Is it time to start thinking about Plan B for the transit referendum?

Jeff Leigh

“Judith Curry offers more objective assessment of the temperature measurements of 2014”.

Well, that is one phrase for it. You opened yourself up here.

Curry stated that when looking at the past few years (and she noted which years) that the peaks looked flat to her. Take a look at her blue trend line, the actual data in pink, and the actual trend line in green, in the first graph. If you stop there, some could conclude she has a something.

Now look at the lower bounds for the very same data. Use the same approach as she used on the upper bounds. Pick a few, and see the trend line. OK? Second graph, red line.

Now, answer me something. What is going to happen when the two trend lines cross, somewhere around 2020? Think about what that means, when the lower limit exceeds the upper limit. If you can describe that situation, it would be interesting.

This just shows that taking an assumed trend line from an eyeball of random peaks is nonsense. The trend line isn’t arbitrary, it is calculated. More inconvenient truths for promoters of “the pause”.

Jeff Leigh

I think what I said was that they don’t need to walk to 12th, if they can enter the building on 10th.

Chris Keam

Game. Set. Match. Put a sock in it Taxslayer.

A Taxpayer

In NASA’s press release they stated:

“The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists.”

There was no qualification “most likely” or acknowledged that it was more likely that another year was warmest and the differences between years were less than the measurement error which is why it is only a probability. The only reason to issue such a misleading statement is so that the public believes the warming trend continues. It is advocacy to convince that action on AGW is required. You did the same thing by choosing the NOAA measurements rather than NASA because it makes a stronger case.

Why is this a problem? Because there is no one thermometer that scientists look at and carefully record the numbers. Data comes from a variety of sources and even then the raw data is not used but is “adjusted”. This requires judgement and professionalism which becomes suspect when science becomes advocacy. (the Climategate emails are a perfect example of this).

The graph you provided is not the only one covering this general period. The RSS data graphed over the same period shows no warming trend.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/clip_image002_thumb.png?w=602&h=329

The failure of the climate models right out the gate means we do not know as much about climate change as we thought. The only rationale decision in the face of this uncertainty is to prepare for adaptation rather than spend billions on mitigation that could very well be wasted or even counter productive.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

How ridiculous! Only a Climate Scientologist would say something like that.

2015 was the coldest January through March in the entire record in the 10 Northeast States and DC
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

The eastern Pacific has driven the climate bus the last two years. The warm water moved into the Gulf of Alaska in 2013 and the Alaska ridge pumped down arctic and at times Siberian air down to the Great Lakes and east. A constant stream of clipper storms brought snow almost every other day to the lakes.

In 2014 the warm water was carried south along the west coast and aided by diminished upwelling with a displaced/weakened Pacific high, helped as it did in the mid 1970s, produce the California drought. See the sea
surface temperature anomalies this winter.

Though the media wants to focus on the western warmth and drought, the bigger story has been the cold and snow to the east the last two winters.

Chicago had its coldest December to March in the record back to 1872 and third snowiest winter in 2013/14, Detroit had its snowiest winter since 1880.

The whole Global Warming scam is disappearing into history with disco music.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

Ha, ha! Reduce fossil fuel dependency. That is soooo cute. And you boys are going to cycle around in the rain and compost your poop and stop the sea from rising up and splashing on my little tootsies while I sip a nice pinot on my waterfront patio. Thanks, boys.

India 142,000,000 Registered cars (taxis, trucks, vehicles, buses, motorcycles). 1.2 billion people and a rapidly growing middle class. The largest democracy on the planet. The World Bank estimates a 7% growth next year. 500 coal plants.

Chris Keam

Oh, Lysie. You do so love to be mocked. Quote from wiki, but link to the Cornwall Alliance for the LOLs.

You should coordinate your comments with Taxflailer. Creationists are persona non grata amigo.

D’Aleo is a signatory to the Cornwall Alliance’s “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming”.[4] The declaration states:

“We believe Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception.”[5]

http://www.cornwallalliance.org/2000/05/01/the-cornwall-declaration-on-environmental-stewardship/

Chris Keam

“A study of 20th century snowstorms published in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, before the big storms of recent years, found that most major snowstorms in the United States occurred during warmer-than-normal years. The climatologists who authored the paper — the late Stanley Changnon, a scientist with the Illinois State Water Survey, David Changnon, a professor with the Northern Illinois University department of geography, and Thomas R. Karl director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center — predicted that “a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.””

http://www.livescience.com/48874-warming-climate-produces-more-snow-storms.html

Jeff Leigh

No, No, No.
Your call for judgement and professionalism is at odds with your approach.
Climategate is not an example of anything here.
Why do you use only the RSS feed when you acknowledge the number of sources? Because it is the only one you can make your talking points around. Why not look at all the data sources in the link I provided you? Why not look at upper atmosphere, lower atmosphere, surface, and ocean temperatures instead of just RSS?
Still with the “warmest year” meme. It was shown above how a debate over different ways of describing “warmest” is semantics. You were given the data. You chose to ignore it and pedal more nonsense.
The only rational decision is to put a price on carbon.

Jeff Leigh

“2015 was the coldest January through March in the entire record in the 10 Northeast States and DC”

And again with the weather. Still waiting for your response to this being debunked previously in this thread.

You are quoting a weatherman. One with some questionable positions (see other posts).

But you did link to first quarter temperatures. Presumably you are drawing on the NOAA site. So let’s see what they say about the first quarter of 2015:

“The year-to-date contiguous U.S. average temperature was 37.2°F, 2.0°F above the 20th century average, and the 24th warmest January-March on record. Record warmth engulfed much of the West, where seven states were record warm, and an additional five states, including Alaska, had temperatures that were much above average. California’s year-to-date temperature of 53.0°F was 7.5°F above average. This bested the previous record set just last year by 1.8°F and was 2.6°F warmer than the third warmest January-March on record that occurred in 1986.”

Reference here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2015/3

Even if we wanted to talk about weather instead of climate change, why would you think that ten northeast states constitute the globe? See the map? Your position offered up seems to be that the small dark blue area is representative of the globe, while the non blue areas are irrelevant. Cherry picking again. And to really get at the global issue (since you referred to it as Global Warming) see the map of the globe for Q1, and tell me how northeast states dominate the picture.
It’s the trend. All this is just noise.

Jeff Leigh

So perhaps when Lysenko charges those he doesn’t agree with and can’t rebut with facts to be members of some made up church, what he is really saying is that they are member of some other church than the one he subscribes to. That makes sense now.

Chris Keam

Speaking of billions and the World Bank:

“In FY2014, the World Bank Group’s climate investments increased to $11.3 billion ($11.9 billion including MIGA), with the World Bank (IBRD/IDA) committing $8.8 billion and the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), committing $2.5 billion. MIGA, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, provided $600,000 million in projects. Together, they had 224 climate investment projects in over 77 countries during the fiscal year.”

A Taxpayer

The debate has never been about whether or not the climate changes or if the planet is warming. It is agreed we are in an interglacial period and of course the temperatures had to of risen or we would still be under several Km of ice. It is a fact that in the past, natural forces have caused these changes and not mankind. It is a fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas – this can and has been proven in the laboratory. However, it is also a fact that CO2 concentrations alone cannot have a significant impact on temperatures. It is the effect of CO2 on other systems that is hypothesized to cause AGW but this cannot be tested in the lab.

So the question comes down to what is the relative effect on climate of the various factors – natural and manmade. The climate models (the number of models only limited by the number of grants researchers can obtain) purported to reflect this relationship. How have they performed?

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-models-global-Tsfc-vs-obs-thru-2013.png
They haven’t. So we should start talking about adaptation as necessary (since climate has and will change whether it is natural or manmade) and not mitigation because if you are wrong then we will not only have wasted valuable resources, we will have to expend further resources adapting to future change.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

I know. You Climate Scientologists hustlers love to fleece the poor! Worse than pyramid or numbers rackets. Look at the corn-for-gasoline rip off. The price of the staple food for all of Latin America skyrockets because Climate Scientologists say we must not eat corn, we have to use it instead of nasty petroleum. The wankerati at their best! Then we have those beautiful twist fluorescent bulbs, neatly packed with – mercury! Save the planet energy but nursemaid them when they blow. What percentage do you guess are recycled and not just dumped into our ecosysstem? I say less than 3%. The rest is a mercury time-bomb in landfills. Slowly seeping into our groundwater. Wankerati criminal backfire in spades!

It’s a business. I guess.

A Taxpayer

It’s good to see you are reading again even if the article is 9 years old and it was established that January to March 2015 was the coldest on record, not warmer than normal, and was accompanied by major snowstorms.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

Chris, why don’t head on over to New England for a holiday. Tell them that Global Warming is a serious issue and they have to reduce their energy consumption otherwise it’s game-over for us all.

After the past two winters they might burn you at a stake.

Chris Keam

If you have a problem with the position the article takes and find it inaccurate then by all means let us know. The article is from November 2014. The study it references is from 2006. I suppose you could find fault in the author for not moving forward in time to know what Jan-March would bring. I certainly hope the revelation that cold winters bring major snowstorms doesn’t blow your mind.

Chris Keam

Oh, I think I’d get a warm welcome. Despite your God-fearing embrace of evangelical weathermen, you might find your clowntrarian position is the express lane to a Salem long pig bbq. All quotes from links found at the
one provided below.

Energy and Global Climate Change in New England

Adaptation Efforts: New England States

http://www.epa.gov/region1/eco/energy/adaptation-efforts-ne.html

“Addressing climate change in Connecticut will present both challenges and opportunities. Connecticut clearly recognizes that the price of inaction is simply too high to bear.”

“A group of New England governmental and nongovernmental leaders are collaborating to help communities across the region become resilient to the impacts from global climate change. These leaders are united by a shared determination to offer support and assistance to New England communities as they learn about what climate change will mean for them and as they take practical steps to become better prepared. ”

“MassDEP is working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global climate change and to prepare for the present and future impacts of climate instability here in Massachusetts.”

“The Task Force recommends that New Hampshire strive to
achieve a long-term reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of
80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.”

“Climate change is a major concern for Rhode Island because of its potential impacts on our coastal areas, drinking water, energy supply, economy and health. ”

“Greenhouse gas emissions associated with human activities are contributing to changes in the climate, both here in Vermont and globally. As a state, Vermont has established aggressive goals of reducing emissions from 1990 baseline levels as follows: 25 percent by 2012; 50 percent by 2028; and, if practicable using reasonable efforts, 75 percent by 2050.”

Chris Keam

Do you ever tire of being proven wrong by the first google result I find?

“While speculation on corn futures to feed ethanol plants did contribute to the price rise, it later turned out that hoarding and price speculation by private grain-trading corporations like Cargill, which benefited from Mexico’s
earlier privatization of national grain reserves, played at least as big a role.1 In fact, Cargill bought a healthy chunk of the late-2006 Mexican corn harvest for 1,650 pesos per ton. It then withheld its inventory from the market, creating an artificial shortage, which drove prices up to 3,500 pesos in January, when it finally began to sell, making a handy profit.2”

http://www.acciontierra.org/IMG/pdf/Food-Sovereignty-in-Latin-America.pdf

Chris Keam

“Of the households that reported having dead or unwanted CFLs to dispose of, just under one-quarter (24%) reported they took them to a depot or drop-off centre, however most households (55%) reported that they put them in the regular garbage, while 13% indicated they still had them. At the CMA level, households in Québec City were most likely to have disposed of them in the garbage (81%).”

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16-002-x/2011004/part-partie5-eng.htm

Lysenko’s Nemesis

And, of course, you promote that sublime crop Palm Oil, for bio-diesel. Vast tracts of tropical rainforest are being slashed, burned and destroyed.

History will not treat these eco-bio vandals lightly.

In 2014, the U.S. will use almost 5 billion bushels of corn to produce over 13 billion gallons of ethanol fuel. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon gas tank with ethanol can feed one person for a year, so the amount of corn used to make that 13 billion gallons of ethanol will not feed the almost 500 million people it was feeding in 2000. This is the entire population of the Western Hemisphere outside of the United States.

In 2007, the global price of corn doubled as a result of an explosion in ethanol production in the U.S. Because corn is the most common animal feed and has many other uses in the food industry, the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, corn-based sweeteners and cereals increased as well. World grain reserves dwindled to less than two months, the lowest level in over 30 years.

Additional unintended effects from the increase in ethanol production include the dramatic rise in land rents, the increase in natural gas and chemicals used for fertilizers, over-pumping of aquifers like the Ogallala that serve many mid-western states, clear-cutting forests to plant fuel crops, and the revival of destructive practices such as edge tillage. Edge tillage is planting right up to the edge of the field thereby removing protective bordering lands and increasing soil erosion, chemical runoff and other problems. It took us 40 years to end edge tillage in this country, and overnight ethanol brought it back with a vengeance.

Most fuel crops, such as sugar cane, have problems similar to corn. Because Brazil relied heavily on imported oil for transportation, but can attain high yields from crops in their tropical climate, the government developed the largest fuel ethanol program in the world in the 1990s based on sugar cane and soybeans.

In 2014, the U.S. will use almost 5 billion bushels of corn to produce over 13 billion gallons of ethanol fuel. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon gas tank with ethanol can feed one person for a year, so the amount of corn used to make that 13 billion gallons of ethanol will not feed the almost 500 million people it was feeding in 2000. This is the entire population of the Western Hemisphere outside of the United States.

In 2007, the global price of corn doubled as a result of an explosion in ethanol production in the U.S. Because corn is the most common animal feed and has many other uses in the food industry, the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, corn-based sweeteners and cereals increased as well. World grain reserves dwindled to less than two months, the lowest level in over 30 years.

Additional unintended effects from the increase in ethanol production include the dramatic rise in land rents, the increase in natural gas and chemicals used for fertilizers, over-pumping of aquifers like the Ogallala that serve many mid-western states, clear-cutting forests to plant fuel crops, and the revival of destructive practices such as edge tillage. Edge tillage is planting right up to the edge of the field thereby removing protective bordering lands and increasing soil erosion, chemical runoff and other problems. It took us 40 years to end edge tillage in this country, and overnight ethanol brought it back with a vengeance.

Most fuel crops, such as sugar cane, have problems similar to corn. Because Brazil relied heavily on imported oil for transportation, but can attain high yields from crops in their tropical climate, the government developed the largest fuel ethanol program in the world in the 1990s based on sugar cane and soybeans.

Numerous crops are grown in the Amazon region for biofuels. Although biofuels offer climate benefits because they are cleaner burning than fossil fuels, their land use impact can be massive, replacing food crops and resulting in an overall larger carbon footprint.

Chris Keam

“And, of course, you promote that sublime crop Palm Oil, for bio-diesel.”

And, of course, I actually don’t. Reduction in fossil fuel use and careful husbandry of valuable non-renewables while improving efficiency for alternatives is a more sensible approach than trying to find new things to burn.

But I surmise that approach might require you to take a long hard look at your lifestyle n’est-ce pas?

Jeff Leigh

It is disappointing to see you citing Roy Spencer as a source for this specific claim, particularly since the blatant errors in it were pointed out to him, and he declined to correct it. Watts Up went one further, by removing comments pointing the deception out. Can’t let facts get in the way of the meme.

What he did was draw the graphs with different start points. He offset the curves, and then claimed that the offset proved the models weren’t accurate. See the graph showing the graphing error, and the link to a fulsome discussion. Looking forward to your rebuttal, since “the models are wrong” appears to be the basis of your position.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-deceit-and-deception.html

Jeff Leigh

“The climate models (the number of models only limited by the number of grants researchers can obtain) purported to reflect this relationship. How have they performed?”

Quite well. When you don’t manipulate the Y axis.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100322194954/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/models-2/

Jeff Leigh

Posted by A Taxpayer: “The debate has never been about whether or not the climate changes or if the planet is warming.”
Good to know.
Also posted by A Taxpayer:
“The fact that there has been no warming for 20 years”
“Despite the good news that global warming had stayed steady or even possibly declined”
“That is of course an admission that the Earth’s average temperature for the last decade has changed very little”
There are lots more, but these make the point.
Sure, change the topic. Do you even know what the debate is about? Given your habit of bailing whenever confronted with data, and coming up with new disconnected talking points, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

What do you think about Bjorn? Is he a denier?

Bjørn Lomborg is the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen.

A Taxpayer

Not so fast. The article questioned some technical choices that Spencer made but did not offer a counter example that would suggest the models were robust in predicting the last 20 years. But if you don’t like the Spencer graph then how about one in an IPCC document which pretty much says the same thing – the models all overestimated warming when compared to actual observations. See page 87.

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_TS_FINAL.pdf

A Taxpayer

You do have to read beyond the first line. The issue is what is the role of natural forces versus CO2 emissions on changes in climate. No warming in 20 years yet CO2 has increased something like 15% would tend to suggest that natural forces play a bigger role than understood by all those climate modellers.
You may not accept it but the debate is about why there has been no measureable warming over the past 20 years, not if.

Jeff Leigh

The technical choice to present the data fraudulently and then use that graph to try and prove his point? And you forgive him that? And defend him? I gave you the data he used without the manipulation. See the link. You went silent. Just answer the question.

Jeff Leigh

“The debate has never been about if the climate changes or the planet is warming”

“the debate is about why there has been no measurable warming over the past 20 years”

Given that there has been no evidence of a slowdown in global warming in the last 20 years the debate, with you at least, appears to be about if the planet is warming. Specifically, whether it has been warming in the last 20 years. Your proof appears to be your claim that it isn’t warming. You were given the data already. You didn’t respond to it.

A Taxpayer

Now who is avoiding the issue which is whether the climate models failed to predict the current observations of temperature. The chart I referenced above is from an IPCC document and there is no doubt that the models failed right out of the starting block. Something wrong with that graph?
So how much are you willing to spend on mitigation based on the faith that these models are reliable forecasts of temperatures over the next 100 years?

A Taxpayer

In the unlikely event the “Yes” side prevails, there will not be a battle as the Mayors and Translink will position the vote as endorsing road pricing since it is in the Transit Plan. Just one more reason to vote “No”.
Having said that, like all user fees I am not opposed to road pricing that has the objective of rationing a scarce resource. A congestion charge that has the effect of encouraging people to choose alternative routes or modes of travel is not a bad thing. The price is set at the minimum amount necessary to achieve the objective. This is much different from road pricing that is used to raise revenue as the price is set at the maximum amount that is politically palatable. And given that there are few viable alternatives(and the transit plan is really not going to change that) and most people can’t choose when they are travelling, it is unlikely that road pricing will have any effect on congestion, it is just another tax.

Jeff Leigh

“Now who is avoiding the issue…”

You are. You are attempting to cast doubt on the climate models. Your main thrust is that “there has been no warming for 20 years”. The event you linked to in order to try and prove your point (climatechange2013) includes this nice summary statement:

“Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1).” Your own links disprove your claim.
Yes, I looked up the graph on page 87 that you seem to think is a smoking gun of some kind. It is about short term weather changes. They call it Near Term. If you take a model that is designed to predict longer term trends, and shorten the window, you can find variance. That is normal. What matters is what the model was designed for, which is a longer term trend line.
It is like your claim of no warming for 20 years. The links you provided didn’t look at temperature during those 20 years. They looked at confidence bands, or error bands. During a short window of analysis (with a resultant few data points) there is lots of uncertainty due to the small amount of data. If you use a highly variable single temperature measurement like RSS, that variability means that during that short period you are analyzing, you can’t prove an increase in temperature or a decrease. I can’t claim warming increased. You can’t claim anything. You certainly can’t claim that warming has stopped. Lack of conclusive evidence isn’t proof of the opposite. Fortunately, we have more data. So add in that additional data, thus reducing the error bands and improving the confidence levels, and what do you see? The trend upward continued unabated. So, continued warming. Which fits well with the observation that it was, well, warmer.
This whole meme came from 2008 or so. With the continued warming since then, resulting in 2014 being likely the warmest year on record, it pretty much doesn’t matter any more. The confidence levels are tightening, and the 1998 outlier is less of an issue. Just wait until the next real El Nino. The noise will die down really fast then. This is the last gasp of the claim that it isn’t warming, because time solves the problem for us.
Whatever you think of the author, the quote “In the age of information, ignorance is a choice” seems appropriate.

Jeff Leigh

“So how much are you willing to spend on mitigation based on the faith that these models are reliable forecasts of temperatures over the next 100 years”
I would use the word “confidence” since it is based on knowledge, rather than “faith” which relates more to hope.
This should be a wide public policy discussion, but it is difficult to get it started when some are still in denial. They sidetrack the discussion away from mitigation relative to adaptation, with bizarre claims. One can only conclude that the purpose of those distraction efforts is to avoid the real conversation.
I think of the rule of holes. First generally acknowledged rule, when you figure out you are in a hole, is to stop digging. We are in a hole called climate change or global warming, take your pick. The evidence we have shows we are the primary cause. Most analysis shows that the cost of adaption (learning to live in an ever deeper hole) is reduced by mitigation (stopping digging).

A Taxpayer

“What matters is what the model was designed for, which is a longer term trend line.”
There is a slight problem with this position. If the models are only useful for predicting a longer term trend than 20 years, then we will not know if the models were accurate in their prediction of the trend until we experience the longer term. Since the value of a model is only as great as its ability to make accurate predictions, this would render them pretty much useless because we do not know how accurate the models are. Just another argument in support of adaptation to climate change as it occurs rather than attempting to mitigate an uncertain risk based on unproven models .

Jeff Leigh

The models are more precise than simply predicting a trend line. They also predict a confidence band. That gives you the accuracy. You can argue for the upper limit or the lower limit, but there isn’t an argument for doing nothing.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

OK we’ll just make sure that you are only a supporter of corn for gasoline, SUVs with nice bike-racks in particular, we guess.

In 2014, the U.S. will use almost 5 billion bushels of corn to produce over 13 billion gallons of ethanol fuel. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon gas tank with ethanol can feed one person for a year.

Let them eat cake.

Lysenko’s Nemesis

If the ‘Yes’ side prevails and mobility/road pricing is introduced quickly, as the Mayor’s Plan says it will, I expect a battle will be started because nobody reads the 100 + pages in the supporting documents and nobody realizes what will happen.

Everyone I’ve spoke to is completely unaware that road pricing is very much a part of the Plan. They will feel cheated. The wording is quite clear, the vote is for the sales tax and the Plan details. The media is not explaining it because they probably haven’t read the Plan either.

I think Vancouver is dreaming when it talks about congestion. The streets of Vancouver are nowhere near anything like congested cities around the world. Vancouver has a few bottlenecks that can be alleviated by improved road designs. The Massey Bridge will be one improvement. Instead of six lanes going into one there will be better traffic flows. The north end of the Second Narrows Bridge is also going to be improved. This will also relieve congestion and reduce pollution.

A tunnel should be built to the north shore and rapid transit should be part of it.

The whole city is quickly becoming a playground for the wealthy. The CAC squeeze that Vancouver puts on developments, along with all the sustainable obligations only lead to more expensive housing, yet the lefties love it. A tales tax increase only hurts the less well off, as will road pricing. Yet the lefties love it.

Right now the bureaucrats are really well paid, so they think that everyone should be well paid and be able to afford everything as they can. So everything is becoming more expensive. The only solution, if they really care about the poor, is to house them in government housing, and that is exactly what they are doing. The building of social housing is growing fast. Inequality will only grow more with this policy because the less well off in the vastly expanding social housing facilities will never have equity.

Perhaps one day people will look back and see the irony.

A Taxpayer

Adaptation is not “doing nothing” and the longer we stay at the low end of your confidence band, the stronger the argument that the costs of adaptation will be less than the costs of what is proposed to mitigate.

jenables

There’s a multitude of health services buildings on twelfth, they would not all use the same entrance.

Jeff Leigh

“Adaptation is not ‘doing nothing'”

Please see the post you responded to; the topic under discussion was mitigation. Not doing any, your proposal, is what is meant by doing nothing. It is obvious that we are going to spend money on adaptation. The discussion is around what mitigation can do to reduce that cost.

If only we were at the lower end of the confidence band. Just one more model, complete with a range of potential outcomes predicted. Now look at the measured actuals since 1990. Yet we keep seeing silly jokes being made about sea level rise.

Observed sea level rise since 1970 from tide gauge data (red) and satellite measurements (blue) compared to model projections for 1990-2010 from the IPCC Third Assessment Report (grey band). (Source: The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009)

jenables

Hmm, find a comment you made years ago, probably on citycaucus? Don’t you remember posting pictures of empty streets such as *Broadway* and remarking on the lack of cars? It was around that time. You were making a case for bike lanes here and there and yes, you specifically suggested 12th as well. I pointed out to you how busy it was at rush hour and you said it wasn’t that busy the rest of the time. Ah, memories.

jenables

Sorry about my tardiness.. Wrote out a reply before my mobile browser decided it really didn’t like this comment thread and it disappeared before I could post.

You have to question how strong your argument is if you are clinging desperately misrepresenting what I’m saying. If the problem was that they didn’t have the equipment, then they COULD contract it out (not should) however, I did do a little research by calling 311 and found out Vancouver has:
52 snowplows
6 snow blowers
17 backhoes
4 gators
2 bobcats
2 awd plows
2 bombardiers
2 brine trucks
2 graters
2 trucks that can be outfitted with brine units
1 pinker
1 large snowblower

You can also find more info here:
http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/vancouver-spends-2-m-a-year-on-fighting-now-toronto-87-million/

I’m hoping by now you can understand the issue wasn’t a lack of equipment, but an unwillingness to use it. I specifically said “in that situation” – the situation where they did not have the equipment, which they do, so moot. The city cuts all kinds of unnecessary contracts – why did they need to pay a company $250,000 to create the “randomly selected” citizen’s assembly in GW ? Does that raise your ire?

A Taxpayer

Like temperature, the sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age so mitigation is not going to stop it. It is just another cost of adaptation we will have to incur. On the positive side, real estate on Point Grey Road should be getting a lot cheaper.

Jeff Leigh

The graph actually shows sea level rise as a result of CO2. it also shows the predictions of a model based on that relationship. So, three points to consider:

1) You claim that models can’t accurately predict the future. Apparently this one can.

2) You claim that we are at the lower edge of the confidence band. Apparently we are not.

3) You claim that CO2 doesn’t have an effect on climate change. This model suggests otherwise.

One graph, three claims debunked.

Chris Keam

Jenables: You really did suggest at first that it could be contracted out. And that was what was questioned. You went on to say that you wouldn’t have all the equipment on standby (as the City currently does) and that the snow budget was used up. Which would answer the question of why equipment was sitting idle. I don’t take issue with you suggesting contracting out (although I questioned the cost-effectiveness and level of service we could expect via a number of links chronicling same). But I don’t think your remarks have been misrepresented, nor is there any clinging going on, although your position shifted somewhat in response to various remarks.

Chris Keam

I suggest to you that you have misinterpreted my remarks. I might suggest twelfth (and Broadway) has plenty of capacity off-peak. I wouldn’t recommend 12th as a bike lane equipped street. I am pretty confident I never have. A hazy recollection of a ‘years ago’ conversation is pretty poor evidence IMO. Ah memories indeed. Very fallible.

Chris Keam

Nope. And pre-emptively… no whale oil, Olive Oyl, mryhh, Phoenix Tears, have I missed any?

There’s plenty of fossil fuels if we engage our brains before we use them.

jenables

Ok Chris are you done nit picking? You realise if you wanted to talk to me this badly, you could have come for a drink with us and not rode this out beyond all belief, right?

Chris Keam

You are accusing me of misrepresenting your remarks. I’m responding to that accusation. I don’t have a huge interest in talking to you. I merely questioned your original assertion about contracting out, as did a couple of other commenters.

I have 2 standing engagements on Thursday evenings that are a higher priority.

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