RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Fookin' Hurricanes!

Western North Carolina got hammered. I'm one of the few people in my neighborhood with power. Asheville got cut off from all but airlifts. Amazing to see what happens when the once in a lifetime thing hits the infrastructure not built for the once in a lifetime thing.

Glad you’re okay Iggy. These “once in a lifetime” events sure do seem to be happening a lot more! I was affected by the storms in August that crippled NE Ohio. I left work early to race the storm home since I have an hour commute and just hit town as soon as it began. We had no power for days and hotels were charging hundreds of dollars a night. It was crazy to see the dozens of vehicles staging from the electric company at schools and stadiums. Fortunately I had plenty of water and beer to get me through it!

Glad you're ok iggy. Airlifts! People on rooftops?

It is pretty nuts. Three more currently in play, with hurricane warnings for Spain as one seems likely to travel east!!

Glad you are okay Iggy! It’s so sad seeing all the destruction and damage

Thanks, all. It is insane what's happening in the mountains here. Now, Milton is ready to devastate Florida so we're really going to need people to be able to concentrate on two things at once. Three things, if we can get people to simply acknowledge there might be something we could do to keep this from getting worse.

How did it go for you?

We did okay overall. Asheville is still a mess though. There's people playing politics with relief. Now, I'm just riding by wreckage everyday until it finally gets cleaned up. There's a transformer and broken power lines just lying on the side of the road on my street because they had to do makeshift repairs and go off to fix other places. Doesn't look very "first world," but that's just perception. Biggest disappointment is not a single soul seems to have thought about how this showed the precarious nature of the system and its infrastructure.

Doog, I don't know why people cannot just accept some level of contribution for climate change and what it is doing to the weather, but that's apparently where we are. Fair skepticism became denialism amazingly quickly. I'm still open to natural processes contributing, but watching the world burn lest we destroy the economy is quite the false dichotomy. Glad you weathered it when it happened to you.

I think many people struggle without a straight line cause and effect. Climate change is the result of complex interacting factors.

You've also got this overlay of job security. "Rising sea levels and storm surges are all well and good but how do I feed my kids if the coal-fired station I work in gets shut down?"

But in the long-term, I think we're already fucked by the end of the century. Not extinct-fucked, but way-of-life fucked. Fighting over resources is going to lead to more wars, and serious ones. There's a political shitshow happening over both the Nile and the Mekong at the moment. What happens if Taiwan destroys the Three Gorges Dam? Monumental loss of life, global economic collapse, tens of millions of Chinese citizens run out of power and water, Taipei glassed.

If the Gulf Stream goes to shit and Atlantic fish stocks collapse, I guess there will be fighting between North American and South / Central American countries over fish. Already Chinese fishing fleets border the Galapagos Islands, which is very far away from their home ports.

Oh, here you go, its worse than I'd guessed: https://www.arcticiceproject.org/the-looming-threat-what-happens-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/

Imagine what we are seeing in Tuvulu occurring in somewhere like Bangladesh. A hundred million people up to their knees in sea water. Mass deaths, millions of people trying to get into India, China, Central Asia.

There have been ice ages and hot ages as long as there's been a planet Earth, and there is zero evidence to date that any change in the weather (or "global warming", or "climate change") are a result of human activity or pollution.

I've seen interviews of multiple dissenting meteorologists with decades of their careers studying the weather, present the actual facts, that there is no evidence human behavior is changing the environment, or that weather is in fact getting worse. That there is, in fact, still a lower level of storm activity than in other decades of the last 100 years.
But I would agree that with a larger global population, when severe weather storms occur, their damage now impacts more people.

The Earth in the last 100 years has only risen one tenth of one degree in temperature ( 0.1 degrees) in the last 100 years.
I'm open to the idea that in the future it could be proven to be the result of human activity at some point, just that at this time it has not been proven.

And I have increasing distrust of the ideologically dug-in scientific community we rely on for our environmental "facts".
Over the last 20 years or so, when they say there is "a 96% consensus among scientists" of the authenticity of global warming theory, that is because the liberal/progressive/activist Left controls the scientific community and the universtiies where scientific research is done. And any scientist or academic who expresses dissent or just scientific objectivity and skepticism will find themselves ostracized, unemployed, and at the very least not promoted.
So very few are willing to risk that dissent.

Further, the example about 15 years ago, where scientists in both North America and Europe were together cooking the books to make new global warming research conform to their pre-existing theories of global warming. I'm amazed anyone still believes anything they say after that.


There's also the Cultural Marxist use of environmentalist "global warming" paranoia as a weapon to control people. As exemplified in the UN's written Agenda 21 plan, to move people out of rural areas where they can have their own farmland and create their own food, and have their own values and pass them on to their children. Agenda 21, in the holy name of global warming, gives them the authoritarian power to move them off of rural land and concentrate them in cities, where they can be more easily surveiled, controlled and indoctrinated. And their ability to pass on their beliefs to their children are blocked by ubiquitous messaging of the state. And unable to grow their own food, the state can take away their jobs, their self-sufficiency and even their food supply, and starve them into submission.

An example from history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

And the authoritarian socialism/Marxism of Stalinist Russia is not so different from that of the lunatic Marxists in the Obama and Biden administrations and those in Europe envision for the nation.
Obama's fortunately rejected "Cap and Trade" system involved "carbon credits" and monitoring the thermostat of every home, and monitoring units installed in every car, that would measure the location and distance travelled, and to where, of every person in the U.S..
And once rejected, Marxist Democrats are just finding new ways to re-package and push these controls on us in another form.

Which is why I increasingly see "Climate Change" as just another made-up con to impose Democrat/Marxist authoritarian controls on us, in the name of pseudo-science.

We have a saying. "There's a few kangaroos short in the top paddock".

Look at these sea water temperatures, year by year:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09...5c-above-pre-industrial-levels/102836304

It is the third chart here that I watch, and find very depressing: https://climate.copernicus.eu/recor...ures-contribute-extreme-marine-heatwaves This chart measure sea water temps on a year by year basis.

But these are short duration charts. When we strip out politics from your post (which you raise as the reason why scientists are lying across the world, as a global conspiracy to set up a parallel to Stalin's man-made famine in Ukraine!), you seem to have the idea that we should take a longue duree approach to assessing climate change. That of itself is a valid response, because humans tend to operate on primacy and recency in memory and in drawing conclusions.

Let's look at long duration measurements. The sources for these are as I understand it analysis of ice core samples.

A little bit down this page is a chart showing levels of CO2 for the last 10000 years: https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=4&t=101&&a=55

Now, CO2 levels have been higher in the past than what they are now. During these periods of time, the planet was not capable of sustaining complex life. Here's another graph: https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/

We have also had temperature fluctuations over the past 400000. We have happy days during interglacial periods. On track records, our current interglacial period is wrapping up about 4000 years too early: https://co2coalition.org/facts/interglacials-usually-last-10000-15000-years-ours-is-11000-years-old/

You might dismiss my data as biased, because of that global conspiracy theory and you like to play the ad hominem logical fallacy.

But the thing I find most disconcerting about you, as an individual, and your far right climate change politicisation and dismissal is that, setting aside what should be no argument about cause, the effect is in front of you. You're a resident of Florida! If you're in southern Florida, you may as well be a resident of the Maldives but with worse weather.

I don't know how old you are. Assuming you're younger than me, do you really think you'll be living there in 20 years? Your property will be worthless in the meantime because you won't have a market for it, and uninsurable because insurers won't back it.

I'd take no pleasure in saying, "I told you so."

Bolsheviks aren't causing repeated catastrophes in Florida. It is as if you're expecting your political belief system and confirmation bias will hold back hurricanes and prevent the destruction of your residential asset base. Your politics isn't going to create a big green glowing sea wall as if you're Breitbart Lantern.

Doesn't that give you a fissure of nervousness?

(Also, as an aside, if you think there is a global urbanisation conspiracy, do you have your own self-sustaining farm? That doesn't sound very Florida but I don't know as I've never been.)

One last thing:

"Which is why I increasingly see "Climate Change" as just another made-up con to impose Democrat/Marxist authorittarian conrols on us, in name of pseudo-science."

What's your worldview? Most Western democracies are left of US politics, and those politicians who are right wing - Le Pen, Farage - never manage to get into power. Is the rest of the Western world Marxist other than the deep red GOP of the United States?

Dave has exited the chat.

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Sorry, I meant to look at your links and reply, but didn't get around to it and forgot about the topic here.
'Tis the season. Sorry, I still plan to read over the links you posted.


I just saw this mentioned in a news report, and it reminded me of this topic :

MEDIA ADVISORY: 96% of U.S. Climate Data Are Corrupted

• By Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, James Taylor, Jim Lakely
  Published July 27, 2022
  
  
  ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.
  
  CLIMATE CHANGE
  ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY
  MEDIA ADVISORY: 96% of U.S. Climate Data Are Corrupted
  By Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, James Taylor, Jim Lakely
  Published July 27, 2022
  Download the PDF
  Nationwide study follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat-bias distortion problem is even worse now
  ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.
  
  NOAA temperature station hot spot
  
  The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.
  
  “With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”
  
  NOAA’s “Requirements and Standards for [National Weather Service] Climate Observations” instructs that temperature data instruments must be “over level terrain (earth or sod) typical of the area around the station and at least 100 feet from any extensive concrete or paved surface.” And that “all attempts will be made to avoid areas where rough terrain or air drainage are proven to result in non-representative temperature data.” This new report shows that instruction is regularly violated.
  
  READ THE REPORT (PDF).
  
  For more information, or to speak with the authors of this study please contact Vice President and Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or call/text 312-731-9364.
  
  This new report is a follow up to a March 2009 study, titled “Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?“ which highlighted a subset of over 1,000 surveyed stations and found 89 percent of stations had heat-bias issues. In April and May 2022, The Heartland Institute’s team of researchers visited many of the same temperature stations as in 2009, plus many not visited before. The new survey sampled 128 NOAA stations, and found the problem of heat-bias has only gotten worse.
  
  “The original 2009 surface stations project demonstrated conclusively that the federal government’s surface temperature monitoring system was broken, with the vast majority of stations not meeting NOAA’s own standards for trustworthiness and quality. Investigations by government watchdogs OIG and GAO confirmed the 2009 report findings,” said H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environment Policy at The Heartland Institute who surveyed NOAA surface stations himself this spring. “This new study is evidence of two things. First, the government is either inept or stubbornly refuses to learn from its mistakes for political reasons. Second, the government’s official temperature record can’t be trusted. It reflects a clear urban heat bias effect, not national temperature trends.”
  
  
  
  An example of the bias problem
  
  The chart below, found on page 17 of the report, shows 30 years of data from NOAA temperature stations in the Continental United States (CONUS). The blue lines show recorded temperatures and the trend from stations that comply with NOAA’s published standards. The yellow lines are temperatures taken from stations that are not compliant with those standards (i.e. near artificial hot spots). The red lines are the “official” adjusted temperature released by NOAA.
  
  
  [ US temperatures chart graph, at link ]
  
  “If you look at the unperturbed stations that adhere to NOAA’s published standard – ones that are correctly located and free of localized urban heat biases – they display about half the rate of warming compared to perturbed stations that have such biases,” Watts said. “Yet, NOAA continues to use the data from their warm-biased century-old surface temperature networks to produce monthly and yearly reports to the U.S. public on the state of the climate.”
  
  “The issue of localized heat-bias with these stations has been proven in a real-world experiment conducted by NOAA’s laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and published in a peer reviewed science journal.” Watts added.
  
  “By contrast, NOAA operates a state-of-the-art surface temperature network called the U.S. Climate Reference Network,” Watts said. “It is free of localized heat biases by design, but the data it produces is never mentioned in monthly or yearly climate reports published by NOAA for public consumption.
  
  The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank founded in 1984, is one of the world’s leading organizations promoting the work of scientists who are skeptical that human activity is causing a climate crisis.
  
  Heartland has hosted 14 International Conferences on Climate Change attended by thousands since 2008, published the six-volume Climate Change Reconsidered series by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and for 21 years has published Environment and Climate News. The Heartland Institute has also published several popular books on the climate, including Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming (2015), Seven Theories of Climate Change (2010), and Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? (2009).

And here's a related article from Fox News in 2013, covering the same questionable accuracy of warming temperature readings, showing this has been in question for at least a decade :
https://www.foxnews.com/science/dis...ticism-theyre-situated-to-report-warming