[ExI] Phil Jones acknowledging that climate science isn'tsettled

[Dan]

If we look at the long course of human civilization and even humans before civilization, both human civilization and humans have gone through lots of drastic changes in climate. So, like you, I don't see the big deal for adapting. I suppose food production might have to change over decades to adapt to different conditions -- maybe by changing the ranges and times for crops or by changing the types of crops grown.

Also, if we just look at the last two or three centuries, we see a huge shift in where and how people live and how they get their food. This shift hasn't taken place as much in the Third World -- but that's mostly because of bad policies that can easily be changed. (How? Simply turn over policy makers and enforcers to me for re-education.)

This is, of course, assuming that global warming has merit and that at least some of the projected climatic shifts will take place.

Regards,

Dan

----- Original Message ----
From: spike <spike66 at att.net>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tue, March 2, 2010 12:39:28 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Phil Jones acknowledging that climate science isn'tsettled

> ...On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
... 
> science isn'tsettled
> 
> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 10:45 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> > I often see stuff like this, but it is always puzzling.  
> Can someone 
> > explain why the average temperature increasing by a degree 
> or two or 
> > half a degree in a human lifetime would bring civilization to its 
> > knees?  Are we really that delicate and non-adaptable?
> 
> My theory supposes linear growth of 1 degree per year 
> wouldn't be so bad if not for the anecdote about boiling a 
> frog to death... Conversely at >1 degree per year as input to my weather 
> model... The observation of <1 degree per year of temperature increase 
> to this weather model...Mike

Mike's post makes my point better than I did.  We are so very accustomed to
thinking of something per year, a few percent a year, another birthday per
year and so forth.  The climatologists are offering numbers that look like a
degree per century.  We just are not used talking about anything per
century, so confusion results.  A lot of teens somehow jump to the
stunningly illogical conclusion that this two degree change we are trying to
stop will show up in a few years or any day now since the Copenhagen flop.

This causes what I call the Russians vs Germans effect.  During WW2, the
Germans had better technology, so in the summers when the days were long and
warm, they beat back their foes and drove deep into Russia, but when the
vicious November storms hit, the German tanks were ill suited to the cold,
the tracks were glued to the ground in the freezing mud, the engines guzzled
fuel since they had to be left running to prevent freezing etc.  So in the
winter the Russians had the clear advantage, and drove the Germans all the
way back.  

In the global warming debate, the proposed change is very slow, but human
lifetimes are very short.  We end up with the global warming people, like
the Germans, having the advantage in the summer, but every winter, they give
up the ground they gained because people still die from the cold.  Then the
global warming ridiculers, like the Russians, regain lost ground.  The
battle surges back and forth every year, with tragic results.

spike