When you give a mouse a cookie... The book Royal's reading to Grace. Mom and Grace at the Explorium in Lexington, June 2006. Sienna looking worried by some animal pens.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Cute pics from '06
When you give a mouse a cookie... The book Royal's reading to Grace. Mom and Grace at the Explorium in Lexington, June 2006. Sienna looking worried by some animal pens.
I Laugh in the Face of Anthropogenic Global Warming!
A family relative has recently been worried about anthropogenic global warming. I've been researching this topic lately, but I'm not convinced. Not by a long shot. There are a few reasons why:
1) The scriptures mention a ton of calamities and disasters that will come upon man in the last days. Tornadoes, floods, tempests, terrors, wars, rumors of war, etc. "the chariots of men causing the earth to get warmer and glaciers melt" is not in the scriptures.
2) Pretty much anything the world is really worried about, is not what we really need to be worried about. The world is REALLY worried about global warming.
3) The 400,000 year global temperature record scaring everybody shows the Earth's temperature rapidly increasing over the last 150 years. This record was mostly reconstructed from a few (under 10) ice core sampling projects in the poles. Reconstructing the global temperature from this is like having a picture of someone's earlobes and drawing a picture of the rest of the face based on that. Also note that in the arcane carbon bubble method used to reconstruct temperature data, I could not find sampling error rates, which are key to interpreting such data. We really can reconstruct (from tree rings, pollen samples, etc) a somewhat reliable 600 year record. What this amounts to is that we think the earth was most likely warmer over the last 150 years than the prior 450 years.
4) The global warming alarmists are worried about at most a 12 degree Celcius temperature increase, but more like 1-2 degree increase. This increase is projected to occur at most in 50 or 60 years, but more like 100-200 years. El Nino causes a bigger temperature fluctation some years.
5) The global temperature record is really only reliable over the last 60 years. While scientists have had calibrated temperature sensing equipment for quite a while, mainstream distibution of reliable and accurate thermometers did not happen until their mass-production in the 40's.
6) It is said there is a scientific "consensus" that global warming is human caused (anthropogenic). This is because a survey of climate papers over a ten year period showed 60 percent mentioned people were likely the cause of global warming. I've read enough computer graphics white papers to know that the content of papers has more to do with who paid the scientist and what the scientist is interested in studying at the moment. You will usually find what you a re looking for, whether it be anthropogenic global warming or links to eating eggs and cancer.
7) Our understanding of the earth's climate has really only been useful in the last ten years, because of nifty computer models (that's when the 3-day forecast became accurate). Any weather forecast past 3 days and you'd do better to look at a farmer's almanac. These day-to-day changes are considered high frequency changes (we have info on the changes every day). So why does anybody think they can accurately predict long term climate changes?
8) We can't accurately predict a strong hurricane season for crying out loud. For the last eight years climatologists were saying "This year is expected to be a heavier than average hurricane season". Was it? Not in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, or 2006. Only in 2005 did they get it right, and it WAS a doozy. But they've got a 12.5% accuracy rating. You'd get a better prediction by throwing darts. And we still can't predict a terrible snowstorm that drops temperatures by more than 30 degrees, like the one that's happening now.
9) Most convincing to me, respected climatologists who have been around awhile and seen weather scares come and go, are refraining from saying anything about the cause of the recorded temperature increases. Some respected climatologists and societies do support the anthropogenic global warming. I remain skeptical largely because so many people are on this bandwagon. By the time they realize they were wrong, they will have sold the house. Really, taking on global panic is akin to selling your house to buy a stock that went up in the last five minutes.
Bottom line; we don't know enough to know what's causing the global temperature increase. The sun has periodic increases, passing comets induce increased volcanic activity which changes the atmospheric temperature, and our global temperature reconstruction methods just aren't very reliable. On this subject, respected climatologists say, "I don't know." Climatologists wanting to be respected say, "It's man's greenhouse gases." Our understanding of the climate is far too rudimentary for me to buy the hype. I'm hoping you'll calm down too, and just take the weather a day at a time.
1) The scriptures mention a ton of calamities and disasters that will come upon man in the last days. Tornadoes, floods, tempests, terrors, wars, rumors of war, etc. "the chariots of men causing the earth to get warmer and glaciers melt" is not in the scriptures.
2) Pretty much anything the world is really worried about, is not what we really need to be worried about. The world is REALLY worried about global warming.
3) The 400,000 year global temperature record scaring everybody shows the Earth's temperature rapidly increasing over the last 150 years. This record was mostly reconstructed from a few (under 10) ice core sampling projects in the poles. Reconstructing the global temperature from this is like having a picture of someone's earlobes and drawing a picture of the rest of the face based on that. Also note that in the arcane carbon bubble method used to reconstruct temperature data, I could not find sampling error rates, which are key to interpreting such data. We really can reconstruct (from tree rings, pollen samples, etc) a somewhat reliable 600 year record. What this amounts to is that we think the earth was most likely warmer over the last 150 years than the prior 450 years.
4) The global warming alarmists are worried about at most a 12 degree Celcius temperature increase, but more like 1-2 degree increase. This increase is projected to occur at most in 50 or 60 years, but more like 100-200 years. El Nino causes a bigger temperature fluctation some years.
5) The global temperature record is really only reliable over the last 60 years. While scientists have had calibrated temperature sensing equipment for quite a while, mainstream distibution of reliable and accurate thermometers did not happen until their mass-production in the 40's.
6) It is said there is a scientific "consensus" that global warming is human caused (anthropogenic). This is because a survey of climate papers over a ten year period showed 60 percent mentioned people were likely the cause of global warming. I've read enough computer graphics white papers to know that the content of papers has more to do with who paid the scientist and what the scientist is interested in studying at the moment. You will usually find what you a re looking for, whether it be anthropogenic global warming or links to eating eggs and cancer.
7) Our understanding of the earth's climate has really only been useful in the last ten years, because of nifty computer models (that's when the 3-day forecast became accurate). Any weather forecast past 3 days and you'd do better to look at a farmer's almanac. These day-to-day changes are considered high frequency changes (we have info on the changes every day). So why does anybody think they can accurately predict long term climate changes?
8) We can't accurately predict a strong hurricane season for crying out loud. For the last eight years climatologists were saying "This year is expected to be a heavier than average hurricane season". Was it? Not in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, or 2006. Only in 2005 did they get it right, and it WAS a doozy. But they've got a 12.5% accuracy rating. You'd get a better prediction by throwing darts. And we still can't predict a terrible snowstorm that drops temperatures by more than 30 degrees, like the one that's happening now.
9) Most convincing to me, respected climatologists who have been around awhile and seen weather scares come and go, are refraining from saying anything about the cause of the recorded temperature increases. Some respected climatologists and societies do support the anthropogenic global warming. I remain skeptical largely because so many people are on this bandwagon. By the time they realize they were wrong, they will have sold the house. Really, taking on global panic is akin to selling your house to buy a stock that went up in the last five minutes.
Bottom line; we don't know enough to know what's causing the global temperature increase. The sun has periodic increases, passing comets induce increased volcanic activity which changes the atmospheric temperature, and our global temperature reconstruction methods just aren't very reliable. On this subject, respected climatologists say, "I don't know." Climatologists wanting to be respected say, "It's man's greenhouse gases." Our understanding of the climate is far too rudimentary for me to buy the hype. I'm hoping you'll calm down too, and just take the weather a day at a time.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Creative Grace
Today, Grace called me over to see how she had dressed up her princesses to look like the picture on her tote bag. How creative!
Thursday, January 11, 2007
January's Trailerrific!
We've decided that while we're just sitting here, in our post-graduation resting spot, we'd buy another Trailer with at least TWO bathrooms (Grace might make a hobby of sitting on her throne). Meanwhile, here's some recent photos!
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