Here’s a funny article about Global Warming. It’s sort of a David Letterman’s Top 10 reasons to look forward to Global Warming.

On a serious note: I think the author is correct in that whatever Global Warming has in store for us there isn’t anything we will do about it. Unless something cataclysmic happens we’re going to go on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for decades to come. So, sit back and enjoy the show. Oh, and don’t think about invensting in real estate that isn’t at least 20 feet above the current sea level.

Robert J. Samuelson’s op-ed Global Warming’s Real Inconvenient Truth is a very honest look at the Global Warming situation. I believe he’s right in that we can jump and yell all we want but in the end CO2 levels will rise for the foreseeable future. It’s inevitable. Only a catastrophic event such as half of the Greenland’s glaciers sliding into the ocean over night is going to provoke us to really make a difference.Our best hope is in technology. Because weather you like it or not people don’t change but technology does.

If this study is accurate then we could be in for even more gray skies here in Seattle.

If only gay sex caused global warming, an op-ed by Daniel Gilbert for the LA Times, gets at the psychological roots of why people have a difficult time believing in, or planning for, global warming.

My view on the subject is that some people look at their world, synthesize it, and come up with beliefs to support their views. Others come to the show with beliefs already formed. Then they look at their world and view it in such a way as to support their beliefs. The only other recourse is to change their beliefs which can be a scary thing to do. Even changing for small things can be dangerous to their belief structure because if they change one they often realize that the world didn’t come unzipped and maybe they can change another and so on.

I’ve noticed that a crisis in someones life can lead to a drastically restructured belief system. They were forced to change their beliefs about one thing and then it cascaded through all, or most, of their other beliefs.

I try to keep fairly current on the global warming news. I read a few sites, mostly RealClimate and Jeff Masters, and also have a specialized Google News category for “global warming” so that when new stories come out I’ll be likely to see them. The cool thing about the Google News category is that it presents commentaries from both sides of the isle, so to speak. And sometimes I just love reading the people who argue against global warming.

(Note: there are almost zero “news articles” that purport that global warming is either not happening or not happening because of man. There are however many commentaries that try to discredit the theory of global warming. And those commentaries can sometimes be laughably inaccurate.)

I read one just today by Patrick J. Michaels that made the following claim:

What’s going on? Can the news really be this bad?

The answer is simple: No. Not if mathematics is any guide.

Every time some “new” information is added to a weather forecast, it should have an equal chance of making it warmer or colder. In global warming, which is really just a super-long-range forecast, every new finding should also have an equal chance of making it warmer or cooler, or “worse than we thought” or “not as bad as we thought.”

The author spends the rest of the commentary reflecting on the consequences of his enlightened observation.

Mr. Michaels follows the same basic formula that his fellow disinformation spreaders from the Cato Institute - that revered institution of unbiased enlightenment - use.

1. Use a cool tone that sounds like the voice of reason
2. Purport to be applying simple logic and/or mathematics
3. Apply a dash of false logic
4. Misquote a respected scientist who vehemently disagrees with their view
5. Support the idea that there is an academic conspiracy to suppress their own view

So lets take apart his argument:

Every time some “new” information is added to a weather forecast, it should have an equal chance of making it warmer or colder.

Lets suppose that this is correct and that our “new” information is always 100% accurate. I should expect that over time the changes would average out 50% warmer, 50% cooler. So, I start making my measurements and low and behold it just keeps getting cooler. There might be a few days here and there that were warmer than the previous day but I’ve noticed that after 3 months of collecting new information the temperature has dropped by 20 degrees. Oh boy, what ever happened to global warming. We must be headed for a new ice age!

But wait, I started gathering weather data in September. Of course, it’s winter now and that’s why the temperature is dropping. So no, each “new” piece of weather data doesn’t have an equal chance of producing a warmer or cooler affect.

If you were to say, “well, maybe he didn’t mean on a day-by-day scale but a much longer scale.” Okay, then how would he explain the Little Ice Age that Europe went through from the 16th-19th centuries? Or even the glacial periods that have lasted for 100s of thousands of years at a time and then the interglacial periods that last for 10s of thousands of years?

So no, our “new” information is not just as likely to create a warming or cooling affect.

His second mistake, and much more subtle one that many people will miss, is his phrasing: “an equal chance of making it warmer or colder.”

You see, collecting data does not make it warmer or cooler. The only affect the data has is on the model. It does nothing to the environment. But that’s what he implies with his wording.

So please be careful when reading commentaries that sound like the voice of reason in a den of panic. If you want to believe one way or another then you can find plenty to read to support your desired outlook. But if you don’t want to be misled then you’ll have to lead yourself by reading critically.

My friend Collis Ta’eed of FlashDen.net, and many other sites, is organizing an event to help promote environmental awareness. The goal is to get as many people as possible to blog about a single event on the same day.

On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

You can read more about it on the official site.

There was a movie out recently that purposed what it would be like if a comedian ran for president of the United States, and won. You might think that outside the real of possibility but it could happen if Al Gore ran in 2008.

Al Gore’s presentation at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) showed again what an extraordinary person he is and how far he’s come from the “cardboard Gore” days. I remember watching him speak back in the early ninety’s and again during the 2000 presidential campaign and thinking, “Geez, would this guy just lighten up.” And then when he did lighten up for the camera it seemed like he was just acting it out. He didn’t seem sincere. He’s totally different now.

He has said, both before and after the debut of “An Inconvenient Truth” that he has no intention of running for president in 2008. We’ll have to wait and see because this guy would be very hard to beat. He seems much more genuine these days, more worldly, and more at ease with himself. But most importantly he really seems to believe in himself.

From TED: Al Gore, in his own words, “used to be the next President of the United States of America” but has since changed professions. This talk is a follow-up to his now-famous presentation, featured in the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” In it, he outlines what we can do to avert a global climate crisis. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)

About TED

If you’re a doomsday lovin fool like myself then there’s a show coming to the NationalGeographic Channel on Thursday, February 14th called 6 Degrees.

Even if you miss the show the preview videos are good to watch.

Note: I’m playing fast and loose with history here. The details aren’t important. It’s the perceptions that I’m speaking to.

In college I had a professor who was talking to the class about the Napoleonic wars. He set the stage for us by telling us how Europe was transitioning into a modern society and they knew it. For the first time in history people were looking at their present and realizing that it was different than the past.

You know how sometimes someone will ask you how your day was and you say, “Same old. Same old.” That’s how life was before around the 1700s, give or take a few hundred years. Point is that most men and women did what their mothers and fathers had done and that’s pretty much how life had been for generations enumerable.

The point here is that Europeans in the 1800s had a sence that they were permanently different than their ancestors and that maybe they wouldn’t even have any more wars. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Then of course everything went to pot when Napoleon started marching around the continent. Not only were they disappointed that they were back at war but this was really bad. They had cannons and muskets and things that made a real mess out of some really nice estates. Not to mention the raping and pillaging that the soldiers did along the way which is pretty much what soldiers had always done.

So just when they thought they were finally pulling themselves out of the mud they fell into a shit hole.

That’s the essence of what my professor was communicating to us.

I raised my hand and said, “But you know, we did get Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of it.” That pretty much got me a “globber” from everyone in the class including the professor.

My point was that, while it may have been really crappy for those stuck in the mess it’s really pretty far removed from us now. Plus we’ve seen things like the Holocaust and such that makes the Napoleonic wars look like a garden party.

But it was the tragedy of those times that inspired Beethoven’s 9th. That symphony will endure. When the Alps are worn down into gentle rolling hills the air will still occasionally vibrate to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th.

So were the Napoleonic wars bad? Is it appropriate to label something historical in that way? Certainly as we distance ourselves from it we are more inclined to focus on the greatness that they produced instead of the horror they suffered.

So what of today? How will people of the future view the events of today and near future? I think of this often when I think of what might be in store for humanity if global warming turns into a worse case scenario.

Perhaps in the generations to follow they will think of us today, the agents of global warming, as the unknowing saviors of the human race. It could be our actions that in the immediate future will be universally considered “bad” that leads to the next evolution of humanity into a true global society. And so our distant children will be thankful that we blundered yet gave birth to something they cherish.

Then again, maybe we’re all doomed. At any rate. I often think of Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet who said, “There is nothing neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”

I just watched the TED.com presentation by Larry Brilliant, director of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google. He talked about the vast array of problems that face the human race in the years to come: global warming, communicable diseases, poverty, etc. and then how we should be optimistic that we, the human race, will overcome these issues.

His case for optimism is to look back at the success of the war against small pox. I knew that it was a big deal but I had no idea it was such a big deal. Small pox killed more people than all the wars in human history, combined. That’s no small number. But it was overcome and now lies extinct.

Larry isn’t a dynamic speaker but his message is. Do yourself a favor and watch the video.