Like a commenter before me, I would question this premise, but if one wants to hold to it one could replace “give thanks” with “be thankful.”

It is the inward act which is of value in any case, just as with forgiveness. The person that benefits from thanks is the person who is thankful and the person who benefits from forgiveness is the person who forgives.

No, he isn’t dumb. His command of language would suggest he’s intelligent but has a different POV.

27. Spectroscope:

Typical interglacial periods last about 8-10 thousand years. In the ’70s, climatologists WERE concerned that we were PROBABLY at the end of an interglacial and should be preparing for another ice age. They didn’t have good data to suggest that was in fact the case, but it was something to think about. When they began to look at GLOBAL temps in earnest, they found data that indicated the exact opposite of their previous assumption, (which really disappointed me, because I’m a down hill skier and was looking forward to more snow. Oh well.)

Over the last 30 some years, average world wide temps HAVE shown an upward inclination of about 1 degree(Centigrade, I believe). This made no sense, because glacial/warming cycles were assumed to be massive changes, so what could be going on that would mitigate another ice age? How could it be so subtle we hadn’t noticed it? Analyses of prehistoric CO2 levels in ice cores in the Antarctic indicated an increase in CO2 since humans became industrialized. Granted, volcanos liberate a lot more CO2 than we do, but that is an infrequent pollutant, whereas our industrial contribution is continuous and constantly increasing, more or less in line with what the ice cores showed. Thus we have a causal connection.

As far as there being little to no increase in temps over the last decade, all I can say is that here in Georgia, the plants and animals all seem to think it’s time to move north. Animal migration from Florida has been about 5 miles/year, for the last 40 years. It’s Nov 28 and we have yet to experience a single day of freezing temps. Historically, that’s quite unusual, at least as far as the folk who have lived here all their lives contend. Personally, I can only consider the last five years.
Granted, a local perturbation says nothing for what’s happening elsewhere in the world, so I guess I’ll just have to trust people much more knowledgeable than myself. I can do that, because I’m a firm believer in the efficacy of the Method to detect and allow us to rectify human error. Besides, I am anything BUT paranoid.

Gary 7

I recently saw an ABC News article about pilgrims on the Haij and Swine Flu concerns. The pilgrims all responded “It is Allah’s will “. IE, Fate and Destiny. That’s not something Americans generally believe in (seeing as “the land of opportunity” sort of implies you can create your own destiny) but a sizeable fraction of the World’s population does believe in Fate. Hard for me to understand but I don’t need to… it’s what they believe.

Comparative religion is one of the most fascinating topics around, in my opinion. It’s interesting to see how the different religions influenced one another through the millenia. Due to personal family history, I tend to be more interested (or at least more informed) about the path of Christianity into Scandinavia. A very interesting story indeed, and definitely one which involved a lot of blood. (And how many Scandinavian Christians still put out a bowl of porridge for the julenisse?)

Can you explain the past decade or so with no warming–even conceded by the leading non-denying climate scientists, where they further concede they cannot explain why this is occurring (which excludes the “climate” versus “weather” distinction)–why this is happening?

I’ve been following this for sometime & it seems to be conundrum (much like the 20 percont or so of annual carbon output that disappears unaccounted, per NOAA). CERN’s CLOUD experiment seems to show some hope for an explanation, or not; given the high calibre of those researchers, whatever they find will be significant given the uncertainties & unknowns with cloud dynamics.

Also, I’ve been watching & hearing so many people (like that actor on a recent Fox News interview) parroting the need to focus on “peer reviewed” scientific literature. But I cannot find any substantial (with objective quantitative data) to rebut the Wegman Report’s findings of a) how limited the climate science community is, and b) how much this allegedly tiny community base their research & findings on each others work–repeating to a significant degree rather than adding to the overall body of knowledge.

SO tosummarize:

- What physical phenomena explain the past decade or so of no warming–what fundamental physics/dynamics are the climate scientists missing?

- Given the emphasis on peer reviewed literature and the observations made in the Wegman Report (which anybody can verify, if anecdotally, via on-line searches & reviews of author references) can you explain how the “vast body of climate science work out there” is really a) that vast and b) not incestuous as implied by bibliographic references… I.E. that this typical for a significant research area.

Those are two areas that either don’t seem to have an answer, or, what readily available evidence is there seems to undermine the assertions made.

Any objective response, supported by equally objecive data, is greatly appreciated.

These “scientists” want to be at the forefront of the reordering of our entire way of life and they’ve one again been caught playing fast and loose with the data and it’s not a major story?

Thank You for one of the best laughs I’ve had all week!

I’m going to have to borrow that line, it’s perfect =p

Why?

Because I strongly feel that the most important entities to give thanks to on this holiday are your family, your friends, and other associates. But mostly your family. Giving thanks to God; well, for those of us who are religious, that can be useful too, but though I’m a Christian, I never considered Thanksgiving a religious holiday. Sure, churches have tried to celebrate it, but attendance is generally dismal. That’s because this holiday isn’t about religion. It’s about *family*. Whatever family you have, which certainly may include people who are not blood relations. (The astronauts in space right now celebrated with their astronaut families, one might say.) And you should give thanks to them. We get caught up in life, and it’s too easy to forget to let them know how much you appreciate what they do in your life. Thanksgiving gives us a chance to do that.

It’s also my favorite time for charitable giving; I see it as thanking my fellow man. People, some of them strangers, were there for me when I needed help. I can’t thank them personally. But I can express my gratitude by giving to those who need it, even if they may never know me.

So give thanks! Mostly, give it to the people who are important to you.

Chet:
Please, don’t wish “Peace on Earth”! It won’t happen. Make it happen.

The Discworld book “Hogfather” (by Terry Pratchett, an author whom I cannot recommend enough) has a wonderful bit towards the end. It also appears in the film adaptation. Susan is discussing belief with her grandfather (Death), and why it is important that children believe in the Hogfather (the equivalent of Santa Claus). He says that people have to start out believing in the little lies as practice so they can believe in the big lies: things like justice, duty, and mercy. She protests that that’s different, but he points out that if you grind the universe down into dust, you will not find a single atom of any of those things. They only exist because people believe in them. The actual line is something like:

YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IN THEM, OR ELSE HOW CAN THEY BECOME?

(Death speaks in all caps.) So yes. Don’t just wish peace on Earth. It won’t happen unless we make it happen. Wishing it is the first step; it acknowledges that we believe it is possible. But we can’t stop there.

Spectroscope is really dumb, isn’t he?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyV5d-aZMbM&feature=player_embedded

So nice to see the AGWers are still with us. I was beginning to think they’d given up(and what would we do if we had no one to wrestle with?).

Glad you appreciate us! It’s always nice to debate big issues with folks & hopefully enlighten some of them.

Greenland ice cap is melting.
East antarctic is melting
Artic is melting,,, But I guess that’s just because we’re entering an ice age???

That’s a reasonably good guess.

In fact, we’re *already* living in a Ice Age – only we’re currently in a warmer interglacial period within this broader ice Age.

As these folks:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

put it:

“From a geological perspective, global warming is the normal state of our accustomed natural world. Technically, we are in an “interglacial phase,” or between ice ages. The question is not really if an ice age will return, but when.

Don’t panic when you hear global alarmists warning the earth may have warmed almost 1 degree in the last 200 years. Although this still hasn’t yet been proven, it is in fact exactly what should be happening if everything is normal.

If Global Warming stops, then you can start worrying! It means our warm interglacial phase is over and we may be heading into another Ice Age!”

So far from messing ourselves as the “Gorebull Warmer” Hysterics would have us do, we should welcome this natural climatic warm spell & enjoy it while it lasts.

Sadly, the planetary warming trend has already passed its peak which happened back in 1998 and the world is now cooling down again just as it was back in the 1970′s.

So I predict its not too long now before the somewhat more-justified hysteria over an ice age starts and people reccomend we desperately *add* as much Co2 and other greenhouse gases as possible to our atmosphere to try to forestall the coming nasty return to Ice Age conditions as our interglacial repreive ends.

Not that it will work – natural processes still massively outweigh any human impact. For instance, 95% of Co2 emissions come from sources such as volcanoes and so forth. In fact, the world’s natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

The drivers of global climate change are natural variation cycles in the Sun (eg. sunspot and esp. maunder and other sunspot minima), the Earth esp. its orbital eccentricity Milankovitch cycle, and other astronomical and geological cycles. Humans did and can sqaut against these over-rising natural phenomena & anyone saying otherwise is either misled or simply dishonest.

The dishonesty of such Climate “Scientists” has (as noted on past threads here) been exposed via the leaked CRU emails which among other things contain the damming admission by the leading Climate Alarmist & IPCC lead author, Kevin Trenberth who privately confessed to his Alarmist colleagues that the data simply doesn’t show what their climate models predicted:

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. ”

Sadly, rather than admit the Greenhouse Effect scare is nonsense, the Alarmists have tried all sorts of tricks to “hide the decline” and have resorted to outright censorship to continue to hype up the “Gorebull Warmer” scare.

Just like the creationists-IDiots, these pretenders to being “scientists” have tried to change the evidence to suit their pre-judged conclusions rather than change their conclusions in light of the factual evidence which contradicts their politicised, cash-raising quasi-religion.

All this is now on the record for everyone to see. Hopefully those who have most seriously violated scientific ethics and even committed outright fraud will soon face the consequences.

—-

PS. I’m not sure why the BA has, so far, been disappointingly reluctant to blog about this major story and development – are you listening Phil Plait?

Why no blog post here on the CRU email revelations yet?

I know that’s its your blog and your choice & I’m cool with that but we are asking if it is also your ideology getting in the way on posting on this? Its looking somewhat that way to me, I’m afraid. You’ve said you’ll take on bad science on the political Left as well as the Right. Well, here’s your chance to prove it.

Really? That premise strikes me as dubious.

Why can we not be thankful in general without needing anything or one to be thankful to?

Good post BA – I agree with everything else you’ve said there – although as an agnostic rather an an atheist, I wouldn’t entirely rule out at least the *possibility* that God exists.

freaking lulz

Dig in!

So nice to see the AGWers are still with us. I was beginning to think they’d given up(and what would we do if we had no one to wrestle with?).

Greenland ice cap is melting.
East antarctic is melting
Artic is melting,,,

But I guess that’s just because we’re entering an ice age???

1)earth will survive
2) human civilization will survive
3) but a lot of people will be dispossessed (and you just know some of them will want to move somewhere more amenable).

Peace, Y’All,

Gary 7

Selective memory and traditions: THANKS!!!