Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Global warming scientists dispute Mayan end-of-world prophesy



(Dissociated Press) Global warming scientists today spoke out about the Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy. At a press conference in Copenhagen, senior climate scientist Dr. Mario Fester refuted the apocalyptic Mayan warnings.

"The world will not end on December 21, 2012." Dr. Fester intoned. "There is no scientific basis for this belief, which is basically just pagan religious hysteria" 
Dr. Fester explained that careful scientific research has refuted the apocalyptic Mayan claims.

"The world will still be here on Saturday morning, December 22, 2012. Don't worry." Fester smiled. "The Mayans didn't have advanced science to guide them."

Fester continued:
"Unlike pagan religious hysterics, we climate scientists have determined that the world will actually end in November 2042, from rising of the seas and hurricanes and earthquakes and cataclysmic polar bear migrations caused by our car engines. We're not sure exactly what day in November the Global Warming Apocalypse will take place, but it is most likely in late November, around the 25th, probably about 10:30 in the morning. We'd like to be more precise, but our data is incomplete. "
Fester noted the danger that civilization faces in listening to crazy pagans with apocalyptic delusions.

"You really have to be careful to take these apocalypses with a grain of salt. For thousands of years charlatans and nuts have predicted the immanent end of the world. As you can see, we're still here!"
Fester continued:

"Climate science tells us that the world will end in 2042. The only way to avoid the end of the world is to give unprecedented funding and power to those of us who are pro-science and have the requisite expertise to save the world. Because the world will end if you don't do exactly what we say. You can take that to the bank." Fester smiled at the scientists and politicians and investors alongside him at the podium. "We certainly have".   

36 comments:

  1. Michael,

    You've forgotten to put in your usual 'Dissociated Press' header to indicate that it's one of your fabricated very unfunny creations meant to show off your juvenile sense of humour.

    Global warming will not end the world. The warming will 'only' be of the order of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 MYA, which was a warming of 'only' 7 degrees Celcius. And life survived (obviously) on Earth, with the mass extinction confined to marine species.

    But you don't want to live through a mass extinction event. Your species might survive but you (or your children or grandchildren mightn't). We in the developed world might have a better chance of surviving, because we have the resources to adapt.

    Poor people in undeveloped countries don't have the resources, and are less likely to survive. Your concern with about malaria is disproportionate to your lack of concern about AGW.

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  2. Silly bachfiend, Egnor doesn't actually give a damn about malaria. It's just a cudgel he thinks he can beat environmentalists with, facts be damned.

    When will people learn? -- Egnor isn't interested in facts or the welfare of other people at all. His net presence is entirely devoted to attacking people he doesn't like. Why is a mystery. My money is on "girlfriend dumped him for an atheist environmentalist Democrat".

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    1. ["girlfriend dumped him for an atheist environmentalist Democrat"]

      Yea. She really wanted to get screwed.

      Delete
    2. Michael,

      Aha! You quietly added your 'Dissociated Press' moniker.

      Delete
  3. We’re screwed, and it’s because of people like Egnor, useful idiots with a demonstrated penchant for believing things on faith, manipulated into protecting the value of the 27 trillion dollars worth of fossil fuel reserves for the companies that control them.

    Egnor and his cohorts are ushering in a wave of suffering and hardship on an unprecedented scale. I guess when your religion teaches you that Armageddon is inevitable and necessary you really don’t have much incentive to give a shit.

    -KW

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    1. "a wave of suffering and hardship on an unprecedented scale"

      For a global warming apocalypse, doesn't the earth actually have to be... umm... warming...

      [http://tribune.com.pk/story/451401/global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-uk-met-department-report/]

      Delete
    2. That's cute. Except that story has been pretty thoroughly discredited and only those on the lunatic fringe still try to cite it.

      But that's pretty much where you stand isn't it?

      Delete
    3. Of the 10 hottest years on record 1880-2011, 9 were in the 21st century (1998 being the exception).

      Yet Egnor tells us the earth isn't warming.

      Discuss.

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    4. The earth hasn't warmed at all for the past 16 years, despite the fact that one-third of the CO2 put into the atmosphere by humans was added in that interval.

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/06/a-problem-nearly-one-third-of-co2-emissions-occured-since-1998-and-it-hasnt-warmed/#more-75408

      Discussed.

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    5. Says Egnor the pathological liar, citing source with 0 credibility.

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    6. Not disputed: no net warming for past 16 years, during which a third of total human CO2 emissions have occurred.

      Could you point to the climate model that predicted this, or explains it?

      This explains it: temperature variation is primarily the result of natural cycles, not human emissions.

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    7. "... citing source with 0 credibility."

      The MET office?

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    8. Not disputed: no net warming for past 16 years, during which a third of total human CO2 emissions have occurred.

      I guess you didn't look at the first graph in the site I linked to before. In any long-term increasing time series with a significant stochastic component you can cherry-pick subsets of the series where the trend doesn't increase. Even a surgeon who knows very little about statistics can see that. That you pretend otherwise just shows how biased and dishonest you are.

      By the way, as you very well know, the MET has disavowed the claim by others that the MET concluded global warming has stopped.

      Stop lying, scumbag.

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    9. Fact: there has been no warming, outside of error bars, for 16 years. This is a period in which there has been a massive amount of CO2 put in the atmosphere by man (1/3 of the total). No model predicted this, and you can't explain it.

      The MET denials mean nothing. The data speaks. The overall warming trend since the early 19th century (which is probably true, although there has been a lot of crap science with measuring sites and "corrections" applied) is the result of our emergence from the Little Ice Age. When you come out of an Ice Age, you warm up, by definition. And most of that warming occurred before the mid-20th century, when human CO2 emissions became enough to even theoretically contribute. So most of the warming over the past two centuries has been natural, with no human contribution.

      Your theory is full of holes. It is just as much of a scam as eugenics, overpopulation hysteria (USA will have 60 million starvation deaths by 1980, England will disappear by 2000, etc), and DDT hysteria.

      It's an old story. You ain't got a shred of cred.

      Delete
    10. You're full of shit, Egnor. Anyone can check the evidence I linked to that refutes your deluded claims. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the 21st century. Yet you insist the warming has stopped. I also note that your usual fans are a bit quiet. Perhaps they are a bit embarrassed about your obvious denial of the facts.

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    11. Whatever the "warmest years on record" are (surely they would be the years that people farmed on "Green"land in the Medieval Warm Period), there are facts that stubbornly won't go away:

      1) The earth has not warmed (beyond error bars) for 16 years
      2) One-third of the total CO2 mankind has released into the atmosphere has been released in the last 16 years.
      3) All of the warming that occurred from 1800 to 1960 (more than half of the total) has occurred naturally, because all agree that man didn't put significant CO2 onto the atmosphere until them.
      4) We have been coming out of the Little Ice Age (1450-1800), so substantial natural warming is definately happening.

      So all of our warming from 1800 to 1960 has been natural, and there has been no warming from 1996 to present, despite a marked increase in manmade CO2.

      Bottom line: your theory sucks.

      But we knew that.

      Delete
    12. [I also note that your usual fans are a bit quiet. Perhaps they are a bit embarrassed about your obvious denial of the facts.]

      They're stunned in awe.

      Delete
    13. and there has been no warming from 1996 to present, despite a marked increase in manmade CO2.

      Despite the fact that you're wrong on this point, let's check the history of the last forty odd years and see how well your argument holds up.

      Hmm, if you cherry pick certain periods, it looks like warming "stops" for a few years every now and then. And then it makes a large jump up to a new level.

      So, when temperatures make a jump that increase them by say, .25 to .5 of a degree higher than now, which if the trends of the last four decades suggest that they will do, what sort of dishonest spin will you put on that?

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    14. That happens when you're emerging from a Little Ice Age.

      What caused all of the warming from 1800 to 1960, which was before humans had put significant CO2 into the atmosphere?

      Atmospheric CO2 rose considerably in the past 16 years. Temperature didn't . Which of your models predicted this? What is your explanation for the lack of global temperature response to substantial rise in CO2 since 1996?

      What evidence do you have that the temperature rise since 1800 has been the result of human CO2 emissions, given the timing of the rise (before human CO2 emissions were significant) and the fact that there has been no rise for 16 years, despite substantial emissions?

      In other words, before humans put much CO2 in the air, temperatures rose a lot. And now after 16 years of putting large amounts of CO2 into the air, temperatures haven't risen at all.

      Explain again how that data supports your theory of man-caused global warming?

      Delete
  4. "Egnor and his cohorts are ushering in a wave of suffering and hardship on an unprecedented scale..."

    Science apocalypticism: eugenics, DDT hysteria, overpopulation hysteria, global warming hysteria...

    Death toll so far: a couple hundred million (missing girls in Asia, infanticide, Nazi eugenics, malaria and insect-borne diseases...), not to mention the sterilizations, forced abortions, etc.

    You've got a real death toll, KW. I have no interest in your current apocalyptic predictions, until you explain what happened to all of your other apocalyptic predictions and why you killed so many people with your junk science.

    There's a history to science apocalypses. You get no more free passes.

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  5. Quote of the Day:

    "Climate negotiators at the most recent conference on global warming were unable to reduce expectations fast enough to match the collapse of their agenda."

    Heh.

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  6. Environmentalist atheist abortionist MuslimDecember 11, 2012 at 9:29 AM

    Strawmen, strawmen everywhere.

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  7. If 2012 turns out to be the hottest year on record globally, and the record stands for a number of years, I guaranty some climate deniers will simply state that the earth has been cooling since 2012.

    I really don’t get how a guy as smart as Egnor can allow himself to be such a lying evil tool. Oh wait a minute, I forgot, he’s religious.

    -KW

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  8. Michael,

    Why don't you make up your mind? In a previous thread, you claimed that all scientific theories have observations that support the theory, and observations that refute it. And that it's the balance of evidence that determines whether a theory is likely to be true.

    In that case, why don't you just regard the purported lack of global warming in the past 16 years as just one of the minor confounding factors?

    But actually, you're wrong. If there's definite evidence against a scientific theory, then it's wrong. But that assumes that you actually know what the theory is actually about. Caricatures such as 'survivors survive' and AGW means that average global temperature must show a linear relation to CO2 levels are just incorrect.

    The theory of AGW states that with increasing greenhouse gases, the global temperature will be higher than it would otherwise have been. Higher than it would otherwise have been.

    There are other factors driving climate. Solar output. Volcanic activity. El Niño/la Nina events. Aerosols from coal burning. And others. Some are currently having a cooling effect.

    And anyway, even if you're right that there has been no warming for the past 16 years, that isn't actually a meaningful measure of global temperature. It's only atmospheric temperature which makes up only a very small percentage of the Earth capable of warming due to the Sun.

    For a start, it ignores the oceans. There's evidence that warming is currently occurring there, with loss of Summer Arctic sea ice. And there's also evidence that the Arctic tundra is thawing, running the risk that the large deposits of buried vegetation will be released as methane or CO2, acting as a tipping point to further warming.

    And spare us your ad hominem attacks. Population growth does provide problems, because it's occurring in poor underdeveloped countries, which then have to grow faster to improve the conditions of their present and future citizens. Including obtaining more energy, while we in the West insist on using more than our fair share of fossil fuels, boosting their price on world markets.

    And DDT hasn't been banned. I have no doubt that everyone who comments on this blog agrees that it is the best current insecticide for use on internal walls of huts. The disagreement is about whether it's a suitable insecticide for general spraying, such as in agriculture. And the science says 'No'.

    And everyone agrees that eugenics was a big mistake. There is no one who would want it returned.

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    1. Richard Dawkins and James Watson have spoken favorably of eugenics, and we are a profoundly eugenic society-- we are aborting handicapped babies at an astonishing rate, and now Holland and England are killing them after birth.

      Malthusian overpopulation hysteria is the archetype of junk science in modern times. There is no correlation between population density and poverty. South Korea is much more densely populated than North Korea, Hong Kong is much more densely populated than Somalia. Your science is crap, and the policies motivated by your crap science have killed a hundred million girls, and almost as many boys.

      DDT hysteria is junk science, just like Silent Spring was junk science. You have been using blackmail and every method of coercion imaginable to get poor countries to abandon DDT completely, with tens of millions of deaths as a consequence.

      Just own up to it.

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    2. Michael,

      'You have been using blackmail and every method of coercion imaginable to get poor countries to abandon DDT completely, with tens of millions of deaths as a consequence'.

      No, I haven't. I think DDT is a perfectly good disease control insecticide, when it is used in the appropriate manner. I disagree with eugenics as a method of improving the 'quality' of humans, because we still don't understand how the genome produces a human. But I support the right of parents to have antenatal screening and to abort a fetus with a significant abnormality, such as trisomy 21, because many even if not most parents would regard a trisomy 21 child as a tragedy (agreed, many parents would regard it as a blessing - but then again screening isn't compulsory. Nor is abortion).

      I'm uncomfortable with the idea of not treating newborns with significant abnormalities, if the means are available. I'd want to know the details of when it would be acceptable, if ever, to deny treatment. Which means I'd prefer treat first, decide later, after very careful open consideration.

      You're changing the goalposts again. Agreed; there's no correlation between population density and poverty. Cities have the densest populations, but they're also the richest parts of the planet. But the argument was about population, not population density. A larger population still needs more food, energy, water and all the other needs, which the poor countries have to provide.

      Cities in the underdeveloped world are burgeoning due to the migration of people from rural areas to the cities to escape rural poverty. Although, the resulting city slums wouldn't exactly be called affluent. Actually, in reminds me of the section in Neal Stephenson's novel 'Reamde' in which he remarks that there's an Anna Karenina effect; affluent parts of all cities are similar, but poor parts of cities are miserable in their own way.

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    3. There are certainly situations in which heroic medical treatment is not in a patient's best interest. I support "comfort care" in appropriate circumstances, and I order it rather often for my patients (with the agreement of the patient and the family).

      Starving or dehydrating a patient is always immoral. There is a difference between ordinary care (food, water, shelter, clothing, hygiene) which should always and everywhere be provided, and extraordinary care (ventilators, pressors, antibiotics) that can be withheld when treatment is merely prolonging the process of dying.

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    4. Michael,

      So you basically agree with me (or I with you) about the care of newborns.

      And my other points? It's an ad hominem attack to accuse someone such as me or KW (although I can't really speak for KW) of being responsible for actions that were done by completely different people, often decades earlier, and for which we didn't have the slightest possibility of influencing.

      It's not an ad hominem attack to call you a pathological liar or an idiot for the things you write.

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    5. The magnitude of the crimes of population control and the war on DDT is such that people who shill for such things out to be held morally accountable for them.

      What I don't hear from you or KW or troy or any of the shills I've encountered on these issues is even a tinge of shame or remorse. "A hundred million missing girls in Asia? Well, it was for a good cause... a junk science war on DDT and tens of millions of poor people who didn't necessarily have to die... oh well, some DDT is ok..."

      It's the callousness and lack of willingness to admit that these were (and are) crimes against humanity. As far as I'm concerned, you guys are on a par with Nazi sympathizers. Same shit, different victims.

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    6. Michael,

      I don't shill for China's or India's population policies. They do what they want to do. Regardless of what I think or do, I'm not going to have the slightest influence on them.

      And DDT as a agricultural pesticide is just too persistent. It's half life is around 11 years, depending on conditions. The likelihood, indeed certainty, of spreading from where its applied to other areas where it's not wanted is just too great. And when that happens, the time necessary before its effects dissipates is just too long.

      The Wikipedia has a good article on DDT. DDT hasn't been banned. If governments in malarial areas haven't maintained their malaria control programs, then that's their responsibility. Many governments in underdeveloped countries couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery, and you think they can continue to manage something as complicated, logistically, as a malaria control program.

      For someone who has Tea Party sympathies, and wants the American government to stop interfering in health and education, you have unusual faith in Third World governments. Why?

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    7. The subtlties of malaria control are not the issue here. The issue is that environmentalists (like you) have engaged a war on pesticides. Much of it is junk science. Silent Spring was pure junk science, and much of the crap about the danger to humans and wildlife from pesticides is crap too. Pesticides don't play any significant role in human cancer, it is unlikely that DDT really had any real effect on bird populations, etc. The war on DDT is the same as the war on vaccines. Crap science. Enviro loons get a pass from guys like you, whereas anti-vaxers are appropriately criticized.

      This junk science war on DDT has made malaria control much more difficult. Nations and agencies have to jump through hoops to use pesticides for vector control. Millions have died unnecessarily because of it. There have even been preventable deaths in the US-- there have been encephalitis outbreaks over the last several years that could have been prevented with appropriate spraying for mosquitoes.

      We're calling your junk science out.

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    8. Michael,

      You are fucking crazy. I'm not an environmentalist. I don't have any influence, beyond that of an ordinary voting Australian citizen, on environmental policies. Insisting that I should apologize for the failure of malaria control programs makes about as much sense as it would if I were to demand that you apologize for Australian Catholic bishops transferring priests accused of child abuse around the country and overseas (as is being revealed in the current Victorian government enquiry) instead of sacking them.

      And DDT is considered to be moderately toxic to humans. Extrapolated from rats the LD50 is about 11 grams for a 100kg individual. Why don't you eat 20 grams of it (its still made in India) and tell me of your experience.

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    9. Bullshit. DDT has very low toxicit to humans, unless a barrel of it falls on you. It is perhaps the most widely used chemical agent in history, and evidence for actual harm to humans is nil.

      Regarding priest abuse of children, I do apologize for it. It is horrible, and I am ashamed for my Church. The abuse issue has been used unfairly against the Church (abuse is found everywhere), but that is no excuse for it in the Church.

      But being an environmentalist or a population control fanatic means never having to say you're sorry.

      Have you ever heard an environmentalist apologize, or even admit that an enviromental policy was harmful?

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    10. Michael,

      Have you read the Wikipedia article on DDT? It's not as non-toxic as you imagine. Until you ingest 20 grams of the stuff and report your experiences, I reckon you are just engaging in hyperbole.

      You've gone from calling me an environmentalist and calling me to apologize, to generalizing about environmentalists. I don't think that it was necessary for you to apologize for the Catholic Church, if any wrong was done - its up to the Church to do that..

      Undoubtedly, many environmentalists disliked DDT. But DDT hasn't been banned, despite your repeated claims that it has. The failure of malaria control has more to do with lackadaisical implementation than active discouragement of its use.

      The trouble with DDT was that it had no friends. The chemical companies didn't like it, because it competed with their patented products. Food processing companies didn't like it because its persistence meant that it was likely to crop up in their products - and if it happened to have adverse effects, they'd be the ones sued.

      Getting back to the topic of this thread. You don't give any consideration to the possibility of global warming adversely impacting on the poor, with their lack of resources to adapt, but are convinced that, all evidence to the contrary, that unrestricted DDT use could have eradicated malaria. It could not, as shown by the failure of the much more doable polio eradication program.

      Delete
  9. Just own up to it.

    That's the funniest thing so far today! A proven pathological liar wanting other people to admit to lying.

    I love this blog!

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