In 'Crucifying Apes on a Cross of Green', Neoconservationist Iain Murray laments:
The short-sighted idiocy of ... demand for biodiesel, which is being met in large part by the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia. The Daily Telegraph in the UK has the story of how these clearances involve the slaughter of the greatest of the Great Apes,the Orang-Utan:
"As jungles are rapidly replaced by palm oil plantations, the great apes starve...At a rehabilitation centre run by the charity Borneo Orang-utan Survival, there are more than 600, mostly orphaned babies.
The unspeakable truth is that this would not be happening...were it not for ...“green” fuels demand... It is sheer insanity "
What can be done to save them?
What Greener solution than giving the great apes Green Cards, and In-Sourcing them to the Potomac fever swamps to take jobs think tank denizens refuse? Adding 600 Orangutans and the odd Bonobo to the gene pool of the Beltway's pundits , fact-checkers, science editors and talking heads would rank as an evolutionary milestone.
Fred Smith Fred Muggs
Dr.
Jim Hansen of Nasa's GISS has escalated the monkey business, replying to CEI's Fatal Flaw du jour campaign with : The Real Deal: Usufruct And The Gorilla. It begins "Fox, Washington Times and their like have gone bananas..." Peel the whole stem here. Planet Gore Of The Apes
While you wait for CEI's response to Nature Reports : Climate Change
Dr. Seitz.
It might have been more beneficial to Dr. Hansen's assertion of the minor nature of the adjustment had he used the same 'y' axis scale on both of his charts in Figure 1. However, this might beg the question, 'Why has the temperature fluctuation in the US been so much less than that of the world as a whole?'
I'd like to see Climate Audit go international to see how those data are being collected and analyzed.
RESPONSE
It's easy to make a monkey of yourself at risk by indulging in the use of rubber graph paper- you can see both versions of the data at the same scale at http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/08/global_warming_totally_disprov.php
I think it more germane that the bad data splice detected by the diligent McIntyre amounts to only a few hundredths of one degree.
1998, formerly the hottest U.S. year, has gone from being 0.01 degrees warmer than 1934 to being 0.02 degrees cooler. Meanwhile, rate at which the Atlantic's overturning circulation transports warm water has just been discovered to vary by a factor of eight.
Will the zeal with which this authentically interesting number is hyped and dismissed by the two sides exceed that of the last one? Or is distortion in the climate wars scale invariant ?
Stay tuned .
Posted by: Oddball | August 17, 2007 at 04:58 AM
I have a difficult time figuring out which side you're on, through all the drollness.
That's probably as it should be.
Meanwhile, skeptics who are not mere political hacks, like Freeman Dyson arguing at Edge, offer their complaints about the data along, but those complaints come with solid suggestions of what to do to prevent further global warming.
It occurs to me that we separate the serious science skeptics on that basis: They question the data, but offer solutions to the problem. Political hacks use questions about the data that they don't understand in order to avoid doing anything.
If it were true that human activities have nothing at all to do with global warming, we still have the difficulties from mosquitoes moving north, drought, more powerful storms, and rising sea levels. It's just that we might have fewer tools to use to stop it.
RESPONSE
Delve into the archives, or check my bibliography and you will find two or more cheers in as many years for Paul Crutzen and Freeman Dyson, both of whom are past masters of not coveting their own hypotheses.
Neither is addicted to the belief that we have certain knowledge of the interaction of anthropogenic change and natural variability and both want to know more. It is those already committed to drastic action to prevent Whatever who afford most of the scientific comedy of manners and modeling that gets mistaken for honest to gosh politicization these days
I have long suspected that stone tools are a serendipitous spin off from Zinjanthopus' attempts at mosquito control- just place the mosquito on a smooth, fine grained rock and strike sharply with another , and before you run out of mosquitoes or rocks, you will surely assemble an arsenal of Clovis points .
Posted by: Ed Darrell | August 21, 2007 at 01:54 PM
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Posted by: Health News | March 18, 2011 at 02:42 AM
Now we know who the snebisle one is here. Great post!
Posted by: Lorene | May 07, 2011 at 02:46 AM