Scott Adams asked me to put together the five best arguments against climate alarmism. This involves a huge amount of information, and fortunately Scott gave me more than six minutes to do it.
I have been summarizing the arguments in a series of blog posts over the past couple of weeks. The details are primarily in the links provided below.
1. Climate alarmism is based mainly around fear of extreme weather. This concept is deeply rooted in human nature, and has its roots in ancient stories of giant floods, famines and plagues – caused (of course) by man’s sins. Climate alarmists are tapping into that primal fear, and pushing the same idea of extreme weather and floods caused by mankind’s carbon sins.
The reality is that there is no legitimate evidence extreme weather is increasing or sea level rise is accelerating. The fears are baseless.
Details in the link below :
Hiding The Decline In Extreme Weather | The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
2. Climate alarmism is much like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. People may not see any evidence of catastrophic climate change or sea level rise, but their opinion is irrelevant because 97% of scientists believe we are doomed due to global warming. Only a small handful of people whom the press and politicians quote over and over again are allowed to state an opinion, and they are claimed to represent 97% of the world’s millions of scientists.
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
– Michael Crichton
Obama’s claims are baseless, yet politicians want to prosecute climate heretics.
There has never been any survey done of actual scientists which showed anything remotely like Obama’s claims. Obama made his claim in 2013, but a survey of professional members of the American Meteorological Society made that year, showed that only 52% of their members believed global warming is primarily man-made – much less dangerous. (I am not aware of any broad survey of scientists where they were even asked if the one part per ten thousand increase in CO2 over the past century is dangerous.) No group in the AMS survey came close to 97%, and among professional forecasters – less than half believed global warming is primarily man-made.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
What little consensus there is, is based around intimidation of academics and censorship, as I detail in this video.
3. Academics have been making apocalyptic predictions for decades. All have failed miserably, yet they keep repeating the same misinformation over and over again. Had their forecasts been correct, we wouldn’t be here now to have this discussion.
Fifty Years Of Failed Apocalyptic Forecasts
4. Climate alarmism is completely dependent on graphs and useless climate models generated by a small handful of people. The graphs are generated through scientifically corrupt processes of data tampering and hiding data.
A large amount of detail is provided in the blog posts below.
61% Fake Data
Overwhelming Evidence Of Collusion
Extreme Fraud In The National Climate Assessment
Extreme Wildfire Fraud In The National Climate Assessment
Doubling The Hockey Stick Fraud
Fraud In The National Climate Assessment (Part 1)
Fraud In The National Climate Assessment (Part 2)
And climate models have shown zero skill, when compared against reliable tropospheric temperatures.
Failed Climate Models | The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
5. The most important argument against climate alarmism is that the proposed solutions are unworkable, dangerous and useless. They were made without consulting engineers, and have zero chance of success. A robust discussion about our energy future is needed, but that discussion is censored in favor of propaganda.
The Malicious Intent Behind Climate Alarmism
We need to have a serious discussion about our energy future, but news agencies like the New York Times and the LA Times have an openly stated policy of censoring anyone with a dissenting opinion. This is dangerous, un-American and threatens our survival. Climate change is not an imminent threat, but the proposed solutions are.
If there was an actual climate crisis, it would be obvious. Alarmists wouldn’t have to hide and tamper with data.
Tony,
I really admire your work on climate change. I was previously a research chemist and here is my input (not that you need help!): the lack of correlation between the lower troposheric (satellite) temperature observations and atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 30 years falsifies the CO2 driven GW theory completely. The data you presented on the overlap of CO2 and water vapor IR absorption wavelengths is also devasting to the AGW theory from a mechanism perspective.
Take away the CO2 connection and the climate alarmists have nothing to study.
Isn’t it true that the CO2 theory of runaway warming was propounded by Hansen based on the discovery that the super-heated Venusian atmosphere is consists almost entirely of CO2?
Maybe someone should have told him about the irrefutable facts presented by Velikovsky which led him to make the greatest CONFIRMED prediction in the entire history of science!!
Of course, Venus has a hellish surface temperature with a nearly pure CO2 atmosphere. 1) Venus is a lot closer to the Sun 2) because of (1), it has no water. Dummies abound, and yes, there is no life on Venus. Lead runs like water there.
Venus is hot because of the high atmospheric pressure, which is 90 times higher than Earth
PV = nRT
My favourite chart of Tony’s is the one of CO2 versus adjustments made to temperature – almost a perfect linear correlation.
Thats my favorite chart too. Their hands got caught in the cookie jar there.
That’s my favorite, too. There is no plausible explanation of the near perfect correlation.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/USHCN-FINAL-MINUS-RAW-TMAX-Vs-CO2-1917-2016-GHCN-US_shadow.png
This is such a smoking gun that I am amazed it is not better known. If any CAGW supporters can give even one good reason why adjustments to raw data correlate so closely with CO2, please post it. I have honestly tried to think of any such reason and have been completely unable to come up with anything which is either scientifically plausible or ethically acceptable.
Many sceptics think that the reputed “97% of climate scientists” are simply wrong. Some sceptics (I admit, I am among them) think that the promulgators at the heart of CAGW are not merely in error, but fraudulent as well. If anyone can reasonably explain this graph it would go a long way to convince me that I am wrong. Please explain it.
No one can.
They name call and quickly turn to scurrilous ad hominem attacks to dismiss it, rather than ever addressing it.
Some just declare everything Tony does is fake.
Some change the subject…misdirection is the oldest trick in the book.
No one can explain it.
Unless it can be shown to not be true, there is only one explanation: Deliberate fraud.
I posted a string of Twitter comments last night beginning with the statements by Karl in 1989 and Hansen in 1998 that the Early 20th century warming had been erased by subsequent decades of cooling.
Then posted the temp graphs which appeared everywhere and were accepted by everyone as the trends in temp over time for the US and the NH and the globe.
The posted the graphs as they had been altered at various points in time, eventually completely contradicting everything that anyone in prior years had ever said, but appearing to show that historical records backed up CAGW.
By the time I posted the adjustments vs CO2 concentration graph, the Twitter warmista troll army had descended in force.
Every fallacy and misdirection ever used came fast and heavy.
Thier obvious strategy is to clog a comment thread with so many repetitive comments that no one will even notice or be able to follow anybody posting a chain of evidence such as the one I did.
Below all of it, is another subtext: No one can explain how an entire large geographical region like the US can trend one way over a hundred+ year span of time, while the globe as a whole trends another way.
Given the jet streams and the speed of prevailing winds carry air masses around the Earth, I do not think it is possible for this to be the case.
If it is the case, then how can Antarctic or Greenland ice cores be taken to represent what the rest of the planet world was doing? But we know by several independent lines of evidence that they do.
So then too must the US unadjusted time series graphs be taken as the best evidence of global temperature trends over the past 100-140 or so years.
Yep. It shows data was fit to a model, based on someone’s predetermined theory, contrary to the accepted process of fitting a model to the data.
The only two reasons I could come up with for the close fit between adjustments and CO2 concentration are these.
1) Fraud. Data is being “adjusted” (ie, faked) to fit the CAGW hypothosis.
or
2) One extra molecule of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of air makes temperature measurements, whether liquid in glass or thermo-couple, read roughly one half degree too low. Even more mysterious, that extra molecule in the present makes thermometers in the past read one degree too high.
Hmmmm…. One or two? Which makes more sense?
(Seriously though, for any CAGW believers out there. How do you explain this? Isn’t this correlation too strong to ignore? If you saw a similar type of monotonic “adjustment” done to your bank account withdrawals, wouldn’t you call the police? No?)
My education is as follows: BSc Astrophysics from Edinburgh University, followed by honours-level work in computational and mathematical modelling at the Open University. I have worked as a consultant for Pfizer. While not being a climate specialist, I do know about data.
I accepted the ‘consensus’. Until my daughter turned 16 and out of interest, I got hold of the raw temperature readings for stations around New Zealand, where we live, to see how much temperatures had risen over her lifetime. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the trendline was down, not up. I then looked at the trend over the time scale of the data, around 80 years. I was expecting to see a ‘hockey stick’ but no hockey stick. A slight upward trend was visible but it was not statistically significant.
I then obtained sea level data for the south coast of England, where I grew up, and again: big fat nothingburger. Millimeters of rise over a century, which were probably due to the fact that south east England is supposed to be gradually sinking. I’m also not convinced that sea level can be measured that accurately.
I wanted to repeat the exercise when my son turned 16. I hadn’t kept the NZ data, so I went back to the same site (NIWA) to download it, but it had disappeared. I wrote to NIWA to ask for it but they weren’t able to provided.
My conclusion from my work is that ‘Climate Change’ is a political invention.
Rob,
The problem is that your children were not born in 1979. If they were you would see how much warmer it got in the following two decades. Also, the data becomes immediately available if you request a starting point in 1979. It signals to the record keepers that you are trustworthy. They won’t think you want to do something funny with their data or try and find something wrong with it.
It is exactly what you conclude it is Rob.
The evidence is overwhelming.
The revisions to historical data and the elimination from public scutiny of the original time series graphs/data is only the (perhaps) most glaring and galling aspect.
Freeman Dyson chaired a Working Group at Princeton in 1968 that found the same thing about the CO2 and water vapor overlap.
Alf I believe you are correct. ALL CAGW warming is suppose to propagate down. So, regarding GHG warming it is measured at that level by the satellites and weather balloons, and that warming is 1/3rd of the model mean. Therefore any additional warming at the surface CANNOT cone from additional GHG.
A great summary…
And there you have the groundwork for numerous dissertations in psychology/human behavior, economics/poly sci, physical sciences, and even religion/anthropology if there’s any serious graduate students reading.
You might also find this interesting, as the pattern is almost identical over a similarly portentous and scientifically “settled” issue:
The Sugar Conspiracy
In 1972, a British scientist sounded the alarm that sugar – and not fat – was the greatest danger to our health. But his findings were ridiculed and his reputation ruined. How did the world’s top nutrition scientists get it so wrong for so long?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin
All the same elements were in place: Skeptics questioning the data, skeptics pilloried in public, destroyed careers and reputations, poorly conducted correlation studies, cherry picked populations to support the thesis, corrupted peer review process, corrupted scientific institutions controlled by a few scientists, corrupted granting agencies, glib congressional investigations, and guileless, mostly scientifically illiterate public dependent on what they read in the mainstream media…
Just substitute “climate change” for the “fat – heart disease hypothesis” and your are looking at almost an identical corruption and social-scientific pathology…
You are absolutely right. I frequently point out the similarity between the two. In particular, the lack of a credible hypothesis in the first place but also the way you can never nail either one because every time you refute it, the theory changes. What you might call the sticking plaster technique.
It’s dietary cholesterol…no, dietary fat…no saturated fat…LDL…HDL…ratio of the two…Mediterranean diet…eggs bad…eggs protective…
Ice age coming…global warming…ozone layer…acid rain…climate change…hotter…colder…wetter…drier…more/less extreme events…
What I find so interesting about that, is that the final verdict looks to be 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
So how is it even possible that the contrary “evidence” could have been excluded and discarded for so many decades? And, supposedly, as we live in an enlightened scientific age that is devoted to the scientific method, reason and logic… our scientific institutions are supposedly setup to prevent things like that from happening.
And the fat hypothesis vs sugar hypothesis was not politicized the way climate science is, so politics adds yet another dimension.
It is all very fascinating to watch…
I think Richard Lindzen really put the pieces together in this article:
Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?
Richard S. Lindzen: Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of Chapter 7, “Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
http://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Lindzen12-March-ClimateScienceNOTansweringQ.pdf
It is a useful article to help one understand what went wrong with the fat-heart disease hypothesis as well.
How are major fields of understanding sometimes so wrong? The truth is, science is really hard. Not merely difficult, but really truly, fundamentally difficult, and the reason is, the practice of real science goes against some of the most basic and fundamental habits of human thought. The practice of science requires a level of rigorous honesty that very few people, maybe one or two out of a hundred, can achieve. For most people, it is so much easier, so deeply ingrained into their thought patterns to follow things like herd mentality, self interest, inflated self worth, that the ability to look at facts and data objectively is as rare as the ability to run a four minute mile. Some people can do it, but not very many. There is a reason why we can look at the history of human civilizations for the last few thousand years and not find science as a rigorous, distinct field. Western civilization over the last 400 years is a rare and perhaps even unique set of circumstances that encouraged the growth of scientific study.
Jason Calley: And, then there are the folks that ‘game’ the science or presentations: replacing peer-reviewed text in summaries with the opposite conclusion, omitting certain countries from dietary studies, truncating results from tree-ring series, disabling air conditioners and opening windows on hot presentation days, predicting ‘permanent drought’ a few months before very wet conditions; and egregious exaggeration by politicians whose locations are sinking or are unprepared for normal-range precipitation or tides.
All of this happens, all the time.
These people will claim that we are rank amateurs, not qualified to interpret the data. That our charts are vastly different from those produced by the “experts”
Thus it is very important while having our debates to make it clear that our data is simply pristine data, available to all, that any interested 6th grader can easily access and analyse. That it doesn’t require advanced degrees in statistics or climatology to make such an analysis.
Hey Steven! “And, then there are the folks that ‘game’ the science or presentations:”
Yes, absolutely! Those are the worst of the worst! They are to science what a sociopath is to polite society.
“All of this happens, all the time.”
Sadly, it does indeed, and is the norm rather than the exception. Science — and objectivity in general — is hard! P.D. Ouspensky once wrote (if I recall correctly) that, “the study of human psychology is the study of lying.”
The success of science and engineering (19th and 20th century) is what lead to its current failings.
First, the great advances resulted in increased standard of living for millions: i.e. they were very valuable in money terms.
Second, science and engineering are difficult and require high intelligence and ethics: i.e. relatively few will be capable of competent practice.
The first (above) lead to a demand for greatly increased numbers of scientists and engineers above the level that the second (above) allowed.
Good one! Similarly, I have this suspicion that the anti-smoking campaign was a trial run for mass indoctrination for the One World Religion. I was mildly entertained to see it used to “support” climate sciencery (the magical branch of science where Truth depends on your budget) as well as the Fake News censorship protocol, or Anti-Revisionism. The introduction of bible study and hollowcause history for schools is the holocau$e industry catching up on this technique. But now we have people like you, to take note and comment, thank you.
Speaking of “one world religion”.
Already 60 years ago there was a movie made(oceans 11) with
a temple for all religions.
The symbol of this temple was the all seeing eye that can be found on a dollar note.(can be seen at the end of the movie)
“The only fear is fear it self.” There will come a time, in five or two billion years where the sun it self; Our steady, dependable, fusion reactor will fade.
Then the weather will calm down, and no wind will be heard.
I noticed yesterday afternoon that the Sun became noticeably dimmer after about 6:00PM or so. If this trend continues, I predict that the Sun will go out completely by midnight tonight!
Um, actually the sun will expand to a red giant phase after it moves off the main sequence, and will envelope the Earth.
There will be something like four pulses of growth and contraction as various elements fuse and are subsequently exhausted in the core and various shells surrounding the core.
At some point it will throw off a planetary nebula, and what is left will be a white dwarf.
Stars to not simply fade away when they exhaust the hydrogen in the core, they evolve.
The evolution of the Sun will leave no chance Earth will remain intact.
I am planning to move to one of the moons of first Jupiter and then Saturn if it gets a little too hairy around the Jupe. The Sun will be getting a lot brighter even before it expands to engulf Earf.
Tony, here is the CO2isLife Top 5 plus Bonus Items:
Response to Scott Adams; The CO2isLife Top 5 Skeptical Arguments
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/response-to-scott-adams-the-co2islife-top-5-skeptical-arguments/
I wish more bloggers would take up the challenge.
Nice that you added the 7000ppm vs the current 400ppm quote,
as i think even average joe realises that ,when even a 17* higher co2 concentration was not able to cause a runaway effect in millions of years a 400ppm will fail to do so in a hundred years.
What i do miss is that both of you did not bother to highlight the canary in the coalmine;
the mainstream climate science vs mainstream climate science paradoxen,
that the very same scientists who predict global warming were the ones that predicted global cooling(they now try to forget) using the very same fearporn scenarios in both cases
Yea, no matter what the event, the solution is always the same:
1) Less Freedom
2) Centralization of Power
3) Higher Taxes
4) Lower Efficiency
5) Leftists in Power
Fistbump to you sir ?
Another fistbump
It was the 97% consensus claim that pegged my BS meter so that I began to pay attention a delve deeper into the matter.
Remembering Alfred Wegener:
Alfred Wegener was a Meteorologist. In 1905 he noticed that the continents seemed as though they should fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He started studying geophysics and geology and pursued his idea that the continents as we know them were once part of one large super continent. . He published a work in 1915 titled The Origin of Continents and Oceans. The work used the pattern of a the jig saw fit, the geological fit, and fossil evidence to propose that land masses move and had all at one time been a part of a large super continent we call Pangia. IOW he proposed continental drift.
Despite the fact that he provided plenty of evidence to support his theory people thought he was nuts. The Royal Scientific Society all but laughed at him. Nobody took him seriously because the “scientific consensus” was he was a kook and there was no way huge landmasses could move. Wegener died in 1930. During the 1950’s scientists using technology developed during WW II were studying the ocean floor in the Atlantic and came to realize that the floor of the ocean was younger than the rest of the crust and had to answer the question why? And thus the theory of plate tectonics was born and Wegener proven correct all along.
So much for the scientific consensus. It is those theories that challenged the established dogma which have, once proven correct, advanced our understanding of our earth and universe the most.
Ironically, Al Gore used the continental drift theory to debunk consensus in An Inconvenient Truth, then he used the rest of the movie relying on the Consensus. You just can’t win with these Climate Alarmists.
Wegener got his ideas and did much of his research as an assistant to his Father In Law, Wladimir Koppen.
Koppen was a polymath who focused much of his life on issues pertaining to physical geography, although he seems to be referenced most often as a botanist.
He travelled the world and made many discoveries, much of the time with Wegener by his side.
He is most famously remembered for developing the system of climate classifications that remains the most prevalently used one in the world today.
His classifications were based mainly on factors pertaining to plants, such as what could survive where.
Your referring to the Koppen-Geiger Climate classification maps. A source that on reflection, I wonder why Tony hasn’t referenced much if any because it really shows cyclic change.
http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/
Geiger made later revisions to the original Koppen scheme of classification, after Koppen himself had made two revisions while he was alive.
There are some valid criticisms of the system, and the main one is that the categories are overly broad. The Cfa climate zone for example. Places as disparate as Western Nebraska, Cape Cod, South Central Florida, Southern Gulf Coast of Texas…and most places in between, except the tops of the Appalachian Mtns.
Heck for this truck driver, it’s already a chore to work the five major facies and their subsets used. The real value to the layman like me is observing how the maps have changed or not changed over time. Here are two of them from two different periods and one really has to look to see the differences.
Here is the one from 1901 to 1925
And here is the one from 1951 to 2000
I agree, the differences are very minor.
Also, the cutoff points are knife edge straight, so all margins and many areas not at the margins are quite borderline.
I like the map for 2046-2070 best. This is a complicated world and we must tell the plants where they are going to do best in the future. A little planning on their side goes a long way.
Wegener actually was aware of the mid-Atlantic rift and had speculated that the sea floor crust originated at the rift from material upwelling from below, and that the sea floor spread out from this point to either side.
He never included these ideas in his later work or papers, or perhaps it might not have taken over 40 more years for his ideas to gain a closer look.
Interestingly, during those 40 years, the establishment in the field of Geology worked vigorously to prevent anyone who wanted to investigate or propound the idea of drifting continents from working or teaching in the field.
It was a virtually identical process of eliminating a competing idea by censorship and banishment, as is seen in the current climate science orthodoxy.
Basically, if a grad student or anyone else proposed study of or work that even hinted at anything akin to moving continents, they were discouraged, defunded, scorned, fired, and discredited. They were most assuredly not allowed to publish their ideas.
I wonder what was thought about the formation of the Alps and the Himalayas prior to the tectonic theory…
The theory in vogue at the time is that of “geosynclines;” that mountains were formed by the crinkling of the earth’s surface as it cools and shrinks, much like a drying orange. Plate tectonics was rejected because there was little knowledge (at least acknowledged knowledge) of the structure and nature of the earth’s interior, or of radioactivity that has kept the interior a hot turbulent fluid for billions of years, or of the mechanism for the formation of granite which is lighter than the interior materials and so floats on top. It was also rejected by the overbearing arrogance of the geosyncline theorists who would not admit to even the possibility of an alternate theory much like the overbearing arrogance of AGW theorists who insist on the CO2 control knob theory today. Wikipedia has a nice article on the subject.
I am not a scientist, but I want to tell you something. I have worked with a therory since 1988, but I have given up the work now, because I’m a little unsteady in English. If you take Africa and put this continent into South- America, it fits together. If you drag Australia and India down to Antarctica, so those continents are clustered togheter, and then rotate everything around one one axis with Panama in the middle, everything will fit perfect toghether around the earth like a perfect “belt” close to Equator. Wegener got this from pole to pole
My wish is that some scientist continue where I left off, the only thing I want is my name on this theory that I have been working on for so many years. I provoked geologists to do a reanalysis because I claimed their measurements were wrong and here’s the result, but they try to take the credit for this. A professor I had talked to for many years and who was my worst opponent, he initiated this investigation to prove that I was wrong. Afterwards, he appeared in the media and said that he had found that the continents were gathered at the Equator as I have claimed for many years. I sent him a copy of our conversations, and since he has been quiet.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15921483.500-magnetic-shift.html
Short version in pictures
And yet people believe this Plate Tectonics and Subduction theory because it’s accepted theory taught in geology. While they hold onto the ideology the Earth has been the same size since it formed a mantle. Those same scientific community majorities rejected the Expansion Theory that Adams has presented in video form. It uses the evidence from mapping the ocean floor by age of rock formations. Explains how mountains are formed and why many other theories are lacking evidence.
There are rocks and fossils at the summit of the Matterhorn in Switzerland that match up with those in Africa and not with those in Europe. just one of many places where fossils and rocks high up in the mountains do not match up with the local geology.
In the state of Washington Mt. Stewart is considered a part of the Cascade range but it’s not. The Granite in Stewart is over twice the age of the oldest Granite in the other mountains of the Cascade range. Geology and geophysics is complicated stuff. Thankfully we have treasures like Nick Zentner that are gifted in the art of teaching that can get some of the complicated concepts across, even to an interested truck driver like me.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=nick+on+the+rocks+downtown+lecture+series&view=detail&mid=8E371BF5182C20BBCB598E371BF5182C20BBCB59&FORM=VIRE
Take a few geology classes at an undergraduate level and you will not be left with any doubts about why plate tectonics is so well accepted.
Physical Geography, Earth History…that oughta do it.
There is a very good reason why mapping the ocean floor so conclusively proved plate tectonics.
You can get so much info online now, if you wanted to you could dispel your doubts.
There is a guy who has a bunch of youtube videos who does not believe in convection, thinks that humid air is heavier than dry air. I had a back and forth with him once at WUWT I think it was. He is convinced. I am convinced he never took a class in even high school level science. Show him a video of a growing thunderstorm and asking him if that is not convection..
No man, it is all “vortexes”.
I meant to say physical geology.
You can add the phlogiston theory to that one. Did I get the spelling correct?
(One of) the (most) fundamental reason(s) for the loss of rational self-control as instantiated by CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) is the doctrine’s religious nature. Once you firmly, religiously believe in something you are easily manipulated even by nonsensical claims.
Once CAGW in its present form is abandoned by its followers, a new “ecological” myth will take its place – unless one fundamental belief is dismantled, the belief that man by nature is hell-bent on destroying nature. This assumption has replaced Christian faith. It is a new variant of human sinfulness.
People are easily persuaded by almost any “eco”-apocalyptical nonsense, as long as they cling to that misanthropic assumption.
At this point the climate orthodoxy has painted themselves deep into a corner from which there is no escaping with career or reputation intact.
They have no way to back out of what they are promoting without being totally discredited.
Having no choice but to quit and find other work, change their mind and lose all prestige and credibility, or double down and fight like cornered rats.
Even when their ship starts to sink, they know if they jump off, they are finished.
A wise prson reasoned that we need to provide these people wit a respectable off ramp if the madness is to end. Face saving is necessary.
Spot on.
I agree with those who recognize the “religious beliefs and behavior” aspects of the topic of Climate Alarmism and it permeates not only social constructs but professional advocacy
The parallels are uncanny.
Apocalyptic language
Prophetic pronouncements
Fanatical adherents
Heretical threats
Heroic saviors of mankind
I’m not interested in participating so do not pass the collection plate my direction….
Hi Tony
Back here in the UK we have an issue with a little thing called Brexit. It is the cause of catastrophe and we are all going to starve without medication on 30th March this year. Now among all this political turmoil we have Honda declaring they will close their UK Honda Civic assembly plant and their diesel engine plant with a loss of 1000’s of jobs. The Brexit catastrophists have leapt onto the bandwagon like a rampaging mob despite the Honda CEO clearly stating it was not to do with Brexit but global demands to reduce emissions and go electric (they ignore the fact Honda are closing Turkey as well). Now I literally saw with my own eyes all the big car manufacturers in this country (and we don’t have many) invest millions with government subsidies to build new advanced diesel engine plant to put in our cars to save the planet. Creating 1000’s of jobs and apprenticeships, a brave new world upon us. But now diesel is the pariah. They can’t sell the cars, they don’t have an alternative so what do they do but centralise and consolidate to develop new electric vehicles in their home markets. Europe is a small market for Honda, SE Asia and China are huge in comparison so what Honda have done makes commercial sense. Now this is my point; it seems to me that every major change in the global car market has been driven by climate change policy. First bio-fuels, then diesel and now electric. Ever increasing demands to reduce emissions that is totally unnecessary. And the result is an urban generation of children with lung issues from diesel (asthma and related diseases have sky rocketed), vast swathes of rain forest cleared for subsidised bio fuels that in the end no one wanted and now a mad dash for rare earth metals to build batteries that destroy Congolese children’s lives mining cobalt and scar the landscape of China and elsewhere. Meanwhile, we have to keep burning fossil fuels to keep the turbines going and light and heat us at night. Every action taken to reduce emissions in the car industry has had very adverse consequences and for us here in the UK it has cost us jobs. Finally the irony of anti-Brexit climate change alarmists screaming at the failure of the government for allowing Honda to leave because of their misguided Brexit policy would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic. After all, they are getting what they wanted.
Indeed, talk about moving the goal-posts. Diesel bad, diesel good, diesel bad…it may be good again soon.
I suggest the car is the most environmentally friendly development ever. Imagine how high we’d be in horse sh1t without it.
Imagine how much coal smoke would be coming out of the steam engines used in trains and heavy equipment. At one time back hoes and drag lines were known as “steam shovels”.
And actual steam shovels were used to dig the Panama Canal. Very powerful machines for their day.
They were used for all the same types of excavation work that the diesel powered hydraulic actuated shovels are used for today. Large cranes were also steam powered.
MGJ,
True, but everyone who has read the Democratic Party’s Green New Deal manifesto can see that we are high in horse shit anyway.
Back in the 1980s, I worked briefly in the Energy and Environment group of OECD in Paris. The French guy in the next office had commissioned a study on fuels for vehicles. Unfortunately the consultant he’d used was convinced that diesel engines were the stairway to heaven, whereas he himself was convinced they were the spawn of the devil (or maybe it was the other way round). Every few weeks they’d have yet another meeting, and I could hear them yelling at each other. At the time I returned to the UK the report still hadn’t been published. Perhaps it never was.
I hadn’t noticed until now that the Obama quotation doesn’t say climate scientists but scientists. Good luck with measuring that statistic!
The 97% was debunked , even the Guardian published that debunking.
I got into it with a guy last night who insists that there is a 97% consensus of scientists and there is no doubt about it.
Another guy today who claims that there is a fresh “tally” done very couple of years to confirm it.
This last one also insists that 97% consensus means that there is a 97% chance that CAGW will happen. And apparently every claim made, no matter how outlandish, is well supported.
His entire online presence is also devoted to the topic of alarmism.
We got a long road ahead I think.
Can I get a cooler planet over here please? NOW!
I believe the 97% comes out of James Cook University in Townsville Queensland Australia. A survey was sent out to (I think) about 3300 ‘Scientists’ Of that 3300 something like a 100 odd replied. These were then screened and unacceptable answers were deleted. That left 74 accepted replies of which 71 said Climate Change was caused by CO2
Hence the 97% – which is itself inaccurate but who is worried about precision?
Just started reading this article. That book cover up near the top, if real, has to be the clumsiest visual ever for a “popular science” book. It literally depicts the earth as flat, with a perpendicular sky. Intentional sabotage at the editorial level?
The AGW hysteria is not going to die down until the alarmists themselves die off. Leftists will go to their graves before admitting they were wrong, about anything.
I especially like the Ehrlich quote. I live two miles from Lake Erie, and it is very much alive, thank you.
Unfortunately, the alarmists will likely outlive the skeptics. The youth of today are being fed a constant stream of environmental alarmism and it is sinking in.
As Tony has shown, the empirical data doesn’t support an alarmist view. I wish it was easier to show why theory rules it out. It seems to me that the ideal gas laws provide an approach. If you increase atmospheric CO2 by .03%, what happens in the molar version of the gas law. There are on-line derivations that show the ECS is basically zero. The only way to get a big temperature change is if pressure increases 1-2% for a .03% change in CO2.
While there are lots of lab experiments people do to show the greenhouse effect, I would like to see more real experiments. I can’t believe its impossible to create an appropriate real-world test.
I can’t believe its impossible to create an appropriate real-world test.
Actually, there has been a real world test, and the hypothesis failed.
A lot can happen with the weather over the next 10, 20, and 30 years.
It will not take much cooling to blow the whole idea up.
The pause should have ended the bullshit once and for all, but did not for various reasons, mostly having to do with politics.
I am almost sure if a unbiased capitalist had won the White House instead of Obama, the whole thing would be all but discredited and tossed out by now.
But actual cooling back to levels below the 1950-1980 average, along with sea ice and glaciers expanding like in the 1970s, and it is hard to imagine how this crap will not be over.
Everyone in Russia and most of the old Soviet Union had a force fed diet of anti-capitalist propaganda fed to them from all sources for many decades…but how long did it take the people indoctrinated in communism to throw it off like a suit of dirty rags?
No time at all.
People see a lie exposed, and they get angry at the liars who had duped them.
You are doing an amazing job on this every day! A lot of work and always well documented. You are a light in the darkness. Thank you so much, Tony!
Scott Adams needs to also pose his Top 5 Challenge to a CAGW alarmist – not that any would accept. It is clear that none will specify what it would take for their hypothesis to be falsified.
They can’t do that because the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is unfalsifiable. We have learned over the last decades that every conceivable outcome is broadly compatible with AGW.
Droughts, normal rain, heavy rain, floods, no snow, regular snow, heavy snow, heatwaves, extremely normal temperatures, cold snaps, fewer hurricanes, more hurricanes, no hurricanes, bad weather, power outages, inner city violence, boring Broadway seasons, racist attacks on actors, impotence, famines, stupidity, obesity, prostitution, earthquakes, toxic masculinity, less nutritious food, zits, shrinking mammals, lack of mobility, wars, climate migrations, little ice ages, bad mood, Islamists moving to Norway, smelly feet, New Yorkers moving to the sunbelt, pest infestations, beer shortage, rising divorce rates, deforestation and a rapid greening of the planet are all caused by global warming.
LMAO!
I think you have a decent start on the first few items on the list of things that prove CAGW, Wellington.
You forgot rapidly rising global food production that will soon lead to global famine and eating maggot paste burgers instead of steak.
Let me give a response primarily to points 1,2,3 and 5. The models can only be done justice by a proper expert, and that’s not me.
Probably the strongest argument against climate change, is #3: doomsday predictions have come and gone. That is a serious accusation. Science is all about predictions. And Tony is correct: anyone old enough has seen these predictions, and they were wrong again and again.
============
There is a reason for that, and we all have just been reminded of it. In the past weeks, two major stories of hate crimes filled the media. Both turned out to be hoaxes. Why were people so wrong?
Some say it’s because there are no hatecrimes, so the media must use hoaxes. I think we all know that isn’t true. Assholes still exist. Here’s my explanation: the ordinary hatecrimes do not get media attention, because they’re ordinary! “Dog bites man” is not a story. “Asshole acts like asshole; nobody defends him; has been arrested” is not a story.
The stories we hear are the extraordinary ones. “Man bites dog” is a story. But the reason they are extraordinary, is that they almost never happen. They are exceptional cases, in a sea of easily-made fiction. If you see a man biting a dog, you’re probably hallucinating. Hoaxes.
When things go well, this is not a problem: the media checks whether that man really bit a dog, and gets rid of the hoaxes. But when 25% of the public really wants to believe it – including the media themselves – confirmation bias makes them fall for it.
==========
And that is what’s going on here, too. Scientists may predict that temperatures may rise 2-6 degrees by 2100 leading to significant pressures on biodivserity depending on the accuracy of forcings and interven… aaaand half of you are snoring.
Nobody cares. It’s not interesting. Another dog bit a man, swipe left. It doesn’t even get published.
But, a politician says in 25 years a hundred million people will start boiling alive and we’re already too late to stop it, all because of Donald Trump! Man bites dog, clicks are given, and so it gets published. Also, it isn’t true.
==========
How about #1? Actual sea level rise is a dog-bites-man. Sea levels went up by 3 milimeters last year. You can’t even picture that differencee! An inch per decade won’t even scare cats. And what might come in 2100, that’s just too far away.
Likewise, a 22.8% increase in hurricane formation and 14.7% increase in hurricane intensity predicted over the next few decades based on… and, we’re snoring again.
The men biting dogs, are that Hurricane Irma was definitely 100% caused by climate changes (and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault!), and so are the wildfires, and so is the island that’s rapidly sinking beneath the waves. That’s the news. Truth be damned.
==========
How about “97%”? Tony’s wrong here, there is a clear source, a paper by Cook. It’s also irrelevant. Science isn’t a democracy. The number doesn’t matter. What does matter is whether most experts agree generally about the way we understand climate change, and then the answer is “yes”.
The main disagreement seems to be how much humans contribute. Which is important to scientists, and irrelevant to the politics. If humans contribute 2%, but that 2% is the part that disturbs (and thus, can fix!) the balance, then 2% is enough.
So this question is mostly about details. There remain some scientists who keep looking into alternative hypotheses, and they’re vital members who do grateless work to verify we haven’t missed something. They deserve our respect.
I will close this by noting that 97% of pundits severely misrepresent what those 97% of scientists actually agree with. As with all statistics, it matters what exactly is said… but, most readers will swipe left if we try to explain it :).
==============
Summary so far: Tony makes three good points. However, these are points against the way the press and politicians represent climate change. Those would be excellent criticisms that I could readily join him in (minor disagreements aside), but the moment he says scientists are making this error, I think he is making a major error.
And that’s not just a factual error but a strategic one (we’re getting to point 5!). In doing this, he is declaring himself a science denier and declaring the “left wing” science accepters. At least the latter part, is false.
===============
#5 Let me make my own accusations against what’s generally the left wing of politics on this subject:
– 97% of them could probably not explain the basics of climate change. They don’t know what they’re talking about, and as such, cannot evaluate claims, nor proposed solutions.
– Alarmists, as opposed to general accepters, are doomsday prophets who want fantastical tales and would be disappointed realizing the more boring – but true – version.
– Wilful alarmists such as Al Gore, have lied, misrepresented data, and are thereby enemies of science.
– Anyone who claims climate change is an existential threat, who then rules out nuclear power because it’s scary, is either a fool or a fraud.
– A green revolution in the west is worse than pointless. If our companies cannot compete, then the industries will move to those countries that don’t join, and the same products will cretae more pollution, and cost more.
===========
Finally: be skeptical, but don’t be a denier. Climate deniers do not have an explanation for climate. What they have are criticisms, and alternative hypotheses (that is, speculation). But none have been able to demonstrate that these hypotheses actually work out.
That said, on the political side, I actually think conservatives are more likely to be the solution. They may deny the problem now, but acceptance is growing and many conservatives recognize that getting of fossil is worthwile for plenty of other reasons – climate change will be a nice side effect.
What’s more is, conservatives tend to be level-headed, solution-oriented, and once they get off their butss, they get things done. More so, many Liberals (and I do mean actual liberals, not progressives) have started seeing that common ground, and I think a majority can be formed there.
=========
What can be done?
0) Coal is great for poor people. I think we can make progress by promoting alternatives to those who can afford it – voluntarily – while for now maintaining coal for those whose wallets are tight.
1) Progressives should put their money where their mouth is. They can start now by installing solar panels and improving insulation for themselves.
2) The moment such tech becomes cost-efficient (for local users), they could make startups that help poor people install those techs, while splitting the savings. Or even do it sooner as a charity. Everybody wins.
3) Nuclear energy is a great stop-gap. Most fears are based on not understanding nuclear energy. Gen 3 is already very safe. And gen 4 should be even safer. With a little common sense we can have affordable, clean energy for decades.
4) In that time, green energy (and maybe fusion) can be perfected until it simply becomes the most cost-efficient. At that point, the market solves the problem.
5) Climate change is a long-term problem. We’ll solve it either way: as the problem gets worse, public support will shift. The only risk is unforeseen feedback loops. If worst comes to worse, we should have some emergency options. We already know some methods to artificially reduce CO2 or reduce temperatures, and if disaster does strike, the world will stand up and face it. All we need for that, is a solid economy.
The Nazis and Imperial Japan found out that a strong America can solve any problem it sets its mind to. This will be no exception.
Anyone still reading: thanks, and hope you found it interesting! Bye for now!
When the Carbon Dioxide level has increased significantly since the end of the last Icehouse Period (Glacial Maximum or Ice Age means the same thing) and global temperatures have fluctuations of over 1°C warmer and colder than the 15°C mean of the past 11,750 year’s. This is evidence that Carbon Dioxide does not have any significant affects on our Global Temperatures if any at all.
The Carbon Dioxide is just around 430 parts per million (ppm) at its last highest recorded level. It was about 260 ppm during the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCM) some 10,700 year’s ago, when the Global Highest Temperature Estimated was 16.5°C. The Carbon Dioxide was only about 340 ppm when the Little Ice Age (LIA)dropped to at about 13.6°C the coldest temperature in our present Holocene Period, just 300 year’s ago.
Since the HCO the Climate has cycled several times warming and cooling. With each cycle the warming periods have been cooler and lasted for many shorter numbers of years.
While the coolest periods have been colder and lasting for many more years.
Climate Change is naturally happening. Without any evidence that Carbon Dioxide is even playing any part of it.
Governments are taxing our sources of energy based upon the Theoretical Hypothesis that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from Fossil Fuels is causing Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and now Climate Change (CC) – because Global Warming never happened, based upon the Computer Models that said it would happen.
Scientists using Super Computers created predictions. Our Governments have based policies on those failed predictions. To Tax Carbon from the Fossil Fuels that provide the majority of the Energy that everyone uses since before the Second Industrial Revolution of the 1900s.
This is the Greatest Scam ever created by Global Governments to increase their income to fund their Government. What these Governments did was demonized the Fossil Fuels Industries as Capitalism in general. They used scare tactics to get their populations to support their ideologies. Ignorant people are going to accept whatever their Government is telling them through their propaganda media. They went to people’s basic fear that the Oceans would rise and wipe out their coastal property. That would be a gigantic fear of any Government losing massive properties they couldn’t get property taxes and taxes from the industries and the taxes from the people and products. Great losses of from their GDP would be an economic nightmare to any level of Government.
They had to convince their population that they had the power to change the Climate by accepting higher costs of energy to make them use less of the Energy they depend upon. So to keep their ideologies they invented the ideology of Green Renewable Energy (GRE)to keep up with the demand for Energy. They don’t tell them the facts that none of those GRE can be made without Fossil Fuels in a greater amount.
Since this doesn’t seem to address any of the five (/four) points, I’ll not respond extensively.
I’ll just pause to note that I’m not sure where you get your data; on a quick check I find ~280 ppm pre-LIA, followed by a dip.
Other than that: climatologists do not believe that CO2 is the only factor in climate. Solar irradiance, albedo, aerosols – just to name a few – are important forcings.
It’s hard work; that’s why we have a lot of experts who study it for a living.
==========
My post however doesn’t delve into that: it’s pointing out that what the alarmists say – media, politicians, activists – is often not what the science says.
I think we should stand with the science, respect true skepticism, and also condemn those who in ignorance, idiocy and ideological zeal spread myth, fearmongering and disastrous policies.
That seems a much stronger position than claiming that we laymen understand it better than the experts :).
Tony, please contact me about a fatal flaw in the ECS calculating business that is missing from your extensive list of things that have been done incorrectly. It might quality in your top 5 (great as they are).
Thanks
Crispin
I couldn’t get through this. I’m a professor in the US who’s not an expert on climate, but basic rationality works across fields. Tell me, is there a “consensus” that smoking can cause lung cancer? I guess Michael Crichton would tell you to reach for your wallet, according to this article.
Fortunately, very very few people pay attention to Tony Heller.
The desperation of climate alarmists is becoming more apparent every day.
I’m a scientist with 3 advanced degrees – Tony is simply following the scientific method. Any professor can see that, right?
Yes. That comment is one you just leave out there and ignore. I mean, he just unquestionably equated the scientific study of greenhouse gasses and global warming to the scientific study of smoking and lung cancer. He has no concern for any difference in scales or scopes of the systems of study, differences in their variables, subjects, tools, methodological approaches and statistical techniques. All things that will differentially and fundamentally constrain the nature of the studies and, in turn, constrain the nature and strength of the inferences to be drawn from them. This guy just dismissed the difference between tightly controlled experimental studies and observational studies. The former is not even remotely possible in climate science, yet experimental study played an important role in establishing a causal link between smoking and lung cancer in animal models. We haven’t even said anything about the methodology of the 97% consenus papers. Bottom lime is that we’d be talking way too much rudimentary science to right his ship – it’s as good as foundered, and no one is obligated to educate him.
No information. No disputing a single fact presented. So tell me “professor” do you think it is rational to claim that cow farts are an existential threat?
I couldn’t get through this. I’m a professor in the US…
Jake, thanks for illustrating why so many academics in this country should be completely ignored. They are simply not very bright, and they cannot follow simple scientific methodology.
Sorry to hear that you Peter-Principled out.
You are not alone, professor. There are many other professors in the US who are unable to get through this. They were promised there would be no math. Too many graphs and tables full of numbers. Fortunately, you can turn on your TV and learn about the the consensus.
Yes, along with the consensus that ulcers were caused by food and stress, that a low-fat, high carb diet was the way to go, global cooling, continental drift, ect, ect.
You’re a professor? Ok. The point you’re not getting is that smoking would cause long cancer irrespective if there was a consensus on it or not, right? Hence, consensus is irrelevant.
Jake Sevins – Increasing the amount of smoke in the air in your home from 280 ppm to 400 ppm and then even to 600 ppm does not cause cancer.
(Sarcasm off)
The reason your cancer analogy does not work is because there have been lots of repeatable tests done on mice and rats that show a statistical relationship between heavy smoking and an increased risk of early onset cancer. These tests can be confirmed by statistical analysis of cancer patients and their history of smoking. And not smoking does not reduce your risk of cancer, you’ll get it eventually if something else doesn’t kill you first. All smoking does is move the age on average at which you will get cancer earlier. I know people who are 75 and still smoking and have been since they were 16. But yes they do tend to get cancer earlier than their non-smoking peers.
But my point is we have lots of data about that. People who smoke have a shorter life expectancy and it can be seen in millions and millions of data points and confirmed in the lab with animals. Plus there is a reasonable explanation as to why it might be happening due to chemical exposure.
With CO2 driven climate change, no such repeatable experiments or exhaustive data exists. In fact, the very long term (going back to the beginning of life) data suggests that the world will be just fine at levels of CO2 in the atmosphere many times higher than what we will leave when we run out of fossil fuels. Early earth contained almost no oxygen in the atmosphere and suffocating levels of CO2. Early forms of life sequestered the CO2 and released oxygen. It’s called photosynthesis and everybody should know about it. Plants live on CO2 and they have since the inception of life on our planet. Who knows the earth may have been a lot warmer then but it got along fine.
If CO2 is a major driver of climate change in the ppm range, so what? We’ll have to abandon a few coastal beach houses. Those houses are mostly built of wood and were never meant to last very long anyway. The termites will get them if the water doesn’t. But emissions will go down as we won’t have to heat the crap out of our houses. I personally am not going to worry about the sea level until the Dutch decide they need to beef up their dykes. Nobody knows sea level better than the Dutch. 1/3 of their country is below sea level.
But in the end of the day, the conversation is useless. Fossil fuels are finite, so we have to develop alternate energy sources sooner or later. Whether you believe CO2 is a catastrophic risk or not that remains the case.
” because there have been lots of repeatable tests done on mice and rats that show a statistical relationship between heavy smoking and an increased risk of early onset cancer.”
Actually, decades of experiments on animals have failed to produce lung cancer and this was accepted in a recent trial
MRS. MARGARET McTEAR v. IMPERIAL TOBACCO LIMITED
“So the animal experiments were of particular importance. The absence of support from the results of experiments on animals is not critical, but it is significant, because proof of the causal connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer therefore depends solely on the conclusions to be drawn from the epidemiological studies, which on one view of the scientific approach could be regarded as yielding no more than untested hypotheses.”
It wasn’t consensus that proved tobacco causes cancer, it was actual studies, conducted scientifically. Creighton (an M.D. BTW) was right and his statement still is.
Smoking cigarettes had not, strictly speaking, been shown to cause cancer, but to increase the risk of acquiring certain forms of it.
Evidence?
Lots of people smoke like frickin’ chimneys for many decades and never get it.
Some people die young of it.
Some people get lung cancer without ever smoking a cigarette.
So clearly, it is a risk factor, a contributor.
And other factors can enhance or counteract the risk for any particular individual.
Virtually every smoker I know is a leftie.
So sir-
you really dare to compare a huuuuge system(atmosphere/climate) that gets penetrated by an absolutely irrellevant number of a lifegiver (0.01% co2)
with a small system(Lungs)which gets constantly penetrated by a toxic volume(smoke) that’s almost as big as the system.
Smoke to our lungs is comparable to the sun to the atmosphere
and not to co2.
And it gets even funnier when we consider that one system is alive(defying laws of entropy)sensitive and supercomplicated(the consequent built molecules and atoms to serve a complicated purpose) and easily damaged while the other is just the sum of gases put together.
The 3rd thing why your arguement is BS.
Since people increased smoking lung cancer went significantly up,
while we had up to 20* more co2 in our atmosphere for millions of years without causing warming or runaway effects.
As co2 concentration follows warming
(after it gets warmer co2 goes up,released by warmer oceans)
a lung cancer analogy would only be valid
if an increase in lung cancer would animate people to smoke more.
Smoking has caused a huge increase in lung cancer but co2 has never caused a greenhouse runaway effect in hundreds of millions of years.
Why should it now all of a sudden??
If you wanna see the amazing powers of co2,
just move to mars(96% co2 atmosphere).
and enjoy freezing to death almost as fast as suffocating because temp. are so extremly cold as co2 ain’t do shit in terms of warming there,but here 1/9600 is supposed to set the world on fire.
US Professor Jake Sevins: “… basic rationality works across fields. Tell me, is there a “consensus” that smoking can cause lung cancer?”
Professor, there was a time when most US professors knew how to argue a point—any point—without resorting to logical fallacies *) as rhetorical devices.
They would have laughed at your idea of basic rationality. Is this the textbook you are using in your lectures?
https://quizlet.com/subject/rhetorical-fallacies
———
1. False Analogy
Logical form:
X is like Y.
Y has property P.
Therefore, X has property P.
2. Appeal to Authority
3. Scare Tactics
4. Bandwaggon Appeal
Et cetera, et cetera …
First learned of logical fallacies / fallacious arguments /illogical syllogisms in sophomore year Intro to Logic. One would think critical thinking courses are no longer offered at university.
Professor of what ?
Certainly NOTHING to do with any science, maths, physics etc.
Professor of “Social Studies” perhaps ?
Most likely a Professor of Social Sciences …… :)
“Tell me, is there a “consensus” that smoking can cause lung cancer?” Maybe there is but it’s irrelevant. Consensus is nonsense. There either data or no data. You make your own conclusion. If this were a literate people the “scientists” would present the evidence, the data. People would work with the data.
Instead, a whole bunch of people, particularly politicians want to . They need a bandwagon and a bunch of horns. I really don’t care whether or not there is a “consensus” about smoking and no one else should either. There is only real evidence and data. Eventually the data will win out because it is true. Not because it’s consensus. Not because it makes some people feel good. Not because it sounds nice. Not because a bunch of people afraid of everything in their lives says so. But because it’s true. It can be replicated. Over and over and over.
A consensus only means that a group of people have an inkling of a hypothesis. Not even a real theory. Just a little bit of a starting point perhaps. My best essay in junior high was about continental drift. I loved that guy. My grade was ok but I don’t think that the teacher was impressed. Circa 1962?
There was a unanimous consensus that Ignaz Semmelweis was a nutter and knew nothing. The entire medical community was of the opinion that it was IMPOSSIBLE for the hands of a doctor to spread disease. They refused to even consider washing their hands after plunging them into corpses to do autopsy work, before then going into the next room to deliver a baby.
Semmelweis was a miasma science denier.
There was a unanimous consensus among geologists that Alfred Wegener’s ideas about drifting continents was not worth even considering, despite evidence along several independent lines that had no other explanation. Were the coastlines of South America and Africa a near perfect match out of inevitability? Geologic strata matching perfectly on the two continents, when they were juxtaposed as indicated by the matching coastlines? Fossils within these strata a perfect match, and matching no where else? And yet he was not simply ignored but discredited and his ideas verboten from further inquiry or investigation. The crust was thought to be too solid for continents to move through it. Wegener was a Solid Rock Science Denier.
Once upon a time, scientists took it as a given that the universe was permeated by something called aether, through which light waves were propagated. But Michelson and Morley found no evidence that any such thing existed, leaving a void which led Einstein to many of his ideas, thus overturning our understanding of the nature of reality, especially by the time these ideas had been extended to form the basis of quantum mechanics.
Those guys were Reality Science Deniers.
Barry Marshall was a Spicy Foods Science Denier
Copernicus was an Epicycles Science Denier
None of these guys was initially hailed as being correct, although some had an easier time of it than others, and all had to assume that the “experts” of the time in which they lived were full of crap.
Trying to draw an inference about the correctness of an idea, or even it’s likelihood of possibly being correct, by pointing to a show of hands demonstrates one thing only: A fundamental misunderstanding of what science is, and how it operates.
Opinions are not evidence.
And voting is how politics is not, not science.
How politics is done…
The ice core record shows something rather obvious that I have never heard anyone explain. The oldest ice cores go back maybe 500k years in Greenland and maybe 700k years in Antarctica. Why don’t we look at ice core records prior to that? Because they do not exist. Why? Because at some point all the great ice sheets everywhere on Earth melted.
Can we assume that average global temperature was greater during the great ice sheet melting period than it is today? I don’t know if CO2 was higher or lower when all the ice melted, but what we can say is that the temperature of the Earth did not become unstable and continue to rise. Instead, it was moderated by a variety of processes. Presumably, those processes are still at work.
In almost any permafrost region on this planet
we can find oil or methan.
How did they got there?
Because the regions had been ice free at some point(s) in history for a veeery very long time and so warm that there was so much life that created all that oil and methan.
The warmer periods have been so beneficial to life on earth(incl. better water supply as more water evaporates from the oceans) while the colder killed the life.
Some antarctic ice cores may be older. Here is an article that may give additional info…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-06/scientists-discover-worlds-oldest-ice-core/5071794
Bob,
That is not correct.
I am pretty sure that the oldest ice found is thought to be 800,000 years old, and there is some possibility that a core to the bottom of Dome A would find million year old ice.
The reason that the oldest cores are not as old as the time the sheet began to form is because ice flows away from where it is accumulating under gravity.
How high the sheet is, is a function of how fast it is accumulating and how fast ice flows away towards the sea.
This is why a warmer world will cause more ice accumulation on Antarctica…it will snow more there in a warmer and thus wetter world.
It will never just pile up to the stratosphere, with the ice that is now 700,000 years old still sitting where it is.
There have been plenty of times the world has been warmer than it is now, including several periods over the past 8000 years.
In fact, except for about the past 2.5 million years, Earth has almost always been warmer, and mostly FAR warmer, than now. But there has been some ice on Antarctica for a long time.
It flows, and thus the oldest ice at the bottom cannot be taken to mean there was no ice there prior to the age of the oldest ice we can now find.
There may well be pockets of older ice than are prevented from moving due to the topography they are sitting on. And in some places, ice is found to be forming under the sheet from liquid water making it’s way to the bottom and then freezing onto it.
I read one article that indicated that deep scans have been interpreted as meaning that as much as 20% of the ice on the sheet is stuff that froze on from the bottom.
I do not think anyone knows when ice first began to form on Antarctica. I seem to recall the general line of thinking was that the current ice age began only about several million years ago, perhaps in response to the closing of the isthmus at Panama, although this does not sound like an intuitive idea to me.
But nowadays some sources are saying ice began forming on Antarctica as long as 45 million years ago.
IDK…hard to trust what you read anymore on some subjects.
As an aside, Milankovich cycles that favor glacial advance in the NH seem to me they would have the opposite influence down there, making Summers warmer. And which would mean that right now, with perihelion close to the Summer solstice there, Winters are colder, coming nearer aphelion.
LiePedia says that during the Pleistocene, East Antarctica lost 500 feet, but only a small amount during the Holocene.
“The ice core record shows something rather obvious that I have never heard anyone explain. …”
Earth has been in an icehouse climate for about 34 million year.
An icehouse climate has cold oceans and polar ice caps.
And in last couple million years we have been in the coldest time period of the 34 million year icehouse climate.
And your last interglacial period was warmer, than our current interglacial period- higher sea levels and warmer ocean, more than 4 C. And our ocean ocean average temperature is about 3.5 C.
Wiki, icehouse climate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth
“During an icehouse Earth, greenhouse gases tend to be less abundant, and temperatures tend to be cooler globally. The Earth is currently in an icehouse stage, that started 34 Ma with the ongoing Late Cenozoic Ice Age.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology
With graph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg
And Eemian was the interglacial period prior to present interglacial period which call the Holocene period.
And wiki, Eemian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
Sir,
This is a wonderful piece, and it is nice to see the information summarized in one place. I offer one criticism, with the best of intentions: I’d like to see the data separated from the historical/people discussion.
To expand, there are two kinds of information are presented:
1: Data, mostly in graph form, with appropriate references, though more would be nice.
2: A believable discussion of the human factor from an historical perspective. This seems more speculative in nature.
As noted above, my preference would be to separate the data from the rest of the discussion. I’d like to see the data presented alone, with references, and where possible, with statistics. This would allow me to reach my own conclusions, and compare them to yours. It also allows me to argue what I consider to be the critical points to others.
This could be followed with the discussion of the people involved in propagating the alarmist story. Obviously this is critical, and we all need to understand it. I’d like to see more discussion about why this has happened.
Again, wonderful job.
Thank you.
The other side will not discuss it, ever. Not in any honest way.
And the format is laid out the way it is because the idea is to persuade people.
To be persausive.
We know very well that warmistas are not convincing people with evidence, but by emotional appeals, exaggerations, false certainty, and shutting down, shutting up, defunding, discrediting, and outright firing, anyone who is not on board with the narrative they are shoving down everyone’s throat.
Not speaking for Tony, but for myself.
Thanks for your thoughts.
In a rational field of inquiry or social climate, you would be correct, most likely.
1.Fear of climate change may exist and may have been used, but it can’t prove that climate change doesn’t exist, as the fear of something and its subject are independent.
The author states but doesn’t prove that “The reality is that there is no legitimate evidence extreme weather is increasing or sea level rise is accelerating.”
His graph (% day above 90F) doesn’t show the data for % day above 95F or 105F, or something else. What if the % of day above 95F would show an upward trend? His example is not enough to convince me that he hasn’t engaged in cherry picking.
2.The rebuttal of the claim that 97% of the climate scientists agree may be valid, but it doesn’t show that climate change is not real. There could be 5% of climate scientists with the opinion that it’s real, and they could still be right. Disputing the 97% number or any other number has nothing to do with disproving the existence of climate change.
3. the fact that people have been wrong in the past doesn’t mean they are not right in the present. In the past, many doctors have been wrong with diagnosing diseases, and now with better science and equipment, doctors get it right. In addition, the new experts are not the same people who incorrectly forecasted a few decades ago.
4. Almost every scientific subject studied in depth depends on graphs and models generated by a small handful of people. Experts in a narrow area are few because specialization necessarily reduces the number of experts in a specialty. Also, they all use graphs and models because that’s the way scientific studies are conducted. Graphs show the data, models show the theory. Calling something useless doesn’t make it useless. Actually, scientists joke that no model is right but a few are useful, but they don’t say that all models are useless.
5. saying that the absence of workable solutions prove that climate change doesn’t exist, or even invalidates climate alarmism is nonsensical. There is no cure against cancer so cancer doesn’t exist or we should not care about it? If that’s his best argument, this is laughable. Also saying that engineers haven’t been consulted is ridiculous. Many engineers are currently developing solutions addressing climate change, such as C02 capture or alternative to air transportation (hyperloop). The fact that there is no solution yet doesn’t mean that a solution can’t be find within a few years.
Remi D. I don’t disagree with most of what you write. It is indeed pretty much impossible to prove something does not exist. I would conclude from the Heller document, and other data I’ve seen that the available information is too unreliable to allow firm conclusions in either direction. That said, it seems reasonable to watch carefully, clean up pollution, and use an “all of the above” power strategy. Going to extremes as many advocate will likely destroy economies and cause more damage than a hypothetical risk is worth.
As an aside, there are cancers for which there are no cures or even reasonable treatments. You don’t spend the patients life’s savings on attempting to do the impossible. In a socialized medicine situation, a decision will be made for them to give no treatment, because it makes sense. This isn’t a perfect analogy to climate change, but given the large degree of uncertainty that there is a problem that mankind can impact, it makes little sense (to me) to spend the planet’s resources attempting to fix something that might not be broken.
Remi, just one question:
Did you object when the smartest man on Earth to ever become a President of the United States kept using the fraudulent 97% scientific consensus argument against skeptics?
Except that the blog post title and the first sentence state that it’s listing arguments against climate alarmism, not arguments against the existence of climate change.
Remi, you are a champion in setting up strawmen and knocking them down, forcefully.
Remi D, interesting comment you make, and if you don’t mind, I would like to borrow your points 1 through 5 and apply them to a different hypothesis, one of my own. I claim that there is an Evil Green Witch (EGW) living under my stairs. I will assume that you, on the other hand, do not agree that the EGE exists. Using your points…
1)”His graph (% day above 90F) doesn’t show the data for % day above 95F or 105F, or something else. What if the % of day above 95F would show an upward trend?”
You may have checked under my stairs and found no evidence of the EGW, but you only checked for three days in a row. What if the EGW was on a long holiday and returned on a day that you didn’t check? You need to check every possible day to prove that the EGW is not there!
2)”Disputing the 97% number or any other number has nothing to do with disproving the existence of climate change.”
There are about 7,000,000,000 people in the world. Even if 99.9% of them disagree that the EGW exists, that still leaves 7,000,000 people who support EGW theory. That other 6,993,000,000 does nothing to disprove the EGW!
3)”the fact that people have been wrong in the past doesn’t mean they are not right in the present.”
Exactly! My uncle was an EGW supporter and often told me that any day now, the EGW would make herself visible in a blaze of destruction. That was years ago, and she still hasn’t appeared, but that failure of prediction has nothing to do with MY predictions. I say she’ll be around in another 12 years. Just wait. THIS time we have it right!
4)”Experts in a narrow area are few because specialization necessarily reduces the number of experts in a specialty.”
Yep. That’s me. I am the world’s leading authority on EGW theory. My friends and associates who have spent their lives studying EGW agree with me.
“Graphs show the data, models show the theory.”
I have a model also. In fact I have a hundred models. I can graph the visible appearances of the EGW (exactly zero at present) and adjust my model to match the collected data (zero appearances) perfectly. Based on my model (constructed based on my understanding of the EGW phenonenon), I now predict that the EGW will appear (probably) within 12 years (or so). My associates have produced their own models which predict different times of appearance. We will wait, and see which model matches future appearances. If none of them match, we will make newer models and take it from there.
5) “saying that the absence of workable solutions prove that climate change doesn’t exist, or even invalidates climate alarmism is nonsensical.”
Based on my calculations, EGW will destroy the entire ecosystem of the planet. I have been unable to find any form of remediation which will rid us of the EGW, but that failure to find a solution does nothing to disprove just how extraordinarily dangerous the Evil Green Witch is!
In short, your points are all generic, none of them specifically address the facts of CAGW, but rather are applicable to any hypothesis, even one as unlikely as EGW. The fact is, CAGW has been predicting calamity for decades and it has not happened. More troubling, there is (in my opinion) a very clear and completely unjustified “adjustment” of climate data to make the facts appear to support the theory. Science is prediction and then verification. If the prediction fails, the theory is wrong. Period. If the facts must be altered to make the predictions seem true, then the theory has failed. Period.
Beautiful. AGW (and your EGW) is about belief first, and it requires the disbelieving skeptic to prove why your belief is wrong. And when reality doesn’t match, you move the goal posts, and tell the skeptic they have proven nothing.. That’s not science. It is garbage. GIGO.
7 billion believers still wouldn’t make a falsified, hyped – hypothesis legitimate science. CAGW is mass belief in a hobgoblin.
@Jason….
Excellent piece. Thank you
Jason, that is a fabulous rebuttal.
Seriously good stuff.
“1.Fear of climate change may exist and may have been used, but it can’t prove that climate change doesn’t exist, as the fear of something and its subject are independent.”
Hard to read on past this, since by the end of your opening sentence you have attributed to skeptics a belief that does not exist.
No one thinks that there is no such thing as climate change.
Few would argue that people do not influence factors that contribute to changes in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Little point in attempting to swim through all of that which you wrote when to even start, one would have to correct all of your implicit misconceptions about the nature and particulars of what is being disputed by skeptics.
The best argument against climate alarmism is a graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1920 next to a graph of global mean temperature since 1920.
There is no correlation. Man made global warming from CO2 emissions is falsified. By observed data.
Man made global warming is a hoax. It is obvious. Clear. Irrefutable.
The graphs should also have the error bars.
My son said to me earlier today that instead of adjusting older temperature records they could have simply left them unchanged but with greater error bars. This would, however, have made the alarmist claims of considerable temperature increases even more ridiculous.
While not a scientist I have noticed how the temperature data for where I grew up over fifty years ago has been fudged. Over the past decade my home town is supposed to be getting hotter yet when I examined the data as a schoolboy I was particularly struck by the high daily maximums over a long time frame. Scott Adams is right about one thing – the need to cleverly brand something to destroy it. Perhaps we should run with “climate fraud”?
If they put honestly calculated error bars on their climate models even a legal size piece of paper would not have the vertical area necessary to show them 10 years out.
It wasn’t consensus that proved tobacco causes cancer, it was actual studies, conducted scientifically. Creighton (an M.D. BTW) was right and his statement still is.
The graph of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature over geological time is also a slam dunker!
Yeah, but supposedly it can be divined that the last 150 years is unprecedented compared to any 150 year period in the last 4.5 billion.
Giggle.
So many man-made global warming believers that I talked to think that man is evil burning fossil fuels. The simple mind understands with man burning fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide level is increasing only because of man. Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and is increasing, the temperature appears to be increasing. Since temperature is increasing, mankind has caused its own destruction. In summary, burning fossil fuels is evil. Obviously, an over simplification of the complex nonlinear global climate, but most people have no clue and want to believe. They want to feel good doing something.
I have noticed that there is a relationship as the earths magnetic field strength is rapidly decreasing, the CO2 in the atmosphere increases rapidly It seems like there would be a better, more direct correlation than the above belief. But one must remember that “correlation is not causation”.
Except the temperature ISN’T increasing rapidly
There has no warming for 33 out of the last 40 years of real unadjusted data.
No warming from 1980-1997
https://i.postimg.cc/fyv8vcRh/RSS_V4_before_El_Nino.png
No warming from 2001-2015
https://i.postimg.cc/SxQy4C6M/RSS_V4_2001_-_2015.png
The ONLY warming has come from the 1998 El Nino and the 2015/16 El Nino.
These are ocean events and therefore CANNOT be anything to do with atmospheric CO2.
The SUN warms the oceans, CO2 cannot do so.
Bingo!
“4. Conclusions
The GISTEMP data set, and the totally independent satellite-based AIRS surface skin temperature data set, are very consistent with each over the past 15 years. Both data sets demonstrate that the Earth’s surface has been warming globally over this time period, and that 2016, 2017, and 2015 have been the warmest years in the instrumental record, in that order. In addition to being an independent data set, AIRS products complement those of GISTEMP because they are at a higher spatial resolution than those of GISTEMP and have more complete spatial coverage, despite a shorter record. Differences in the products (and lower temporal correlations) mostly reflect areas without much directly observed station data (the Arctic, Southern Ocean, sub-Saharan Africa) suggesting that the fault lies in the station-based products rather than with the AIRS data. Notably, surface-based data sets may be underestimating the changes in the Arctic.”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafd4e/meta
The main problem here is that you are not arguing against what the climate scientists says, you are arguing against what some alarmist journalists says.
Just some examples from the first argument:
“Climate alarmism is based mainly around fear of extreme weather.”
IPCC writes in its latest report AR5 (page 53):
1. “There is medium confidence that the observed warming has increased heat-related human mortality and decreased cold related human mortality in some regions.”
2. There are likely more land regions where the number of heavy precipitation events has increased than where it has decreased.
3. There is low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and magnitude of fluvial floods on a global scale.
4. There is low confidence in observed global-scale trends in droughts.
5. There is low confidence that long-term changes in tropical cyclone activity are robust, and there is low confidence in the attribution of global changes to any particular cause.
Link: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf
This is far more conservative than what most of the media reports and it is therefore difficult to counter Tony’s argument from a climate science perspective.
However, there are some well known fact we can say for sure, such as:
1. We know that hurricanes increase in strength when the sea surface temperature is above 27 and Celsius. The warmer water the quicker they increase.
2. Warm air can contain more water. This means that we can expect heavier rain in a warmer climate.
3. Warm water occupies more space. This means that the sea level increase if the sea temperature goes up and if the glaciers melt the sea level will increase further.
/Jan
Jan, you clearly missed the entire point.
Scott Adams asked me to put together the five best arguments against climate alarmism.
Now try again.
The problem is that the first sentence make any debate impossible. Nobody will call themselves alarmists. Everybody view themselves as the realists.
However, it would be interesting to know whether Tony think IPCC is right in the statements that I have quoted above.
The problem with your questions is that it does not address what portion of the above is caused by man! And THAT is the question. Climate changes. What is not natural variation is the question.
BTW anyone that would look at the ARs in total starting with the 1st to the latest would notice that the IPCC has done 180’s on several of the claims you list above.
You may wish to re-think that.
Alarmists never think they are. Jan is an alarmist…
Anyway, my position in the global warming debate is that I think the global warming is real and a serious threat. Furthermore, I think IPCC does a very good job. The five assessment reports describe, in my opinion, the current scientific status in an objective and balanced manner.
Jan “think IPCC does a very good job”.
Nuff said.
Why Gator, why would anyone doubt the scientific claims of the political organization? Every single syllable of an IPCC AR summary is parsed by politicians before it’s released. LOL!
Nobody calls themselves rapists, racists, or pedophiles. It is up to the rest of us to point these things out. And the IPCC has been wrong for decades, so who cares what they say?
What exactly is your point Jan?
I reckon the point is that when you want to have a rational debate with National Socialists you should not call them Nazis. They don’t like it. They prefer to be called National Socialists.
As I understood Scott Adams, this was an invitation to debate. But nobody will come to a debate if you start by calling your opponents for alarmists.
Jan,
Again, you may want to revisit that. Alarmism and catastrophic thinking is what they are calling for, themselves.
Debate what? Alarmism? LOL
Sorry, but anyone that believes that a gentle warming out of the LIA is a threat cannot be taken seriously. The sky is not falling.
“… nobody will come to a debate”
Jan,
If people don’t come to debate whether “alarmism and catastrophic thinking are valuable” I’m fine with it.
It would be a sign that support is waning for the catastrophic bullshit pushed by the New York Times and some such. Anyway, reasonable people don’t expect a better outcome than the whole thing dying on the vine as most of the original alarmists quietly abandon it. Very few will publicly admit they were fools pushing nonsense. It requires intellectual honesty not in abundance on the Left. Besides, the Leftists will find another cause that requires that we surrender our liberties and a way of life to an all-powerful government.
They always do.
Hey Jan,
Maybe if all of the non-alarmist scientists would speak up about the alarmists instead of just clamming up no matter how ridiculous the claims get exaggerated and magnified and reported as facts and not uncertainties, then maybe just maybe we would not be in the situation we are in, where teachers tell children, every single day, that they lived on a doomed and poisoned planet, it is their parents fault, and we will be baked alive just before we all drown when all life goes extinct in 12 years.
Huh?
How about that?
From the scientists to over the top politicians and news disseminators?
*crickets*
All the way down.
““There is medium confidence that “
That is the highest rank you can give??? seriously
It basically saying, “we haven’t got a clue, but we think we might be right.”
I had medium confidence with that young lady last night.. guess what! :-(
These are meaningless statements…..
…. especially when you consider that the further their models diverge from reality, the MORE confident these idiots become.
What a JOKE.
Tony, will you please turn your Top 5 into a video? I also have a Top 5 List I’d like you to consider:
Response to Scott Adams; The CO2isLife Top 5 Skeptical Arguments
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/response-to-scott-adams-the-co2islife-top-5-skeptical-arguments/
What would be nice is if you encourage your Skeptical Friends and Bloggers to do the same, and then we can create a Top 5 of the Top 5.
Climate alarmist suffer from two syndromes.
The first is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is that people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, they believe their cognitive ability is greater than it is and this illusion of superiority is because they don’t recognize their own ineptitude.
The second is the Pauline Kael syndrome who made this statement after Nixon won.
“How can he have won? Nobody I know voted for him.”
Alarmist live in a self conformational bias bubble, because they surround themselves with people who agree with them they get on facebook/twitter and chose only friends and followers who agree with them, professors only go to conferences with fellow believers and don’t invite or disinvite skeptics, this self conformational bias weakens the alarmist argument and results in things like the 97%.
The so called skeptics don’t have this issues as we are constantly bombarded by claims of the alarmist and consistently challenged, which improves the skeptics argument thru refinement.
Side note: Dellingpole has picked this topic up on Breitbart
A most excellent outcome.
Just testing to see if actual rebuttals will remain on the page of comments — since Scott Adams posted a link to this page with an invitation to critique …
Eg, http://archive.is/Rc4di#selection-2317.0-2339.1282
“Part 1: Alarmism
Heller’s charge of “alarmism” is denialist rhetoric and silly, especially since the IPCC tends to under-estimate the impacts of climate change, which runs contrary to the charge of alarmism:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-ipcc-underestimated-climate-change/
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-ipcc-underestimate-assessing-climate-risks-15338
“Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction
[…]
A constant refrain coming from the denial campaign is that climate scientists are “alarmists” who exaggerate the degree and threat of global warming to enhance their status, funding, and influence with policy makers. The contribution by William Freudenburg and Violetta Muselli provides an insightful empirical test of this charge and finds it to lack support. […] They then present evidence that IPCC assessments have in fact understated the degree of subsequently reported climate disruption, supporting their argument.”
And this is some of the relevant supporting research on this point:
“Reexamining Climate Change Debates: Scientific Disagreement or Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs)?”
“Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?”
“Global warming estimates, media expectations, and the asymmetry of scientific challenge”
“Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011”
Furthermore, the IPCC’s tone tends to be more tentative and less “alarmist”, with sufficient attention paid to uncertainty:
“The language of denial: Text analysis reveals differences in language use between climate change proponents and skeptics”
“Comment on “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” by J. A. Curry and P. J. Webster”
“Guidance note for lead authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on consistent treatment of uncertainties”
William, is that a rebuttal? Just in the last day you are hearing a constant chorus of people saying scientist say we have 12 years to safe the world. The Diane Feinstein video is a good example. That sounds like absurd alarmism is alive and well given the large number of people parroting the nonsense. So I don’t get your rebuttal.
William Scott Scherk, Or so the Germans would have us believe…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdjY_UnNtQ4
Incoherent, rambling, impossible to discern the point being made.
How about you just say what you want to say in clear language, instead of word salad?
Scientific American just got finished claiming that the very notion that there was a global cooling scare was itself a fiction pushed by a few paragraphs in a Newsweek magazine article. Yet Tony has documented dozens and dozens of newspaper amd magazine articles each citing the cooling trend of the time, each warning about a coming ice age should the trend continue, and quoting government scientists as either sources of or in support for these claims. So as far as scientific america and climate science is comcermed, it is evident and conclusively propagandist trash.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be/
Sci Am is not a scientific journal anymore, nor is it American.
It is owned by a company in the travel and leisure entertainment business based in Germany.
Part three response from the archived commentary: http://archive.is/Rc4di
“Part 3: Evidence-based scientific consensus
Heller adds misguided claims on consensus. He resorts to baseless paranoia on the consensus, claiming it’s due to “intimidation of academics and censorship”. That’s typical denialist rhetoric and is used by science denialists (ex: AIDS denialists) to avoid an evidence-based scientific consensus that shows they’re wrong. For more on this, see sources such as:
“How the growth of denialism undermines public health”
“Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?”
“HIV denial in the Internet era”
Heller also uses a Michael Crichton quote to suggest that if a consensus of scientists is being mentioned, then one is being had. That’s ridiculous, since evidence-based scientific consensus is common in well-evidenced science, in topics ranging from vaccines not causing autism, to HIV causing AIDS and humans evolving from non-human animals. So unless one is going to object to well-evidenced scientific points like that, then no, reference to scientific consensus is not a sign that one is being had. Here are some examples of referencing scientific consensus in other scientific fields:
http://www.pewinternet.org/interactives/public-scientists-opinion-gap/
“European evidence based consensus on the diagnosis and management of Crohn’s disease: definitions and diagnosis”
“Inventing conflicts of interest: A history of tobacco industry tactics”
“An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research”
“Analyzing hominin phylogeny: Cladistic approach”
“The Durban Declaration”
With respect to climate science, there’s an evidence-based scientific consensus that:
A1) There has been global warming since the mid-20th century.
A2) Humans [largely via anthropogenic greenhouse gases] caused most of this recent warming.
A3) Most of the recent [or near future] climate change is [or will be] caused by humans.
A4) Climate change is a serious problem and/or a danger to humanity.
The following sources document the consensus on A1 and A2:
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Table 1: “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming”
“Does it matter if the consensus on anthropogenic global warming is 97% or 99.99%?”
“The consensus on anthropogenic global warming matters”
Page 49 of: “Models, manifestation and attribution of climate change”
For the consensus on A3 and A4:
Among AAAS (American Academy for the Advancement of Science) scientists with relevant expertise (PhD earth scientists currently working), there’s a 95% consensus that climate change was a serious problem and a 93% consensus that recent warming is mostly caused by humans:
“Earth scientists views on climate change”
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/23/elaborating-on-the-views-of-aaas-scientists-issue-by-issue/
And in another survey, ~87% of climate researchers thought that humans caused (or will cause) most of the recent (or near future) climate change, while ~86% of climate researchers thought that climate change poses a very serious problem and/or a threat to humanity:
Figures 88 (v043) and 2 (v007) of: “The Bray and von Storch 5th International Survey of Climate Scientists 2015/2016”
https://www.hzg.de/imperia/md/content/hzg/zentrale_einrichtungen/bibliothek/berichte/hzg_reports_2016/hzg_report_2016_2.pdf
Heller tries to counter this by claiming a 52% consensus from the following paper co-authored by Stenhouse, Maibach, and others:
“Meteorologists’ views about global warming: a survey of american meteorological society professional members”
Of course, the paper shows a 93% consensus, not a 52% consensus. That’s because the relevant consensus is among those with the most expertise in the topic, as measured by factors such as publication record, advanced degrees in the subject, etc. Similarly, if you wanted medical advice on your heart condition, you’d ideally want the cardiologist with a long publication record in heart issues, years of research and experience in the field, an advanced degree in the subject, etc.
These points are accounted for in a paper I mentioned before (a paper co-authored by Maibach, the 2nd author on the paper Heller cites):
“Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming
[…]
Among members whose area of expertise was climate science, with a publication focus on climate, 78% agreed that the cause of global warming over the past 150 years was mostly human, with an additional 10% (for a total of 88%) indicating the warming was caused equally by human activities and natural causes. […] Thus, Stenhouse et al (2014) concluded that ‘93% of actively publishing climate scientists indicated they are convinced that humans have contributed to global warming.'”
AAAS might as well be a communist organization. That’s why I quit it.
The intimidation that Mr. Heller speaks of is real and and just as he says, Dr. Gray’s experience was and still is quite common.
I heard of this guy who was once considered a heretic for daring to question the consensus of the time…….. Galileo. There was also this other nobody who received a letter from 100 leading so called scientists who had a “consensus” that he was wrong on his theory and his response….. it only takes one: Einstein….. then there was this other guy who amazed the “consensus” to provide the very light you fail to see this very day….. Faraday…… hmmmmmm what was your argument again regarding consensus?
Ibn al-Haytham about 250 years before Roger Bacon, hit the fundamental essence of the attitude required to practice the scientific method: “The duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and… attack it from every side,” he wrote. “He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”
“With respect to climate science, there’s an evidence-based scientific consensus that:”
Ok then Shrek, produce empirical evidence that increased atmospheric CO2 causes warming, or affects the climate in any way.
Let’s see how “evidence based” your cut/paste of baseless propaganda really is.
You do know that the so-called GHE from CO2 has NEVER been observed or measured , anywhere on the planet, don’t you.
It only exists in un-validated models.
When I was doing Formal Physics in my college days, I took a couple of “Philosophy of Science” courses.
One of the things you don’t do in Western Empirical Science is change your data to fit your theories… that’s what Classic Greek Science did. The latter would start with an a priori conclusion and fit their gestalt of the World around it. The former will junk a Theory as soon a single (or sufficiently enough) data point(s) is(are) found that describes the World different from that predicted by the Theory.
Global Cooling, Global Warming, Weather Change, etc… are all Classic Greek Science put into the service of Political Classes in the current time. The only way the theories fit is by manipulating the data sets. By this, we must realize that the “scientists” practicing this kind of “science” are not Western Empirical Scientists… at best they are alchemists, at worst they are political hacks.
Perhaps they should wear togas instead of white lab coats.
Short and sweet. Nice comment.
I always appreciate it when people tell me who they are. William Scott Scherk links his mugshot to this page:
https://tonyhellerakastevengoddard.com/who-is-tony-heller
I love it when they start their argument, and then base it entirely on a demonstrably false premise.
Evidence-based scientific consensus
What>/i> evidence? LOL
The Dunning-Kruger is strong in Billy Boy!
Pretty PATHETIC when someone is so small-minded, like whoever did that page, that they have to use another person’s name, TWICE, to get attention, isn’t it. :-)
Interesting, thought provoking reply to Mr. Adams, Tony. The pending discussions should should be riveting.
W/ regards to #4, the following may be helpful. It broadens the geographic scope of data tampering / corruption. https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/02/changes-to-darwins-climate-history-are-not-logical/
W/ regards to #2, the bogus bases for the 97% consensus nonsense is well illustrated by the first of its 3 versions. Literally 97% of data examined by the creator was TOSSED OUT so she could claim a 97% consensus. That is gross, easily recognized data tampering, not objective research.
Keep up the good work and fight on.
Do all you people think that we can radically change the chemistry of the atmosphere and de-forest the planet with complete impunity? Why are the ice caps melting? Why are many mammals, fish, birds, and even plants moving north? Why are humans losing habitat and agricultural land (i.e. the Maldives, Indonesia, etc.)? People are migrating by the thousands because of climate change.
You are parroting propaganda. Read the blog and get an education.
“Both data sets demonstrate that the Earth’s surface has been warming globally over this time period, and that 2016, 2017, and 2015 have been the warmest years in the instrumental record, . . . ”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafd4e/meta
Does your ‘education’ deny this?
You should actually read my blog instead of showing up and making stupid comments.
No education then?
Gary P Hardesty,
You seem very alarmed and I’m sure you won’t mind showing us what you know.
How about taking it one by one so we can keep it down to facts and data. Let’s start with an easy one that received a lot of media exposure:
1. How much habitat and agricultural land did the humans in the Maldives lose and why?
Meanwhile, back in the Maldives:
“Pass the tanning butter.”
1. How much habitat and agricultural land did the humans in the Maldives lose and why?
Crickets …
It was a simple question. It’s safe to assume that Gary P Hardesty was just running his mouth about things he knows nothing about.
WOW, Adam Chandler would be proud of you, GPH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0&list=FLOVDMRLglMq6XnL69q5RaqQ&index=14
Basically EVERYTHING you said is provably WRONG !!!
Gary, the chemistry of the atmosphere is no different than it has been in the past. And the planet is now “greening”, there is more forest cover now than there was a century ago.
Now, give mommy’s phone back before she notices it is missing.
Parts Four and Five reply … (from active discussion at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5fncpSikwk&lc=Ugzb-QsbQibXOvK0zxN4AaABAg.8rf9mfziDqu8rfkMZiVDA7)
≪≪ Part 4: Sea level rise acceleration
Heller claims sea level rise isn’t accelerating. That’s false:
“Yes, sea level is rising at an increasing rate.”
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
“Sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades.”
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
Sea level rise results largely from melting land ice and thermal expansion of water. Warming causes thermal expansion and land ice melt. Thus, one would expect warming to increase the rate of sea level rise. And that’s the case. For example:
“Global sea level linked to global temperature”
“Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era”
“Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era”
In the 20th century to the 21st century, global warming occurred from the ~1900s to ~1940s, then slight cooling (or temperature stagnation) from ~1940s to the ~1970s, and then global warming from the ~1970s onwards. For example, see:
“Estimating changes in global temperature since the pre-industrial period”
“A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly surface climatological datasets”
“Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents”
Given the aforementioned points, one would expect the rate of sea level rise to change in response to global warming patterns of the 20th century, with greater sea level rise in the late 20th century as compared to the mid-20th century. That’s clearly shown in:
Table 2 of “Twentieth-century global-mean sea level rise: Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts?”
Figure 3: “Considerations for estimating the 20th century trend in global mean sea level”
Figure 1B: “Reassessment of 20th century global mean sea level rise”
“Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago?”
“Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807”
“A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise”
“Sea-level rise from the late 19th to the early 21st century”
“An anomalous recent acceleration of global sea level rise”
“Probabilistic reanalysis of twentieth-century sea-level rise”
“A consistent sea-level reconstruction and its budget on basin and global scales over 1958–2014”
Other papers confirm the increased post-1990 rate of sea level rise shown in some of the above papers; this increased post-1990 rate is greater than the rate during the mid-20th century. The other papers also show that sea level rise acceleration post-1990, predominately due to increased land ice melt:
“Global sea-level budget 1993–present”
“Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807”
“Evaluation of the global mean sea level budget between 1993 and 2014”
“Considerations for estimating the 20th century trend in global mean sea level”
“New estimate of the current rate of sea level rise from a sea level budget approach”
“Reassessment of 20th century global mean sea level rise”
“The increasing rate of global mean sea-level rise during 1993–2014”
“Unabated global mean sea-level rise over the satellite altimeter era”
“An increase in the rate of global mean sea level rise since 2010”
“A consistent sea-level reconstruction and its budget on basin and global scales over 1958–2014”
“Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era”
Part 5: Extreme weather
Heller says “there is no legitimate evidence extreme weather is increasing”. That claim holds a special place in my heart, since Heller blocked me on Twitter when I repeatedly debunked him on this claim. That’s one of Heller’s typical responses to evidence rebutting his denialism:
https://twitter.com/SteveSGoddard/status/1054581972092125184
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1054587658192781312
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1054585521299701760
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1054579152874016768
For the curious, here’s some of the research I cited, that eventually broke Heller on this:
“Increased record-breaking precipitation events under global warming”
“Observed heavy precipitation increase confirms theory and early models”
I also pointed out that:
“Heller’s image comes from a 2004,2007 source for the US. Thus it would not include recent record precipitation for the rest of the globe over the last decade.”
Anyway, there’s been an increase in hurricane intensity, concurrent with the later 20th century and 21st century warming I discussed in part 4. There’s also likely been a decrease in hurricane frequency as well. potholer54 has discussed these issues before, and they’ve been covered in the scientific literature:
potholer54’s video: “11. Climate Change — Hurricanes, atolls and coral”
potholer54 video: “28 – The consequences of climate change (in our lifetimes)”, from 14:49 to 15:05
“Recent intense hurricane response to global climate change”
“Economic losses from US hurricanes consistent with an influence from climate change”
Walsh et al. 2016, page 3: “Tropical cyclones and climate change”
“Dominant effect of relative tropical Atlantic warming on major hurricane occurrence”
Knutson et al. 2010: “Tropical cyclones and climate change”
There are also other issues such as increased drought intensity
, increase risk of wildfires, and dryland expansion. For more context on these, see:
“Anthropogenic warming has increased drought risk in California”
“Contribution of anthropogenic warming to California drought during 2012–2014”
“Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models”
“Global warming and changes in drought”
“Emergence of heat extremes attributable to anthropogenic influences”
“Observed drought indices show increasing divergence across Europe”
“Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests”
“Extreme fire season in California: A glimpse into the future?”
“Comparison of dryland climate change in observations and CMIP5 simulations”
“Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change”
≫≫
Please show links to stable long term tide gauges that show this supposed acceleration in sea level rise. If you fail to do so, I will doubt anything else you have to say.
No doubt we’ll get JASON satellite BS scabbed on to the tide gauge record.
Really to be absolutely stable no matter what the land their placed upon is doing the set up needs to be: “In order for Tide Gauges and Tide Gauge data to be useful for determining actual changes in sea surface height (or rates of change in sea surface height), regionally or globally, the Tide Gauge station must have an associated GPS@TG (GPS at tide gauge) Continuously Operating [GPS] Reference Station mounted on the same structure as the tide gauge that will precisely determine vertical movement (VLM) of the tide gauge itself.”
Hey rah! “No doubt we’ll get JASON satellite BS scabbed on to the tide gauge record.”
The JASON data is a joke, and a poor joke at that. Ask any physicist what kind of error you can expect when using an orbiting satellite with microwaves that are ten times longer than the average annual change of a global surface which is constantly moving every few seconds on a range at least 1000 larger than the change you are trying to measure. Sticking it on to the actual tide gauge readings is worse than a joke.
I went to the first non-Twitter link posted by Mr. Scherk above:
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
It says: “In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inches above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch per year.”
In my opinion there is good reason to think that the rate of rise may only be about half or less than that (see the actual tide gauge readings around the globe, the majority of which are lower than the 1/8 inch per year) but just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the 1/8 per year is correct. Is that a crisis? Is that even unusual? (And as a side note, for anyone who does, in fact, trust satellite sea level rise measurements, please explain why the European measurements from Envisat gave a reading of 1/20 inch per year.)
“Disruptive and expensive, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago.”
Really? That 50 years equals about 6 inches rise in a half century. We are expected to believe that a six inch rise has increased flooding by 900%? And that we have been unable to ameliorate this 900% increase in danger when we only had a half century to prep our drainage, plan our foundations, berms and seawalls? Do the Dutch know about this? I lived for 40 years close to the sea in Florida and I am completely underwhelmed…
“claims sea level rise isn’t accelerating.”
And it isn’t. It only when you cludge “adjusted ” satellite data onto tide dat you get any acceleration
A mathematical no-no.
But you clearly know zip about maths.
There is NO acceleration at any stable tide gauge around the world
If anything, sea level rise is decelerating
What a garbled load of incoherent, brain-washed regurgitated BS.
What else did you have to eat last night, shreak?
Sludging together “adjusted” satellite data onto tide data is mathematical idiocy.
No sea level acceleration at ANY tide gauge.
In fact, probably deceleration.
I will not argue against the fact that there is a bit of thermal expansion when water warms. But as for land ice melting at a rate greater than the average? That is plain BS! There are only two ice sheets that can greatly effect the (SL) Sea Level and accelerate Sea Level Rise. They are the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
First Greenland:
Charts from the Danish Meteorological Institute (These charts from minimum to minimum):
2014-15 was pretty much an average year:
Now the 2016-2017 which was a near record growth of the Surface Mass Balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Now 2016-17 and 2017-18 together. It is quite obvious that the Ice Sheet on Greenland has been growing and thus would not only not contribute to Sea Level Rise but actually detract from it.
The numbered responses to the Scott Adams ‘Science Challenge’ are from Twitter account @AtomsksSanakan within Youtube comments on a Potholer54 video “Response to Tony Heller #3” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5fncpSikwk
Scott Adams has addressed the first Top Five on Periscope today. He has also uploaded today’s episode to Youtube (cued to mention of Tony Heller’s first “Top Five”): https://youtu.be/uvFtRv9PILw?t=1966
⋖
Part 6: USHCN
Heller repeats his long-debunked paranoia on the US temperature record, as represented by USHCN. potholer54 has addressed that sort of nonsense before:
“Can we trust peer-reviewed papers?” from 24:29 to 26:21
Heller fails to adequately explain that scientifically justifiably adjusted for the effects of urbanization, changing locations for temperature monitoring stations, etc. NASA explains the sort of corrections they do for their GISTEMP analysis, for instance:
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
“Q. Why are the US mean temperatures in the Hansen 1999 paper so different from later figures?”
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/#q215
“GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
History of GISTEMP”
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/history/
And the adjustments (also known as “homogenization”) for USHCN has been repeatedly validated. For instance:
“Evaluating the impact of US Historical Climatology Network homogenization using the US Climate Reference Network”
“An evaluation of the time of observation bias adjustment in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network”
“An intercomparison of temperature trends in the US Historical Climatology Network and recent atmospheric reanalyses”
“Benchmarking the performance of pairwise homogenization of surface temperatures in the United States”
“On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record”
“Benchmarking homogenization algorithms for monthly data”
“Quantifying the effect of urbanization on US Historical Climatology Network temperature records”
⋗
Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Air Temperature Variability: 1840–2007*
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1
Key sentences in the abstract:
” Year 2003 was the only year of 1840–2007 with a warm anomaly that exceeds three standard deviations from the 1951–80 base period. The annual whole ice sheet 1919–32 warming trend is 33% greater in magnitude than the 1994–2007 warming. “
The Church of Data Rape and Grantology has spoken. They waive their magic cash filled hands and change the world, questioning them is heresy.
Now for the Antarctic ice sheet which is much larger than that of Greenland
In 2015 NASA declared that the SMB of Antarctica was GROWING and would continue to do so for 20 to 30 years! https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
“The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimeters) per year. This small thickening, sustained over thousands of years and spread over the vast expanse of these sectors of Antarctica, corresponds to a very large gain of ice – enough to outweigh the losses from fast-flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent and reduce global sea level rise. ”
Link to five papers that back up the conclusions of the NASA paper. http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/30/new-paper-indicates-antarctica-has-been-gaining-ice-mass-since-1800/
BTW William
The Maldives were supposed to sinking under the water by now according to the UN and various other experts. Not a single one of the over 1,000 islands has submerged. Why?
The numbered responses to the Scott Adams ‘Science Challenge’ are from Twitter account @AtomsksSanakan within Youtube comments on a Potholer54 video “Response to Tony Heller #3” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5fncpSikwk
Scott Adams has addressed the first Top Five on Periscope today. He has also uploaded today’s episode to Youtube (cued to mention of Tony Heller’s first “Top Five”): https://youtu.be/uvFtRv9PILw?t=1966
Here is AS’s number six and seven [from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5fncpSikwk&lc=Ugzb-QsbQibXOvK0zxN4AaABAg.8rf9mfziDqu8rfkMZiVDA7 ]
⋘ Part 6: USHCN
Heller repeats his long-debunked paranoia on the US temperature record, as represented by USHCN. potholer54 has addressed that sort of nonsense before:
“Can we trust peer-reviewed papers?” from 24:29 to 26:21
Heller fails to adequately explain that scientifically justifiably adjusted for the effects of urbanization, changing locations for temperature monitoring stations, etc. NASA explains the sort of corrections they do for their GISTEMP analysis, for instance:
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
“Q. Why are the US mean temperatures in the Hansen 1999 paper so different from later figures?”
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/#q215
“GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
History of GISTEMP”
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/history/
And the adjustments (also known as “homogenization”) for USHCN has been repeatedly validated. For instance:
“Evaluating the impact of US Historical Climatology Network homogenization using the US Climate Reference Network”
“An evaluation of the time of observation bias adjustment in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network”
“An intercomparison of temperature trends in the US Historical Climatology Network and recent atmospheric reanalyses”
“Benchmarking the performance of pairwise homogenization of surface temperatures in the United States”
“On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record”
“Benchmarking homogenization algorithms for monthly data”
“Quantifying the effect of urbanization on US Historical Climatology Network temperature records”
⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠⟠
Part 7: Hansen’s projections
Heller misrepresents James Hansen’s temperature projections. potholer54 and I have already dealt with this elsewhere; we both agree that Hansen’s projections held up pretty well in light of the observational analyses, contrary to what Heller said.
From potholer54:
https://archive.is/VXpTN#selection-2305.1935-2305.2017
http://archive.is/KJO9i#selection-1291.4-1291.96
Here’s a basic summary of some of Heller’s distortions on this, with cited evidence on each point:
1) Hansen’s projections were for the near-surface and surface temperature trends:
Figure 3 on page 9347 of: “Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model”
Yet Heller compares that to a satellite-based lower tropospheric analysis. that is not the same as a near-surface / surface analysis, so Heller performs an inadequate apples-to-oranges comparison.
2) Heller cherry-picks the outlier UAH satellite-based analysis, that has a long history of under-estimate lower tropospheric warming in comparison to other analyses.
Both the UAH and RSS satellite-based analyses are known to under-estimate warming, as acknowledged by the RSS team:
AGU conference abstract: “Understanding and reconciling differences in surface and satellite-based lower troposphere temperatures”
Page S17 of: “State of the climate in 2017”
Page 7715: “A satellite-derived lower tropospheric atmospheric temperature dataset using an optimized adjustment for diurnal effects”
Also see the following for further evidence of the UAH analysis under-estimating lower tropospheric warming, but this time on a regional level:
“An analysis of discontinuity in Chinese radiosonde temperatures using satellite observation as a reference”
The RSS and UAH analyses can be examined at sites such as:
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
https://climexp.knmi.nl/selectindex.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
Matters became even worse for the UAH analysis after the ERA-I analysis was updated in ERA-5. ERA-I was one of the few analyses to show warming anywhere near as low as that of UAH (see the reference to “State of the climate in 2017” above). Yet ERA-I has long been known to under-estimate lower-to-mid tropospheric warming, as admitted by the ERA-I team:
“Estimating low-frequency variability and trends in atmospheric temperature using ERA-Interim”
Section 9 of: “A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly surface climatological datasets”
Section 2 of: “Climate variability and relationships between top-of-atmosphere radiation and temperatures on Earth”
That issue was largely addressed in ERA5, again yielding a greater warming trend than UAH. ERA5 which can be examined here:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_rea.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
3) Heller fails to mention that though Hansen’s scenario B has CO2 levels that largely matched subsequently observed CO2 trends, scenario B overestimated subsequent changes in some of the other greenhouse gases. So if Hansen was right on the relationship between greenhouse gas radiative forcing and warming, you’d expect to observe a bit less warming than projected in scenario B. And that’s what we observe.
4) If one does an apples-to-apples comparison of Hansen’s scenarios with the near-surface / surface temperature record, taking into account the greenhouse gas levels issue from point 3, then Hansen’s analysis did reasonably well, contrary to what Heller said.
This is covered in sources such as:
Non-peer-reviewed:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1010240647960264705
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/06/30-years-after-hansens-testimony/
https://moyhu.blogspot.com/2018/06/hansens-1988-predictions-30-year.html
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/06/judgment-on-hansens-88-climate-testimony-he-was-right/
Pages 9 – 11 of: “Climate denial 101: A user’s guide to the arguments of global warming skeptics”
Peer-reviewed (a bit out-dated, since they don’t include recent warming):
“Global temperature change”; doi: 10.1073/pnas.0606291103
Page 557 of: “Skill and uncertainty in climate models”; doi:10.1002/wcc.58
⋙
On the persuasion scale, your link heavy and disjointed word salad rates off the scale on the low end.
The way you choose to present is unreadable and incoherent, except for the parts where you say over and over again: “Skeptics are wrong and everything warmists say is solid science and absolutely true”, though far less directly and concisely.
We debunks that crap here and elsewhere, have done so daily for years, we do it thoroughly and repeatedly.
So saying “Nuh-uh” is pathetically lame.
What an incredible load of incoherent MORONIC GARBAGE,
Your post looks like it was put together by a demented orangutan doing random cut and paste.
My guess is this is lifted directly from various alarmist blogs if anyone wanted to take the time to check.
But why bother?
This may be my top argument.
http://www.pigsandsheep.org/is-the-earths-climate-in-trouble/?fbclid=IwAR1nFktuXTEItdZIqPF5R7XAJkl6bOiHHEo0s3xrwt8NQGIWXa_HMroj7WQ
I for one am not clicking a link for your argument. Type in your argument like everyone else. Post links to reference materials.
Cyntia, the article you link to argue that we may look at a CO2 level of 400 ppm as a good thing. It has been below 300 ppm for the last million year, so it is a abrupt change, but who knows.
However, the problem is that the Co2 level is no longer 400 ppm, it is now at 408 ppm, and it is increasing with 3 ppm annually. Are we sure that 500 ppm would be a good thing, or 600?
There is a useful concept called «too much». If we just continue to pump more Co2 into the atmosphere with no plans to ever stop, we will evenually reach a point when it is just too much.
/Jan
“, we will eventually reach a point when it is just too much.”
Again a load of zero-science BS.
Unfortunately, the highest its likely to get is 600-700ppm
And that is BELOW OPTIMUM for plant growth (1000-1500)
You do know that in a normal bedroom overnight, the level of CO2 climbs to 2000ppm +, don’t you?
At ANY level possible in the atmosphere, CO2 is ONLY BENEFICIAL.
The problem we have Jan, is that we need energy or people will die in huge numbers.
And the people who are pushing climate alarmism are not promoting anything remotely realistic regarding replacing fossil fuels.
They simply want to eliminate them and replace them with diffuse and intermittent sources, while also eliminating the two sources that are not intermittent and diffuse and do not emit CO2.
These two are nuclear and hydro.
Hydro is very limited by geography…there are not a lot of places with big rivers and large changes in elevation. But they are against builing any more dams.
And no matter what we do in the US and Europe and Canada and Australia, the rest of the world is not going to stay poor.
No matter what we do people will not just starve and freeze, even here, at least not for long.
Put if the people that want to dismantle our infrastructure get hold of enough political power to try, there will be civil war as people start to freeze and starve and die.
And that will be very bad.
You are wrong.
You have not thought this through, and have not looked critically at the so-called scientists you defend, nor have you been correct about the IPCC. They are a political organization with the goal of wealth redistribution and power grabbing.
The summaries they issue for policy makers are not in accord with the findings of the working groups, but in any case they only have as a goal proving a predetermined outcome, not doing objective science.
Are you aware of the numerous skeptical scientists who have worked on earlier IPCC reports and tell of how they were muzzled and their findings were eliminated from the reports when they did not comport with the goals of the IPCC?
Scott Adams invited noted climate skeptic Tony Heller to present his Top Five skeptical arguments for public debate.
I hereby take the challenge here of answering to Tony’s five arguments
However, the main problem here is that Tony is not arguing against what the climate scientists says, he is arguing against what some alarmist journalists says.
I view myself as representing mainstream climate science and I think the UN Climate panel (IPCC) do a very good and important job with their climate reports. My answers here are compliant with their synthesis report.
The label ‘alarmist’ is one I would use on those who think that the climate change poses an imminent existential threat to our civilization. The view of the UN climate panel is that it can develop to a huge problem, but we have several ways to stop it before the consequences become too severe. Therefore I do not label the UN Climate panel as alarmists.
Point 1. “Climate alarmism is based mainly around fear of extreme weather.”
Answer: Typical media alarmist may prioritize this viewpoint, but the climate science is more conservative on this topic.
However, there are some well known facts we can say for sure, such as:
We know that hurricanes increase in strength when the sea surface temperature is above 27 Celsius. The warmer water, the quicker they increase in strength.
Warm air can contain more water. This means that we can expect heavier rain in a warmer climate.
Warm water occupies more space. This means that the sea level increase if the sea temperature goes up and if the glaciers melt the sea level will increase further.
Point 2 “Climate alarmism is much like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. … Only a small handful of people whom the press and politicians quote over and over again are allowed to state an opinion”
Answer: I agree in the last point above. The media should confront new sensational claims with what IPCC says on that topic before reporting it.
Point 3: “Academics have been making apocalyptic predictions for decades”
Answer: I Partially agree. The problem is that a small minority of academics have always come with apocalyptic predictions, and the media have reported only those. The new now is that virtually all academics agree on the fundamentals of climate science which are:
There are such things as a climate effect and climate gases
Water vapor, CO2 and methane are the three most important climate gases.
The amounts of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere are the highest in at least 800 000 years, and probably the highest in 3 million years.
The reason for the current elevated level of CO2 and methane is human emissions.
The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is correlated with temperature. Higher temperature results in more water vapor. This effect, viewed separately, means that the temperature increase caused by the greenhouse gases, CO2 and methane, increase more than the greenhouse effect from CO2 and methane alone should imply.
Higher amounts of climate gases in the atmosphere should result in higher temperatures.
The average surface temperature on the planet has increased by approximately one degree Celsius since 1900, and the rate of increase has been exceptionally high since 1980.
Point 4: “Climate alarmism is completely dependent on graphs and useless climate models generated by a small handful of people.”
Answer: Science is about analyzing models, and it has been so at least since Galileo and Kepler. It is true that the models which prevail have been developed by a small number of people, but the strength in science is that these methods are transparent and open to critique by all the scientific community.
Point 5: The most important argument against climate alarmism is that the proposed solutions are unworkable, dangerous and useless.
Answer: I disagree, although this is of course a huge topic by itself. My take is that there are several solutions to the problem, many are impractical, but a few are doable:
The electricity production can be totally de-carbonized by either nuclear power, or renewables in combination with hydroelectric pumped storage.
Virtually all the industry and transport sector can either be electrified, based on gas produced by power to gas solutions or bioenergy.
So how serious problem is the climate change?
My view is that it belongs among the top five challenges to humanity. Perhaps below the crisis that we still have a billion people on the planet living in desperate poverty; the economic development for those people should not be constrained in any way by requirements for green solutions.
We, in the richest part of the world, have to take the lead.
/Jan
Point 1.
There is no evidence of an increase in extreme weather or extreme rainfall.
There is no evidence of any acceleration in sea level rise at tide gauges, there is only a gradual steady rise that was occurring well before atmospheric CO2 could have cause anything 1000-2000 years ago, sea levels were some 1m-2m higher than now.
Point 2
IPCC is a political organisation. , why take anything they say into account.
Point 3.
Humans are responsible for only a small amount of the highly beneficial rise in atmospheric CO2.
There is NO empirical evidence that increased atmospheric CO2 causes warming or affects the climate in any way.
If you think you have some, then present it.
“and the rate of increase has been exceptionally high since 1980.”
This is a manifest LIE.
The ONLY warming since 1980 has been from a single El Nino event around 1998 which caused a step change. There recent transient has all but disappeared.
There was zero warming from 1980-1997, and zero warming from 2001-2015
Point 4.
Engineering models are validated , time after time after time. Climate science models have been PROVEN WRONG against reality, they are not fit for any purpose except propaganda.
Point 5 RELIABLE dispatchable electricity can never be de-carbonised, except by nuclear, so again, a manifest LIE
Transport cannot be electrified, the storage needed for the embedded energy for large trucks is prohibitively dangerous and uses prohibitively large supplies of material that can only be mined using fossil fuels.
You are living in a hallucinogenic fantasy.
CO2 is totally and absolutely necessary for all life on Earth, and =is currently barely above plant subsistence levels.
We need to take the lead in DESTROYING this anti-science, anti-CO2, anti-life socialist totalitarian agenda, as quickly as possible.
Jan Kjetil Andersen says:
“However, the main problem here is that Tony is not arguing against what the climate scientists says, he is arguing against what some alarmist journalists says.”
Jan,
Do you include Dr. Michael E. Mann, PhD among “climate scientists”?
1. If not, why?
2. If yes, do you want to reconsider your assertion?
“The label ‘alarmist’ is one I would use on those who think that the climate change poses an imminent existential threat to our civilization. The view of the UN climate panel is that it can develop to a huge problem, but we have several ways to stop it before the consequences become too severe. Therefore I do not label the UN Climate panel as alarmists.”
There is not a huge problem. Claiming there is huge problem is being an alarmists.
How about I say, we need to live on two planets- it’s huge problem if we don’t.
You could say, I am being an alarmist.
But even if I accept there is huge problem, the problem isn’t going to solved by wind mills and solar panels. All the alternative energies are all a scam.
If the focus was on making more nuclear power, at least that would going in a correct direction of reducing CO2 emissions.
“We know that hurricanes increase in strength when the sea surface temperature is above 27 Celsius.
The warmer water, the quicker they increase in strength.”
There is no evidence of sea surface temperature are lately getting above 27 C, rather they have have been getting warmer the 27 C since “beginning of time” or tropical ocean even during glaciation periods can surface water above 27 C.
“Warm air can contain more water. This means that we can expect heavier rain in a warmer climate.”
The tropics has warmest average temperature and does rain a lot in most of tropics.
And warmest/hottest air is in dry regions, deserts can have breif periods there is very heavy rainfall.
But global warming is mostly about warming regions outside the tropics and highest increases in average temperature are in polar region.
Mainly what global warming is about is having more uniform global air temperature.
And records of recent warming has indicated we have less severe weather as we have recovering from the cooler period which
is called the Little Ice Age. And highest ever recorded daytime high temperature was recorded about 100 years ago.
“Warm water occupies more space. This means that the sea level increase if the sea temperature goes up
and if the glaciers melt the sea level will increase further.”
The average temperature of all our oceans is about 3.5 C, and if this warms then there will be thermal expansion of the
ocean. {or thermal expanse is not about merely having a tiny portion of a warmer ocean surface temperature].
It has suggested that over last hundred year the ocean has warmed and had thermal expansion of somewhere around 2″ of the 7″
sea level rise. But roughly the ocean has been around 3.5 C for thousands of years. And not likely to warm to about 4 C within
hundred years. If when did, the thermal expanse would be about 1 foot.
Jan Kjetil Andersen says:
February 25, 2019 at 5:17 am
“Point 1. “Climate alarmism is based mainly around fear of extreme weather.”
Answer: Typical media alarmist may prioritize this viewpoint, but the climate science is more conservative on this topic.
However, there are some well known facts we can say for sure, such as:
We know that hurricanes increase in strength when the sea surface temperature is above 27 Celsius. The warmer water, the quicker they increase in strength.
Warm air can contain more water. This means that we can expect heavier rain in a warmer climate.
Warm water occupies more space. This means that the sea level increase if the sea temperature goes up and if the glaciers melt the sea level will increase further.
Point 2 “Climate alarmism is much like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. … Only a small handful of people whom the press and politicians quote over and over again are allowed to state an opinion”
Answer: I agree in the last point above. The media should confront new sensational claims with what IPCC says on that topic before reporting it.”
Allow me to start with your hurricane defense:
Plenty of scientists have declared that climate change will cause either an increase in frequency or severity of hurricanes and the media just trumpets what they say. https://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-climate-change/
BTW Joe Bastardi a Meteorologist with a very good track record of forecasting and predicting the behavior and tracks of hurricanes spanked Mann for his claims on Hurricane Harvey. Mann is neither a meteorologist nor a hurricane forecaster nor has ANY expertise in the field beyond that of an ambulance chaser.
https://junkscience.com/2017/08/bastardi-no-michael-mann-climate-change-did-not-cause-hurricane-harvey/
First when we talk about ANY violent weather one must recognize that the historic context will be skewed because of our ever growing ability over time through advancing technology to detect storms, measure their various properties, and changes in the procedures in measuring the properties these storms. This goes for tropical cyclones and well as tornadoes. Even in the short term this applies. The hurricane hunters do not use the same procedures and formulas for calculating the windspeed that they did 10 years ago.
It should also be noted that the IPCC exists because of the claim that increasing CO2 and other green house gases will change the climate.
You and the IPCC can talk about how elevated SSTs (sea surface temperatures) produce more powerful tropical cyclones all you want but the proof is in the pudding. That pudding is the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) metric. Show me where the CO2 signature is? Show me where the signature of increased SSTs is? You nor the IPCC can.
First the ACE chart
As I said “climate science is more conservative on this topic”. No strong trends in hurricane activity can be seen, and none could be expected over this short time period.
However, we see that the the sea temperatures are rising fast, especially since 1980.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:36
/Jan
So, are you claiming the air above the oceans is heating the oceans?
Technically the sun is heating the oceans, but less heat escapes from the oceans to the atmosphere because the atmosphere is getting warmer.
/Jan
There is little if any warming in the tropics where hurricanes form.
“No strong trends in hurricanes are seen and none can be expected.”
Wow.
Talk about historicaly revisionism…going back and saying they were not expected are you?
If sea surface temps are rising fast and warmer water means more hurricanes, why would there be a delay?
Why was there a giant call to alarm in 2005 when the whole band of mainstream climate scientists declared that extreme and far more frequent hurricanes were not a forecast but a new permanent reality?
Including a new thing which does not exist called hypercanes or some such garbage.
You do not, as you purport, speak for climate scientists.
We have for many years, on this and other blogs and social media, been closely following the DAILY reports from all stake holders in the climate emergency.
They have not been measured, calm, or rational, and your statements here in no way reflect what we see all the time on an ongoing basis, and not just from politicians and media figures.
But from academics of every stripe and field of study.
” but less heat escapes from the oceans to atmosphere because the atmosphere is getting warmer.”
Again, a load of unsubstantiated BS. !!
The ONLY warming in the last 4o years has come FROM the oceans.
Atmosphere cannot and does not cause oceans to warm.
Jan,
Nice try. You’re repeating talking points – not science – like I did when I was a gullible believer in CAGW.
The U.N. IPCC said we’ll know the hyped hypothesis is legit when we record the trapped heat at the Equator at about 10,000 feet – the “Hot Spot.” If it were being trapped, you would have provided the scientific measurements that prove it’s being trapped by the magical heat trap (carbon dioxide). Instead, you only parrot what is projected to occur. Not what is actually occurring.
Sorry Charlie. Heat is still escaping into space as it always has. Get me the radiative forcing proof.
Menicholas says:
“Why was there a giant call to alarm in 2005 when the whole band of mainstream climate scientists declared that extreme and far more frequent hurricanes were not a forecast but a new ”
There are a lot of scientist around, and you can always find some who says almost anything.
However, the official reports from IPCC does not claim that we can see any clear evidence of more hurricanes. They say that we may see it in the future because we know there is a connection between ocean temperature and hurricanes, but so far we have not seen it.
This is not revisionism, I just say what the IPCC has said all the time, but mainstream media have dramatized this.
AR4 (2007) says that “there was no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.”
AR5 says: “Current data sets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2017/09/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen says:
“However, the main problem here is that Tony is not arguing against what the climate scientists says, he is arguing against what some alarmist journalists says.”
Jan Kjetil Andersen also says:
There are a lot of scientist around, and you can always find some who says almost anything.”
Jan,
I asked you a question earlier in this thread that you did not directly answer so I will repost it again:
Jan, you sound like a level-headed, decent guy but the ongoing evasions and prevarications in your arguments look like you are crossing the line from mere sloppiness to partisan dishonesty.
Please reconsider.
Colorado Wellington says
Quote
“However, the main problem here is that Tony is not arguing against what the climate scientists says, he is arguing against what some alarmist journalists says.
Jan Kjetil Andersen also says:
There are a lot of scientist around, and you can always find some who says almost anything
“Quote end
Colorado, nitpicking about formulations don’t bring us anywhere.
It should be clear that the first statement is about what most scientists says.
However, among all people, scientists included, there are always some dissidents, and you can therefore find some people who say the opposite. That is the meaning of the second statement.
Do you include Dr. Michael E. Mann, PhD among “climate scientists”?
Hm, it feels like a trap; you want me to say that I consider Dr. Mann as a scientist and then you come with something wild, he has once said, right?
Anyway, I regard Dr. Mann as an excellent scientist, but I am sure he, like most of us, has sometimes said stupid things.
The physical science basis reports from IPCC are the most respected source for the current status of climate science. I think the considerations stated there are well formulated and correct.
/Jan
Sorry, Jan.
This “nitpicking” argument won’t do. It’s a cop out. Words and sentences have meanings, or at least, they should have them. You’ve been avoiding and evading the most important objection to your comments.
Scott Adams asked to “put together the five best arguments against climate alarmism”. Tony repeated that wording in the very first sentence of his blog post and he proceeded to do just that. I assume you are a Norwegian and not a native English speaker but your English is very good and I’m certain you understood it.
For some reason, however, you have decided to make the argument that climate alarmism is just some unimportant journalist practice while climate scientists and their political IPCC organization are engaged in real science, and, therefore, Tony’s arguments are somehow irrelevant. Several of us called you out about it but you never responded. I don’t know you and I don’t know if you did it consciously, or just because you are consumed by your conviction, but in the eyes of many of us here you are simply evading so you can carry on.
Most of us here are serious people who care about the fraud perpetrated on the public by the political “global warming” coalition. You also seem to want to be taken seriously and convince us you have something important to say.
Get serious then and stop the bullshit. If you want to have an argument about real science, so be it, but this post was by definition about climate alarmism and I’m certain you are smart enough to know it. When you are ready, we can have a discussion about modern climate science and it’s methods.
In his previous work, Tony has developed and assembled plenty of damning evidence you should find relevant. Most of it was not even mentioned in this blog post. Show me you are interested in an honest discussion.
Thanks for your comment Colorado
I am here if we can discuss climate science, and by that, I mean the official view of IPCC and NOAA as they present in their official reports.
The fact that some alarmists exists and say crazy things like “the world will come to an end in x number of years if we do not act immediately”, does not imply that the whole climate science is hoax.
Ask yourself what will be most important for our grandchildren fifty years from now; is it whether climate change is real or not, or is it whether some of their grandparents once said some stupid things in a heated debate.
/Jan
Hey Jan, would any of these folks be you “do good science” people?
And what do the High Priests of the trillion dollar Climate Change Industry have to say?
“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.
– Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
– Dr David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
– Al Gore,
Climate Change activist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<i."The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound
reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world
has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both
governments and individuals and an unprecedented
redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift
will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences
of every human action be integrated into individual and
collective decision-making at every level.”
– UN Agenda 21
Jan,
I appreciate that you want to talk about science and rational policies based on science. My main focus has always been on policy but I am not a fool who ignores propaganda and politics which is what really moves people and in democracies it ultimately determines what is going to happen.
It is a sad state of affairs that the current global warming campaign is not about science. It is politics and climate change alarmism is one of its major tools. How our children will live fifty years from now is being shaped right now. People who really want to know whether dangerous anthropogenic climate change is happening don’t dismiss skeptical voices and their arguments. They do not want to silence them which is exactly what the proponents do, in private and in public. It is naïve to ignore this political reality as “some stupid things” said “in a heated debate”. The protagonists discussed these things calmly, and sometimes even cheerfully:
Chris Landsea, chief scientist at the National Hurricane Center, resigned from the IPCC in 2005. He objected to the poor science and politics behind the IPCC hurricane claims.
Jan, you can chose whom you listen to and whom you ignore but the resulting picture you create in your mind does not change the reality that climate alarmism is a major driver in the current debate.
Colorado, you have many good points. I really enjoyed reading it.
( I am not sarcastic)
Hope we meet again in future debates.
I am somtimes on Wattsupwiththat.
/Jan
Jan said, “Anyway, I regard Dr. Mann as an excellent scientist,…”
Why?
“because the atmosphere is getting warmer.”
The ONLY warming in the atmosphere in the last 40 years has come from OCEAN events.. El Ninos in 1998 and 2015
Between 1980 and 1997, there was NO WARMING of the atmosphere.
https://i.postimg.cc/fyv8vcRh/RSS_V4_before_El_Nino.png
and between 2001 and 2015 there was NO WARMING of the atmosphere.
https://i.postimg.cc/SxQy4C6M/RSS_V4_2001_-_2015.png
The oceans WARM THE ATMOSPHERE, not the other way around.
There is absolutely ZERO anthropogenic signal in the atmospheric data.
NONE, NADA, ZIP !!!
Takk.
See you around the camp fire.
spike says:
Between 1980 and 1997, there was NO WARMING of the atmosphere.
Spike, you do not say where you take your numbers from. Woodfortrees.org give other results:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1997/trend
ROFLMAO. !!!
Jan proves he is a monkey with ZERO mathematical understanding
The ONLY reason there is a trend is because of where in the 2-3 year cycles its starts and finishes.
What is the trend of this graph, simpleton ?
Even RSS v$ has no warming from 1980-1997.
And remember, its noisy-cyclic..
See if your tiny mind can comprehend that, Jan….. or prove you are a mathematical ignoramus.
For your edumacation, Jan,
One way of determining if a semi-chaotic cyclic series has a trend is to plot the mid-points of each up and down section.
I’ve done a rough estimate here, to just before the El Nino interrupted the noisy cycles. (last dot is “if” the cycle continued)
Notice anything ?????
Linear trends on cyclic type graphs need more thought than just applying a monkey’s ruler.
Spike says:
“Even RSS v$ has no warming from 1980-1997.”
plus a lot of inane ad hominem arguments.
Show me where you have your data from Spike, otherwise you have no credibility at all.
Now you
Poor Jan just FAILED his mathematics test.. AGAIN !
Go back and do junior high again, idiot. !
And if you don’t know where to get the original RSSv3.3 and RSSv4 data from, why the **** are you bothering to comment, except to show your base level IGNORANCE.
I see Spike continue his rant and claiming no warming in the RSS record between 1980 and 1997, and from 1998 to 2015
The RSS lower troposphere temperature is shown here:
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Look and see.
I looked, and I don’t see any issue with Spike’s claim. Anything else?
Menicholas: “Talk about historicaly revisionism.”
Ignorant followers parrot only the latest latest revisions, which sound plausible, without knowledge of contradictory projections of the original hypothesis. They don’t know they’re being led by the nose.
You can claim what you want but the FACT is that in the end there is absolutely no evidence that tropical cyclones are increasing in frequency or intensity outside of natural variation and THAT is the bottom line.
By far the major component of ocean heating is direct insolation and the vast majority of that insolation occurs in the tropical band. The models the IPCC use don’t address varience in solar activity well, if at all.
The heated water is carried towards the poles where it is most easily lost to space. The troposphere over the equator is about 16 kilometers in depth. Over the poles the depth of the troposphere is about half of that and so there is far less atmosphere to trap or deflect the radiated energy at the poles.
There is far more to hurricane formation than SSTs. The amount of dust coming off N. Africa last year greatly reduced the potential for hurricane formation in the MDR (Main Development Region) for the first half of the season for example.
Also the mechanism for initial development requires contrasts in temperatures. That contrast in temps between the equatorial band an the poles has been reduced. In general colder times in the temperate zones are the stormier times because of the increased contrast.
I could go on and on but I would also point out that the physics upon which the models are based and which the IPCC predictions are rely upon required that a persistent hot spot or hot spots form in the upper troposphere over the tropics. No such persistent feature has been found.
Hurricanes by definitio form in one air mass and do not form in response to or gain energy from contrasting tempeatures, as do mid-latitude cyclones.
But the do require very specific conditions to exist or they will not form no matter the sea surface temp.
They almost never form close to the equator, because of a lack of coriolis force there.
The need air with a very high dew point, low pressure at the surface, and high pressure aloft. And there has to be a complete lack of wind shear at all altitudes, or they will be torn apart.
IOW, the wind has to be blowing at the same speed and in the same direction in a very thick layer of the atmosphere. At the same time as very warm water, very humid air, low pressure at the surface and high pressure aloft, exist simultaneously, and over a considerable length of time and horizontal extent.
Entrainment of any dry air disrupts them.
variations in wind speed and direction with height can tear a hurricane apart in a matter of hours.
Hurricanes typically start out as tropical waves which are warmer Air masses than the air around them. It takes contrast to get the convective engine started. Temperature is in part a function of pressure.
I cannot help but believe that the powerful El Ninos we had helped the US have it’s 12 year major hurricane landing hiatus. Typically sheer from west to east winds is worst during El Nino years because of the reversed trades in the equatorial Pacific which are a preconditions for El Ninos and thus the powerful El Nino’s helped prevent formation, weakened development, and helped steer those that did develope to recurve and avoid the coast of the US.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2876905
Hurricane frequency is not correlated with sea surface temperature anomalies.
And average global sea surface temperature has no bearing on the strength of a hurricane should one form.
It only matters if the ocean is warmer right under where the sotrms form and travel. And the depth of the warm layer is very important as well, as hurricanes rapidly cause mixing of surface with deeper water.
El nino conditions are the strongest negative correlation with Atlantic basin hurricane frequency that we know of.
If the sea surface is warmer, it prevents them from forming because it causes wind shear. And this effect is many thousands of miles removed from the place where the sea has warmed.
Likewise, if the heating that shows up as so called global warming based on a single average daily temp actually consists of less cool nights and less hot days, which it does, how is this in any way a theoretical basis for more and frequent storms of any type?
Global warming is mostly a less frigid Arctic, less severely cold winters, less cooling at night, along with the very unscary lower daytime high temps.
But global milding sounds decidedly unscary, and not at all screaming, for trillions of dollars and overhauling (translation: Wrecking) our economy to stop it.
Now the Frequency graph
Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. At this time there is none for CO2 or any other green house gas causing more intense or frequent violent weather. End of Story! The US just had a near record low tornado incidence year in 2018. Not a single EF-4 or 5 tornado was recorded in the US though there was a single EF-4 recorded in Manitoba, CA. Unlike Tropical Cyclones, NOAA provides an adjusted tornado count in order to try and retain some historical continuity to the record. But even in the unadjusted historical record there is nothing to see. (In a typical year the US accounts for about 75% of all tornadoes reported on the planet)
Here is the tornado record per the NOAA
I used to be a analyst at the National/Naval ice center. I got tired of the personal agenda. People get worried about funding so they make it seem like less ice than there is. Whenever there is talk about the Arctic having less ice you can be pretty certain that the Antarctic will have more ice. A true scientist will come up with a theory and try to prove it wrong. These alarmist come up with a theory and manipulate data to make their theory a fake fact.
Are you willing to go public?
There are laws protecting and rewarding whistleblowers, or so I believe.
We need people with direct inside knowledge of what is going on.
I for one am completely unsurprised by what you say.
What does surprise me is why no one is speaking up publicly about what they know.
There must be thousands like you, taking into account all of the different groups, agencies, faculties, etc.
Maybe we need a climate whistleblower #metoo movement?
At this point the scale of fraud is flabbergasting.
The endgame they are pushing for is nightmarish, if they can ever get hold of the reins.
Imagine if in 2020 they win the White House, House and Senate, pass the NGD, and set about making it reality?
It will be game over for the US, capitalism, freedom, and prosperity.
The stakes could not be higher.
The fact is none of the warmista malarkey can stand up to even mild scrutiny.
The only reason to believe it is if one simply wants to.
The only reason for believing it is lack of critical thinking skills and willingness to look at the huge number of ways each alarmist claim has been deconstructed into lies, exaggerations, hype, scaremongering, altered data sets, and invalidated models.
Nothing unusual is happening with the weather on the Earth that is outside of historical norms.
You will not be able to gaslight people who are fully aware of what real science is and how it is done and what the published history of weather events has recorded, and who are fully aware of every aspect of the CAGW saga.
+1
BTW it’s time for me to hit the sack and get some rest in order to be ready to drive all through the early morning hours into the great white north. It has been great getting a chance to post so much but now I have to go earn my keep. Catch ya all on the flip side.
May your vigilance, St. Christopher and our prayers protect you on the road!
A medallion of St Michael, patron saint of the paratrooper among many other things, hung around my neck when I was in the Army. I’m not a Catholic, but who cares? I’ll take all the blessings I can get!
Well CW, it worked again. I’m home. Yesterday afternoon coming out of Toronto during rush hour in a good snow after it has been snowing all day it took me 1 hour to go 12 miles at one point. I pulled in at the first en-route service area west of Toronto and parked it even though I still had 1 hour and 23 minutes left on my clock. No sense wasting all that time in traffic. I had been driving in snow and traffic basically the whole day so it had been a long and rough one and I was out about 1/2 hours after I pulled the curtain shut.
This morning at 03:50 I was on the road, the plows and salt shakers had done their stuff overnight, little traffic, and so the hammer was down. Stopped at my favorite Canadian truck stop to pick up my clearance papers for customs and fill a thermos with Tim Hortons coffee and wolfed down a couple apple fritters.
Then it was across the bridge and through customs and down I-75 to the Vandalia, OH terminal where I dropped the trailer full of scissor jack assemblies for Toyota automobiles and hooked to an empty to bring back to Anderson. I used about 3 1/2 gallons of windshield washing fluid in 838 miles.
The most compelling argument against AGW is that which contains for the first time in world literature the CORRECT physics pertaining to heat in planetary systems above and below any solid surface.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2884148
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2876905
If we lower CO2 to “safe” levels, then we have the climate/weather of the 20s, 30s, 40s,……….Does anybody brave enough to say extreme weather was rare during those periods? So, why even bother? Forget consensus, we have a real comparison. This usually gets people stuttering.
Reason 5 is not an argument against climate change. It is an argument against the way humans should react to climate change. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that this climate scare is all watermelon horse hockey, that just isn’t what Dilbert asked for.
Look at the title of the blog post, not what you imagine it to be.
Often forgotten is the Koppen Climate Classification done in 1895. Though Chinese researchers claim there has been a 5% change it does show that the rate of climate change is far slower and no near as scary as we hear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification
Enlightenment. So, I found this page via a link on a podcast by former NYPD, Secret Service officer Dan Bongino. The ACE graph posted by rah struck me as very powerful evidence (had not yet seen 2 others), so I forwarded the image and web-log link to a warmist hysteric acquaintance because he had last week been claiming worsening of storms.
Now, I’m not a “climate scientist”, though I do take care to try to followthe scientific method, and am not much of a statistician nor mathematician (it’s not my first impulse to apply them), though we both have helped numerous grad students & profs crunch their data, but he is far more of a mathematician than I. We both have known meteorologists, hurricane predictors & chasers, oceanographers, geo-physical fluid dynamics people.
So, he responds, “I don’t believe it. The graph must not mean what you think. It doesn’t agree with what I know.” So, I pressed for a more concrete argument…and he sent me a URL from a power-mad watermelon site, with pictures of “beautiful people”, and text merely asserting in essence, “The sky is falling!!! …severe storms…catastrophic… real soon, now! End of the wirld! Please donate!” No data tables, no graphs, no links to data or graphs, nothing about methodology or design of models, no discussion of instruments/transducers/gauges or Stephens shelters or proper location, no analyses & logical arguments over adjustments, homogenization, aggregation, no factor analysis, Maunder minimum, Little Ice Age…
Just pretty people, snow, catastrophe, donate.
OTOH, here & on other climate web-logs, there are data, graphs, debates over methodology, solar activity, water vapor, methane, CO2, history, problems interpreting tree rings from various places, compensation for sensor satellite orbit wobbles… nuts & bolts.
We need more pretty pictures of beautiful people (playing out-doors?), posed smiling into the camera to convince certain audiences.
Question to Tony Heller:
The best argument against alarmism, for me, would be the definitive proof that some past centuries with lower CO2 have been warmer than our 21st century. I find many graphs showing that when I google “hockey stick debunked” or “medieval warm period”. But too often these graphs are for specific regions or are crude cartoons or don’t mention the original source. Could you direct me to the best link showing the best graph on past warming periods of human history up to our 21st century?
My argument is that Indiana cantaloupe, already the best to be found anywhere, is this year the best this Hoosier has ever had. I don’t think they could possibly be any better.
Whether or not you side with the 97% of scientists who agree climate breakdown is happening, it’s the things that are contributing to it which are just plain bad: destroying rainforests, filling the seas with plastic, creating mono cultures, killing our pollinators, and other animals we rely upon for a balanced eco-system.
So even if you don’t think the planet is being changed into something we and most of our fellow animals we share it with aren’t adapted to surviving in, don’t you agree that the things mentioned above that are something we can all unite against?
Amazing amount of BS in one comment
Good God Sam! Go hide under a rock. Move to Antarctica. Do something other than fret.
Good grief, Sam. If you really want to build consensus, don’t lead off with the bogus “97% of scientists” argument. I bet you don’t even know where that bullshit claim originated.
#1 – There is no 97% consensus. The vast majority of Earth Scientists say there is no crisis.
#2 – There are more forests now than a century ago.
#3 – The vast majority of oceanic plastics come from third world countries.
#4 – I cannot give away bees. I have tried. Not one beekeeper wanted any of the swarms I have discovered on my property. Nobody wants them because there is no shortage. There is no extinction crisis. Period.
#5 – We have already united against poor stewardship. The air and water are cleaner than they were a century ago. The planet is getting greener every day.
Poor Sam…
The Wall Street Journal did not consult climate expert and mathematician extraordinaire AOC before they published this article.
‘Doomsday’ Math Says Humanity May Have Just 760 Years Left’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doomsday-math-says-humanity-may-have-just-760-years-left-11561655839
My opinion is this. Smoking one cigarette at the age of 20 will not cause cancer at the age of 71.
The earth is 4 billion years old. We have been on this planet an insignificant fraction of that time. We have been using the fossil fuels for an even smaller amount of time – almost non existent in the context of the age of the planet and what it’s been through. Our usage of fossil fuels is the cigarette at the age of 20 – insignificant.
Yet us humans don’t like the uncertainty. We fear the unknown. We like to think we are in control or at least someone is. Just like with any significant event or terrorist attack or death of someone powerful or famous. We don’t like to think that bad things happen randomly and are out of our control. So when 9/11 happened, people wanted to believe that it wasn’t just an evil act of some men from the Middle East. It was too random and too untraceable. It was easier to come up with theories that put someone in charge.
Same thing with the Climate Change. The activists think that WE can control the planet. That we matter. That we can stop it from spinning. That we can stop it’s natural processes which have been happening for billions of years and will happen long after we are gone.
Late George Carlin put it perfectly in one of his stand ups. It’s not a direct quote:
“The earth has been through many extreme situations, extreme temperatures, been bombarded with asteroids, explosions of the Sun and all that… and the activists think it can’t take a plastic bag!”
I do think we should find ways to pollute less but find ways that work because for now it’s just the rich people telling the poor people to consume less.
I don’t see any of these activists getting rid of their phones or their cars. The thing is, we could dig holes with bare hands, we could enslave horses to do all the heavy lifting for us and get us from point A to point B but that would be going backwards.
What are your qualifications ?
Where have you recorded your debated with scientists.
Have you visited drought affected regions.
Why are oceanic nations worried about rising sea levels.
My two cents, or rather points:
”The climate issue summarized in two points”
See https://slowfox.wordpress.com/2019/11/22/the-climate-issue-summarized-in-two-points/
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