the end, the sum is a big problem.

Last summer we started bee keeping (per the simple warre system that I can recommend, also good for city bee keeping). Interesting is, how much theories exist about the reasons of the varoa milb. It seems to be, the to much "a little bit to ..." cause, that the bees can't live with the milb. The best seems to bee to give the bees a natural environment as possible.

[tokiop]

Hello Micha !

Sure it's a matter of "little bits" and lifestyle at our scale.. but some vips/gov/companies may bother of their "little bits" before making the population feeling guilty..

Nice to hear for the bees, how are they doing ? Did they installed from themselves or you "installed" them in ? Do you have a good ressource for warre system ? It is a subject of interest.. also, what is varoa milb ?

[glebe digital]

Bees are also one of my secret interests.
We re-planted our garden three years ago with a mass of 'bee friendly' plants, now we get around 5 different species, two of them pretty rare.
No bees = no pollenation = no food.........if you ask me, the 'seemingly relentless' decline in Bee populations is a far greater problem than AGW.

[JDHill]

So Stu, it occurred to me late last night - enough gum-flapping - you have asked for 'some actual facts for a change', and I have at least some ability to help you get them. So I downloaded all of NASA's temperature data files for 1950-2005 and spent an hour or so on the start of a simple utility app for viewing them...I've had enough of people showing me their pretty graphs; I want to see what it is that they're looking at. The first analysis it can do (because it's the simplest) is to show you which locations we have data for, and which ones we don't:



The first thing that struck me was just how small the data sets are; the grids are lat/lon, with data points for every odd index. So, you're talking about a 180 x 90 grid, which I am using to build a small bitmap, which is then overlaid on the earth map in the background (above, red = no data). As you see at the bottom right, I added a 'stretch to fit' function for the display, due to the low resolution of the data. As you may guess, you are looking at May 1951 in the screenshot, and you can change the date interactively using the slider at the bottom. The available dates will depend on how many and which temperature data files you load.

Obviously, this is not the kind of programming I get paid to do, so, no guarantees on how fast I'll move along...this will have to stay a 'sunday evening' kind of project - I'll post a link so you can download and play with it once I have made sure that I'm plotting everything correctly, and after I have had time to add some more data views.

[glebe digital]

Fantastic JD!

[Micha]

Nice to hear for the bees, how are they doing ? Did they installed from themselves or you "installed" them in ? Do you have a good ressource for warre system ? It is a subject of interest.. also, what is varoa milb ?

An advanced bee keeper "installed" them in our hive, but friends of us started with self catched swarms. Swarms are better for starting, stronger and heather. For next year we plan to catch some swarms too, for two chunk hives. In germany the local fire departments helps to find the swarms.
We got our Warré hives from here:
http://massivholz-tischler.at/xt/index. ... 6f17fddd4b

Sorry, I suppose so "varo milb" isn't english. "Varo mite" could be the right name. It's a little mite at the bees and conventional bee keeping is using formic acid to push down the mites. It's a problem around the world, but interesting is, that often untouched bee populations stay living over the years. Also it seems to that yearly usage of formic acid makes the mite stronger, more acid is needed and more often. So, some people stoped using formic acid and try to improve the direct environment - Warrè systems, less open the hive, using swarms and allow swarms, grow plant like lavender around the hives ...

@glebe digital: In Germany less people are bee keeping than the years before. The Warrè system is a way, that many people can start bee keeping without spending to much time and money for it - bee keeping for everybody. Last I found a big hollow, cutted tree. We cutted two pieces from it for traditional chunk hives. Our plan is, let the bees live in the chunks and steal a little bit honey one time in the year. It could look like this.
I hope, if more people start bee keeping, than general 'seemingly relentless' decline can be stopped.

Interesting is, how many simple bee keeping systems exist. Today my wife (she is the bee expert of the family ) found this one - a simple bee box:
http://www.bienenkiste.de/

(Some infos about warre hives - http://warre.biobees.com/ ... and if my wife get it done, in some months the old book from padre Warré will be translated to german language as free PDF, at the moment a cutted free german brief instruction is available from here - the original Warrè will contain more infos, but it's good for a first impression. I don't know a link - a basic english translation of the Warrè book can be find somewhere at the www too.)

@JDHill - sounds interesting, good luck for coding.

[glebe digital]

It's heartening that even in this small corner of the web there's Bee activism happening.
However, I should raise my hands and admit my own blinkers here......my activism is -so far- restricted to Bumblebees, I know very little about the Honey Bee.

A rare Northern Whitetail:

[ivox3]

Hey guys .. Been away a bit, ..just came back from the future(50years). I'm happy to report --- all is well.
Everybody can relax. Just zero in on the positive and don't buy into people with agendas linked to money. --- lying sacks of ....

ps. Start raising huskies ....

[Hervé]

you've "bee -n" away... hihi.. in Alaska buying the huskies...?

[ivox3]

Yes ... lol..

also ... You'll be receiving a delivery via special animal courier --- puppies ! Hope Ms.B is okay w/that ... I know Isa would dig it ...

ta ta

[Bubbaloo]

I had a husky. That is one wild breed. They need lots of room to run and work. Ours learned how to climb the chain link fence. He learned by watching me do it once. Smart dog. After he learned there was no stopping him. He ran away.