Saturday, February 03, 2007

A Voice of Sanity at the Globe

I was going to tack this onto end of the 'Sky is Falling' post, but I think it deserves a spotlight of its own - Margaret Wente in an on-line Q & A about global warming.

H/T SDA and Halls of Macadamia. I have a warning from Blogger about a scheduled outage soon, so perhaps we can discuss this later.


* * * *

BIG UPDATE: Another voice of sanity at the Globe!! Yikes. Are they all Kyoto-deniers there?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post Joanne. The Globe article is probably the best I've ever read. Didn't really fully understand it before now. Visit my blog to read about what happened to my granddaughter when she broke both her wrists snowboarding. Our health care system is a mess and it makes you wonder what the provincial Liberals are doing with that special health care tax. Blogger will go down soon. Have a good day.

Anonymous said...

Me again. In case you don't have my CRUX OF THE MATTER address: scrux.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Ironically the elephant in the room is small.

Tiny in fact. Almost unnoticable.

I'm talking about Canada's contribution to world output, which is only 2% before China's planned increase (which should put our percentage well below 2%).

2%

Don't expect that number to be raised, because to do so, would render this issue for Canada, essentially moot.

Now carry on with our regularily scheduled program of narcissistic, self importance.

Anonymous said...

I had to go out this morning and posted my comment on the last thread in a hurry and without proof reading. As you can see I'm not the world's best typer or speller. My apologies for the exta mistakes.
Some people in the media seem to be having second thoughts about Kyoto. Having proven their power to influence the course of the country, they seem to have suddenly realised that it better not turn out to be a disaster. The sudden switch to a cautionary note protects them no matter which view is correct.
Margaret Wente is still repeating some of the false claims of the radical enviormentalists. The claim that global warming will lead to a drier world is false. A new ice age will lead to a drier world. Global warming leads to a wetter world!
During the time when continental ice sheets covered a large portion of the world, the amount of land covered by forest was much less than today. Most of the rest of the world not covered by ice was grassland, semi desert, or true desert. Forest requires more moisture than was available in many places during the ice age. Yet these same places are now covered with forest or would be if man had not clesred them.
The reason is quite obvious once you think aout it. It should come as no surprise to find out that more water evapourates from warm water than cold. Also warm air holds much more water vapour than cold water. Result, much more rain because what goes up does come down.
The lack of real science in the alarmist camp can be seen in the contradictory claims made on the amount of percipitation the alarmists claim to be the result of global warming. Every time there is flooding it's the result of global warming, but we are going to be living in a world of deserts because of global warming.
According to the to the global warming thery everything bsd is cased by the rising temperatures. Notice they did not claim that the very benign 2006 hurricane season in the Atlantic was caused by global warming but the disasterous 2005 season, was solely the result of global warming.

Anonymous said...

not to mention that pickey little inconvenient truth that the Earth's temp. HASN'T risen in five years.

If we're turning into an oven, shouldn't the temperature be, uhm,


rising?

Brian in Calgary said...

Are they all Kyoto-deniers there?

Joanne: I think Kyoto skeptic would be a better term. Pro-Kyoto extremists like the term Kyoto-denier because it conjures up images of Holocaust deniers, and would like the two groups to be equated in the public mind.

Jason Cherniak has been taken to task for it's use (see the comments to his post of Jan 31, updated Feb 02: "What does Stephen Harper believe?"):

"It is not appropriate for people to use the murder of millions of Jews, gypsys and others just to crank up the emotional impact of their pet political project." - Sophie

"...term is loaded, inappropriate, and demeans the memory of one the most terrible episodes of history." - The Rat

"I think Sophie has a point, as it does lead ones mind to 'Holocaust denier' (unless there is another example of ____ denier that I'm missing)." - Olaf

"It is an attempt to be derisive toward climate change skeptics through loose word association." - Cicero in Pants

I think it behooves all of us Kyoto-skeptics be careful of lending credence to the language of the pro-Kyoto extremists.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Brian, of course I was being facetious, but point taken. Thanks.

Swift, good comment. I don't think anyone really knows what's going on here. They're just all posturing - politicians, pundits, scientists, the whole lot of them.

No wonder the average Canadian is confused.

Brian in Calgary said...

No problem, Joanne. However, I must confess to having been a little extravagent in my language in the past. In one of my posts (I don't think on your blog, but I'm not sure) I've used the phrase "Kyoto cultists." It's not exactly language designed to encourage a civilized debate on the issue, is it? From now, I'm now jettisoning its use from my comments.

Anonymous said...

I don't think anyone really knows what's going on here.
That rather a neat why to justify self-delusions… carry on….

Joanne (True Blue) said...

I've used the phrase "Kyoto cultists." It's not exactly language designed to encourage a civilized debate on the issue, is it? From now, I'm now jettisoning its use from my comments.

Well, that's very honourable of you. Personally, I'm going to keep referring to the Kyoto Kult.

Mac said...

I like the term "Kyotology" (like Scientology but without the cool alien part) I first saw at Stephen Taylor's blog.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

"Kyotology" Yeah, that's a good one, Mac. It has kind of a misleading, pseudo-scientific nuance as well. Quite apropos.

Brian in Calgary said...

Kyotology seems to be a good term. It is, after all, the Kyoto version of archaeology, biology, climatology, geology, meteorology, zoology, etc (I hope my spelling was okay). Nothing uncivilized about it.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Nothing uncivilized about it.

Of course, then there's astrology...