I had not seen the news about Gov. Pence taking the talking point about the supposed scientific consensus in the 70s about “global cooling” or a new ice age. This is a bit of handwaving intended to discredit the current scientific consensus about human caused climate change. Silly eggheads are always changing their minds. Aren’t they silly?
In this story about our IDEM official conflating “local weather” with “climate,” the AP states:
In February, Gov. Mike Pence said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he wasn’t sure climate change was caused by human activities.
“We haven’t seen a lot of warming lately,” Pence said.
“I remember back in the ’70s, we were talking about the emerging ice age,” he said. “We’ll leave the scientific debate to the future.”
Who can say whether that light coming at us down the tunnel is a body smashing freight train or not? We’ll leave that debate to the people who write our obituaries.
In any event, someone who actually cared about the realities of scientific thought in the 70s went back and took a look at what scientists were actually saying back then:
Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.
The study reports, “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.
“A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.”
As for the IDEM guy who took our unusually cold weather as an opportunity to suggest that it disproves the idea of global warming, turns out that “Indiana” is not “the earth.”
Baugues wrote to his staff on March 19 in response to their outcry. But he stuck by his position, calling himself “a skeptic on global warming.”
“It seems silly to be talking about global warming at a time when we were having extremely cold unseasonable weather,” he wrote.
Although January was indeed unusually cold across much of the United States, it was actually the fourth-warmest January on record worldwide, according to Lonnie G. Thompson, an Ohio State University professor of earth sciences.
Updated: The original post was from April 6, 2014 – I’m updating this on May 15, 2017, to add a link to this 2013 column debunking the “ice age scare of the 1970s” myth and a link to this story about Trump’s staff giving him a fake Time cover hoax as real news about the 70s ice age myth.
So am I surprised to see that kind of vapid nonsense coming from Mr. Pence? He only listens to the right wing echo chamber. These people do not begin to understand or even have the slimmest grasp on this reality which their ideology keeps them from developing. I understand that scientists are reluctant to let fly just how scared they really are, and so their comments tend to be conservative (not in the Pence sense). Many are now saying that the change may be very abrupt and not reversible, and that runaway Greenhouse may already be underway. Writing for the Arctic Methane Emergency Group in Arctic News, John Davies said, “The world is probably at the start of a runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040”. I guess that will include the fools, too.
The IDEM guy’s job is not to protect Indiana’s environment. It’s to protect corporate interests from Indiana environmentalists. Or anyone else who dares object to sh__ting where we eat.
Another example of how Indiana works to improve the common good.
“We’ll leave the scientific debate to the future.”
Yes, and the national debt and the unfunded pension liability in Indiana.
Hate for the future generations seems to be a prerequisite for being a politician these days.
No, Joe. This is part of the plan to address the unfunded pension liability. Let it go until they owe $20+ billion, call it a “financial emergency”, and, in a grand gesture, cut the pensions of all the folks who depend on those accounts, all for the sake of “fiscal accountability” (spoken piously with an earnest face). Then they are heroes, protecting the state coffers, while those grubby greedy folks who were owed the money just won’t get their $20 billion. Besides,they’re just old people who will die soon anyhow. It will serve them right for making the government owe so much. It is, after all, the Christian duty of our leaders to keep people from becoming dependent on regular sources of government money.
Let it go?
Turn away and slam the door?
Very popular tv show disagrees with this revisionism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_861us8D9M
Oh, man. I loved “In Search Of.” Although, for years, I was vaguely disturbed by their “End of the World” episode. I think the world was supposed to end in the 90s.
“I think the world was supposed to end in the 90s.”
Didn’t it? Find a band since 1992 that can play a song with some balls or light up a guitar solo. Post Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Dave Matthews, we’re in a bombed-out, wimped-up wasteland. Millennials are listening to the least talented, least imaginative, least aggressive “musicians” ever given record contracts.
Current musicians simply have no talent, whatsoever and are utterly incapable of even covering a real rock song. One of today’s wimp bands would literally die trying to cover these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLjE-2_Luaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsW9ocBW9MA
Wimp music makes wimp adults. Wimp adults have wimp politics.
Listen to the records, kids. Careful, though. You might start riding motorcycles, chasing skirts and voting for Ronald Reagan.
I’m amazed you’d have respect for Pearl Jam given they fired their third drummer, in part, due to his attitude toward guns.
As usual, you completely misread and misunderstood.
Says the guy who put “Dave Matthews” in the same sentence as Nirvana and Pearl Jam and posted links to Motley Crue and Billy Idol songs. That’s fine, I liked both when I was 12.
It’s the tradition of every generation to think the music the kids are listening to is “crap”.
“Says the guy who put “Dave Matthews” in the same sentence as Nirvana and Pearl Jam”
Yeah, they all suck, and they’re all Wimp Rock.
This is an objective conclusion, Stuart. Dave Matthews is low-talent crap. It takes far less skill to play it (and almost everything else on WTTS in the last 20 years) than it does to run with Steve Stevens and Mick Mars. Music has become much simpler and less diverse.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-science-music-idUSBRE86P0R820120726
That the weakest generation ever seen on Earth has the simplest music yet seen only more rapidly drives down America’s descent.
BTW, it’s “Joe”. Not “Stuart”.
Lumping Dave Matthews in with Pearl Jam and Nirvana … sounds as dumb as me lumping in Herman’s Hermits with the Rolling Stones and Hendrix.
Or the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
“They all suck”.
How many times have you seen Pearl Jam live?
You can have your Dave Matthews, but you’re outta your mind on the other two as “wimp rock”.
Please, Motley Crue touring with Alice Cooper opening. The order of the show should be reversed.
I would not have expected the conversation to evolve in this direction.
The music when I was a kid sucked, by and large — mid 80s. Lots of ballads and hair metal. Though there was some good music. For example, I have recently discovered what a bad ass Glenn Danzig was.
It wasn’t until the mid-90s that I figured out that punk is a preferred musical style for me. Simple and aggressive with some melody. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered how awesome funk is. I seeded Pandora with only Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and the results were awesome. Pandora also clued me in to some pretty cool stuff that was well off the beaten path for me – Panjabi MC, for example.
I’m not going anywhere in particular with this.
“sounds as dumb as me lumping in Herman’s Hermits with the Rolling Stones and Hendrix”
“Lumping in” in what way? Noting that they were contemporaries? That’s fact. For years, those bands were all played on the same station. The Hermits fell off the Rock playlist in the 70’s, as much of the Stones’ catalog and all of Hendrix was moved to more dedicated hard rock stations, but even today, an oldies station will still play “She’s a Rainbow” and “I’m into Something Good.”
That was also a different era of radio, was it not? Asks the guy who haven’t listened to the radio in a decade…
I wouldn’t lump America and Led Zeppelin together because they were contemporaries. Or Van Halen and Cyndi Lauper. If I said the 80’s sucked because Lionel Richie was on the charts the same time as Billy Idol or Motley Crue, it wouldn’t make a lick of sense. Other people were having a great old time listening to the Replacements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdBf4ObBxVo
Wimp rock. Right.
“I wouldn’t lump America and Led Zeppelin together because they were contemporaries. ”
In what way are you using this “lumping together?” What do you mean? Both were huge at the same time, and many buyers walked out of record stores with Zeppelin and America under the same arm.
“Or Van Halen and Cyndi Lauper.”
Why not? “She-bop” hits a lot harder than “Love Comes Walking In.”
You’re not making any sense with this “lumping in” nonsense.
“If I said the 80?s sucked because Lionel Richie was on the charts the same time as Billy Idol or Motley Crue, it wouldn’t make a lick of sense.”
No, because Lionel Richie has an assload of talent and is awesome. The 80’s had a phenomenal depth of talent and variety.
That Nirvana song sucked ass. Lazy, slow, low-talent, boring, Utter Wimp Rock. Is that supposed to be a solo at :51? Ha, ha, ha. Wimp Rock, bad.
By contrast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fAi8Jc2hrw&feature=kp
Nirvana killed real Rock by letting hacks with no talent get airplay and concert dates. The people who listen to my song beat up the the people who listen to yours.
Here’s how to write, arrange and produce a song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdQDXs75Ulo
Lemmy would beat them all up.
Ace of Spades
Motorhead is fun.
Also, I’m occasionally irritated that Pandora gives me Lionel Richie ballads because I seeded a station with “Brick House” by the Commodores.
So put “September” in there, and see if your selection improves.
“I’m not going anywhere in particular with this.”
I see. The technical skill and imagination of the mainline 80’s bands blows away one-chord Punk. Mister Mister, Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, Eurythmics, INXS, The Outfield, Azia, 80’s Yes and many others were unbelievable talents.
I forget that Indiana radio was stuck in the Dark Ages in the 80’s. I’ll play songs for Hoosiers that were huge elsewhere, and a Hoosier will never have heard it.
Punk isn’t really that aggressive. It’s loud and raw, but not terribly aggressive.
This is aggressive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhXUutpELRA
Dude, sorry. Accidentally stuck it in the wrong thread right before this.
No problem. This discussion is more interesting than anything that was going on in either of these threads.
I responded to that wrong thread with some superficial thoughts about the Metal Evolution documentary.