12 ms·

Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

acqq 8y ago
Regarding ice on Arctic and Antarctic, the extent as we speak extremely low compared to our historical records: https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iq... https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iqr_timeseries.png https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iq... (from National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado)
thaumaturgy 8y ago
If only the senate could have waited a couple of more days before confirming an AGW "skeptic" to head NASA [1], we could've had some really nice contrast between this essay and the current government. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/jim-bridenstine-nasa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/jim-bridenstine-n...
sgt101 8y ago
A good thing would be to see the graph up to today - am I right that the article only shows the graph from 20 years ago and then some affirmation of the validity of that artefact? If so does anyone have a link to the picture up to 2018?
- f_allwein 8y ago
  NASA has one up to 2017. It does not look pretty. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
  - sgt101 8y ago
    Thank you - perfect.
  - IncRnd 8y ago
    My first question, looking at that graph, is "how does that graph calculate a global temperature for an entire year?" Do you know the actual source of the global temperature readings going back to 1880? Sure, the webpage says the dataset came from https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/original/647_Global_Temperature_Data_File.txt https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/o..., but where did they come from? These are the first 10 lines of the linked dataset, showing land and sea temperatures for the entire earth from 1880 to 1889. 1880 -0.19 -0.11 1881 -0.1 -0.14 1882 -0.1 -0.17 1883 -0.19 -0.21 1884 -0.28 -0.24 1885 -0.31 -0.26 1886 -0.32 -0.27 1887 -0.35 -0.27 1888 -0.18 -0.27 1889 -0.11 -0.26 I'm curious where this data originated - and that curiosity has nothing to do with belief in or disbelief of climate change.
    - sgt101 8y ago
      I believe in climate change, but I am very much with you on the curiosity. Is this a long running carefully curated experiment or is this a case of data science - many experiments carefully integrated with confounding and conflating factors managed out of the picture?
      - SiempreViernes 8y ago
        The latter, its simply weather station data carefully examined, see my other comment. I guess you could do an actual global measurement if you put a satellite fairly far out with capable of measuring the IR and optical. Then you could define a black body effective temperature, but I'm not sure that straightforwardly tells us about surface temperatures.
        sgt101 8y ago
        Thank you - this is a very nice case study.
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      To be precise, these are global averages, so from this alone it is clear the numbers aren't measurements but rather the output of some analysis. The linked file is simply the analysis output, the source is the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, presumably their GISTEMP dataset (since that's the one about global average surface temperature). The original GISTEMP analysis is documented here: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00700d.html https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00700d.html with later refinements found elsewhere on the GISS site. In brief they simply use weather station data, and build their global average from that. They also talk about change in the average rather than the absolute value, which makes sense since you are then much less sensitive to the absolute calibration error of each station. Then they do a lot of statistics on it to compensate for lack of coverage etc etc, read it yourself if 30 year old statistics papers are interesting to you.
stareatgoats 8y ago
Much as I agree that fossil fuel burning is a horrendous thing that has sent us on a life-threatening trajectory, I also think this narrative is overly simplified. The fight to minimize fossil fuel would benefit from a more realistic (i.e. humble) approach IMO. Doubting if Thomas Mann will be the person to do that though. To be clear, climate science has come a long way and has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that fossil fuel burning is changing our climate in ways that already is causing damage to the livelihood of millions if not billions of people, something which will accelerate in the short term and put our capacity for adaption and human compassion to a severe test, that we will probably fail miserably. So the core issue is not up for debate. But there are still claims that rubs me the wrong way, for example that is that this is "a fight between science and self-interested industry". Yes, to some extent. But climate science is not a mature science like (some parts of) physics. As a science it is still struggling to explain why things like ice-ages were (are?) a recurring phenomenon. The reason is that climate science is in essence a historical science. What this means: while we can tell that the climate has behaved in a certain way historically, and many times (not always) understand why, we have no way to determine the accumulated future effects of warming beyond a certain, in geological terms, fairly short horizon. It may well, through the combination of various tipping point effects, planetary, intergalactic or even hitherto unknown extra-galactic phenomenon have the exact opposite effect, as far as we know. So part of the drama is in my view caused by climate science trying to establish itself as a mature science with a predictability powers comparable to sciences that can perform reproducible experiments, downplaying its own nature as a historical science. The fossil burning industry (and all the other interests tied in with them) is handed a gift in a way, since they can appeal to the natural intelligence of the average person, and get an agreement that the climate science is making hyperbolic claims. We don't know everything, and it would serve the sane discussion well to delimit what we can and can not predict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...
- sintaxi 8y ago
  Of course its up for debate. Climate alarmists claims were never defended in the first place and there are countless instances of known data manipulation and deliberate misleading of the public. The debate hasn't even happened yet.
sintaxi 8y ago
Looks like the disgraced Michael Mann is trying to save his discredited hockey stick graph. People need to know that this graph couldn't be defended when challenged in the Supreme court of British Columbia. I never thought this graph would ever again see the light of day.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  Please stop trying to get us all killed by denying climate change. Thanks!
  - sintaxi 8y ago
    I'm not joining your anti-human death cult. Please start actually caring about science and facts.
SiempreViernes 8y ago
So the history of climate change goes something like: confusion about overall sign in the 1960's, mounting evidence for warming due to CO_2 in 1970's, consensus about overall warming caused by human CO_2 emission in the eighties, and then clarifying in the details since then. The fact that there still isn't mainstream discussion about how society must change, but rather eternal growth society is still the default target across the globe is depressing and gives confidence that we are going to see substantial civilisation collapse in the future.
- assblaster 8y ago
  I think that alarmism has hurt climate science ever since the 1960s. Past mistakes matter because people generally won't trust the naysayers when they've been proven wrong so obviously that grade school children won't trust them. From https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/21/18-examples-of-the-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-first-earth-day-in-1970/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/21/18-examples-of-the-sp... >Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started: 1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” 2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. 3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” 4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” 5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” 6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” 7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness. 8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” 9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” 11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate. 12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. 13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years). 14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” 15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. 16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” 17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” 18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
chrisseaton 8y ago
I was always confused about what people meant by 'hockey stick growth'... until I worked out they mean ice hockey stick growth. A normal hockey stick wouldn't be very impressive growth!
- ninkendo 8y ago
  What kind of hockey stick were you referring to?
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Normal hockey sticks have a little curl that goes back on itself - not great growth! https://www.hockeydirect.com/Catalogue/Hockey-Sticks/Grays-Hockey-Sticks https://www.hockeydirect.com/Catalogue/Hockey-Sticks/Grays-H... Hockey sticks that you use to play ice hockey have a long straight line that goes up and to the right, like strong linear growth. https://puckstop.com/product/true-xc9-acf-youth-hockey-stick https://puckstop.com/product/true-xc9-acf-youth-hockey-stick
- chestervonwinch 8y ago
  In the US, hockey is synonymous with ice hockey.
tobr 8y ago
We should start talking about actions that contribute to global warming in a significant/active/systemic way as crimes against humanity. That is what they are. Executives and politicians need to know that that is how we will judge them in the future.
- southern_cross 8y ago
  So every time you get in your car and start personally spewing excess CO2, that's a crime against humanity? Or you fire up your oil or gas furnace? Or you eat a burger or pretty much anything else produced by Big Ag? Or you build a concrete structure? And so on and so forth. As the old saying goes: "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones."
  - tzs 8y ago
    Is there a recognized name for the fallacy southern_cross is using here?
    - southern_cross 8y ago
      It's called "Avoiding taking personal responsibility by trying to point the finger of blame at others." And it's something that children and immature adults often do. For those who are so torn up about the situation, nothing's stopping you from finding a piece of cheap real estate out in the middle of nowhere (maybe by a nice stream or a lake), building a yurt or whatever and then just living off the land. That's the kind of thing our ancestors often had to do, and that's the kind of thing people in underdeveloped countries still often have to do. (Hence why they are called "underdeveloped countries".)
      - tzs 8y ago
        So by your logic, because I have on occasion urinated outside in my backyard, where some small part of my urine will perhaps find its way to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I cannot object to Victoria, BC's dumping of 21 million gallons a day of raw sewage into it without being a hypocrite? Your argument is based on the assumption that if X and Y and Z all have a particular bad consequence, then X and Y and Z are all equally bad, with no consideration to how much of the bad consequence each has, or what other, good consequences each have. That's not valid reasoning. I'm curious if it has a name.
dl75 8y ago
For your consideration: “A Disgrace To The Profession": The World's Scientists In Their Own Words On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, And Their Damage To Science https://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession-Mark-Steyn-editor/dp/0986398330 https://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession-Mark-Steyn-editor...

acqq 8y ago

Regarding ice on Arctic and Antarctic, the extent as we speak extremely low compared to our historical records: https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iq... https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iqr_timeseries.png https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iq... (from National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado)

thaumaturgy 8y ago

If only the senate could have waited a couple of more days before confirming an AGW "skeptic" to head NASA [1], we could've had some really nice contrast between this essay and the current government. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/jim-bridenstine-nasa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/jim-bridenstine-n...

sgt101 8y ago

A good thing would be to see the graph up to today - am I right that the article only shows the graph from 20 years ago and then some affirmation of the validity of that artefact? If so does anyone have a link to the picture up to 2018?

f_allwein 8y ago
NASA has one up to 2017. It does not look pretty. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
- sgt101 8y ago
  Thank you - perfect.
- IncRnd 8y ago
  My first question, looking at that graph, is "how does that graph calculate a global temperature for an entire year?" Do you know the actual source of the global temperature readings going back to 1880? Sure, the webpage says the dataset came from https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/original/647_Global_Temperature_Data_File.txt https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/o..., but where did they come from? These are the first 10 lines of the linked dataset, showing land and sea temperatures for the entire earth from 1880 to 1889. 1880 -0.19 -0.11 1881 -0.1 -0.14 1882 -0.1 -0.17 1883 -0.19 -0.21 1884 -0.28 -0.24 1885 -0.31 -0.26 1886 -0.32 -0.27 1887 -0.35 -0.27 1888 -0.18 -0.27 1889 -0.11 -0.26 I'm curious where this data originated - and that curiosity has nothing to do with belief in or disbelief of climate change.
  - sgt101 8y ago
    I believe in climate change, but I am very much with you on the curiosity. Is this a long running carefully curated experiment or is this a case of data science - many experiments carefully integrated with confounding and conflating factors managed out of the picture?
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      The latter, its simply weather station data carefully examined, see my other comment. I guess you could do an actual global measurement if you put a satellite fairly far out with capable of measuring the IR and optical. Then you could define a black body effective temperature, but I'm not sure that straightforwardly tells us about surface temperatures.
      - sgt101 8y ago
        Thank you - this is a very nice case study.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    To be precise, these are global averages, so from this alone it is clear the numbers aren't measurements but rather the output of some analysis. The linked file is simply the analysis output, the source is the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, presumably their GISTEMP dataset (since that's the one about global average surface temperature). The original GISTEMP analysis is documented here: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00700d.html https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00700d.html with later refinements found elsewhere on the GISS site. In brief they simply use weather station data, and build their global average from that. They also talk about change in the average rather than the absolute value, which makes sense since you are then much less sensitive to the absolute calibration error of each station. Then they do a lot of statistics on it to compensate for lack of coverage etc etc, read it yourself if 30 year old statistics papers are interesting to you.

stareatgoats 8y ago

Much as I agree that fossil fuel burning is a horrendous thing that has sent us on a life-threatening trajectory, I also think this narrative is overly simplified. The fight to minimize fossil fuel would benefit from a more realistic (i.e. humble) approach IMO. Doubting if Thomas Mann will be the person to do that though. To be clear, climate science has come a long way and has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that fossil fuel burning is changing our climate in ways that already is causing damage to the livelihood of millions if not billions of people, something which will accelerate in the short term and put our capacity for adaption and human compassion to a severe test, that we will probably fail miserably. So the core issue is not up for debate. But there are still claims that rubs me the wrong way, for example that is that this is "a fight between science and self-interested industry". Yes, to some extent. But climate science is not a mature science like (some parts of) physics. As a science it is still struggling to explain why things like ice-ages were (are?) a recurring phenomenon. The reason is that climate science is in essence a historical science. What this means: while we can tell that the climate has behaved in a certain way historically, and many times (not always) understand why, we have no way to determine the accumulated future effects of warming beyond a certain, in geological terms, fairly short horizon. It may well, through the combination of various tipping point effects, planetary, intergalactic or even hitherto unknown extra-galactic phenomenon have the exact opposite effect, as far as we know. So part of the drama is in my view caused by climate science trying to establish itself as a mature science with a predictability powers comparable to sciences that can perform reproducible experiments, downplaying its own nature as a historical science. The fossil burning industry (and all the other interests tied in with them) is handed a gift in a way, since they can appeal to the natural intelligence of the average person, and get an agreement that the climate science is making hyperbolic claims. We don't know everything, and it would serve the sane discussion well to delimit what we can and can not predict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

sintaxi 8y ago
Of course its up for debate. Climate alarmists claims were never defended in the first place and there are countless instances of known data manipulation and deliberate misleading of the public. The debate hasn't even happened yet.

sintaxi 8y ago

Looks like the disgraced Michael Mann is trying to save his discredited hockey stick graph. People need to know that this graph couldn't be defended when challenged in the Supreme court of British Columbia. I never thought this graph would ever again see the light of day.

SiempreViernes 8y ago
Please stop trying to get us all killed by denying climate change. Thanks!
- sintaxi 8y ago
  I'm not joining your anti-human death cult. Please start actually caring about science and facts.

SiempreViernes 8y ago

So the history of climate change goes something like: confusion about overall sign in the 1960's, mounting evidence for warming due to CO_2 in 1970's, consensus about overall warming caused by human CO_2 emission in the eighties, and then clarifying in the details since then. The fact that there still isn't mainstream discussion about how society must change, but rather eternal growth society is still the default target across the globe is depressing and gives confidence that we are going to see substantial civilisation collapse in the future.

assblaster 8y ago
I think that alarmism has hurt climate science ever since the 1960s. Past mistakes matter because people generally won't trust the naysayers when they've been proven wrong so obviously that grade school children won't trust them. From https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/21/18-examples-of-the-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-first-earth-day-in-1970/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/21/18-examples-of-the-sp... >Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started: 1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” 2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. 3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” 4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” 5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” 6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” 7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness. 8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” 9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” 11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate. 12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. 13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years). 14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” 15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. 16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” 17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” 18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

chrisseaton 8y ago

I was always confused about what people meant by 'hockey stick growth'... until I worked out they mean ice hockey stick growth. A normal hockey stick wouldn't be very impressive growth!

ninkendo 8y ago
What kind of hockey stick were you referring to?
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Normal hockey sticks have a little curl that goes back on itself - not great growth! https://www.hockeydirect.com/Catalogue/Hockey-Sticks/Grays-Hockey-Sticks https://www.hockeydirect.com/Catalogue/Hockey-Sticks/Grays-H... Hockey sticks that you use to play ice hockey have a long straight line that goes up and to the right, like strong linear growth. https://puckstop.com/product/true-xc9-acf-youth-hockey-stick https://puckstop.com/product/true-xc9-acf-youth-hockey-stick
chestervonwinch 8y ago
In the US, hockey is synonymous with ice hockey.

tobr 8y ago

We should start talking about actions that contribute to global warming in a significant/active/systemic way as crimes against humanity. That is what they are. Executives and politicians need to know that that is how we will judge them in the future.

southern_cross 8y ago
So every time you get in your car and start personally spewing excess CO2, that's a crime against humanity? Or you fire up your oil or gas furnace? Or you eat a burger or pretty much anything else produced by Big Ag? Or you build a concrete structure? And so on and so forth. As the old saying goes: "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones."
- tzs 8y ago
  Is there a recognized name for the fallacy southern_cross is using here?
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    It's called "Avoiding taking personal responsibility by trying to point the finger of blame at others." And it's something that children and immature adults often do. For those who are so torn up about the situation, nothing's stopping you from finding a piece of cheap real estate out in the middle of nowhere (maybe by a nice stream or a lake), building a yurt or whatever and then just living off the land. That's the kind of thing our ancestors often had to do, and that's the kind of thing people in underdeveloped countries still often have to do. (Hence why they are called "underdeveloped countries".)
    - tzs 8y ago
      So by your logic, because I have on occasion urinated outside in my backyard, where some small part of my urine will perhaps find its way to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I cannot object to Victoria, BC's dumping of 21 million gallons a day of raw sewage into it without being a hypocrite? Your argument is based on the assumption that if X and Y and Z all have a particular bad consequence, then X and Y and Z are all equally bad, with no consideration to how much of the bad consequence each has, or what other, good consequences each have. That's not valid reasoning. I'm curious if it has a name.

dl75 8y ago

For your consideration: “A Disgrace To The Profession": The World's Scientists In Their Own Words On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, And Their Damage To Science https://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession-Mark-Steyn-editor/dp/0986398330 https://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession-Mark-Steyn-editor...