This skeptic thinks Green buildings are cool!

Speaking of cool...

Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russians are bracing for temperatures of as low as minus 55 degrees Celsius (minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit) in Siberia as Russia's emergencies ministry warns on Wednesday of its impending dangers in the coming weeks.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009739004

How do Russians feel about Kyoto?

The GISS press release on 2007 global temperatures is out along with a summary of the data. I don't know if this is worth a separate thread or not (Brett?), but it's there for people to look at.

Thanks Travis!

If the buildng was so green why would they waste energy in powering a fountain? (Reply: It energizes the sleepy employees as they come into work for the morning according to the interview. The fountain also has a cooling effect on the inside air in the vicinity of the fountain which is useful in the summer.) Kinda pointless if you ask me, I don't have a fountain in my house! I think all they did was end up wasting money in the soul purpose to reduce C02. I am the biggest environmentalist one could ever find. I want to conserve our forests, our animal life, our natural bodies of water, stop pollution, stop over fishing, and living with nature! I even break for squirrels! But when this bull about C02 comes up I CRINGE! They blame everything from earthquakes to jellyfish over population on C02, I don't think so...

I live in the woods of northwest Jersey and I am always out hiking, biking, rock climbing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, fishing, star gazing, jogging, nature photography, rafting, boating, cave exploring, and etc... One could not love nature more than me, and I have no motive for oil companies, just a understanding of science and the need for proof which the AGW crowd cannot supply.

Buildings like these are just good common sense.
Along with ruducing energy bills, they also reduce the risk of service outages from brownouts.
This is a good hedge on future power prices as well. I am sure the greenies will make sure energy costs a fortune in the future.

More like this one please.

Rich, remember: weather isn't climate.

Darren writes:

They blame everything from earthquakes to jellyfish over population on C02

Darren, I'd love to see the reference on that.

Darren M from NJ. I am former Jersey girl and could not agree more with your post. BTW, I just checked the temps outside this morning as I fed my horses. It is -16 here today and clear. Tonight should be colder.

Enough with the weather is not climate rhetoric.

The definition of CLIMATE is:

1. The prevailing WEATHER conditions in a particular region.
2. A region having certain WEATHER conditions; ie...lives in a cold climate.

If I have to point out that its still deathly cold and that a .6 degree rise in temperature is a drop in the bucket, then so be it. I do it to help quell the anxiety that we are in a global meltdown.

Jeez, we cant talk about the economics and the politics of global warming (Reply: who said those specific words?), and now we shouldnt talk about the weather. GIVE ME A BREAK!

Chris C.

In reference to Darren's post commenting on global warming being responsible for earthquakes and jellyfish....

The list Brett posted on Dec. 3rd 2007 contains a thousand or so things blamed on global warming with links to the article/paper in which they were cited. It's in alphabetical order and indeed jellfish and earthquakes are both on there.

Earthquakes article was posted by NASA in 2004

Jellfish article by the boston globe in 2002

Regards,
~Elliot

Chris Crawford:

Here are your refrences,

Earthquakes-http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0819/p16s01-sten.html

Jellyfish-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702151056.htm

Chris, you can pretty much guess any occurance on earth and somewhere out there someone is blaming it on global warming. Just go to google and type "(insert noun or verb here-------) and global warming". Type bottle water, cheese, cows, norways moose, or even toilet paper in that blank spot. Heck, I didn't do my history paper because of global warming, can I get away with it? Yeah, I think I could.

Kricki Kachmar: Jersey rocks!

chris crawford and the others who say weather isnt climate. its funny you agw people keep saying this time and time again. then again if people from all over collected their weather and posted it here would that be considered climate. its obviously cold outside its winter but is it the normal cold you agw people wish to see or would you like it to be warmer temperatures people post that way itcould prove agw was happening? maybe then you wouldnt be repeating yourselves.

Me Thinks that was just a little bit impressive. Nice!

Anyone out there with a horizontal geothermal heat pump system to heat their homes should pray that there is global warming instead of a mini ice age.

An extended, multi-annual cold anomoly could place your system within the deeper ground frost levels resulting from this cold. The ground in many areas of Canada freeze to two meters depth in three months from Nov. to Jan.

Imagine how deep the frost will be if we had a ten year period of cold. Invest in a good wood stove.

Brett,

I said...Jeez, we cant talk about the economics and politics of global warming...

You replied: who said those specific words?

Chris Crawford said on January 19, 2008 12:52 PM...However, as I understand it, this is a science blog, not a political blog, and so we have to honor the preferences of our hosts.

Ok, perhaps Chris does not understand or perhaps I dont understand. Regardless, I still appreciate this site.

GO PATRIOTS! (I hope this doesnt offend anyone, being non AGW related.) Reply: It does not offend me......GO PATS

Guys, thanks for the links to the silly stuff about AGW. Yep, the world if full of crazy people (on all sides). The moral of the story is that you should get your information from the people who know what they're talking about. Read the NAS reports or the IPCC reports.

I am astounded that people continue to insist that there's little difference between weather and climate. Let me try to cut through the confusion here by cutting out the middleman term "climate".

Our basic question is, what will the weather be like in, say, fifty years? We can argue about "weather" versus "climate", but our real concern is with atmospheric conditions in many different places over many different times. So that we don't get into convoluted semantic arguments, let's define a new term: snargfab, which I define to mean "the average temperature of the surface of the earth to a depth of one centimeter. I'm talking about a nearly spherical shell of land and water that's one centimeter thick. We measure the temperatures for every cubic centimeter of this shell and average them all together. The number we get from that calculation is the snargfab of the earth.

So our question is, how will the snargfab change with time? We're quite certain that, the slope of the graph of snargfab over time, smoothed out with a 100-year window, will be positive. We want to know the slope of that graph. So far, it appears to be somewhere between 1 degree C per century and 4 degrees C per century.

However, we all know that local temperatures jump around on short time scales. The temperature can change by 10 degrees C in 24 hours. And there's also the differences in location. It's colder than usual in Colorado, and warmer than usual in Finland.

So let me ask you, what predictive value does the temperature in Colorado on January 20th have on the snargfab of earth in 2050? Is there any way you can use that temperature reading to draw any kind of reasonable conclusion about the snargfab in 2050? Of course not! So I ask, what's the point of citing that number? It's useless!

Let me give you an analogy. Let's talk about the American economy. How well is it doing? Are we going into a recession? Are we enjoying exceptional growth? Here are two very different strategies to answering that question:

Strategy One:

In support of the claim that the economy is doing well:
"My friend Henry just got a job."
"Larry across the street found a quarter under his sofa cushion."
"Cousin Jane says that they're building a new McDonald's down the street from her."
"A guy at work just bought a new car."

Opposed to the claim that the economy is doing well:
"My brother can't find a job."
"I haven't had a raise in three years."
"The classified ads are full of listings selling Winnebagos."
"There seem to be more panhandlers on the streets."

Now I ask you, how can people using this strategy ever figure anything out? For every anecdote one comes up with, the other can find an opposing anecdote. For every extra-cold temperature you come up, I can come up with an extra-warm temperature. Where does that get us? Nowhere.

Strategy 2:
Combine lots of data from many different sources: profit and loss statements from every company you can find, import and export figures, home sales, employment figures, prices of commodities, interest rates, stock prices. Use figures spread out over at least three months (and you're on safer ground looking at annual figures) Then take those combined figures to come up with an overall assessment of the economy.

So which of the two strategies do you think will yield more reliable results?

Chris Crawford writes:
Of course not! So I ask, what's the point of citing that number? It's useless!

I'd like to add the implicit continuation that I believe Chris assumes:

It's useless ... for predicting the snargfab of earth in 2050!

I enthusiastically agree with this extended statement.

What if the purpose of flooding the blog with "useless" information like this is not to predict the snargfab of the earth in 2050?

I hope that Chris (and others) will allow me to assume that our most prolific contrarian anecdotal contributors are (a) intelligent (b) articulate and (c) rational. Given that assumption, and given that (as Chris has shown) such anecdotal data is useless for predicting the snargfab, could there perhaps be other purposes for which this flood is, in fact, quite useful -- and utterly rational?

It seems to me that, in general, when some life-form (including a person) exhibits a well-entrenched behavior, that behavior in general provides a net benefit to the organism -- it is, in fact, useful for something.

It seems to me that our inability to comprehend the relentless attachment to "useless" behavior demonstrated by our contrarian contributors is evidence that we are simply not yet looking hard enough for the purpose served by that behavior. It seems to me that this behavior supports the hypothesis that these contributors for some reason do not want anyone to predict the snargfab of the earth in 2050.

What purpose do you suppose these intelligent, articulate, and rational contributors might then be advancing?

Chris C:

Climate = Case of water

Weather= One bottle of water

They are still both water, therefore are the same thing. Climate is made up of weather, and weather makes up climate. Anyone else agree with me???

Chris C,

...so please share with us what the P & L's said about the the economy in the 1700's?...or 1600's?

I let you ponder how WIDE open you left yourself and the weakness of your analogy...proving the very weakness of the AGW theory. The arrogance of us mere humans to think we have ANY grasp of the enormity, complexity and the dynamics of our planet, if it wasn't in the hands of politicians, would be laughable.

Both sides argue with such voracity using incredibly myopic knowledge of earth's systems over the IONS, and then to think one or the other side is right or wrong...is just silly.

Then to think that if the apocalypse is within a generation, the human race has the ability to change that course...adds to the humor of the debate.

Again the arrogance is breath taking.

Good luck

Darren, your comparison with a case of water is OK, but it fails to properly acknowledge the very great difference between a lot of water and a lot of both space and time. Instead of comparing a bottle of water with a case of water, compare it with a lake stretching over several millennia.

MJames seems to think that my analogy with economies breaks down because we didn't have economic data for the 16th and 17th centuries. MJames doesn't explain the point in detail, but I suspect that the intention is to suggest that our temperature data from the 16th and 17th centuries is so bad that it somehow disproves AGW. If this is indeed MJames' point, then I will respond by pointing out that the accuracy of that data is not crucial to the AGW hypothesis. The crucial data is the dramatic and steep increase in temperatures in the 20th century. And yes, we have pretty good data for that.

You also suggest that it is arrogant to think that we can understand climate. Perhaps it is, but that's irrelevant. We're stuck with a problem: the potential for dramatic increases in temperature that could be very damaging to us. It would be irresponsible to simply throw up our hands and declare "We're too stupid to figure it out, so we might as well just give up, keep going the way we're going, and if it turns out that our children will suffer for our folly, that's their problem." We have a responsibility to consider the prospects, learn as much as we can about them, and make our best guesses as to the consequences of our behavior. We are morally responsible for the consequences of our actions, and if we deliberately ignore those possible consequences, then we will deserve the opprobrium of future generations.

Chris Crawford,

I am still sick so will keep this short. But in continuing our discussion on humanity...

On January 21, 2008 12:30 AM you post: We're stuck with a problem: the potential (emphasize potential) for dramatic (emphasize dramatic)increases in temperature that could (emphasize could) be very (emphasize very) damaging to us.

Reply: Hypothetically speaking of course. There is no concensus on this belief.

But on January 20, 2008 11:53 PM you post:

So there's no question that the biosphere (we are a part of the biosphere) can survive increased temperatures. Indeed, I'm quite confident (emphasize quite confident) that civilization will easily (emphasize easily) survive higher temperatures.

Reply: Now I know that you mean infrastructure (could) be damaged, therefore effecting the economy. However, what I am confused about is to what extent you believe that temperatures (could) increase and to what extent you believe the infrastructure (could) be damaged. Surely you agree that if economies buckle (this will tie in with that non-AGW piece I am working on for you), it will have a DRASTIC impact on our co-dependent civilizations. What I am looking for is just a clearer picture on where you stand.

Thanks Chris.

P.S. Speaking of an economic impact. Could you please list which 3 commodities you feel are the most important?

(Hint: What FUELS the world economies?)

CC,

>>We're stuck with a problem: the potential for dramatic increases in temperature that could be very damaging to us.
----------
Who says it will be damaging to us? You and your modelers....based on who's data? BTW, what is normal for the planet? Is it normal now, or was it normal in the 1300's or 1500's? Who determines normal? What's right for us may be miserable for folks in Siberia. Has the climate of the earth ever been normal for all, whatever normal is?

>>It would be irresponsible to simply throw up our hands and declare "We're too stupid to figure it out, so we might as well just give up, keep going the way we're going, and if it turns out that our children will suffer for our folly, that's their problem."
----------
Stupid? WE, as occupants of this ball called earth, are not stupid, relative to the previous occupants before us. However, we may appear stupid by the occupants 200-500 years from now because we considered ourselves "enlightened" by letting woefully inadequate computer models convince us that the future will be dismal because of climate changes with little data to back up that guess. And please specify what you mean by "keep going the way we're going"? What does that mean? There are a lot of things going on with 6 billion humans on the planet. Its pretty diverse out there. I don't see a remedy. I only see people jockeying to the front, pretending to be leading the crowd, that has NO conception of what it would take to change the climate to normal...whatever that means.

>>We have a responsibility to consider the prospects, learn as much as we can about them, and make our best guesses as to the consequences of our behavior. We are morally responsible for the consequences of our actions, and if we deliberately ignore those possible consequences, then we will deserve the opprobrium of future generations.
----------
Huh?? Did you really say that? "make our best guesses as to the consequences of our behavior" and "if we deliberately ignore those possible consequences...". So if we guess right (or wrong depending on when you look at the guess timewise) and create worse unintended consequences because the original consequences weren't as bad as predicted, are we off the hook with future generations? I don't think so.

Playing with the future is always fraught of disaster and rarely is accurate. Thinking that the inhabitants of the planet, which, if put into a crowd would occupy an area smaller that the UP of Michigan, can dramatically change the ebbs and flows of climate is folly and, well, stupid.

MJames

BT,

Nice try with the child psychology!!!

If the word contrarian was changed to AGWer we would be playing the reverse psychology game.

I know you can do better than that.

Rich asserts that there is "no consensus" on "this belief". Well, I'm not sure exactly what belief you're referring to, but there is plenty of scientific agreement that temperatures will rise significantly during the 21st century, and it is a no-brainer that an increase of more than a couple of degrees would have economic impacts measured in the hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.

However, what I am confused about is to what extent you believe that temperatures (could) increase and to what extent you believe the infrastructure (could) be damaged.

I believe that we'll see temperature increases in the next 50 years of at least 1 degree C, probably 2 degrees C, and possibly as great as 3 degrees C. I believe that the associated economic costs will be at least a trillion dollars net, probably a few tens of trillions of dollars, and possibly a hundred trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, the total world economic output right now is (very roughly) 50 trillion dollars.

MJames makes much of the notion that normality is undefined. The basic case for changing behavior because of AGW is predicated, not on the notion that the climate will not be normal, but that it will be different from what it has been for the last century. And we can be pretty sure that it will indeed be different.

I won't comment on some of MJames' wilder-eyed assertions. I will instead remind MJames that the future is coming whether we like it or not, and we can choose to do nothing, or we can choose to make the best assessment of the consequences of our actions and behave correspondingly. Yes, our data is imperfect and our climate models have flaws. But that's no excuse for abdicating moral responsibility for our actions. We can err by doing the wrong thing. We can also err by doing nothing. Inaction is not necessarily the safest course.

Lastly, MJames' claim that humanity is too puny to affect the planet has already been dismissed by human experience. Why do you think we started placing restrictions on pollutants back in the 1960s? Do you really insist that CFCs never affected ozone, that sulfur dioxides never led to acid rain, that nitrous oxides never led to smog, and that various forms of water pollution never affected the biosphere? Do you deny that humanity has caused the extinction of hundreds of species? And do you reject the calculations that show that a full-scale nuclear exchange would lead to a nuclear winter highly destructive to the biosphere?