“Making it rain” is just a euphemism for a water delivery system—in other words, through human ingenuity, irrigation is providing water at a time and location when/where Mother Nature has not. Thus we have altered, the microclimate, at least, of the field of crops.

Additionally, I am not suggesting that campfires altered the global climate, just that we humans have been altering the climate at different spatial scales, for a long time…basically since we have been humans. So a human alteration of the climate shouldn’t be, by default, considered a bad thing—which, I think, is the view that some people are taking on the of global climate change—If humans are responsible, it must be bad and we must stop.

-Chip

“Consider that humans have been altering our climate ever since we first moved into a cave and started a fire to warm ourselves. In fact, it is highly probably that without our climate modifications that 6.5 billion of us would not currently inhabit the earth.”
I think what we “may” be doing to our climate now (if the AGW theory is right) would vastly outweigh what we could’ve done in the past; 2 billion cars versus a couple of million camp fires?
Forgive me, I oversimplified there, but, you probably get my point.

I like and agree with most of everything else you said. Just… that thing you claimed about irrigation, that sounded really really stupid.

For what I can tell, there has not been a lot of critique of the Lindzen and Choi paper (or at least not a lot that has been made public). There was a critical comment (#16) on my earlier thread on Lindzen and Choi, and a response from Lindzen (#18).

Lindzen and Choi have a longer paper in the works, which provides more detail, but I am not quite sure of its status (perhaps Rob Bradley may have more info about it).

-Chip

I couldn’t even begin to think how to respond to the drivel, so I just joked “Let me know how that works out for you guys-if you need a ride to another planet, just ask.”-I’m “Space Guy” you see, the only aerospace guy in the room.

Anyway, sorry to vent that on you but I just have to wonder why people are worried about “bad advice” that doesn’t alarm people enough, and not about the crap that gets pumped into kids heads that is just wrong?

Incidentally, a while back you asked if I wanted a copy of some work that Michaels, Davis, and yourself of heat related mortality. I was wondering if I could ask for any other papers, like, say:

Michaels, P.J., et al., 2004. Trends in precipitation on the wettest days of the year across the contiguous USA. International Journal of Climatology, 24, 1873-1882.

And on a related note, I was intrigued by the reference in Climate of Extremes of the paper:

Knappenberger, P.C., P.J. Michaels, and R.E. Davis, 2001. Nature of Observed Temperature Changes Across the United States during the 20th Century. Climate Research, 17, 45–53.

And was curious if you guys had ever thought about updating it.