The following report is from Benny Peiser’s blog The Global Warming Policy Foundation:
It is a year since the so-called Climategate e-mails were leaked. Since then, we have had freezing winters in Europe and the US, and revelations of gross misrepresentations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The lasting impression is of massive corruption of science.
Leaked from the Climate Research Unit in England, the e-mails showed the scientists behind the climate scare plotting to: hide, delete and manipulate data; to denigrate scientists presenting different views; to force journals to publish only papers promoting climate alarm; to subvert “peer review” into “pal review”; and make the reports of the IPCC nothing but alarmist propaganda. The corruption spread through governments, universities, scientific societies and journals. You have to look back to the Lysenko episode in the Soviet Union in the 1940s (when a crank persuaded the Soviet establishment that agriculture did not follow Darwinian evolution) to find such perversion of science.
The worst nonsense after the scandal was this: “Well, some climate scientists committed a few minor transgressions but the basic science is sound.” In fact, the basic science is nonexistent.
There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way. The slight warming of the past 150 years is no different from previous natural warming periods, such as the worldwide medieval warm period from about 900 to 1200AD… [Read the rest here]
Why we did not hear a thing here about the “Satellite-Gate”?
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6144&linkbox=true&position=2
For many folks, particularly the readership here at WUWT, yes, the shennanigans revealed by the East Anglia files (Climategate) has been enlightening – but not unlike the illustration in the sidebar ad for Spenser’s book “Blunder”, it’s just the tip of a larger iceberg.
I dropped off this link in the ‘tips’ thread, but I’ll repeat it here, as it’s cogent to the overall discussion and point – that being the sad and sorry state of ‘industrial strength science’ as practiced in the modern day – with climate not the only area where then current methodologies run into problems. It’s also an issue in other fields, with much more immediacy, such as the field of medicine, as described in this piece from The Atlantic magazine, which details findings that followers of the Climategate mess will find all too hauntingly familiar.
The very state of ‘science’ itself almost appears to be an utter trainwreck, given these examples from current events. What is to be done? I don;t have the foggiest idea. But the entire subject is certainly dis-heartening.
You touch on one of the subjects I have wondered about. Mann’s hockey stick smooths over the MWP and the LIA. Both that were accepted to have happened via the historical record. Good scientific practices would have required that his theory be independently validated like what happened with cold fusion.
Very important topic but the article could have been more focused on corruption and less on making the case that there is not dangerous global warming caused by humans. Both are important topics and trying to cover them in a single short article does justice to neither topic.
It should also be mentioned that no matter what we eventually discover about CAGW, corruption of the scientific method (as demonstrated by ClimateGate, for example) is a profound problem that has to be dealt with immediately.
“There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.”
It is one thing to disagree with or even distrust the evidence mainstream scientists have published. But no honest person can assert that it does not exist. This is absolute closed mindedness not scepticism.
Also a year after Climategate, Prince Chuckles is still backing the UEA, CRU, Jones and the rest of the gang:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/8179485/Prince-Charles-backs-Climategate-scientists.html
“The Prince of Wales has given his support to the scientists involved in the “Climategate” saga, describing their treatment as “appalling”. ”
Even Acton must wish he’d shut up. Support from this plonker isn’t likely to improve the UEA’s credibility.
And conversely his support for CRU isn’t likely to harm the campaign for the long overdue abolition of the monarchy.
rob m. says:
December 3, 2010 at 9:11 am
…and Hot fusion too, and , and….We are about to witness the end of the “Flintstones’ Universe” paradigms, and the fall of many science “idols”, “saints”, holy names and their fans alike.
Kenny wrote: “Over the p ast half- billion years (the span of multicelled life), CO² levels have averaged more than 2000ppm (parts per million) but with wild fluctuations, from more than 6000ppm to less than 500ppm. This has had no noticeable effect on global temperatures, which have remained remarkably constant for long periods, pointing to a stable global climate system, without which higher life might not be possible. ”
So, the ice ages did not happen? Whatever you think of AWG, this essay is nonsense.
No creditable organization would publish this.
Next he writes: “This stability probably comes from low clouds, which increase when temperatures rise and have a powerful cooling effect by reflecting away sunlight.”
It is a reasonable hypothesis, but Kenny gives no evidence that verifies it. New research points in the oppose direction.
“LOW, grey clouds help keep the planet cool. But as the world warms they will shrink and temperatures will rise ever higher, according to a study that could help to resolve one of the biggest uncertainties in climate science.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827893.400-goodbye-grey-skies-hello-extra-warming.html
Interestingly enough, while the MSM and the Warmists have done their best to circle their wagons around the scoundrels, the public seems well aware that the seriousness of AGW is in doubt, the sea levels have stopped rising (the Obama effect?), and that the Warmists are hysterics with an agenda that involves them getting wealthy at the expense of taxpayers.
We know it was fraud. The fraudsters of course know it was fraud. And they know that we know it was fraud, and that we know that they know that we… ok, you get the point. The evidence for the fraud is so overwhelming that one can sometimes feel like one is existing in the Twilight Zone when hearing and reading the stinking bullshit that comes from our governments and the UN.
Unfortunately for us realists – and fortunately for the fraudsters – it is still painfully obvious that there are a lot of gullible, green idiots out there who are still only too willing to lap up the alarmism in spades, and completely ignore any evidence which contradicts their world view. And they call us deniers! Have they learnt nothing from history? Or maybe they just think those abuses of citizens by governments only happen in other countries – the UK and USA couldn’t possibly have turned into corrupt, totalitarian states like 1930s Germany or the USSR, could they? No, never. Our leaders are saving us – they’re saving the planet! We’re all being ruled by saints (God bless ’em) with super powers to stop the climate from changing!
And all we have to do is surrender our money, our freedom and our desire to prosper. Small price to pay though, in return for sleeping soundly in the knowledge that these glorious people are saving the world.
Mike says:
December 3, 2010 at 9:18 am
“There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.”
It is one thing to disagree with or even distrust the evidence mainstream scientists have published. But no honest person can assert that it does not exist. This is absolute closed mindedness not scepticism.
You have fallen into a logical fallacy Mike. Your statement “no honest person” is used to imply that anyone who disagrees with a given view is dishonest. Be careful that the closed mindedness is not your own. The arguement was that ““There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.” If you disagree, then show your proof that the statement is wrong without the use of ad hominem BS.
Absolutely correct, jev2000
Mike says:
December 3, 2010 at 9:18 am
Mike quoted: “There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.”
And Mike replied: “It is one thing to disagree with or even distrust the evidence mainstream scientists have published. But no honest person can assert that it does not exist. This is absolute closed mindedness not scepticism.”
===========================================
(Above in bold added by me.) Mankind has affected many local climates; there’s UHI, climate changes from changing forsests to crops and changing cropland to forests, and other such local effects. I can’t argue that mankind has not had an effect on climate. However, I’d be curious to see your evidence that mankind has; a. changed the global climate, and b. in a dangerous way.
Where are the bodies? Where is your evidence?
Mike responds to:
“There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.”
By saying:
“It is one thing to disagree with or even distrust the evidence mainstream scientists have published. But no honest person can assert that it does not exist. This is absolute closed mindedness not scepticism.”
You misunderstand the scientific method, skepticism, and the definition of an honest person. First, scientific skeptics have nothing to prove. And dishonest people make fact-free assertions while evading the necessity of testing and verification. Skeptics ask to be shown data, methodologies and metadata – and their requests are routinely stonewalled by “mainstream scientists.”
The question at this point is not whether AGW exists. The climate alarmist crowd [AKA: “mainstream scientists”] have put forth a hypothesis saying that an increase in CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe [CO2=CAGW].
It is not the duty of skeptics to falsify CAGW, and it is the duty of those asserting the CAGW hypothesis to demonstrate, with testable, replicable, empirical evidence, that their hypothesis explains reality better than the null hypothesis of natural climate variability.
They have failed, because they rely on computer climate models rather than on raw, testable data. Their models have been repeatedly falsified. Their models cannot predict the future. And the planet itself falsifies their AGW hypothesis: there are no verifiable measurements showing the fraction of warming, if any, attributable to the very minor 0.7° warming over the past century and a half. Thus, their hypothesis is downgraded to a conjecture; an opinion that cannot withstand the rigor of the scientific method.
If testable evidence is ever produced showing how much warming the increase in CO2 causes, out of the total of natural climate variability, and such putative evidence withstands falsification, that would be evidence of AGW. But so far, the claims of CO2-induced warming is all conjecture.
The observed temperature fluctuations are minor, and they are well within the parameters of past variability. According to the scientific method you cannot simply assume that the cause of the 0.7° rise is due to CO2, when much greater rises and declines have happened naturally, prior to the industrial revolution.
It is either laziness or grant greed that causes mainstream scientists to disregard the scientific method in favor of evidence-free climate alarm. No other branch of science allows this, and by skipping the essential scientific method, climate scientists who are promoting AGW in return for grant money are depriving the other physical sciences of much needed funds.
IMHO, CAGW is nothing but a fraud, done with a wink and a nod between corrupt mainstream climate scientists who cash in on their alarming scam. If the conniving scaremongers at Cancun actually believed their own alarming stories, they would be the first to lead by example, by meeting in low-cost venues with lots of public transportation, and teleconferencing whenever possible.
Instead, their profligate waste of energy and gluttonous consumption at a very expensive beach resort shows that they do not care about the environment; they care only about living high on the hog at the expense of taxpayers, and conniving to boost the UN to the status of the world’s government.
Don’t listen to what they say. Look at what they do.
The post’s author writes;
“There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way.”
It is going too far to say “no evidence”. It would be more accurate to say “insufficient evidence with many indications of poor quality and a similar body of evidence to the contrary” (from mainstream scientists Mike). Further, that many of the “solutions” proposed could do more harm than the thing they claim to prevent. That last point is the reason why it is so important for scientists to subsume their egos and be 100% scientific.
Mike says:
“Whatever you think of AWG (sic), this essay is nonsense. No creditable (sic) organization would publish this.”
Thanks for the fact-free post. Actually, your comment is nonsense. Why don’t you try again, using facts instead of sweeping ad-hom generalizations?
Phil’s Dad,
I think the emphasis is on the word “dangerous.”
Are there any global observations you’re aware of showing that the climate is changing in a dangerous way? I’m not aware of any, but I’d like to know if there are.
In fact, the current global temperature indicates a “Goldilocks” climate: not too hot, not too cold, but ju-u-u-st right.
Mike says: December 3, 2010 at 9:32 am
Kenny wrote:[…]
So, the ice ages did not happen? Whatever you think of AWG, this essay is nonsense.
This is typical of the proxy reconstructions I’ve seen over the past 45 years, concurring with this essay. Do you have alternate data?
http://i46.tinypic.com/2582sg6.jpg
A lot of what Lysenko was advocating looks very much like epigenetics, which is a valid area of study today. Mind you, Lysenko screwed up a lot of other things. Skeptics are by definition, sceptical. When somebody starts yapping that they are positively certain who is wrong and who is right, well they are just evangelists of another stripe. The balance of evidence suggests, it doesn’t dictate.
Mike is either a rube or a troll, or maybe he is both. You will do your best by ignoring him.
Very interesting and quite informative and accurate on a number of topics, but I have problems digesting the following statement:
“In the 19th c entury, CO² levels were about 280ppm, extraordinarily low, putting stress on green plants. Man, by burning fossil fuels and through deforestation, has pushed the levels up to 390ppm.”
Oh, reeeally? Are you sure man is the sole culprit of ALL the increase in the level of CO² from 280ppm back in the 19th c entury to current 390 ppm in the atmosphere?
Mike says: December 3, 2010 at 9:32 am
“So, the ice ages did not happen? Whatever you think of AWG, this essay is nonsense.”
Ice ages happen roughly every 100,000 years – do you want to posit that every 100,000 years, the CO2 level decides that it’s time to cause another ice age and starts to drop? Sort of like an invisible spirit?
Sorry, Mike. Your theory falls into the realm of animism.
Andrew Kenny is a fellow citizen of mine in South Africa
His publication in Business Day and interview on radio is a major breakthrough here.
It is the first time ever here that sceptics have been given an opportunity to speak.
In fact I already warned him,
:::
always be careful! It does not hurt to look over your shoulder a bit more.
There is (very) big money riding on this carbon dioxide scam.
Your pension already depends on it…I am sorry to say.
:::
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
When compared against the extremes possible in known planetary bodies, Earth’s climate is *amazingly* stable within bounds. I’m curious why ice ages are something you’d bring up in discussion of CO2 concentration over known geologic time frames. You seem to be waving a flag of distraction on ice ages while failing to address what Kenny wrote, which is that there isn’t even historical correlation between ice ages, warm periods, and CO2 concentration, much less reason to believe in causation.
New research also tells us that eggs are bad for us… no wait, they’re good for us. No, now they’re bad again, except only when used with butter. Now bacon is bad. Now all cholesterol is bad, now only some cholesterol… nope, now all cholesterol is good for you, but only in certain levels. Now anti-oxidants are good! Now they’re bad! Now they’re really bad for you! Now you want a high carb diet! Now you dont! Now it’s a balance of carbs you want!! Now you dont want any glutens!!! Now you want them!!!!
My point? New research should always be given about the attention of the next layer of paint as a masterpiece is laid down piece by piece. It’s interesting, but inconclusive. If it were conclusive, it wouldn’t be considered new research. If it’s new research, it cannot be conclusive.
So your mention of “new research disagrees with you,” is meaningless. Until you can predict next months or next years, or next decades weather by the hour, we officially don’t know jack about our climate system, and certainly not enough to trust our instincts about what new research may be showing.
Ah, a new scientist article, based on their past attachment to blatant journal gatekeeping, I’ll properly file that for you:
http://www.generalwastedisposal.com/images/3yd_bin.jpg
Of course corruption of science persist. Apparently there’s very few actual scientist brave enough to adhere to the common rules and regulations of everything science these days.
If you’re considering yourself a scientist but can’t stack yourself up against Dr Lindzen in behavior, you’re a frakking hippie, get a god damn grip of yourself, get frakking real will ya’, god dammit, but can’t you take the responsibility?
Steve Keohane says:
December 3, 2010 at 10:36 am
Mike says: December 3, 2010 at 9:32 am
What would that chart look like with the temperature range between the minimum and maximum verified record ever recorded? I think it would range between -90’C and 60’C and be nothing more than a ripple.
I would agree with
Kenny wrote: “Over the p ast half- billion years (the span of multicelled life), CO² levels have averaged more than 2000ppm (parts per million) but with wild fluctuations, from more than 6000ppm to less than 500ppm. This has had no noticeable effect on global temperatures, which have remained remarkably constant for long periods, pointing to a stable global climate system, without which higher life might not be possible. ”
@ Phil’s Dad says:
December 3, 2010 at 10:23 am
Yes! You got it right. If you feel the evidence is not sufficient to warrant mitigation efforts, then I respectfully disagree. People like Kenny who say there is no evidence for dangerous AGW are not being honest.
There are honest people on both sides of the issue, and there are dishonest people on both sides. This is true for almost any major issue. It is not ethical or wise to support people you happen to agree with but who are dishonest.
Smokey
is right , of course.
It is up to the person who claims that CO2 causes warming to prove it.
Nevertheless, there is convincing evidence to prove that green house gasses do not cause warming.
For example
Take a careful look at some actual temperature data from the past. It shows the average year temp. since 1946
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/8705/navacerrada.gif
This is in Spain, which I think is pretty much average as avarage goes for a place to stay on earth! The station has been very accurate in its recordings and only one day’s recordings are missing. Note that the minimum temps. since 1980 have stayed constant. If green house gasses were to blame for the warming (trapping of heat), you would think it should have been minimum temps that would show the increase (of modern warming). But that line is completely straight…..So it cannot be greenhouse gasses that caused modern warming. It must be something else…..
Wind Rider,
Thanks for the link to Atlantic Magazine’s article about fraudulent medical practices. There is much, I suspect, phony science going on. I am a practicing engineer and have great respect for the scientific approach to problems but have noted that many so-called scientists and researchers are really just a kind of politician – particularly academically-oriented practitioners of science. Climategate was my wake-up call and now I use Climate Science as a kind of litmus test – if a publication or individual is a hysterical warmista I immediately know they are running (or are being run by…) some sort of political rent-seeking scam.
@woodNfish
“Mike is either a rube or a troll, or maybe he is both. You will do your best by ignoring him.”
Yes! The true way of skepticism is to uncritically accept the author’s conclusion that human C02 emissions “will have only one major effect: better crops and forests, and more biodiversity”.
This article is a good summary of arguments anyone even slightly interested in science should run a mile from.
Mike,
“it [low clouds causing cooling] is a reasonable hypothesis, but Kenny gives no evidence that verifies it. New research points in the oppose direction.”
This ‘new’ research you cited, turns out to be another climate model run. Watts up with that?
I don’t think Lysenko’s baloney had anything to do with evolution; he just spurned genetics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
“This article is a good summary of arguments anyone even slightly interested in science should run a mile from.”
Why is that, why don’t you elaborate on that pronouncement. Just stating something is not going to get you taken seriously if you don’t back up your words.
Smokey says:
It’s entirely possible that Mike meant “credible,” of course, but “creditable” does mean “worthy of belief,” which is appropriate in this context.
Steve Keohane says:
CO2 is not the only climate forcing agent. Combine CO2 with solar forcing and they match up much better. See Figure 2 here.
@Wind Rider says:
December 3, 2010 at 9:00 am
It’s also an issue in other fields, with much more immediacy, such as the field of medicine, as described in this piece from The Atlantic magazine, which details findings that followers of the Climategate mess will find all too hauntingly familiar.
=======
REPLY:
Thanks for this! I’m in the “belly of the beast” in public health, dominated by shrieking banshees of doom & gloom, forever reaching out for more, ever more funding with outstretched, grasping claws. I ain’t real popular over here!
This was key in the Atlantic story:
“Maybe sometimes it’s the questions that are biased, not the answers…”
Absolutely! We are all human & fallible, and tend to color our research with our own personal biases, political orientations etc. (although, with work, it is possible to overcome these and focus on pure science with unblemished results). In PH, the research has one real goal = “more money.”
USA spends more dollars on health research than any other country, with much poorer outcomes. CAGW ain’t no different.
Global Warming could cool down temperatures in winter
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/global-warming-could-cool-down-temperatures-in-winter
WUWT
@Ben D
“Why is that, why don’t you elaborate on that pronouncement. Just stating something is not going to get you taken seriously if you don’t back up your words.”
Well actually I did highlight one claim. I presume this is not your first article on WUWT or that you’re not hearing about global warming for the first time so you’re likely aware that making a statement to the effect there will definitely not be any negative consequences and will definitely only be positive consequences to raising atmospheric C02 is a bit silly.
So taking another claim
“Its only significant absorption band (15 micron) is saturated, so adding more to the atmosphere has a small and diminishing effect.”
This is the tired old C02 saturation argument. He doesn’t really quantify what “small” means but even AGW sceptical scientists like Dr Roy Spencer accept that the pure radiative effect of a doubling of C02 is on the order of 1 degree. Given that the mainstream claim is for about 3 degree total sensitivity that doesn’t sound like “a small and diminishing effect.” to me.
In terms of a more detailed and specific refutation of the claim I’d start here
regarding the corruption of science persists – what amazes me is that we had several investigations into the Climate Gate issue and none of those showed that there was anything majorly wrong – hmm, is there nothing wrong with manipulating data, emails, people (maybe investigators never looked at the emails!!)?, is it simply protectionism or does corruption spread further than just the “scientists”?
BC Bill says:
December 3, 2010 at 10:46 am
lesson of Lysenkoism:
The most severe lesson of Lysenkoism is not that Lysenko was necessarily 100% wrong, though the effect upon Soviet agriculture was devastating. His tenure in charge of Soviet genetics for Stalin, was 100% TOTALITARIAN!! No other view or theory on anything connected with the field of genetics was allowed, on penalty of job loss, exile, or death. Only the “Party Line” or “Lysenko Line” could be expressed. Today’s scientific TOTALITARIANS have tried all techniques short of the Gulag (though we are now hearing threats of criminal charges for giving (politically) incorrect testimony).
The November 2010 anomaly in now up on http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ at +0.38 degree C. A slight drop on October.
The following report is from Benny Peiser’s blog The Global Warming Policy Foundation:
Since then, we have had freezing winters in Europe and the US, and revelations of gross misrepresentations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Well the name Global Warming Policy Foundation gives the impression that it’s chock a block full of really smart guys who know how to evaluate the scientific literature, and formulate really complex government policy position papers.
Except Benny believes that “there is snow in my backyard so the whole planet must be freezing”.
Does Benny even know that there is a northern and southern hemisphere?
Can Benny read the weather maps that pop up in front of his face every night showing cold air blowing out of the Arctic. Is Benny smart enough to figure out that if there is cold air blowing out of the Arctic there must be warm air blowing into the Arctic.
Maybe Benny is a really smart guy and can figure all this out for himself. So why is Benny peddling wrong stuff to his readers?
Desert Yote writes:
Well, if you had clicked on the link in this post, you would have discovered that this whole post is from an article by Andrew Kenny. But don’t let that minor fact stand in the way of your “theory”.
Similar patterns of behaviour can be found in the vaccination debate.
SandyinDerby says:
Alas, scientists actually studying paleoclimate would not agree with you http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5697/821.summary :
But, I guess we can ignore them since they publish in scientifically-corrupt journals like Science whereas Andrew Kenny writes his pieces on the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, clearly a much more scientifically-credible body: http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation 😉 It’s good we have all these right-wing policy organizations to identify for us which science is good and which is corrupt, aye?
I have always been puzzled by the word climate. I understand the word weather as in -5 and snowing at the present time where I am located. But the near surface temperature of the planet today is close to 1 half a degree colder than it was a year ago according to UHA satellite measurements. Now these satellites take 1000,s of measurements a day. Does that mean they are recording weather or climate? If it is just weather at what point does it become climate. Who decides? Based on what premise?
Wind Rider says:
Loved your post from Atlantic Magazine, especially part of the conclusion that basically said that a lot of scientists careers and science research is dressed up to appear more right than it really is ,and when they get away with this, they will just keep doing it. Sure seems to fit the AGW crowd.
Lazy Teenager had best look in the mirror. After saying, “Does Benny even know that there is a northern and southern hemisphere?” the lazy kid then mentions the Arctic three (3) times in the very next paragraph.
But then s/he’s a teen, and therefore knows everything.☺
There does happen to be an Antarctic – a fact that escapes the notice of the CAGW contingent, which is fixated on Arctic ice.
Joel Shore commented here a while back:
Actually, the problems lie with the lying models. Because the models don’t support the data, the data must be wrong according to true believers.
This is exactly what James Hansen does. He adjusts the past data to fit his models. And based on this, the CAGW crowd believes climate catastrophe is upon us. But the data has been so manipulated, twisted and massaged that it is foolish to believe it.
“Since then, we have had freezing winters in Europe and the US, ”
And a freezing winter in South America! Don’t forget that the planet has two hemispheres.
Adpack – you have hit the nail right on the head. The point is not that scientists might be wrong. They inevitably will be. At any one time, a good of scientific understanding will turn out subsequently to be wrong, but a politically open society (of both scientists and more broadly) will foster the scepticism integral to the advance of science.
The circling of the wagons, the dispatching of the white cells to fight infectious ideas, the denigration of critics as ‘inexpert’ or ‘deniers’, and the subversion of process (lack of posting and deletion of data, subversion of peer review processes, threatening of editors, etc) are all anathema to science and liberal society (in the correct, British sense of that word). Many who stress the importance of political liberalism also subscribe to scientific liberalism (Popper advocated both), and take exception to the autocratic tendencies Paul Feyerabend described. Scientists might use all these tricks, but quality science demands that we demand Popperian standards.
But let’s ignore all that and commit the genetic fallacy. Let’s play ‘Six Degrees of Exxon Mobil’ and dismiss any such inconvenient questions as part of the conspiracy of those evil right wing deniers in the pay of Big Oil.
Perfect example is Joel Shore (above): ‘the climate sensitivity may be even higher than suggested by models.’ (Why is climate ‘science’ so reliant on words like ‘could’ and ‘might’?) Why not look to the commentary paper by Penner et al in Nature GeoScience a couple of months back that suggested that perhaps only 35% of recent warming was due to carbon dioxide and the models projecting future warming seriously overestimate warming? I guess that’s just too inconvenient. Or perhaps Big Oil was involved somewhere.
Science is part of a learning process. It involves the detection and correction of error. The rhetorical arguments employed and fallacies committed by the likes of Joel Shore – like Lysenkoism – are inherently antiscientific. And like the attempts to tell us we must do what The Science tells us, they are inherently antidemocratic.
Reference: Short-lived uncertainty?
Joyce E. Penner, Michael J. Prather, Ivar S. A. Isaksen, Jan S. Fuglestvedt, Zbigniew Klimont, David S. Stevenson
Nature Geoscience 3, 587-588 (1 August 2010) doi:10.1038/ngeo932
I don’t think the problem is corruption, as much as incompetence.
My take is that far too much is being read into, and far too many conclusions being drawn from the incredibly short data series that is the modern temperature record.
The Earth is 4500 million years old. The modern temperature record 150 years at best.
To put this into perspective, if you scale down the geological history to a single year, we would have been recording temperature data for A SINGLE SECOND.
And THAT is sufficient to conclude that the “science is settled”?
I think not…….
From the article: “In the 19th century, CO2 levels were about 280ppm, extraordinarily low, putting stress on green plants. Man, by burning fossil fuels and through deforestation, has pushed the levels up to 390ppm.”
What deforestation? In an otherwise fairly reasonable argument, the author throws in a stinking glob of falsehood.
It may be news to the hubris-filled, self-absorbed, post-modern world, but globally there are more forested acres with more trees today than there were 500 years ago. That’s a fact; inconvenient perhaps, but a fact nonetheless.
Indeed, it might have been the elimination of landscape-scale anthropogenic burning and subsequent continental-scale afforestation that induced the Little Ice Age. See
http://tinyurl.com/26b3lj5
Robert A. Dull, Richard J. Nevle, William I. Woods, Dennis K. Bird, Shiri Avnery, and William M. Denevan. 2010. The Columbian Encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt Land Use Change, Fire, and Greenhouse Forcing. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(4) 2010, pp. 1–17.
The hypothesis offered in that (peer-reviewed, journal published) article depends on CO2 forcing and is thus questionable to me, but the rebounding of forests after the near-elimination of the indigenous populations of the America’s (and on other continents such as Australia) is solid.
But Science marches backwards (I agree with that contention), so what was once common knowledge is now lost. Might as well burn the libraries. Hello the New Dark Ages.
PS – to be fair, the author claims zero expertise in forest history, so his throw-away line about deforestation must taken with a truck load of salt.
Henry@Sharper00
here, we have been all through those arguments about the carbon dioxide
1) Co2 causes cooling by re-radiating some sunshine
2) CO2 causes warming by re-radiating some earth shine
3) CO2 causes cooling by taking part in photo synthesis. This process extracts heat from its surrounding. (did you ever see a forrest grow where it is very cold?)
the question is: what is the net effect of all of that? It seems to be zero or very close to zero.
for example, see my posting here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/03/a-year-after-climategate-the-corruption-of-science-persists/#comment-543008
why did you not respond to this?
Why don’t just go back to your favorite site and “cook” some more books.
Wind Rider says:
December 3, 2010 at 9:00 am
“[The sorry state of industrial strength science is] also an issue in other fields, with much more immediacy, such as the field of medicine, as described in this piece from The Atlantic magazine, which details findings that followers of the Climategate mess will find all too hauntingly familiar.”
And maybe by now only a voice from the grave, check out this quote concerning our old Post Normal Climate Science nemesis, the “given truth” warrant allegedly deriving from a publication’s Peer Review process:
Nature, the grande dame of science journals, stated in a 2006 editorial, “Scientists understand that peer review per se provides only a minimal assurance of quality, and that the public conception of peer review as a stamp of authentication is far from the truth.”
Offer a man the Dollar and he will do or say anything you wish. When the paymaster is government, and the US government has spent $32Bn over the past ten years to prove AGW, then this makes more sense given larger sums of dollars.
I do not think that the US government has spent any of that vast sum wisely since they have still to make any connection between human activity and climate that makes any sense.
Mike,
You keep claiming that there is evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way. Yet failed to show any evidence to support this, why is that then?
Phil,
Like above there is no evidence if you can’t even make one point that supports this.
First thing you both need to consider is what is the sensitivty of CO2 to climate and show this represented in global temperatures taking natural factors into account. If you don’t know the sensitivty, then you can’t claim there is evidence mankind is changing the climate in dangerous way.
The facts are that most of recent global temperatures have increased in short sudden bursts. That means for CO2 to have caused this the sensitivty must be high, but a stable period shows that this is not true. This period has shown that natural cycles of global temperatures are responsible for most of the warming with El Nino’s and ocean cycles the key players. Therefore the CO2 senstivity must be low, but most of the increase has occured in bursts so that leaves very little room for warming from CO2. That is sound evidence along with other weather events (hurricanes, droughts, floods etc) not getting any worse over recent 100 years, that there is no evidence to support a dangerous climate ahead caused by man made CO2.
And according to a link from climatedepot to financial post opinion piece by Lawrence Solomon: Hockey stick coverup, a sequel
UVA has admitted it lied and thus covered up, and are apparently still refusing to hand over the information requested by law, so essentially they’re still then breaking the law.
The trend of not wanting to come clean with the original information is ongoing on an upwards slope it seems, so bad an upward slope they’re actually willing to break the law over and over to not have to come clean.
David, UK says:
December 3, 2010 at 9:45 am
the UK and USA couldn’t possibly have turned into corrupt, totalitarian states like 1930s Germany or the USSR, could they?
How could you even think such a thing?
The BBC only ever reports the truth and nothing but the truth.
Please report to your nearest re-education centre on Monday morning.
RE sharper00 says:
December 3, 2010 at 2:41 pm
The article you linked to was fine for C)2 induced warming of the atmosphere, however this statement at the end of it was not fine…”And of course the result of this energy imbalance is the accumulation of heat over the last 40 years.”
The energy imbalance would only necessarily be in the “atmosphere” not in earth’s energy budget. If LWR induces atmospheric heat and increases the hydrologic cycle, and therefore cloud cover, which decrease SWR entering the oceans where any change in radiation has a GREATER effect over the long term, then overall the planet may not warm at all.
Enneagram says:
December 3, 2010 at 8:54 am
Question: What happened to Satellite-Gate?
Answer: Ask no questions – Hear no lies.
Smokey said:
They have failed, because they rely on computer climate models rather than on raw, testable data. Their models have been repeatedly falsified. Their models cannot predict the future. And the planet itself falsifies their AGW hypothesis: there are no verifiable measurements showing the fraction of warming, if any, attributable to the very minor 0.7° warming over the past century and a half.
There’s the alternative hypothesis of UHI effects being responsible for such observations. Cities have certainly increased in size over that time period as have machines which put emit heat, which you also tend to find concentrated in urban areas. With an effect so small it’s also necessary to consider accuracy and calibration of the data in the first place.
If testable evidence is ever produced showing how much warming the increase in CO2 causes, out of the total of natural climate variability, and such putative evidence withstands falsification, that would be evidence of AGW. But so far, the claims of CO2-induced warming is all conjecture.
The observed temperature fluctuations are minor, and they are well within the parameters of past variability. According to the scientific method you cannot simply assume that the cause of the 0.7° rise is due to CO2, when much greater rises and declines have happened naturally, prior to the industrial revolution.
It would also be necessary to show that any rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human activities. This also being something which has varied due to natural causes.
Even if there was a foolproof method of identifying CO2 from human use of fossil fuels (as opposed to the likes of Burning Mountain in Australia) you’d still need to show that this actually raises the amount in the atmosphere. Adding more directly to the atmosphere may simply mean that the same amount which would have otherwise gone from the oceans into the atmosphere has stayed in the oceans.
Jeremy said
When compared against the extremes possible in known planetary bodies, Earth’s climate is *amazingly* stable within bounds.
If this wasn’t the case we most likely wouldn’t be here to discuss it in the first place. It’s also a reasonable hypothesis that the climate mechanism has negative feedback mechanisms for this to be the case. Yet the AGW doomsday senarios require positive feedback.
Smokey says:
I suppose that if I were unable to intelligently address the actual scientific points that someone was making, I might be desperate enough to resort to quoting them out of context too, although I would hope that I would still have higher standards than that.
I think I have rarely run into someone who has such high standards for the conduct of others whose views he disagrees with (as he discusses here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/03/a-year-after-climategate-the-corruption-of-science-persists/#comment-542920 ) while having such abysmally low standards for his own conduct (and of those who agree with him).
Aynsley Kellow says:
I’ll give you two other reasons:
(1) Because the subject that I was addressing was estimates of climate sensitivity from paleoclimate data and Penner et al. is not discussing paleoclimate data and what it says about climate sensitivity AT ALL.
(2) Because, irregardless of that, you have GROSSLY distorted what Penner et al. ( http://xweb.geos.ed.ac.uk/~dstevens/publications/penner_ngeo10.pdf ) have actually said. First of all, saying that methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon have “augment[ed] the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide by 65%” is not the same thing mathematically as saying that CO2 is responsible for only 35% of the forcing. What it means is that if the CO2 forcing is, say, 1 W/m^2 then that due to the others is an additional 0.65 W/m^2, which means that CO2 is responsible for ~61% of the forcing due to all of these factors. Second of all, you completely neglect the inconvenient fact that Penner et al. also note in the very next sentence that “Others — such as sulphate, nitrate and organic aerosols — cause a negative radiative forcing, offsetting a fraction of the warming owing to carbon dioxide and that there basic conclusion in regards to climate sensitivity is simply that “at present impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity” using the past instrumental temperature record. This is precisely why the best constraints on climate sensitivity come from paleoclimate data, response of temperatures to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, and other things besides simply the instrumental temperature record.
From my calculations, if Dec 10 is over .394 anomaly, we’ll have a new record….
Henry@ MattN
it seems we are going in circles here. Nobody denies that warming is happening. The question is: is it natural or is it man made. The evidence points to natural,
1st because it has happened naturally like that in the past, as Andrew Kenny has explained, and
2nd if you study the pattern of the warming, for example, here, we have some average temperature data since 1946,
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/8705/navacerrada.gif
This is in Spain, which I think is pretty much average as avarage goes for a place to stay on earth! The station has been very accurate in its recordings and only one day’s recordings are missing. Note that the average minimum temps. since 1980 have stayed constant. If green house gasses were to blame for the warming (the trapping of heat), you would think that it should have been minimum temps that would show the increase (of modern warming). But that line is completely straight…..So it cannot be greenhouse gasses that caused modern warming.
So it must be something else that is causing warming…..natural causes…obviously
The nexy question is: do we want (natural) warming to stop?
No!!
Warming is good for the planet as it stimulates growth
http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=128438
I am enjoying a blessed afternoon at our pool….my brother is complaining about the snow…. please help my brother….stop complaining about the warming….
HenryP says:
December 3, 2010 at 11:32 am
Andrew Kenny is a fellow citizen of mine in South Africa
His publication in Business Day and interview on radio is a major breakthrough here.
It is the first time ever here that sceptics have been given an opportunity to speak.
+++++++++++
I am pretty sure Prof Philip Lloyd, chemistry professor, a notable and informed sceptic and devoted reader of WUWT, was loud and clear in Business Day. I am not worried about who was first, just that Business Day, which is widely circulated, gives a platform for reasoned comment. Good on them! It is always a good read whatever the topic.
Joel Shore,
Thanx, me boi, for linking to my statement. It can’t be repeated often enough that the alarmist crowd runs and hides from the Scientific Method like Dracula runs and hides from the dawn. They are both evil, eh? The corruption of climate science is what the article is about, and as usual you hide from that central fact.
And the real world laughs at the models you worship. BTW, when are you gonna write that article for WUWT? You can explain to us yokels how your computer models trump the real world.☺
Good article.
Thanks, Anthony!
Joel Shore 5.40
Come on Joel, its unusual for you to be so snarky. This from Taminos open mind blog;
“There’s a crucial point in that sentence: as I mentioned in this post, “One drawback of local records is that they tend to show much larger scatter than global/hemispheric averages.” Compared to global, hemispheric, or even regional averages, the noise level in individual station records is huge. You can’t expect to be able to “see” what the long-term behavior is just by looking at graphs of individual station data, especially with trend-squashing y-axis scales.”
We have the double problem that individual stations-because of instrumentation and methodology etc- have not in the past produced basic data that is any more accurate than to within 1 to 1.5 degrees. Add to to that the frequency with which the parameters of an individual station alters- a station physically moves, trees grow around it, it is urbanised, figures are not collected for five years and are ‘interpolated’ 100 years later etc etc and inaccuracies are piled on inaccuracies.
So individually the data is highly dubious, but add them together to create a global construct and suddenly the basic data is supposed to become fantastically accurate!
In any discipline except climate science everyone would accept that multiplying bad data many fold merely makes the resultant problems greater.
From that melange of nonsensical data computer modellers then like to parse results acurate to three decimal places. Are they Harry Potter? How did this magic occur?
Do you seriously believe for example that we can know that the global temperature (whatever that is supposed to mean) is say.561C warmer than in 1887 when the inacuracies are greater than the result they are computing?
tonyb
Four, actually.
Henry@Crispin in Ulaanbaatar
Pray do tell: where is Ulaanbaatar? Cannot be near Silverton, I cannot get a Business Day here….except via the internet
Also worried about the all the money that has been bet on “green”, then? Keeping a low proifile. Very sensible, as I explained to Andrew earlier.
Did you read my letter in Business day:
http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=128438
You say:
“I am pretty sure Prof Philip Lloyd, chemistry professor, a notable and informed sceptic and devoted reader of WUWT, was loud and clear in Business Day”.
I don’t know who was first. If he is a great man, he should hire me. I was here even a few months before Climate Gate started/ and I learned a lot here… other websites like Sceptical Science are wilfully trying to mislead people….
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
tonyb: Good to hear from you. Yeah, that may have been a little snarky, but I get annoyed when Smokey quotes me out of context.
As for the rest of your post:
(1) Actually, it is well-understood that when you have randomly-distributed errors, you can in fact get an average to a greater precision than the individual measurements.
(2) As for the 3 decimal places: The temperature data sets come with errorbars (see, for example, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif ) and they are usually careful to note when the difference in temperature between two years is not statistically-significant.
Joel Shore
December 3, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Well, if you had clicked on the link in this post, you would have discovered that this whole post is from an article by Andrew Kenny. But don’t let that minor fact stand in the way of your “theory”.
###
Mia cuplpa, mia culpa, mia supra culpa!
I actually did, immediately after posting my comment. I posted another comment right after, requesting the mods to scratch that knee-jerk comment, because it was the result of reading things too fast while at lunch, but they did not do so. They only scratched my comment requesting the dumb one be nixed.
OTH, mike is a troll and what I accused him of is a technique that trolls are starting to use to disrupt and high-jack threads. I was just wrong and an ass in this case.
[Reply: I intended to delete your comment per your request, and got sidetracked. My sincere apologies. That post has now been removed. ~dbs, mod.]
Smokey:
“You can explain to us yokels how your computer models trump the real world…”
Well, I hope he can at least write down ALL the differential equations, initial, and boundary conditions, and auxiliary source term models that purportedly govern the climate system and the numerical methods employed for solving them (I’m not holding out any hope for that, however. Modelers seem to run for the hills when there are equations to document…). For extra credit, he can prove that the resulting set of equations is solvable, consistent, and well-posed.
Tonyb,
My apologies, it seems to be my fault that Joel posted a snarky comment at grant fosters blog.☺
FYI: irregardless is not really a word. Either regardless or irrespective mean what Joel was intending, curiously in a sentence in which he mentions his own intelligence. The ‘ir’ in front of regardless would actually make its meaning the opposite of what people often intend, i.e.. the ‘ir’ and ‘less’ create a double negative.
Mark
Joel Shore says:
December 4, 2010 at 10:08 am
Actually, no, this is not what is “well-understood.” What you are attempting to cite, and failing at it quite miserably, is the law of large numbers (and, in a related context, the central limit theorem.) The errors need to be much, much more than simply “random-distributed” for the LLN to apply. The LLN states that the sample average of independent, identically distributed random variables will converge to the true mean if the sample size is sufficiently large. I suggest you look up the distinction and familiarize yourself with the implications of independence and identical distributions.
Mark
Hi Joel 10.08
I am well aware of the theory that if you multiply one horribly incorrect piece of data by a further one thousand pieces of horribly wromg data you will end up with something almost perfect.
That reminds me, I must finish reading Alice in Wonderland. I like the bit where down is up and up is down. A metaphor for climate science really 🙂
Tonyb
Not sure what you are referring to Smokey. I don’t think I have posted anything at Tamino’s blog for months. As near as I can tell, tonyb’s riff about Tamino is completely unrelated to his first sentence referring to this comment of mine here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/03/a-year-after-climategate-the-corruption-of-science-persists/#comment-543370 as being snarky.
[Reply: I intended to delete your comment per your request, and got sidetracked. My sincere apologies. That post has now been removed. ~dbs, mod.]
###
Thanks ☺ I understand about getting sidetracked. I’m an aspie and my whole life is nothing but a sidetrack. If I was doing the mod, I am pretty sure I would be getting sidetracked by the very comments I was supposed to be modding.
Smokey: “It can’t be repeated often enough that the alarmist crowd runs and hides from the Scientific Method like Dracula runs and hides from the dawn. They are both evil, eh?”
Actually, a recent re-appraisal of the evidence has shown that Dracula is more misunderstood than evil. So the garlic-and-crucifix defence is a bit of an anachronism in these enlightened times.
Speaking of enlightenemt, I notice that Realclimate has an interesting update on the Keenslyside claim of gobal cooling until 2015 from a couple of years back, which caused a bit of a stir in the media.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/so-how-did-that-global-cooling-bet-work-out/
The Keenslyside scenario doesn’t seem to be working out so far. Realclimate has even offered Keenslyside or co-authors an opportunity for comment. The Scientific Method in action.
Roger Knights says:
December 4, 2010 at 9:21 am
… Don’t forget that the planet has two hemispheres.
Four, actually.
Mathematically – probably an infinite number of hemispheres 🙂
Smokey says:
December 3, 2010 at 4:07 pm
There does happen to be an Antarctic – a fact that escapes the notice of the CAGW contingent, which is fixated on Arctic ice.
—————-
I think you missed the point Smokey.
I am beating on people who promote the idea that their local weather conditions are indicative of what is happening globally.
The Arctic is mentioned because it is changes in Arctic circulation patterns which are affecting the UK and Norway.
So are you suggesting that Antarctic circulation pattern changes are affecting the UK and Norway?
Regards from the smart-a—- teenager.
Roger Knights says:
December 4, 2010 at 9:21 am
RoHa says:
And a freezing winter in South America! Don’t forget that the planet has two hemispheres.
Four, actually.
————————-
Tsk Tsk picky picky!!!!!
Even pickier:
So 4 hemispheres = 2 spheres
“woodNfish says:
December 3, 2010 at 10:50 am
Mike is either a rube or a troll, or maybe he is both. You will do your best by ignoring him.”
I disagree that he should be ignored. There may be many who read these things who are on the fence. And while we may not convince Mike, we may influence others who may either agree with Mike or who are unsure. It should be very clear that as a group, we have no problem defending our position.
Mike says: “So, the ice ages did not happen?” Yes they happened. However the swings in temperature were not so extreme that life disappeared from Earth. Furthermore, the ice ages were due to Milankovitch cycles and not due to CO2 changes.
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm
Joel Shore,
James Hansen and colleagues said much the same thing in setting out the ‘Hansen Alternative Scenario’ almost a decade ago, and suggested that mitigating other forcing factors was likely to be technically easier, more cost-effective, or be accompanied by substantial co-benefits. Example: carbon soot from inefficient combustion of biofuels, source of the Asian brown cloud, much regional warming and the death of 150,000 mostly women and children annually from indoor air pollution. But this was not the preferred problem-solution set and Hansen cam under attack from the likes of the luvvies at the Union for Concerned Scientists. Since then, he’s largely stuck to the preferred meme of decarbonisation.
The same political climate surrounding climate science applies to all who question the narrative – be it the missing evidence for increasing water vapour, the missing ‘hot spot’, or whatever. Fact is, most climate science projections or predictions rely on statements of ‘could’ or ‘consistent with models’ and downplay enormously the extent of the uncertainty that Penner et al rightly highlight. It even makes a difference to the policy instrument chosen: most policy-makers believe that the scientists can tweak the atmosphere to a certain level of carbon dioxide and dial a certain (stable) chosen degree of warming. They are seriously deluded – which is why a tax is preferable to cap and trade.
But actually, I was using you as an example of someone committing the genetic fallacy: SourceWatch indeed! Six degrees of Exxon Mobil! Example: Exxon gave $10,000 of their $125m community altruism one year to the Fraser Institute. Ross McKittrick is a fellow of the Fraser Institute. Bingo! In the pay of Big Oil! Let’s ignore the $25m pa they gave to Stanford, or the $1b they spend annually on climate change in their operations. Even if all $10,000 went into a Swiss bank account for McKittrick, it has no bearing on whether he is right or wrong. To think it does, as SourceWatch does, is to commit something called the genetic fallacy.
HenryP says: (December 4, 2010 at 7:50 am)
Nobody?
This argument is equivalent to saying, “Because I have never been in a car crash in the past, I have no need for seatbelts in the future.”
The whole point of the “A” in “AGW” is that modern climate change is different from past changes in climate. For example, never in the past has ½ trillion tons of carbon been converted from a solid form to gaseous within ~150 years.
Why do you think “modern warming” would affect Spain differently depending on whether it is “natural” or anthropogenic in origin?
HenryP@Anonymous Howard
I am sure you missed what Smokey said earlier. It is up to the person making the claim that my carbon foot print is bad to prove this to me. I have looked everywhere for the relevant evidence and could not find it. It is only stories and some odd calculations (which do not even include all the relevant corrections for overlaps). What they did at the IPCC is look at the problem from the wrong end. They assumed carbon dioxide is the problem….of global warming. They even worked out a forcing for CO2 based on the increase in that gas since 1750. But I say it is not the CO2…….
The car crash story does not apply at all because I am actually finding that carbon dioxide is good, the net effect of its cooling and warming is probably zero or close to zero, and (natural) global warming at current rates is not bad….
Here is my story:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
read it and then you come back to me with your “proof”
Obviously you missed my argument about the data from that station in Spain. I said that if global warming is caused by green house gases, you would expect the average yearly minimum temperatures to have risen by 0.7 degreesC per 100 years (if that is the correct rate of global warming) or even a bit more. But that line is perfect straight from 1980.
If you were a real Howard and not a coward you bring me some similar data from other stations that either proves or disproves what I am saying, i.e. modern warming is largely not caused by human activities.
Don’t come to me with stories. I have heard enough of those…
I notice that Sharper00 has left for greener pastures at Sceptical Science. I suggest you go there as well. You two belong together.
Aynsley Kellow says:
Well, you’ve gone from distorting science to just distorting history. So, I suppose we can think of that as progress of some sort. Yes, Hansen et al. argued that in the short term, reducing these other components could buy us time but Hansen never saw that as an excuse not to start to take serious steps to reduce CO2. In the long run, the CO2 is going to dominate because the CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere whereas those other contributors do not.
Are you seriously trying to argue that the Fraser Institute does not have a strong ideological bent? Don’t you think the skeptic world is a bit upside down when the entire scientific community in a field, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy, etc. are all said to be “corrupt” while organizations like Fraser Institute and the Global Warming Policy Foundation are actually taken seriously? It is called “poisoning the well”…basically, making defamatory arguments against the acknowledged experts so you can replace them with people like Andrew Kenny and Benny Peiser whose expertise is essentially nil but who subscribe to your ideology.
Joel Shore says: (December 6, 2010 at 4:32 pm)
Interesting that you posted this comment just before this article at RealClimate was posted:
At the risk of spoiling the surprise, it turns out time cannot be bought, only wasted.
Anonymopus Howard, you and Sharper00 are the ones here who are making claims here that more carbon dioxide is bad for us. I asked you before, where is your proof , and you did not answer.
Here are my results:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
read it and then you come back to me with all the results of your tests that proves that the net effect of carbon dioxide is warming rather than cooling and then we can talk again.
Anonymous Howard says:
What can I say? I taught Ray Pierrehumbert everything he knows! More seriously though, thanks for pointing out that post of Ray’s and it is nice to see one of the experts making the same point I did, with considerably more detail and support to back it up.