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Michael Barone: The Economist's Emily Litella moment on global warming
Washington Examiner ^ | March 29, 2013 | Michael Barone

Posted on 03/29/2013 11:16:30 PM PDT by neverdem

Emily Litella was the Saturday Night Live character who would spin out lengthy theories based on her misunderstanding of a word or phrase and, when her error was pointed out, would respond crisply, “Never mind.”

The Economist, which I read and revere and for which I have on occasion written (they assign reviews of books by Economist writers to outsiders), has long been convinced that we on earth face a crisis caused by man-made global warming. Now the newspaper (as it refers to itself) seems to have reached an Emily Litella moment.

“Global warming slows down,” reads a line on the cover. It references a long story in the science and technology section headlined, “A sensitive matter.”

The writer begins by noting something global warming “skeptics” and “deniers” have been pointing to for some time: “Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar.”

In other words, the regnant global warming alarmist theory has not accurately predicted the last 15 years of climate.

The Economist thinks that there is still reason to be worried about global warming, but a whole lot less worried than it used to think. I have been arguing that we just don’t know nearly as much as we need to know to have the confidence in predictions justifying measures that drastically reduce economic growth – and that a lot of people in the global warming industry have been hyping the dangers.

In its penultimate sentence the Economist writer seems to agree with the first of these propositions: “Despite all the work on climate sensitivity, no one really knows how the climate would react if temperatures rose by as much as 4 degrees Celsius.”

That’s at least reminiscent of Emily Litella.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: agw; climatechange; climatesensitivity; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

> Humans migrated out of Africa, to the colder climes of
> Europe and survived by wearing animal hides.

Really? Were you there? Did you actually observe this? Or are you simply superimposing your preconceived notions on scraps of bone found in different strata many miles apart?


21 posted on 03/30/2013 5:13:47 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it.)
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To: sergeantdave

> We’re dealing with emotionally arrested neanderthals

Given that the cranial displacement of “Neanderthal” is greater than that of modern humans, there is a possibility that they had more intelligence.


22 posted on 03/30/2013 5:15:16 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it.)
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To: tomkat

“What does this station have against violins in television?”


23 posted on 03/30/2013 5:37:24 AM PDT by Rocky (Obama is pure evil.)
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To: Westbrook

Someone recently posted an article which discussed that issue.

Recent research appeared to show that neanderthal brains (taken from research on the skulls) had a larger chunk of brain addressing the vision center of the brain rather than the higher reasoning centers. Hence it could well be that they simply saw better without being any smarter.

Or it could be as Thomas Sowell often says of the intellectuals of today “It’s not so much that they are ignorant, but rather that they know so much which simply is not true. “


24 posted on 03/30/2013 5:52:15 AM PDT by drbuzzard (All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.)
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To: drbuzzard

> Hence it could well be that they simply saw better without
> being any smarter.

Thanks for the update.


25 posted on 03/30/2013 5:55:54 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it.)
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA
-- The rate of absorption varies logarithmically with CO2 concentration --

I don't think that's right. You might mean "inverse log," but I don't think that's right either, as the graph seems to be showing the incremental contribution to warming of each additional/incremental amount of CO2. If the graph showed total warming vs. concentration, it would be an inverted hockey stick, increasing toward some asymptotic value. The first part of the graph would be steep, then it would approach horizontal (no increase, not a logarithmic increase) at higher concentrations.

26 posted on 03/30/2013 6:04:13 AM PDT by Cboldt
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To: gleeaikin

Creatures living today are striving to adapt to the climate today.


27 posted on 03/30/2013 6:21:00 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (What word begins with "O" and ends in economic collapse?)
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To: Lancey Howard
It won't take a stake through their heart, because globull warming is not something they believe in their heart and soul. They will move on to another cash-cow whenever the cash for globull warming dries up.

On the other hand, many of the globull warming scientists are jumping ship because ridicule is a most powerful force in their community. Most of them were not in on the mega-bucks as was algore.

28 posted on 03/30/2013 7:33:01 AM PDT by X-spurt (Republic of Texas, Come and Take It!)
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To: neverdem

Those who advocate the MMGW theory should properly be called “Nimrods”, for they think that puny mankind can control the weather.

This following was written by Josephus (in the 1st Century A.D., mind you), of the Biblical Nimrod, builder of the Tower of Babel, and it should sound eerily familiar:

“Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness.

“He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power.

“He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.

“Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water.”

And you know how the rest of the story goes...

Well, in any event, looking at the current collection of MMGW “Nimrods”, the same basic principles apply. They hate God, and say that everything good has been made by science, and parceled out by the increasingly tyrannical government.

Likewise, the “Nimrods” have done much to turn government into something on which everyone is dependent, and to also give much contempt to those who believe in God.

Indeed, “Nimrods” seems to be a fitting label for them.


29 posted on 03/30/2013 8:15:20 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: sergeantdave
"While sitting in a saloon one day contemplating the universe, this guy starts spewing global warming crap, blaming Republicans and right wingers."

Did you ask him about the CO2 generated in brewing whatever it was he was drinking?

30 posted on 03/30/2013 8:29:10 AM PDT by Flag_This (Real presidents don't bow.)
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To: tomkat

Probably the best comedienne of my generation, gone too soon.


31 posted on 03/30/2013 9:33:51 AM PDT by EDINVA
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To: sergeantdave

Hey “magnitude of 10” isn’t right either. He is off by a little more than a magnitude of two, or a factor of 100.


32 posted on 03/30/2013 9:51:30 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: lepton

Thanks for the correction. My lack of mathematical skills is why I’m not a nuclear physicist and had to opt for brain surgeon instead. :-)


33 posted on 03/30/2013 10:56:22 AM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: Lancey Howard; neverdem
Thanks for the ping.

A tipping point?

I think WUWT had something on this also.:

A sea-change on climate sensitivity at The Economist

34 posted on 03/30/2013 12:50:24 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ((The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?))
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To: Cboldt
You're right that an inverse log would be wrong.

The graph you wanted would look like this:




35 posted on 03/30/2013 1:02:38 PM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: sergeantdave; lepton
http://co2now.org/

"Original NOAA data file dated Tuesday March 5, 2013," 396.80ppm (parts per million) CO2 (by volume) is less than 4 per 10,000. That's less than .4 per 1,000 or .04 per 100, i.e. less than 0.04 percent.

Be that as it may, how is our gradually tapering atmosphere realistically compared to a greenhouse? The second law of thermodynamics says our temperature will come to an equilibrium with outer space once the sun burns itself out. Besides that, their climate models were built without accounting for all carbon sinks. Here's a new one:

Fungi pull carbon into northern forest soils

36 posted on 03/30/2013 1:24:22 PM PDT by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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To: sergeantdave

Heh. I did my off-the-cuff math wrong too.

It’s about 400 ppm, 40% would be 400,000 ppm.

So, it’s a actually magnitude of three and a factor of 1000.


37 posted on 03/30/2013 4:50:01 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: lepton

“So, it’s a actually magnitude of three and a factor of 1000.”

LOL! that looks like my checkbook.

Enjoying your comments. Semper fi, lepton.


38 posted on 03/30/2013 5:08:49 PM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: neverdem

Yep, closing in on 400 ppm.

The greenhouse analogy is messed up in a lot of different ways. The first of which, is that the planet’s atmosphere is not contained in a small glass box.

Greenhouses also tend not to have thunderstorms with thunderheads, hurricanes, or weather fronts of any kind. They further tend not to have a point of elevation within them above which water vapor does not rise.

As for the climate models there are a lot of things they don’t account for. The primary one is the behavior and varying presence of clouds. Since they don’t know whether the net effect of clouds is positive or negative, nor the pattern to the clouds appearance, they just decided to skip that issue in the models and give water vapor a positive feedback.


39 posted on 03/30/2013 5:15:41 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: sergeantdave

Currently the CO2 in the atmosphere is about 390 PPM (parts per million). That is 0.039%. 40% to .039% is an error of 1026 to 1...

By far the greatest quantity and most active “green house” gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. That’s a fact.


40 posted on 03/30/2013 11:19:22 PM PDT by DB
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