Tell you what … I change my job and the income and freedoms that it affords me if you do the exact same sacrifice in the exact same ratio.

So If I am going to half my income, you do that as well. Fair?

This is a real problem, the socialist position. It keeps creeping into the issue.

Could you explain #6 a little further, my brain is a bit sluggish today.

If only we could have a leisurely move on… I feel it will be rushed, as ever.

Nonsense. We had 3.4 tbls potential oil reserve in 1975 (optimistic estimates) from all sources. We have 6.5 tbls today (much more accessable than in 1975), and growing.

Reverves have been expanding sice we put our first straw down in PA in 1859. This “running out of everything” nonsense was put paid 20 years ago. Long before we run short of oil, we’ll have (leisurely) move on.

502 stations observed (of 1221) so far.

Errors are warming bias as estimated by NOAA/CRN, and can be masked by UHI (but UHI is lowballed, anyway).

(Temperatures in Celsius.)

CRN1: 4% Top rated
CRN2: 9% Good
CRN3: 18% 1C warm bias
CRN4: 55% 2+C warm bia.
CRN5: 14% 5+C warm bias.

Pro-rating it, using the smallest estimated error (zero for CRN1 & 2), the result is a 2C warm bias, most of this bias introduced SINCE 1980.

For perspective:

NOAA (Recently adjusted up) Measured warming for 1900-2000: 0.72C (used to be c. 0.6C).

This sort of thing has been very well dealt with by people like the RealClimate guys.

Even if burning fossil fuels gave us all vitamin C, they are finite, so we should be aiming to reduce their use before we’re forced to reduce their use. If I’m about to lose my job, whether my job is giving me dangerous stress or not is perhaps not very important; I need a new job, to get a new income.

But really, it’s amazing the bullshit people will come up with to protect their burgers and SUVs. Honestly, it’s not that hard to reduce the fossil fuel intensity of your life. Yes, yes, I know, you couldn’t possibly do this or that - but why not give it ten years? When the international negotiators meet to hash out CO2 emission reduction targets, they always give themselves many years to reach those targets. So if for example your job requires you to travel by air - well then give yourself five or ten years to change the way your job is done, or find a new one, so you don’t need to fly. If you’re saying that such a simple change is impossible in five or ten years - well then you’re really underestimating yourself, I think.

There are going to be less burgers and SUVs in the future whether we voluntarily reduce or not. You may as well get used to it now.

I seem to remember disagreeing with quite a lot of what he has to say… because he has too much anti-US sentiment, if I remember rightly? Still, thanks for the link I will have another look.

Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, writer and economist, has a very interesting take on the AGW policies and potential for political change. His speeches are quite popular and are an interesting read especially since they are the point of view from a person who grew up in a communist country and now is leading a democracy.

Vaclav Klaus

The scramble to decarbonise our society has precious little to do with climate change, and everything to do with rising energy prices and energy security.

See trouble in Russia, trouble in Middle East and then the rising economies of India and China for evidence of this.

I think what people in 100 years will pity us for is having the stupidity to:

a) listen too hard to alarmists and catastrophists [e.g. the media].
b) ignore all the hard work that has been done in the last 20 years achieving equality and a better way of life for all [politically and economically].
c) allow (a) and (b) to grip us so firmly that we [economically, politically and possibly religiously] sleepwalk through the first half of this century.

That is of course assuming that people in 100 years have the freedom to read about our past mistakes. I for one can see no reason why that should necessarily be the case, which ultimately scares me far more than a bit of adverse weather.

“one station does not invalidate them all, you are cherry picking”

“all temperatures are filtered and adjusted for UHI effects”

“The US is only one small part of global temperature”

Did I miss any?

Now the answers…

While one station is used for an example repeated calls for site auditing and testing of recording equipment has fallen on deaf ears. Data is only as accurate as the equipment that collects it and no amount of data massaging can remove the simple fact that the site placements have not been fully audited nor is there a standardized normalization of data sets.

While many changes were adopted to compensate for UHI effects, unlit urban sites only used, missing data is pulled from surrounding stations, etc. No matter what researchers say these practices hugely effect the overall output of the data and are not standardized across the research communities.

While the US is a small portion of the world temperature record it is the part with the highest resolution by sheer numbers of sites. Yet it would be irresponsible to assume the US network is the only one effected by site placements and data collection methodologies. Surface temperature records should be consistent and globally complete, they are not.

Researchers use a phrase that is very important here “statistically insignificant” when answering these charges about the data, this is the same phrase used by the “denier” community to describe the temperature variation of the last 8 years, the variation is statistically insignificant. While eight years does not indicate a long term trend the fact that the official record uses a 5 year trend is, you will notice that the five year trend has flatlined since 2004.

All this as CO2 concentration continues to grow at faster and faster rates.

The answer from the scientists now is NATURAL VARIABILITY. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?