Annapolis Capital Punishment

CP received this note from a reader in response to a recent piece on global warming (see post for Feb 6th below)

I'm genuinely assuming that you're being ironic and that you understand that global warming is measured in tenths of degrees across several decades, and not a sudden warmup in the middle of winter, right?

Tim Hamilton
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to which CP responds....

Dear Tim Hamilton:

Well, yes...and no. The scientist in me fully understands your statement, but what I am mainly doing here is making a political statement, and a snarky one at that. It is specifically directed toward the hyper-conservatives who not only deny that we clearly are in a pronounced warming period, but also blast any scientists who believe that data increasingly shows a high degree of correlation between anthropogenic factors and surface and ocean water temperature increases. These same hyperconservatives believe this is a hoax perpetrated by socialists and environmentalist/one-worlders in order to achieve their social goals and transform our political-economic system. They are obsessed with Al Gore, unable to imagine that humanity can be causing this, extremely afraid of the fact that this will certainly necessitate a global structure or regime to reverse or otherwise deal with the potentially catastrophic results.
These hyperconservatives, who include some Maryland bloggers, bristle at the very suggestion that this may be a serious problem we have created. They made fun of our protest in January which was a normal winter day--cold and snowy, which was basically their way of saying how silly and wrong we were.
So, I threw it back at them based on a meeting on what was certainly not a normal winter day. They try to make a silly claim about one day--a normal one at that--but how many will look at 72 degrees today, or many other record-breaking and near-record days over a period of years and even begin to possibly question that something odd is happening? Very few I would imagine until they find themselves swimming and water-skiing in January.

As I wrote "so it's only one day you say?", I am of course not claiming that one unusually hot day in February means the whole planet is about to catch fire. But, who is to say that this warming trend must be linear? Don't forget chaos theory. Only time will tell, but we may have already squandered much time. Do we err on the side of caution or do we just spout off stupid, misguided, ignorant rhetoric as do these hyperconservatives? They are just deathly afraid of international and global cooperation and any form of social control of the means of production. And they are likely afraid of science as well, appealing to it only when it suits their ends, all the while claiming that folks such as myself, are the politically-motivated ones. That's projection on a global scale--and we don't need it. CP
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and then came more responses:


I didn't know about the bloggers decrying the Global Warming Solutions Rally. Did they not grow up around here? When I was a kid it would have been frozen snow not soggy snow, and it would have stayed for days, the creeks would have been frozen for weeks, and we would be sledding. Not the way weather's been in recent times. Denying that global warming is occurring is as simple as closing one's eyes. Will Small

and another:

But Globally its cooling, despite it being warm on the East coast and Europe. RSS and UAH both have this January below average temperature, they are the only ones that have reported so far.

The sun is waning, the PDO has entered a cool phase, but the AMO is in a warm phase, which is why the East is warm but the West is cold. This is setting up what is going to be a long term trend, which is going to kill AGW theory once and for all this year.

AWG is a hoax created by socialists and Nazis who want a world government, and thats a known fact.

hahajohnnyb
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(NOTE FROM CP: Sure johnnyb--as for "known facts" why don't you give us your real name? It would appear that your AMO has been overcome by your PDO which in turn has rendered your RSS and UAH incomprehensible)
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and this....
Paul:

I do not buy into this whole global warming frenzy. I think we have a lot of different data and statistics that can be used and interperted (sic) in several different ways. Scott Bowling

Scott: You have the choice to believe that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around it as well, and you may choose to believe in evolution operating through natural selection or you may choose to believe in parthenogenesis for all I care, but why do you call this a "frenzy"? You are correct that there is a lot of data, and that bolsters the case for what you refer to as a "frenzy" but you may not be aware that there has been an increasingly clear consensus among those that have devoted their careers to studying this phenomena, that the earth is heating, and in all likelihood, at an accelerated rate due to human inputs.

How you choose to have it "interperted" (sic) as you say is of course up to you. There are billions of people on earth who believe that Jesus is the son of God and that Mohammed was his greatest prophet...and then there is Santa Claus, the Energizer Bunny, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Ronald McDonald and of course, every day at about noon is time for teletubbies, time for teletubbies.... not to mention how the World Trade Center attacks are believed by many to have been an "inside" job, how the moon landings were faked in a studio.....and on and on ad nauseum...
Paul
(oh, did I fail to mention how there really is a man in the moon or that Nostradamus predicted that Delegate Don Dwyer would be re-elected?)