The Fort Mac wildfire is horrific. Miraculously, no people have been killed. Saying that the unseasonably hot conditions in Alberta are "consistent with" climate change is not to say that they are "caused by" anthropogenic global warming. But there is no jurisprudential rationale here for requiring that guilt be established beyond a reasonable doubt. On the contrary, the precautionary principle is the appropriate standard for evaluating the possible connection.
A lot of people go on social media to offer their prayers for the people affected by the disaster. There's nothing wrong with that. But what gets the Sandwichman's goat are the sanctimonious edicts against "politicizing" the disaster by mentioning the connection to climate change. "Now is not the time." And if not now, when?
5 comments:
i thought this was an urban renewal project, to get people into non-fossil fuel based energy, and out of those shacks and into descent housing, like in bollywood.
use trees and the boreal forest for fuel.
global warming has been disproven by wattsupwiththat blog (via slutsky's theorem , spurious correlations, which proved that a correlation is the cause; 'men see only what they look at, and they only look at what they already have in mind'--frederick celine in the book 'north', from france---he sided with hitler on the invasion of france).
Another good disproof is from Nicolas Scafetta, of the physics dept at prestigious Duke University (based on slavery and cigarettes) . Using 5th order polynomials he can prove that global warming (the hockey stick) is due to sunspots. also www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0209373 ---'greed is good'
maxwell-botlzmann.
my real estate company is selling alot of the properties in fort mcmurray as 'fixxer-uppers', also has properties in syria and iraq. they don't have a drought there, instead they have a steady rain of bombs coming from the sky. fixxer-upper houses need a little work on them, but use sustainable energy---firewood---for heating. in alaska you're measure of morality is the size of your woodpile (i used to cut wood up there . my woodpile was what i could get out back---go out back and get a bunch of dead spruce and fir trees when my cabin --a squat--hit -15F inside).
i used to use firewood like this in west virginia, and along the yukon river near eagle alska--6 mile walk along the frozen yukon river---u go and get a coffee plus get a 12 mile walk. some say walking is good for your health, especially when its -30F. (people up there thought i was a bit crazy---see 'coming into the country' by john mcphee'---some people in that book partially about eagle alska were still there. i eventually split when the 'yukon quest sled dog race' cut the trail on the yukon river, so i walked to dawson (between 100 and 150 miles, sometimes -45F or colder). one time up there i dissapeared for a couple of weeks to climb some mountains to see the caribous---we got a cold snap and i almost froze to death. found a trappers cabin to stay in but it was unheated and i was too cold to make a fire. i eventually decided since i was getting frostbite i'd have to move. they had a 'cold inversion'---something i had never heard about---it was like -40F where i was in the valley but i walked up the mountain to find food--it was only -15F and warm alot of cranberries, frozen blueberries and snowberries under the snow .
people had sent a plane to look for me and i saw it circling above me. i wondered what it was doing. aimlessly circling around. they didnt catch me. i was busy getting my cranberries and had to walk 12 miles home. they tried to charge me for that rescue too.i told them i didnt ask for any rescue.
it might be nice to put together a relief convoy to fort mcmurray area. it would be some big trucks, loaded with glue, for the native american youth , who sniff that stuff. see on youtube ramones or metallica--'now i wanna sniff some glue, now i wanna have something to do, all the kids wanna sniff some glue'. the trucks could have some alcohol in there for the native american elders. in eagle alaska area, which was a 'dry town'--no alochol--the local athabascan indians (they referred to themselves as half a gas can indians since they used snowmobiles--only people who used sled dogs were white people) used to smuggle alcohol in there on the plane (in winter roads were closed but every week a plane came to deliver mail and transport a few passengers with their contraband).
i hear on radio there were a bunch of shootings in this area today.
probably domestic squabble related or gangs. alot of schools are on lockdown.
I always read your comments with sheer amazement, media. You couldn't be making this stuff up. You couldn't not be making this stuff up, either!
I did make up the fact i had to walk 12 miles back. That was the round trip total--it was more like 6. I never saw the caribous either---they apparently were way past where i made it---somewhere on the plateau---all tundra. (in alaska tundra starts at 3000 feet elevation or less. it was too cold). I stayed in that cabin a week waiting for it to warm up--my legs were like blocks of ice--so i left.
I had my own little fire up there (had another one in west virginia---this is why my family sees me as error prone; when i see some for a visit, maybe to take a hike or lecture, instead they say no and drive me to a hospital),
I had insulated my first abandoned cabin (there are alot of them in alaska there from homesteading days) with dry moss. I was out cutting wood during the first cold snap in septmeber--- -25F. I thought this was way cool, and it was nothing---i always wanted to know what subzero was like. Had no globves or coat on, and was sweating. Then i got hypothermia, went in and made a fire in my stove---an empty metal barrel with no door. Fell asleep and woke up to see sparks flying out, caught my sleeping bag on fire, then the whole cabin started going up in flames, ran out to see what i could do---no water, everything was frozen. My ammunition was going off too---i traded labor catching salmon in exchange for a 22 and a 30 odd 6 (big enough to kill a caribou or moose, but i only shot it one time---the recoil made me fall down plus even if i got a moose i wouldnt be able to caryy it home; i just got grouse---easy unlike in west virginia; animals and grayling trout in alaska have no hunting pressure in the 'bush' so you can just walk up on them; squirrels werent worth the trouble and i didnt like killing them ).
with no shoes, i decided to go visit friends in eagle--1 mile in the snow. They told me i could get a new cabin 6 miies down ---a big one, almost a mansion. i was careful on the stove after that. had to watch the grizzly bears tho. 2 people had been killed there since the also kept their salmon in the refrigerator--- outside. i met one grizzly but it didnt like my music---i had a guitar--so it ran away. my music does this i've noticed. 'velvet underground, fear...' I once went to ladack india; had the plane ticket but only 2$ in cash.lied my way through customs as i did on the way back--la guardia airport was funny --they wanted to check out my book 'abraham and marsden, math methods in classical mechanics'---they didnt find my contraband. i told them i had been on a spiritual quest to see my guru. went from bombay, to taj mahal, to delhi and visited the quantum biology group there---they told me i should go back to usa and do some experiments to prove that ELF has biological effects (Frohlich model of bose-einstein condensation in biology 1968, science mag---fairly recently disproved again in PNAS--roger penrose discusses this). i tried to go to tibet but i was sick and had left my shoes --i figured if tibetans can walk in snow over the himalayas, i can. military told me turn back.
then i walked with a buddy over the himalayas to manali and went to veranasi (benares)---land of the dead--the ghats, and center of opium production in india. alot of europeans get stranded there, and strung out. They put a road now on the trail we walked, but its closed half the year.
Interestingly, Fort McMurray looks like a modern suburban town. Places i was at like Dawson , yukon and eagle ak didnt. Williston N Dakota (half my family is from N Dakota---see on youtube 'a tour of streater n dakota) looks same way. Energy makes the world go round. Maybe Peter Victor, or P Antonelli (Edmonton, math bio) might like to work for my company fixing up the fixer-upper houses i am selling.
Sandwichman:
I am always interested in reading the comments on your posts too! Interesting stuff.
Re: "global warming has been disproven by wattsupwiththat blog (via slutsky's theorem , spurious correlations, which proved that a correlation is the cause; 'men see only what they look at, and they only look at what they already have in mind'--frederick celine in the book 'north', from france---he sided with hitler on the invasion of france)...."
I haven't heard of the wattsupwiththat blog. I'm checking it out now. It seems to have an incredible readership.
'Global warming' doesn't need to be disproved. It needs to go away.
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