Let me emphasize I would not know about this if someone had not pointed it out to me.
Posted the other day on the science denial blog Watts Up With That.
I won’t post a link. Find it yourself:
Which now brings me to the decisive point: while the proponents of the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) insist that the temperatures of the planet are set to rise in an accelerating mode that we won’t be able to control least we adopt drastic climate protecting measures a.s.a.p., we just learn that in the Sinai desert, a region to the south-west of Israel, four hikers have died in a blizzard. They lost their way and sadly froze to death in deep snow at temperatures well below the freezing point. Pictures in the internet show camels knee-deep in snowdrifts.
If one pieces together this information and biblical records, one might feel entitled to draw the conclusion that such a weather event hasn’t been observed in the region for several thousand years. Not exactly an indication of runaway temperatures, at least not a rush to the northern regions of the mercury scale. And this wasn’t a singular event. Over a prolonged time period and a wide area, the Middle East might have been experiencing its worst cold snap in several hundred if not thousand years.
This certainly does not harmonize with stories about runaway temperatures sizzling our planet. If the Bible is right, the CAGW theory seems to have hit some serious snag. Maybe it would be a good suggestion to tell these people to go back to the drawing boards and proceed to an in-depth makeover of their simulation software…
[Note: some commenters questioned why this essay was posted, I simply saw it as an interesting discussion of recorded historical events, something that scholars worldwide look to document. The Roman Warm Period is well known and also much studied, and it coincides with many writings in the Bible. Wikipedia says:
Theophrastus (371 – c. 287 BC) wrote that date trees could grow in Greece if planted, but could not set fruit there. This is the same situation as today, and suggests that southern Aegean mean summer temperatures in the fourth and fifth centuries BC were within a degree of modern temperatures. This and other literary fragments from the time confirm that the Greek climate during that period was basically the same as it was around 2000 AD. Dendrochronological evidence from wood found at theParthenon shows variability of climate in the fifth century BC resembling the modern pattern of variation.[3] Tree rings from Italy in the late third century BC indicate a period of mild conditions in the area at the time thatHannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.[4]
The phrase “Roman Warm Period” appears in a 1995 doctoral thesis.[5] It was popularized by an article published in Nature in 1999.
Anyone reading anything more into this posting, or thinking that I’m endorsing the idea that the bible “disproves global warming” should think again. – Anthony]
Just another contrarian post from Willard “Fencepost” Watts.
I”ll let you all guess where the post is stuck.
“Pictures in the internet show camels knee-deep in snowdrifts.”
Screen shot of WUWT site show contrarian knee-deep in his own dung.
Anthony Watts, or, The Eighth Plague.
Here you go…
http://cafewitteveen.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/63031_1485605577335_1149750185_32371760_7271009_n.jpg
You’re welcome
Extreme weather disproves climate change.
Extreme weather was the first prediction decades ago regarding climate change. If you had any understanding of thermodynamics you’d know that temperature and energy contrasts indicate increases of energy in the system. But this concept may be beyond the brainpower of a troll.
Uh, JEV? NevenA can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he was just keeping in the spirit of this post and having fun, as are all the rest of us who have commented so far.
The all-knowing one that WOULD present such a statement and believe it to be true is thankfully not yet on scene.
While you’re here, could you explain in more detail how temperature and energy “contrasts” indicate “increases of energy” in the system? I’m just a dumboldguy and am easily confused and have limited brainpower, but doesn’t “energy contrasts” speak more to distribution of energy rather than overall quantity? And don’t certain Laws of Thermodynamics explain how that produces “weather”?
Watts: “the decisive point:… the proponents of… AGW… insist that the temperatures of the planet are set to rise…[yet] in the Sinai desert… four hikers… died in a blizzard… Anyone reading anything more into this posting… should think again.”
Or maybe think a first time. I’m thinking they were carrying frankincense and myrrh and yet another sign of the End Times is upon us.
“Pictures on the internet” show coeds at the U of A in Fairbanks sunbathing in bikinis—in February. WUWT?
FLASH! More surfing of the internet yields pictures of moose and caribou knee deep in prematurely melting permafrost/tundra.
According to the sacred book of the Inuit, this has not happened since Hannimukluk crossed the Brooks Range on Mammoths in search of ikkuma kanosak, which translates as “black liquid that comes from the ground and burns like whale oil but is cheaper”.
By the way, do camels have knees?
Actually, if I remember my long-unused facts about mammalian anatomy, they have both four knees and four elbows, and are strange in many other ways as well.
And camels ARE related to elephants and elephants ARE related to Hannimukluk’s Mammoths, so the question is where is Kevin Bacon?
Camels secondary knees… I believe it is similar to bats wings, where the digits are greatly elongated and consequently work as struts in wings. The elongation is either due to the expression of HOX genes or something further downstream. Perhaps a closer parallel would be the hind legs of cats. When you look at the leg of a cat, it appears to have two knees, one bending backwards. But this is due to what would be the foot in us being elongated and serving as part of the leg, with the ankle serving as a second knee. Relative to us, they are always walking around on their toes. Elongation may either be the result of accelerated growth during the cartilaginous phase prior to “ossification” (calcification) or due to a delay in the onset of ossification. Anyway, I remember a few years back a bit of research being done into the gene network evo-devo of bats wings. Interesting stuff.
The real question, dumboldguy and Tim, is what mutation allows denialists like Watts and his followers to bend over backward and stick their heads so far up their . . .
I really don’t know the answer to that. It’s been a long time since I studied the topic deeply, and I suspect that it’s a mutation that began to appear at about the same time as the right wing-nut and Grover Pledge genes, and it seems to be linked to the even more recent Tea Party gene.
Anyway, I am more interested in the mutation that has made them all so freakin’ stupid that they seem to be so happy and pleased with themselves when they DO stick their heads up their . . .
Are they dung beetles looking for a meal?
Please. Dung beetles play a vital role in the Great Circle of Life. No reason to be derogatory toward them by comparing them with denialists, who serve no useful purpose whatsoever.
I agree….I’m thinking rodents and caecotrophagy.
If I remember, it’s actually the cousins of rodents—-rabbits and such—-that practice cacophagy.
I think what you’re really after is a “war cry” that was sometimes heard in the USMC back in my day—-“EAT S**T AND DIE, ANAL ORIFICE!”. Nowadays, it will often have MF appended instead of AH. Either version is appropriate to our discussion.
Rabbits are rodents. It’s all in the teeth. They, rats, mice, guinea pigs and deniers all consume their own crap (caecotrophs). Many other animals consume other animal’s crap (coprophages)…think flies, dogs, pigs and dung beetles, less educated deniers who choose to rely on other deniers.
Not that I think we need to get into an argument about such a “crappy” subject, but I was reminded of our old friend K P COFGS, who helps us interpret biological taxonomy (just as his cousin ROY G BIV helps us with the colors of visible light).
Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Genus-Species
Rodents and rabbits are both members of Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, but they diverge at the Order level. Rabbits belong to Order Lagomorpha while Rats belong to Order Rodentia. There are 20+ classes of mammals, and while rabbits and rats may be more like each other than Primates and Cetaceans are, they are sufficiently different to have been put in two different orders. So Rabbits are simply not Rodents (although they may eat the same things sometimes). Just like they’re not monkeys or dolphins.
And why did you make me look all that up anyway?—we were all “crapping” on deniers nicely and talking about how they have s**t for brains, and—-wait, maybe they EAT brains? No, that’s zombies. Giant Zombie dung beetles eat denier SFB? The deniers look like rats? Dang, I’ve lost the train here—dumboldguys get so confused sometimes. kanspaugh, help me out here!
I am biased against rabbits after being scared shitless by a giant Easter bunny in a shopping centre when I was a small child. That said, I will defer to your researching the topic and accept that I am wrong about their taxonomy…but they do eat their own faeces. Interesting that you’ve brought up the denier/zombie inference. Given their mindless regurgitation of the same crap they swallow……..
YOU are biased against rabbits? I spent a couple of summers in NJ during HS working on what we lovingly called the “rat farm”. They bred laboratory animals for the big NJ pharmaceutical industry—-we had on hand at any time ~10,000 rats, ~20,000 mice, ~3,000 guinea pigs, some occasional hamsters and sheep, and ~500-600 RABBITS, so I know my “rabbits and rats” and their poop from the perspective of feeding them, watering them, and cleaning their cages.
I am quite familiar with “rabbit poop” of both varieties, as well as the diarrhea that they often seemed to contract en masse. That made the many wheelbarrows-full cleaned out every day rather sloppy and hard to deal with. It was more unpleasant cleaning up after those few hundred rabbits than all the tens of thousands of rodents put together. I don’t need a giant Mall Bunny to have bad dreams about rabbits.
you win 🙂
Let us all agree that, according to the Dantean logic of contrapasso (whereby the punishment suffered by damned souls in hell reflects / extends their own evildoing in life), denialists should be tied down and force fed their own super-heated (yea, molten) dung for all eternity. Any objections?
I’m not even slightly averse to harsh criticism or mockery but I don’t agree with you for various reasons which I won’t go into at this time except to say that I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed by deniers and others I don’t see eye to eye with – and I have scant interest in stooping to that level.
You don’t like metaphors?
I believe that over time, you are or become what you think.
That’s one way of looking at it, but it’s perhaps backwards.
I think what you ARE instead determines what you think, and if you are a person who is concerned with the greater good, thinks rationally, believes in science, and has come to abhor those who aren’t and don’t, then you are in little danger of “flipping” to the dark side if you invent metaphorical tortures for folks who would have been shot dead in the streets of Tombstone AZ 120 years ago.
Let us have our fun, and watch out when you’re in the house of mirrors. It’s sometimes hard to figure out what you’re looking at in there.
What do tickets for front row seats cost? I’m on a retiredoldguy budget, but I can always take out a second mortgage.
Rabbits & hares, among others are lagomorphs, somewhat different from rodents although having many similarities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagomorphs#Differences_between_Lagomorphs_and_other_mammals
You’re right. I stand corrected. Once the the snow accumulation from the extreme weather that is not caused by AGW melts here in VA, I will seek out a dung beetle (if any survive the winter) and apologize. Since they are, as you say, more useful than deniers, they are probably smarter too, and will likely understand my message.
Morin Moss. I’m generally pretty tolerant of people whose opinions differ from my own. There are some out there, however, who don’t deserve tolerance, deserve only contempt. Denialists are knowlingly shopping an extremely pernicious anti-scientific discourse, one that is intended to obstruct action that could possibly mean the difference between the world my grandchildren are born into being liveable or unliveable. I assume vis-a-vis the denialists, therefore, the same sort of attitude I would toward some sleazy-assed drug dealer selling heroin to middle schoolers. So no apologies. This is war. And, as Voltaire put it, “Ecraze l’infame!”
I’m old, but can you post the pics? Oops. What was the topic? Camels and snow? No wonder I was distracted by bikinis.
Anyone reading anything more into this posting, or thinking that I’m endorsing the idea that the bible “disproves global warming” should think again. – Anthony]
… Still, as an aside, my oily masters have reminded me that they give heavily to several mega-churches. My masters have lobbied these churches to convince their congregations that there is a theological debate that this is a carbon starved planet. I therefore must occasionally pander to ignorant rubes who will buy anything a guy on a church pulpit tells them
PS This clip should be re-posted at every opportunity to remind us of the challenge that we face.
(And what’s a “bah-bull”? Some sort of interspecies cross between sheep and cattle?)
I believe what he was saying was actually bar bell. I believe in the bar bell. It is the bar bell that tells me it’s time to order last drinks and then go home. It hasn’t led me wrong yet. All glory to the bar bell. Hallelujah.
Back to reality:
Date: Feb. 27, 2014
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.K. Royal Society Release Joint Publication on Climate Change.
“Climate Change: Evidence and Causes is a jointly produced publication of The US National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society. Written by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists and reviewed by climate scientists and others, the publication is intended as a brief, readable reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and other individuals seeking authoritative information on the some of the questions that continue to be asked.
Climate Change makes clear what is well-established and where understanding is still developing. It echoes and builds upon the long history of climate-related work from both national academies,”
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=18730
I am a secular person,but I have devoutly christian friends who believe that god gave us a brain and the ability to use it to recognize and solve our problems,not for us to passively wait for “him” to recognize and remedy all that ails them and our planet.
Just sayin’
(Oh,and as an aside,I also have christian friends who believe that all you have to do is pray on every problem,and god will take care of it for them.Oddly,they seem to have no end to their troubles…wonder why?)
Because god moves in mysterious ways of course.