Comments on: NYT’s Tom Friedman is wrong: We are NOT (yet) the people we have been waiting for to solve global ‘weirding’

By: Earl Killian

Earl Killian — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:29:46 +0000

There seem to be plenty of suggestions for alternate terms to global warming, but even JMG’s suggested “climate derangement” seems a bit technical. What about “climate wrecking”? “Wreck” is a good old English word.

By: CMann

CMann — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:18:45 +0000

This kind of goofy writing from Friedman is what made him such a laughingstock w/r/t Iraq. It’s just typical him. Though he may do better on GW, it’s best to remember to filter him through appropriate BS/egotist goggles.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:11:13 +0000

John Mashey,
Very nice expression of trend and variance.

Joe,
I don’t understand your criticism of Friedman. It seems to come from a fear that the people might solve this global warming problem without much need for the government’s revenue grabbing presence. This is an example of contradictory complexity. Your solution requires the institution of a massive global government run system of tax trade-offs and penalty avoidance schemes. Corruption and bureaucratic bumbling aside, such a system is years away and guaranteed to be deeply flawed. As shown by Kyoto, even a ten times better program would not have much effect on 21st century temperatures. Yet, you say this system is necessary to force the use of non-carbon based energy. Friedman and others are saying that maybe it isn’t. You label this belief Delaying. That is a misnomer. Technos fervently desire accelerating into the marketplace the technologies we developed in the last 30 years. Artificially raising the price of carbon based energy is not the best nor only way to achieve the goal.

By: JMG

JMG — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:28:08 +0000

I would use climate derangement before destabilization — anything to avoid the long Latinate ending that makes peoples’ eyes glaze over.

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:03:39 +0000

I think this is just an attempt to get around a widespread problem, which is that people don’t use statistical expressions very well, and in particular, the differences between:

1) No trend in mean or variance. [OK]
2) No trend in mean; increasing variance [trouble] [weirding]
3) Upward trend in mean; no change in variance [trouble] [warming]
4) Upward trend in mean; increasing variance [bad trouble] * [warming & weirding]

Even with the simplest interpretation (just temperature, and just in one place), anything but 1) can cause trouble. As an old farmboy and current skier, I hate high-variance unpredictability, which can ruin crops or ski-seasons, even if the season’s averages are fine. Of course, those are minor compared to the effects of one bad hurricane.

Anyway, I’m not sure “global weirding” is such an awful phrase, as it may stick in people’s minds better than: “Increased temperatures will increase variability of temperature and rainfall, as well as the probability of extreme weather events.”

By: Ronald

Ronald — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:35:01 +0000

I read the Tom Friedman article and I had the same reactions. I remember buying a book on electric vehicles a person could make themselves with all sorts of different batteries and generators. It’s got to sell to the main stream that’s hard.

Which also forgets that there are very good engineers in, to mention 2, Japan and Germany, who have larger incentives for years to develop these plug-ins and none are still available for purchase.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:19:46 +0000

I remember a few years ago that some people in the science community and science magazines wanted to change the name Big Bang to something else because that name hardly described the start of the universe. Months of discussion and contests and Big Bang was still the best name for it, they couldn’t find a descriptor-name. They had gone thru many name combinations.

Have a contest for a better name than Global Warming? Maybe. What could it hurt and the contest itself might give it some publicity and it could be educational by describing all the possible things it could affect to get a descriptor-name?

Of course some will want to call it ‘The Biggest Hoax ever perpetrated on American People Thing’ but you can’t please everybody.

By: Max Kaehn

Max Kaehn — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:05:44 +0000

I’ve also heard “climate destabilization”, which sounds sufficiently ominous.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:26:09 +0000

Weirding is being incorrectly defined. It is not pejorative. It connotes an often contradictory complexity. I’ll bet Hunter Lovins read Dune.

By: JMG

JMG — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:31:13 +0000

I have had good luck with both “climate disruption” and “global heating” (lifted from Lovelock, who points out how comforting and friendly “warming” sounds).