Monckton submits this rebuttal argument to the piece in the New Scientist Stamp out anti-science in US politics here. He doesn’t expect his rebuttal to be published.
Background: Paul Nurse is a Nobel prizewinner and Royal Society president.
Stamp out anti-science in UK science
By Christopher Monckton
It is time to reject UK political movements that masquerade as scientific societies while turning their backs on science, says former adviser to Margaret Thatcher FRS Christopher Monckton
IF YOU respect science you will probably be disturbed by the following opinions.
On climate: true science may be found in “the consensus opinions of experts” [1], we can “say with assurance that human activities cause weather changes” [1], recent variations are not “natural, cyclical environmental trends” [1], the manmade CO2’s contribution to the annual carbon cycle is not the 3% imagined by the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, but 86% [2], “anthropogenic climate change is already affecting every aspect of our lives” [3],
On freedom of information requests asking publicly-funded scientists for their data: the requests are “a tool to intimidate some scientists” [4].
On a sceptical interviewer: the force of Sir Paul’s replies had left him “tongue-tied” and had compelled him to stop the cameras on several occasions, when the interviewer had in fact told Sir Paul he suffered from hypoglycaemia and needed to take regular breaks to maintain his glucose intake [5].
On US politics: voters should not choose Republicans [1].
You would probably be even more disturbed to be told that these are the opinions expressed not by some climate scientist or politician but by Sir Paul Nurse, the geneticist who heads the world’s oldest taxpayer-funded lobby-group, the grandly-named and lavishly-grant-aided Royal Society.
It’s alarming that a country which leads the world in science – the home of Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell – might be turning its back on science. How can this be happening? What can be done?
One problem is treating scientific discussion as if it were political debate. When some scientists try to sway public opinion, they employ the tricks of the debating chamber: cherry-picking data, ignoring the consensus opinions of experts (who, in the peer-reviewed economic literature, are near-unanimous that it is cheaper to pay for the damage arising from any global warming that may occur than to spend anything now on attempted mitigation), adept use of a sneer or a misplaced comparison, reliance on the power of rhetoric rather than argument. They can often get away with this because the media rely too much on confrontational debate in place of reasoned discussion.
It is essential, in public issues, to separate science from politics and ideology. Get the science right first, then discuss the political implications. Scientists also need to work harder at discussing the issues better and more fully in the public arena, clearly identifying what they know and admitting what they don’t know.
Another concern is science teaching in schools. Is it good enough to produce citizens able to cope with public discussions about science? We have to ensure that science is being taught in schools – not pseudoscience such as a one-sided belief in the more luridly fanciful claims of climate extremists. With the rise of politicized science in the UK, measures need to be put in place to safeguard science classes. This has been difficult to maintain particularly in the US.
We need to emphasise why the scientific process is such a reliable generator of knowledge – with its respect for evidence, for scepticism, for consistency of approach, for the constant testing of ideas. Everyone should know and understand why the processes that lead to astronomy are more reliable than those that lead to astrology, or the wilder conclusions of the environmental propagandists adopted as though they were science by the IPCC and naively but profitably parroted by the likes of Nurse.
Finally, scientific leaders have a responsibility to expose the bunkum, not to perpetuate it. Scientists have not always been proactive about this. They need to be vigilant about what is being said in the public arena. They need to be vigilant about what scientific societies are publicising about science in their name, as four Fellows of the Royal Society did recently in forcing a complete and now largely sensible rewrite of the Society’s previously extremist statement about climate science. They take on the Paul Nurses when necessary. At elections, scientists should ensure that science is on the agenda and nonsense is exposed. If that nonsense is extreme enough – as Sir Paul’s ill-informed statements on climate science have been – then the response should be very public.
If scientists and scientific societies in the UK are anti-science and are allowed to carry the day it will ultimately hurt the British economy. The best scientists will head for the established leaders of science, such as the emerging powerhouses of China and India, whose leaders have realized that the climate scare has been more than somewhat oversold. But beyond that, the Royal Society’s present leadership will damage the UK’s standing in the world. Who will be able to take those leaders seriously? Scientists may not care, but they should.
Science is worth fighting for. It helps us understand the world and ourselves better and will benefit all humanity.
We have to hope that the people of the UK will see through some of the nonsense being foisted on them by vocal minorities. It is time to reject – and to de-fund – political movements that pose as scientific societies while rejecting science and taking us back into the dark rather than forward into a more enlightened future.
Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.
References
- Nurse, P, 2011, Stamp out science in US politics, New Scientist, November 14, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128302.900-stamp-out-antiscience-in-us-politics.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
- Booker, C, 2011, How BBC warmists abuse the science, Sunday Telegraph, January 29, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8290469/How-BBC-warmists-abuse-the-science.html#dsq-content.
- Motl, L., 2011, BBC Horizon: president of Royal Society defends AGW ideology, The Reference Frame, January 25, http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/01/bbc-horizon-president-of-royal-society.html
- Jha, A., 2011, Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, The Guardian, May 25. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists.
- Delingpole, J., 2011, Sir Paul Nurse’s big boo-boo, climaterealists.com, January 30, http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7127.
It’s not about the science anymore, it’a about the funding and a lot of that is political, dressed up as climate change, dressed up as environmental.
According to some sources, Lord Monckton was never Margaret Thatcher’s advisor. Is there any proof that he really was?
[REPLY: check here for a start. You should do your own homework first. -REP, mod]
I like this bit ” scientific leaders have a responsibility to expose the bunkum, not to perpetuate it. ” It’s great to see TVMOB is back
[Reply: Welcome to WUWT, Hengist. Please be kind enough to check this. Enjoy your visit. -REP, mod]
By their silence we shall remember them. The scientific method is vital to humanities survival, but the teaching institutions are due to fall from favour as they are not educating anyone but cynics.As a cynic toward govt education I have been taught that the product is far worse than I thought.Not the lesson our academics intended I assume.
Lord Monckton, thanks!
God save the Queen and you!
Lord Monckton is always so well spoken and well written; thanks for having this post here. I hope we can all learn from his example.
Who is the Advocate of science and who is the politically driven lobbyists, is it the politician or the scientist? Lord Monckton is sharp!
Nurse is a nice guy, so is Monckton. Monckton neatly turns the tables on Nurse by pointing out that he is guilty of the same failing that Nurse accuses American science of.
But there is a philosophical point here. We can wonder why Nurse and others think the science is settled, when its obvious to us that it isnt. But there are areas where WE think the science is settled
will the sun rise tomorrow ?
does the earth go round the sun?
is the earth flat?
we certainly need to get the scientists engaged, but we need the philosophers to get stuck in as well
in my humble opinion
Monckton was an advisor to Thatcher, but not a science or climate advisor. Wikipedia also this on him:
“Resurrexi Pharmaceutical is stated on the UK Independence Party (UKIP) web site to be a company of which Monckton is a director. In the BBC documentary, “Meet the Sceptics” (2011),[43] Monckton, said he had cured himself of Graves’ disease an auto-immune disease thought to have been triggered either by a one-time virus or bacterial infection, and said he was researching a “broad-spectrum cure” for infectious diseases. UKIP’s CV for Monckton states that “patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves’ Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex 6. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue.”
So if a guy like that is calling “anti-science”, it must be bad!
Why is it that after at least 12 years of education, Americans of all political perspectives don’t know the difference between faith and science, or the difference between science and morality? If we narrow our focus more to science, how is it they have no knowledge of the scientific method.
Paul Nurse seems to prove this Quote
“To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world; and I certainly never endeavored to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile, who in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest.”
Consolations in Travel, by Humphrey Davy
Al Gore’s ‘Climate Reality’ CEO, Maggie L. Fox, Cancels Climate Change Discussion
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate
To Chris Monckton the refusal to debate will not be new, he’s been ‘calling-out’ Al Gore
for years. Seems that extends to his staff now as well.
Kasuha says:
September 17, 2011 at 11:05 am
… “[REPLY: check here for a start. You should do your own homework first. -REP, mod]”
The link you provided only confirms he was working in a function called “political advisor” in Number 10 Policy Unit while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. I don’t think that really deserves titling him “Margaret Thatcher’s advisor” any more than anybody else working in that building deserves being called Margaret Thatcher’s doorkeeper, janitor, delivery boy or whatever else.
Of course it’s matter of opinion, too. And I guess it explains a lot of the confusion.
Ostensibly Monckton and Nurse are saying the same thing…the only difference being the scientists they each choose to believe…i.e. if you don’t believe “my” scientists, you are anti-science. In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?
“In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?”
You don’t think they are already here?
Nuke Nemesis says:
“Why is it that after at least 12 years of education, Americans of all political perspectives don’t know the difference between faith and science, or the difference between science and morality? If we narrow our focus more to science, how is it they have no knowledge of the scientific method.”
For the same reason that science has been corrupted: government control of education. Science and the scientific method are taught less and less in government schools, and are replaced with global warming propaganda and environmentalism.
Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is shown incessantly to impressionable students with almost never a balanced, skeptical rebuttal. For balance, adults have WUWT. But the poor kids are spoon-fed alarmist scare stories. Child abuse, no?
Peter Hadfield was a correspondent for New Scientist. Watch his 5 part YouTube series on Christopher Monckton. Monckton is ripped to bits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3giRaGNTMA
I look forward to Potholer54’s video on Watts Up With That?.
Oh yes. 😉
For those of you who did not see it, Paul Nurse was the producer and presenter of one of the BBC’s worst propaganda programs ever produced. It was intended to debunk and lampoon climate scepticism, but it turned into the most one-sided and unscientific comedy shows I have ever seen. Any perpetrator of such nonsense, even Paul Nurse himself, should have their degrees revoked.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8290469/How-BBC-warmists-abuse-the-science.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p2X6Oc3kc8&feature=related
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>>Kasuha says: September 17, 2011 at 12:27 pm
>>confirms he was working in a function called “political advisor” in
>>Number 10 Policy Unit while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
>>I don’t think that really deserves titling him “Margaret Thatcher’s advisor”
So a political advisor to Mrs Thatcher, is not really a political advisor. That’s a magnificent distortion of the known facts. Tell me, do you analyse tree rings as well?
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Kasuha says “I don’t think that really deserves titling him”
I see a classic troll tactic of attacking the person, not the substance of the topic.
Ralph, Christopher Monckton clearly said he advised Margaret Thatcher on the subject of climate change. Just one of his many fabrications.
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:30 pm
In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?
Well said that man! Now about that melting ice……………..
In the US, the idea that Republicans are anti-science was popularized by Chris Mooney. There is some truth to the charge, but their anti-science is selective and religion-oriented – primarily directed against abortion, evolutionary theory, and birth control.
The irony is that AGW partisanship is heavily supported among Democrats, and promoted by party leaders and office-holders. Their partisan activity has been blatantly anti-science in that it has suppressed dissent, distorted the granting process, negatively affected careers, encouraged and even protected dishonest scientists, and actively sought to pervert the necessary dispassion of scientific inquiry.
In all this, the Democrats have been very successful in subverting science. AGW partisanship is an active war against science by the Democratic Party and by democrats that has been far more noxious, more widespread, more destructive, and far more successful than anything the Republicans ever achieved.
Speaking personally, after the Religious Right took over the Republican Party I found myself unable to ever vote for Republican candidates, even when they were personally worthy, because I knew that to get anything done they’d have to compromise with vile party ideologues. Since AGW partisanship became prominent, I can no longer vote for Democratic candidates either. Their party agenda is to actively pervert science in the name of AGW and even worthy democratic legislators would have to compromise with vile party ideologues. I’m almost certainly not alone in this quandary.
I was at a Humanist conference a year ago in LA, where Chris Mooney spoke. It’s a deep irony that, having accused Republicans of being anti-science, he’s as anti-science as the worst of them and as self-righteously blind about it. He’s got no cognizance and no concept, at all, of his failing. In Mr. Mooney’s defense, one isn’t a hypocrite if one is sincerely dishonest.
New paper by Manabe (the father of the climate model and early promoter of global warming – at 2.0C per doubling only to be pushed aside by Hansen’s 4.5C per doubling) showing the tropical troposphere is responding much differently than the climate models project.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~qfu/Publications/grl.fu.2011.pdf
New paper by Ben Santer (of climategate fame and wide error margins) talking about how far off the troposphere is responding versus the climate models. We need 17 years to be able to assess whether they are wrong. Manabe above uses 30 years and says “way, way off Ben.”
http://muenchow.cms.udel.edu/classes/MAST811/Santer2011.pdf
So Paul Nurse is only partly correct. We cannot trust the early climate model projections but the scientists themselves are now coming around.
Read about Paul Nurse’s attempt to ‘curb overpopulation’:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece
(if this is not creepily politically motivated, I don’t know what is)
Paul Nurse was the president of Rockefeller University, and the Rockefeller foundation are enthusiastic eugenics supporters.
An excellent point. I can only say to you that my skepticism of AGW is a product of my scientific training. While my political views tend to be libertarian rather than liberal, I try hard to look at science from a position of political neutrality. In other words I look to the facts (all of them) and let my conclusions be derived from them.
Mark S says:
“Ralph, Christopher Monckton clearly said he advised Margaret Thatcher on the subject of climate change. Just one of his many fabrications.”
And how would you know if that is a “fabrication” or not? Do you presume to have ESP, or maybe a teleconnection to what was discussed between them? The alarmist contingent has such an abysmal reputation because of off the wall, unsupportable and unverifiable statements like that.
It all sounds very ad hom.
Not a very edifying debate whichever side of the divide you are observing from.
It shows a lack of confidence in the science they are espousing when the protagonists tout their honours and reputations in front of the cameras.
R. Gates says: September 17, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Kary Mullis has a wonderful video on TED and starts off talking about the intersection of politics and science and the founding of the Royal Society in the 17th century. It’s worth a view.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kary_mullis_on_what_scientists_do.html
>>roger says September 17, 2011 at 12:48 pm
>>Well said that man! Now about that melting ice……………..
What melting ice??
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/antarctic-sea-ice-since-1979.jpg
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This article is almost verbatim lifted from Sir Paul Nurses’s piece already published. It is legitimate to quote from the work of others, but using almost their entire work without quotation marks, or direct attribution, is normally considered unethical.
MarkS
Monckton Bio.
“In 1986 he was the first to advise the Prime Minister that “global warming” caused by CO2 should be investigated. Two years later she set up the Hadley Center”
http://www.mitef.org.uk/efuk/pages/mitef_bio_lord_monckton.php
tip – I wouldn’t call Monckton a liar if I were you.
>>ZT says: September 17, 2011 at 1:10 pm
>>Read about Paul Nurse’s attempt to ‘curb overpopulation’:
Leave overpopulation out of this – it has nothing to do with Global Warming, and people from both sides of the debate support a curb in population. In fact, no civilisation can call itself civilised, until it can control its population – or are we to act like lemmings and leap off cliffs when we run out of resources (esp: food and water)?
The surprising thing here, is that Greenpeace will not debate population levels. The exponential rate of human population is the GREATEST threat to the environment, and yet Green peace said in an email to myself, that: “Greenpeace had never and would never, campaign on population levels”.
So there you have it, the environmental lobby group who will not debate the greatest threat to the environment, but will debate ‘cuddly’ seals, whales and polar bears.
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No, the questions about using embryonic stem cells is not about science. It’s a question of values.
I agree that Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory, it is a statement of belief.
One problem is we don’t teach the difference between science and belief in our schools. Intelligent Design could be used to compare the differences between science and belief. But if you really start teaching science, you’ll have to teach things such as the scientific method, how a scientific theory must be falsifiable and how experimentation and real-world observations are used to support or invalidate theories.
Our schools are dumbed-down for a reason. How are you going to turn our kids into little community activists if they are taught to ask questions?
Hugh Pepper says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:39 pm
This article is almost verbatim lifted from Sir Paul Nurses’s piece already published. It is legitimate to quote from the work of others, but using almost their entire work without quotation marks, or direct attribution, is normally considered unethical.
Nurse’s argument is laughable, and chock-full of mistakes in logic. Monckton simply uses Nurse’s own flawed, ideologically-based logic against him. It is satire, and there is nothing whatsoever about it that’s unethical. It is quite brilliant, actually.
joseph says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:37 pm
“In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?”
You don’t think they are already here?
_____
Not quite…close, but not quite. Once we see the first scientist sent to prison (or worse) for his/her beliefs, we’ll know they’ve started in earnest.
And as a tangential note, during Europe’s dark ages, of course China was in full bloom in advancement of science and technology. Interesting how history repeats…I will be willing to bet China will place the first humans on Mars.
Ralph says: September 17, 2011 at 1:41 pm (Edit)
Actually, Ralph, the issue of population has a great deal to do with the debate and alarmists like Ehrlich and Holdren have had a great deal to say about that linkage. They have been yammering about the “population crisis” since the sixties and have latched on to CAGW as a vehicle for promoting their neo-malthusian nonsense. Over-population is NOT the greatest problem facing the world: developed, industrialized countries enter periods of population decline. The U.S., Western Europe and Japan have all reached the point where their birth rates have fallen below the population replacement rate. The U.S. population continues to expand because of immigration. The other consideration is that the population in those countries is aging… the median age in the United States is about 38, for Germany it is 40 and the percent of people over age 65 will reach 25% of the population within the next 15 or so years. It is most definitely relevant.
Doug in Seattle says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:14 pm
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:30 pm
“In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?”
An excellent point. I can only say to you that my skepticism of AGW is a product of my scientific training.
_____
And I can only say to you that my belief in AGW is a product of my scientific training. But please note, never once have I been a C-AGW proponent, and so, while I think it more likely than not that humans are affecting the climate, and have for quite some time, I am not a believer that this will necessarily be catastrophic in outcome. Furthermore, I am currently quite opposed to economic and technical (i.e. geoengineering) fixes for this situation…especially geoengineering I would oppose as the cure could be far worse than the disease . I think our resources are far better spent to find ways to improve the lives of the billions of humans living in poverty and hunger around the world. To the extent that the efforts to help these fellow humans intersects with the efforts to ameliorate the effects of climate change, it becomes a win/win situation…but the focus should be first and foremost to eliminate poverty, hunger, access to clean water, and lack of education.
I was pleasantly surprised to read “in the peer-reviewed economic literature, are near-unanimous that it is cheaper to pay for the damage arising from any global warming that may occur than to spend anything now on attempted mitigation” – any pointers to some of this literature? I am sorry to say other than the Stern review bunkum I was not aware other more serious attempts at cost-benefit had been made.
It would seem a little know the story of Margaret Thatcher conservative government was very much opposed by the very large and powerful coal unions of the time. More importantly these unions were funding the labor party and also funding much opposition to a the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in general.
A way to reduce the viability and influence of coal unions was to embark on a large nuclear program and close down as many coal mines as possible. The result would be the elimination of a very significant and vocal group of coal Miners who were supporting and funding the labor party.
It is ironic twist of fate that a conservative government of Margaret Thatcher pushed the idea of carbon dioxide as being bad as a way to break the coal unions and shut down coal mining and increase use of nuclear power.
Lord Monckton was obviously an adviser to the Thatcher government and no doubt issues of climate came up. Monckton never claimed he was a climate advisor but there is little doubt that climate was a topic since the Margaret Thatcher government is very much responsible for jump starting a lot of the lets tax co2 and co2 is bad for mankind movement.
As a few pointed out here, the lame attempt to discredit Monckton here by the fools who are really bankrupt in any intellectual debate shows much why the likes of Al Gore ONLY accept interviews when the questions to be asked are given to Al Gore BEFORE the interview.
If you can, find today’s Wall Street Journal and read Daniel Yergin’s essay “There will be Oil” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576572552998674340.html, which exposes the origins of the Peak Oil concept and why it’s nonsense.
Peak Oil was promulgated by Marion King Hubbert, who was a technocrat. Technocracy “promoted the idea that democracy was a sham and that scientists and engineers should take over the reins of government and impose rationality on the economy” and “envisioned a no-growth society and the elimination of the price system, to be replaced by the wise administration of the Technocrats.”
Sound familiar to anyone?
I haven’t read Sir Paul Nurses’s piece. Let me guess then which part of the post comes from His text.
Quote – “We have to hope that the people of the UK will see through some of the nonsense being foisted on them by vocal minorities. It is time to reject – and to de-fund – political movements that pose as scientific societies while rejecting science and taking us back into the dark rather than forward into a more enlightened future.”
1. “by vocal minorities” – well, decidedly “WUWT Society” – sort of minority of petty “deniers”. 😉
2. “time to reject – and to de-fund – ” >>and gun down or execute<< is pressing into my mind. Clearly CAGW language.
3. "rejecting science" – only CAGW use such expressions.
So, the paragraph was written by Sir Paul Nurses. Am I right? 😉
Regards
R. Gates says: September 17, 2011 at 1:57 pm
I will be willing to bet China will place the first humans on Mars.
Agreed. I’ve been saying for years that the first starship will probably be named Tien Shan rather than Enterprise.
Although Christopher Monckton, and many others, can be very cogent in their opposition to AGW their audience can be very limited as the media is not likely to communicate their ideas.
I think the main problem is that ‘environmental correspondents’ will usually be from the Green Movement, either as members or with strong affiliations. To be objective with regards to the science which contradicts AGW risks alienating them from friends, and even a whole lifestyle, should they be ostrasized.
I do not know if environmental correspondents are ‘gullible idiots’ who simply believe what they are told to believe, or more knowledgeable people who simply want to push propaganda ‘for the good of the cause’. It would take someone brave to be objective as the consequences on their personal lives could be far reaching.
The same must also be true of climate scientists who, if they were too objective, could lose friends, research grants, their job, any future career, etc.
This winter thousands will die of hypothermia as they can not afford to pay the subsidies for wind and solar power. This is the responsibility of these environmental correspondents, scientists and activists who have clung on to AGW far beyond the time that it made any sense. Plus of course those getting rich on the proceeds [there is some overlap here!]. Do they have ANY conscience about this?
Monckton is a sharp spearhead constantly poking warmist in the arse. No one is better at it, and I thank him for his efforts. Some of the comments and video have crossed the line from ad hominem to libelous. This reveals more of the commenter than Lord Monckton. GK
Nuke Nemesis says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:53 pm
“Our schools are dumbed-down for a reason. How are you going to turn our kids into little community activists if they are taught to ask questions?”
___
Not to pick specifically on you, but this is perfect example of the extreme divide in thinking in our society. Schools (both public and private) across the U.S. are always looking for most qualified science and math teachers they can find. If you’re a qualifed math or science teacher, especially at the High School level, you’re in great demand. There is no conspiracy to “dumb down” our schools, at least on the public school level…quite the opposite. I would give you an example from close my own community, with the opening of public school Institute for Science and Technology:
http://www.aurorasentinel.com/news/article_35b30ac8-8b40-55ef-8306-64fe7870e0cc.html
This is hardly an attempt to “dumb down” students…but rather to help them compete in a world increasingly dependent on scientists and engineers for economic growth…
>>Robert E. Phelan says: September 17, 2011 at 2:02 pm
>>Actually, Ralph, the issue of population has a great deal to do with the debate
So in what way does overpopulation cause Global Warming? Please do tell me? Stop comparing apples and oranges. I do not believe in AGW – but I do think that overpopulation is a threat to the environment (and to world political stability).
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>>Over-population is NOT the greatest problem facing the world:
>>developed, industrialized countries enter periods of population decline.
…. while developing and religious nations breed exponentially. We are being called upon to look at the effects that Global Warming is having with starvation in East Africa, while the fact that the population had trebled in 30 years is totally overlooked. We are told that water shortages are Global Warming induced, when the majority of shortages are caused by population pressures.
And likewise, you are ignoring the greatest threat to the environment, which is the industrialisation of the Third World. When the rest of the world catches up with US consumption, the threat to resources and the environment will be inescapable. Or is the Third World not allowed to play ‘economic catch-up’?
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“Background: Paul Nurse is a Nobel prizewinner and Royal Society president.”
and…
“he sold Socialist Worker” + “Despite the grand achievement, Nurse’s undergraduate socialist spirit is still alive and well:”
http://www.newstatesman.com/print/201106090038
He has socialist ties as does Carol Browner, Joseph Stiglitz, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Jeffery Sachs, and Howard ‘yeeeaaww’ Dean.
anticlimactic says: September 17, 2011 at 2:14 pm
If you are interested, you can start by looking at the website for the Society of Environmental Journalists here:
http://www.sej.org/?device=desktop
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>>Nuke Nemesis says: September 17, 2011 at 2:08 pm
>Today’s Wall Street Journal and read Daniel Yergin’s essay “There will be
>>Oil”, which exposes the origins of the Peak Oil concept and why it’s nonsense.
Utter nonsense.
Peak oil is an undeniable fact – written in stone. Oil is a limited natural resource, and so it WILL peak in its production at some point in time. It has to, by the laws of supply and demand. The only variable (and unknown) here, is the estimation of WHEN it will peak in its production.
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>>Robert E. Phelan says: September 17, 2011 at 1:27 pm
>>Kary Mullis has a wonderful video on TED and starts off talking
>>about the intersection of politics and science and the founding of
>>the Royal Society in the 17th century. It’s worth a view.
>> http://www.ted.com/talks/kary_mullis_on_what_scientists_do.html
Yes, that TED video is worth watching. But Mullis is wrong in one key aspect. People always did have enquiring minds and understood something akin to the ‘scientific method’, but before the European Reformation and the Enlightenment Era (and the establishment of the Royal Society), having such views was both heretical and dangerous.
Many good freethinking people, like Giordano Bruno and William Tyndale, were burned at the stake for having slightly heretical views. This, in his own way, is what Paul Nurse wants to bring back to the West – the political persecution of those whom you disagree with.
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Mullis also forgot to add that King Charles II’s brother, King James II, was no better than their father. James tried to re-establish the Catholic Church in England, and so the ‘leading lights’ of London invited a Dutch king, King William III, to become King of England. It was William III who defeated the French Catholic forces in Ireland, and so paved the way for the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution.
I would slightly revise what Mullins said here – every technological gadget you have in your house and office, was the product of the emasculation of the Catholic Church and the establishment of the Age of Reason. This is why the American Constitution was written in the form that it was, as a secular constitution.
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Hmm, I find myself agreeing with a couple of R gates points…
Yes, over here, good science teachers are in demand, I have had numerous calls rom the TDA to convert me to teaching just because I showed an interest a couple of years ago.
Also, as a geo-engineer, I am totally opposed to any geoengineering of the climate – but not necessarily because the principles/methods may be wrong, more because the flipping size of the climate/atmosphere/biomass, etc is simply too flipping large and complicated to be affected by some poxy geoengineering scheme (e.g. carbon capture!), etc….the words p*ssing and ocean come readily to mind…
However, for exactly the above reason, I cannot and will not accept that AGW exists, at least not on the denigrating scale as suggested by the very weak and currently unproven CO2 based AGW theory.
‘It must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays….’
Ralph says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:26 pm
“Peak oil is an undeniable fact – written in stone.”
Does the “peak” mean that we will stop consumption on the peak level as new revolutionary energy resources will emerge or that we will not be able to extract it (due to what constraints?)?
Regards
The whole thing was his; Monckton reversed a few words, making the warmists the villains of the piece.
Yes, someday we will have reached our peak production of oil. The nonsense about Peak Oil is in the panic. We reached our peak production of steam engines long ago. And so it will be with oil.
The problem with “Peak Oil” is the doomsday nonsense attached to it. We aren’t running out of oil this decade, or next, or the one after that. Oil production may peak during that period, but so what? Do you think we won’t advance technologically?
>>R. Gates says: September 17, 2011 at 2:18 pm
>>There is no conspiracy to “dumb down” our schools, at least on the
>>public school level…quite the opposite.
Come, come, now – the ‘grade inflation’ scam has been well known in the UK for years.
In the UK, candidates can get a grade ‘C in chemistry (a pass) with 18% !
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23636375-gcse-where-18-was-enough-to-get-grade-c.do
While many of the questions were dumbed down to an appalling degree. One maths question last year was: “spell 50,000”. While the ‘science’ exam was an entire paper full of childish questions about Global Warming.
In the UK, they took 30 grade A* students, and gave them (after a month’s extra tuition), the 1960 exam. 90% of them flunked the old-style exam completely. There is no comparison between the old education and examinations, and the new.
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Ralph says: September 17, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Ralph, for a substantial portion of the CAGW movement, the issue has always been that there are too many humans consuming too many resources (e.g. burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, priducing cement, planting rice and herding live stock) and thus contributing to CO2 production. Fewer consumers means less of them to produce CO2.
?… while developing and religious nations breed exponentially…
It is the poorest nations that have the highest population growth. The developing nations, whether religious or not, are starting to reduce their population. I think we can safely say that countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia can be defined as “religious nations”; check the CIA world fact book and see how thweir fertility rate compares with nations like Somalia or Sudan.
The problems in East Africa are less the result of population pressure than a lack of infrastructure (which can be fixed by having a larger work force) and the corruption of their governments. With development population comes down… but development requires a work force that is not engaged in subsistence activities. Even China currently has about 40% or its labor force engaged in agriculture, whereas Western Europe has only about 2% so engaged and the U.S. has about .6%. Without population increase, they can’t develop… and only developed nations can afford to be concerned about quality of life issues like the environment.
Pat Frank ,
I think you are mischaracterizing the majority of Republicans by painting the entire party with the religious right brush – a tactic the Left has employed for the last couple of decades at least . Outside of the evangelicals , Republicans have no problems with birth control and evolution , not that birth control has much to do with “science” as we are discussing it . Abortion is really a non-issue that only pops up in election years . Abortion is here to stay , at least until the majority of women in this country decide they oppose it , and I suspect that – privately – most Republican pols wish it would just go away . So what we have here is politics . Remember that the evangelical right of today were Democrats some thirty years ago . Jimmy Carter is a “born again” Christian and used that to his advantage in 1976 .
>>Przemysław Pawełczyk says: September 17, 2011 at 2:45 pm
>>Does the “peak” (oil) mean that we will stop consumption on the peak level
>>as new revolutionary energy resources will emerge or that we will not be
>>able to extract it (due to what constraints?)?
What new energy sources? Every time anyone mentions nuclear, it gets trodden on (witness Germany).
Anyway, any new discoveries of oil do not alter the undeniable fact that oil is a limited resource – and so its production MUST peak at sometime. That may be 50 years, or that may be 500 years, but it WILL peak.
My guess, based upon recent oil finds getting smaller and harder to extract by the decade, is that we shall peak in less than 30 years. That’s only a guess, and others may have a different opinion – but the production of oil WILL peak at some time. I bet you ten million dollars it will. Bet?? … 😉
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Hugh Pepper says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:39 pm
This article is almost verbatim lifted from Sir Paul Nurses’s piece already published. It is legitimate to quote from the work of others, but using almost their entire work without quotation marks, or direct attribution, is normally considered unethical.
================================================
Boy they sure do crawl out when Monckton’s name is mentioned. Hugh! Read the damned article before you start spewing garbage about ethics!
What does this mean to you?“Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.”
Mark S says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Peter Hadfield was a correspondent for New Scientist. Watch his 5 part YouTube series on Christopher Monckton. Monckton is ripped to bits.
While interesting videos, you are in fact using ad hominem attacks. As we all know ad hominem attacks are the first resort of those that have weak arguments or rather immature children. Monckton provided an interesting and thoughtful opinion to Nurse’s opinion piece. To this you offer ad hominem attack.
With respect to Hadfield, I’d be much more impressed if he were to refute of a science heavy weight say Dr. Lintzen or Dr. Ivar Giaever.
>>Robert E. Phelan says:
>>Fewer consumers means less of them to produce CO2.
That’s a rather counter-intuative argument, considering this blog denies that CO2 is involved in GW. The point is, that many people are concerned about the ENTIRE environment, not just this CO2 nonsense. And for the ENTIRE environment, population pressures are the No1 threat, and so we allow our population to increase exponentially at our peril. Search through history, and discover the number of civilisations that out-bred their resources.
And your arguments about the Third World needing more people are (religiously motivated?) nonsense. You say that the West uses LESS people to produce their resources, and so the Third World can only emulate the West by INCREASING their populations !!!! Que?? Back of the class, Master Phelan.
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Much of what Nurse said is not just controversial, but just plain wrong. Case in point:
That’s not a scientific question; it’s a bioethical question. All the science in the world will never be able to address it.
That was a very poorly composed political rant, with little to actually say about science. But he apparently fancies himself a priest of science, and thus entitled to blither without criticism.
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Too late. Scientists are already about to experiment with an artificial volcano to address a ‘Potential’ threat from a trace gas hypothesis. Thier actions are pre-emptive strike. Where do you think they got that idea?
P Walker, I was speaking to the party and its leaders, not of the rank-and-file. But whatever the views of the membership, it’s a fact that one can’t get nominated in Republican national politics without making public obeisance to religion and the religious right agenda, which dominates the social legislation of Republican lawmakers. The obsession of the Democratic Party with environmental extremism, most stridently and destructively AGW, is a kind of mirror image ideological imposition.
Ralph says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:00 pm
I absolutely believe in the degrading of the ‘grades’ regarding the examination achievements. It is apparent not only in the lack of understanding of so called ‘graduates’ but also in their lack of problem solving skills. It is even worse today – if they can’t google it, they haven’t a bloody clue!
In my day, if you weren’t sure, you always started over from first principles – I seriously believe that today, the first principles have long been removed from the basic curriculum, leaving many simply unable to ‘self-educate’ when a problem presents itself. IMO it will only get worse – it won’t be long before kids today won’t able to wipe their own backsides without computer assitance!
Ralph:
I pretty much agree with your comments on peak oil and grade inflation, but you are really wrong about population issues. (a side note: this blog does not deny that CO2 is involved in GW, merely that it is vastly overstated and grossly under-estimates natural processes; I think most of the regular commenters here would agree with that) and I was merely summarizing the neo-malthusian / CAGW position.
Suggesting that my position on Third World Countries needing more people is “religiously motivated” is on a par with suggesting that maybe you want to see their populations reduced because you fear dark-skinned people. Both are silly suggestions. My argument is essentially that until a society can afford to mechanize its agriculture and develop a robust distribution infrastructure (and thus set in motion the forces that reduce population) it needs a large enough population to build that infrastructure and afford the means to mechanize agriculture. It needs people.
Sir Paul writes:
‘IF YOU respect science you will probably be disturbed by the following opinions.
On evolution: intelligent design is “a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science class”. And don’t believe in “a theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea or from monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”‘
Why is it that when people discuss the teaching of evolution in high schools they never refer to the facts. The facts are students are taught that Darwin was a great scientists, that he discovered evolution, proved that mankind evolved from Chimpanzees, and proved that no designer is necessary for production of the highly complex species known as homo sapiens sapiens.
After the course, none of the students can name or describe any of Darwin’s hypotheses, order them according to importance, identify those that have been falsified, or identify metaphysical claims among those hypotheses. In addition, not one of the students can identify conflicts between Darwin’s theory and Mendel’s theory nor can they explain why the two theories gave rise to two disciplines that are barely on speaking terms with one another. If you raise the question of who discovered the mechanism of heredity, you will find that all students will say Darwin. Of course, both Darwin and Mendel knew that there must be some physical mechanism of heredity, but neither of them had a clue what that mechanism might be. If you start asking really challenging questions such as “What are the differences between Darwin’s account of the scientific methodology of evolution and his account of the mechanisms of evolution, you will get nothing but blank stares. Amazing, isn’t it? And we haven’t yet reached Watson and Crick.
The reason that high school students cannot intelligently discuss any of these matters is that they are not taught them and they are not taught them because to do so teachers would have to be critical of Darwin and explain what he got wrong. But they cannot do that because the PC Police will castigate them for criticizing the accepted religion of Darwinism. After all, the PC Police will say, if Darwin might be mistaken, then his account of human evolution might be false. If teachers taught that humans might not have evolved, that would violate the First Amendment, right? Or that is how the PC Police would put it. The result is that public high school students in America learn to be stupid about biology and the reason is that they must learn the religion of the PC Police.
As regards Nurse’s reference to the thought of some (religious) people “that human beings – thinking, loving beings” could not have descended from apes, I defy Nurse to find something in biology which explains human consciousness and the unique place of human consciousness in all of Nature. There is no other living creature that possesses anything resembling human consciousness, or a near predecessor of it, and no digital computer that can simulate it. You can become expert in Darwin, Mendel, Watson, Crick, and all the works of their followers and you will learn that there is no evidence whatsoever that human consciousness is not unique in all of nature. So, why teach that it evolved from a lower consciousness? Because it is contained in a body that might have evolved? What nonsense that is.
When oil becomes either too scarce or too expensive, we will switch to synthetic fuels based on coal and/or biomass. US coal reserves can meet domestic demand for a couple hundred years, and deep coal, which can be pyrolyzed in place, can double or triple that. Do you think we can come up with some technological advances in the next 400 – 600 years?
Kev-in-Uk,
School grading is simply following the
liberalprogressive agenda: clickRalph says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:09 pm
“Anyway, any new discoveries of oil do not alter the undeniable fact that oil is a limited resource – and so its production MUST peak at sometime. That may be 50 years, or that may be 500 years, but it WILL peak.”
So what? The stone age didnt end because of lack of stones.
@ Pat Frank says:
Your bigotry is noteworthy as too is your lack of understanding about how religion (specifically Christianity) plays a significant role in the advancement of science.(Check Newton, Planck, and Monsignor Lemaître just for starters) I would also submit that you would benefit from a historical review of the foundations of this nation. (Start with J. Adams and Madison)
Vile? Vile would be disparaging a group of people that wish nothing more than to live in peace within a moral and religious society. Why don’t you try engaging in the arena or ideas as opposed to mischaracterizations?
“In the UK, they took 30 grade A* students, and gave them (after a month’s extra tuition), the 1960 exam. 90% of them flunked the old-style exam completely.”
When I was taking O-/A-/S-level exams twenty years ago we practiced with old exam papers and I can safely say that the questions from the 60s were noticeably harder than those we were given.
Dumbing down has been happening for decades in the UK. I presume the same is true in all countries with institutionalised ‘education systems’ because dumbing down exams is much easier than improving education.
Ralph
I bet you ten million dollars the sun won’t rise at some time in the future.
You have to pay me if it doesn’t. I never have to pay you, because we always have to wait for tomorrow.
A bit like your bet that production of oil will peak ‘at some time’.
So are you telling us that peak oil is about as likely as the sun not rising tomorrow?
“In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?”
Indeed. As Eisenhower warned in 1961:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.” (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp)
Oddly, while we hear about the perils of the military-industrial complex on a regular basis, I’ve rarely see people warning about the scientific-technological elite and the perils of taxpayer funding for science.
Hugh Pepper says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:39 pm
“This article is almost verbatim lifted from Sir Paul Nurses’s (sic) piece already published. It is legitimate to quote from the work of others, but using almost their entire work without quotation marks, or direct attribution, is normally considered unethical.”
Another Peppery comment…. but a Hugh (or more correctly ‘Huge’) mistake! Did you not bother to read the acknowledgements or the references that followed? Is a false allegation ‘normally considered unethical’? DOH! Here they are again, for your belated edification……
Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.
References
1. Nurse, P, 2011, Stamp out science in US politics, New Scientist, November 14, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128302.900-stamp-out-antiscience-in-us-politics.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
First of all “Bravo Lord Monckton.”
As for peak oil, it is not a meaningful concept. It is merely a theoretical construct with no particular relavance to the real world. Firstly there are a number of sources of hydrocarbons which we have barely begun to tap, unconventional sources if you will. Secondly there is this miraculous thing in economics called “substitution.” Long before oil is exhausted substitutes shall be taking its place… we can not be certain about the fuel mix in 2050 (arbitrary year), so worrying about what role oil will play at that stage is a fairly meaningless question.
Got to love them peak oilies though… they do provide much entertainment.
Albert D. Kallal said on September 17, 2011 at 2:07 pm:
The battle with the unions happened many years before any mention of global warming by Thatcher. In fact, at the time the lefties had a campaign to encourage people to turn on as many lightbulbs as possible, so as to deplete fossil fuel stocks and thus force the government to make a deal with the coal miners. Few realised at the time how futile this was, since Thatcher had stockpiled masses of coal in advance.
The current battle over the AGW-proponents’ efforts to shut down, effectively, all economic activity can (pace “scientific” arguments) only reasonably be seen as a continuation of this Marxist strategy. Some people scoffed back in the day, when the unions (and the Labour Party) in Britain were accused of receiving Soviet funding and support, but now we know this to have been the case. These days, some people (not too many) laugh when folks talk about the agenda of AGW-proponents, so I can only imagine the noble Lord feels a sense of déjà vu.
Ralph says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:09 pm
>>Przemysław Pawełczyk says: September 17, 2011 at 2:45 pm
>>Does the “peak” (oil) mean that we will stop consumption on the peak level
>>as new revolutionary energy resources will emerge or that we will not be
>>able to extract it (due to what constraints?)?
> What new energy sources? Every time anyone mentions nuclear, it gets trodden on (witness Germany).
Why? Oil industry? Do they know what we do not? (On proven oil resources for example). Search for the moment they will start to invest in nuclear technology (or whatever), that’d be your real “peak”.
> Anyway, any new discoveries of oil do not alter the undeniable fact that oil is a limited resource – and so its production MUST peak at sometime. That may be 50 years, or that may be 500 years, but it WILL peak.
Yep, but time matters. 50 or 500 years is 1000% difference! You preach doomsday scenario.
> My guess, based upon recent oil finds getting smaller and harder to extract by the decade, is that we shall peak in less than 30 years. That’s only a guess, and others may have a different opinion – but the production of oil WILL peak at some time. I bet you ten million dollars it will. Bet?? … 😉
Nope (see the first part of my answer). The U.S. gov spend trillions on unnecessary and unlawful wars in the last years. What we could get in technology advancements and achievements for the money instead?! I’m sure that “something wonderful” (Copyright Bowman from 2010: The Year We Make Contact).
My doubts expressed also:
1. Andrew Parker says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:49 pm
2. kwik says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Regards
Pat Frank says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:36 pm
The obsession of the Democratic Party with environmental extremism, most stridently and destructively AGW, is a kind of mirror image ideological imposition.
==================================================================
Mirror image may be correct. Enviro-whackos propose many destructive ideas, such as living without carbon based fuels. They also embrace the thoughts of Malthus: Believing that we’ve too many people and we need to reduce our population…….. leaving it to your imagination as to how we’d accomplish such atrocious goals. And, they’ve proposed and to an extent have been effective in keeping some 3rd world nations impoverished.
In retrospect, they’re nothing alike and you do a great disservice to your nation and its people by making such comparisons.
Christopher says/quotes:
True science may be found in “the consensus opinions of experts”
———-
So instead we are supposed to believe that true science resides in the opinions of eccentric political activists like Christopher Monckton?
Sorry guys ain’t gonna happen.
A summary of what Potholer 54 found out about Monckton’s “scientific truth”.
For more detail watch the videos.
Monckton said he advised Margret Hatcher on climate change – HE DIDN’T.
He said he wrote a peer-reviewed paper – HE DIDN’T.
He said the earth has been cooling – IT HASN’T.
He said a leading Danish expert found that overall Greenland ice has not been melting – HE DIDN’T.
He said there has been no systematic ice loss in the artic – THERE HAS.
He says there has been no correlation between CO2 and temperatures over the past 500 million years – YES, THERE IS.
He says a pre-Cambrian ice planet shows that CO2 has no effect on the climate – SHOWS THE OPPOSITE.
He says there has been no change in Himalayan glaciers for 200 years – THERE HAS.
He says only one Himalayan glacier is retreating – NO, LOTS OF THEM ARE.
He claim that CO2 forcing is 1.135 watts per square meter when it is three times higher.
He confuses forcing with sensitivity.
He says a leading climate researcher found a loss of cloud cover is responsible for recent warming – SHE SAYS IT SHOWS NO SUCH THING.
He misquotes scientists to mislead his audience.
He says planets with a high albedo are cooler than planets with a low albedo – WRONG.
He gets information in peer-reviewed science papers wrong.
He says some planets are warming because of the Sun – NO THEY’RE NOT
He said the International Astronomical Union has declared that the Sun is responsible for the recent warming – IT DIDN’T.
Bulldust – best of luck growing the global economy with unconventional carbon energy.
Ashes to ashes – bulldust to bulldust
So in what way does overpopulation cause Global Warming? Please do tell me? Stop comparing apples and oranges. I do not believe in AGW – but I do think that overpopulation is a threat to the environment (and to world political stability
You have it back to front. The supporters of Global Warming are pushing it not because it causes overpopulation but because the actions they propose to combat it will have the effect of significantly reducing population. For the eugenicists and Malthusians CAGW is a new opportunity to suppress people, reduce their standard of living and options and thereby their freedom and livespan. Anticlimactic said it above
This winter thousands will die of hypothermia as they can not afford to pay the subsidies for wind and solar power.
If left to their own devices, this screw will just continue to tighten on people.
The real irony is that they have it back to front too. What is truly incontrovertible is that the higher people’s standard of living go the lower their birthrate. This has happened over and over and over. It just seems, though, that some people cannot abide the thought of other populations rising to their own standard of living. CAGW has been called the greatest scam in history (which is it) but, as some of its proponents know all to well, it is also the greatest hypocricy.
To see how government education has dumbed down the entire population, see an 1895 school exam here. Over 90% of the population would fail it.
Here’s a current test by WUWT commentator A. Fucalaro [posted 1/10/2011] that he gives his class to work on over Christmas holiday, so maybe all is not lost [however, he teaches in Canada]:
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The central problem in government-funded education [even most private schools receive government funding] is the same as in government-funded climate science: way too much tax money. Money corrupts. A little is necessary. But when the federal government shovels ≈$7 billion into “climate studies” every year, grabbing that money by hook or by crook becomes priority #1.
Thus, Climategate; endless jaunts to holiday hotspots for unnecessary conferences and meetings; falsely inflating cronies’ CV’s; using underhanded, unethical tactics to keep everyone out of the peer review process and journals who could possibly jeopardize that income stream; attacking and demonizing skeptical scientists [the only honest kind of scientist]; and universities repeatedly whitewashing flagrant scientific misconduct when any of their Elmer Gantry-style rainmakers are threatened.
The $billions in the climate grant trough also starves much more deserving science and scientists of needed funds. Recently a rather large asteroid passed between the earth and the moon – which wasn’t noticed until after it had passed by. Yet funds to track dangerous asteroids and comets amount to only a few million per year. It is past time to end the financing of the corrupt climate alarmist industry, and concentrate on real threats.
Andres Valencia says:
September 17, 2011 at 11:37 am
Lord Monckton, thanks!
God save the Queen and you!
God save the bloody QUEEN? The Queen – like all the other Royals – is firmly on the Climate Alarmist side. The Queen also happily disregards her duty as enforcer of our constitution (the Bill Of Rights) and has willingly signed away our sovereignty at every opportunity. Again, like all the Royals she is totally pro-EU. So God Save Britannia from the Queen.
Iren – take a detailed trip on google earth and don’t miss the coastline of China – for one.
Kasuha says
The link you provided only confirms he was working in a function called “political advisor” in Number 10 Policy Unit while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
——–
I see what you mean: a polical advisor amoungst many vs the personal day to day political advisor.
I think Maggies biography would give some clue to that question. I get the impression that christopher’s role was down played in that book. Worth checking as Christopher has a habit if big noting himself.
If I recall correctly Maggie was a trained chemist and put in substantial climate change policies as has the current conservative government. A case of conservative government actually being conservative.
The current crop of republicans in the us seem to have gone right wing radical and have become obsessed with the left wing. Any thing that they can categorise as left wing seems to be gut reaction rejected.
I reckon if Obama claimed that the world was a sphere and the sky was a thin film of gas surrounding that sphere, the republicans would immediately claim the world was flat and the sky was a huge blue tent.
Ralph says….
“Peak oil is an undeniable fact – written in stone. Oil is a limited natural resource, and so it WILL peak in its production at some point in time. ”
Yawn!
The concept of peak oil has no useful purpose. It exists to be used as a club to advance a political agenda.
As I said recently on a thread at Climate etc., I don’t rule out human inventiveness. Especially in combination with the profit motive.
One winter, on the equinox, my brother and friends balanced eggs on the table. Later that year, he was talking about it and my immediate response, after trying to think of a reason why this would happen, was to tell him I think that’s wrong. He told me, “no we did it in Earth Science class back in high school” (He’s 35 years old). I simply asked him, “have you ever tried to balance an egg on another day of the year?”, he said “no” and then I retrieved a half dozen eggs from the fridge and balanced them all in front of him.
This is just one example of the stuff placed in your head in high school by teachers who are just self deluded and also lack critical thinking skills. I think that is the largest failure of schools today. I’ve learned more out of school than in school by reading and applying critical thinking; especially re-examining things I heard while in school. History has been eliminated and replaced with “Social Studies class”. What will happen to science?
What has happened in the AGW, or CAGW debate is astounding to me. By connecting general warming to man, they have reduced the debate to the point where people think that if one year is warmer than the last, man made global warming is true and they don’t have the critical thinking skills to realize what the argument is even about.
Here we find ourselves in the odd position of hoping for cooling, continents to freeze over and also trying to “pet” one of the most deadly predators on earth.
Ancient man used to pray to the gods for the glaciers to recede, now we cheer for their arrival.
Smokey says:
September 17, 2011 at 4:40 pm
To see how government education has dumbed down the entire population, see an 1895 school exam here. Over 90% of the population would fail it.
——————————
Anytime I keep see in recurrent themes, especially in mass emails, I check them out. This has gone through many forms and is not accurate.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
New Scientist sometimes surprises me. They printed my response to a green sided article on Rainforest management, a response which I never expected to see in print – a month late, but they still printed it.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427290.500-human-versus-forest.html
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Ostensibly Monckton and Nurse are saying the same thing…the only difference being the scientists they each choose to believe…i.e. if you don’t believe “my” scientists, you are anti-science. In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?
———-
Er no.
Its really about the balance of evidence. If there is a whole lot more evidence favoring one position than another then it is likely that the position with more and better quality evidence is correct. A consensus in science is firstly about a consensus of evidence and a consensus of professional judgement about what the evidence means and how reliable are the conclusions from that evidence.
Monckton is claiming that any evidence that contradicts his position is entirely wrong without making any honest effort to assess the reliability of that evidence. He starts from the proposition that it must be wrong, so he must find a way to discredit it.
He is trapped in a circular logic loop. He does not like the idea of social change, therefore he does not like climate change mitigation policies, therefore climate change can’t happen, therefore the scientists must be lying, therefore all if the evidence supporting climate change they produce must be bogus, therefore the scientists are lying, around and around in circles.
SethP,
Read the comments below the article and get enlightenment. Snopes doesn’t say it’s a hoax. In fact, it’s hard to know exactly what Snopes is saying, as several commenters pointed out.
Anyway, feel free to believe the test was a hoax, if that belief is important to you. But how did you do on A. Fulcalaro’s test? And how would the average American do on it? Be honest.
And while you’re at it, try to defend the incredible, non-productive waste in government education. The level of waste in government climate science funding is even more egregious.
Smokey says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Mark S says:
“Ralph, Christopher Monckton clearly said he advised Margaret Thatcher on the subject of climate change. Just one of his many fabrications.”
And how would you know if that is a “fabrication” or not? Do you presume to have ESP, or maybe a teleconnection to what was discussed between them? The alarmist contingent has such an abysmal reputation because of off the wall, unsupportable and unverifiable statements like that.
—————
Well good point. So pick up a mirror and ask yourself have you ever made unsupported claims about the motivations of climate scientists along the lines of “they are making stuff up to get fame and fortune”.
Monckton: “One problem is treating scientific discussion as if it were political debate” There follows a laying out of a modus operandi that is actually Monckton’s,not his target’s. If Monckton thinks this is a problem,then perhaps he should not do it…
“ben says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:07 pm
re cost benefit.”
See Bjorn Lomborg:
“The problem is that the cure may be worse than the disease.”
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1929071_1929070_1945639,00.html
@smokey
You’re right, it’s not a “hoax” per se, but it reminds me of “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?”. You probably won’t remember the middle name of the 7th president of the US, but a kid who just heard it a couple of days ago probably will.
I am in no way defending the current education system, quite the opposite. I didn’t mean to give that impression. And if you can answer question 1 off the top of your head I would be surprised.
Lazy T says:
“Its really about the balance of evidence.”
Err, no.
Because there is no empirical, testable evidence, per the scientific method, directly connecting the rise in CO2 with the current temperature rise. That may be the case… or not. But direct evidence is missing. That accounts for all the peripheral arm-waving, and for their vile censorship of alternate points of view.
Furthermore, the alarmist contingent hides out from debate, and refuses to disclose their methodology, data, metadata and codes. They treat any other scientist who simply requests data, code, and information on how they arrived at their conclusions as their mortal enemy. They connive to endlessly delay, or even to keep skeptical climate papers entirely out of journals, while their pals get fast-tracked in one day. In short, they act like any charlatan committing scientific misconduct would act.
Ben questions
——-
– any pointers to some of this literature?
I recollect some graphs about this few years back. So I know they are out there.
However some of this might originate with right wing think tanks and I tend to view their output, depending on which one, with attitudes ranging from skepticism to utter contempt.
LT says:
“And how would you know if that is a ‘fabrication’ or not? …pick up a mirror and ask yourself have you ever made unsupported claims about the motivations of climate scientists along the lines of ‘they are making stuff up to get fame and fortune’.”
I know it’s a fabrication because it was stated by the inventor himself. When he was fabricating 13 years of missing temperature data, Harry the programmer wrote: “I can just make it up as I go along. So I have.”
•••
SethP says:
“…if you can answer question 1 off the top of your head I would be surprised.”
I can’t. I’m in that 90%.☹
SethP says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:03 pm
> History has been eliminated and replaced with “Social Studies class”. What will happen to science?
The answer is – it will evolve into Internet polls if not yet. The [cut] *) “poll culture” is pervasive in the so called western demo(crapo)cracies. Alas, I read them too many times on the WUWT pages as well. Poll say this, poll say that, etc. as if it has any meaning in real life. Another item in big box of brainwashing tools.
Regards
*) enter any expletive you like
Nuke Nemesis says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:08 pm
If you can, find today’s Wall Street Journal and read Daniel Yergin’s essay “There will be Whales” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576572552998674340.html, which exposes the origins of the Peak Whale concept and why it’s nonsense.
Addendum
After I wrote about the “polls” on WUWT pages I have checked the WUWT homepage and what I see – YEAH!- another f*** poll on what public think on climate matters. Pathetic.
Mr Watts, give us more polls, and only polls. They are Science of the Future. Better be ready.
Regards
Nick says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Monckton: “One problem is treating scientific discussion as if it were political debate” There follows a laying out of a modus operandi that is actually Monckton’s,not his target’s. If Monckton thinks this is a problem,then perhaps he should not do it…
======================================================
Nick, Monckton’s entire comment was a parody of Nurse’s comment. The problem is, it is the scientists that have politicized the discussion. See their unholy marriage with politics by forming the IPCC. I can easily state that if they’d not ventured to the world of politics many of us would have never engaged in the discussion, and probably Monckton, too.
It seems to me, that Monchton’s engagement with political activists should be encouraged. I know I’m glad he does. If they wish to wrap themselves in their psuedo-science, so be it.
@ Seth, your Snopes link doesn’t say what you seem to infer. You should read all of the link.
Kev-in-UK says
.the words p*ssing and ocean come readily to mind…
——–
Go to China, look upwards, admire the Great Pall of China. This is the geoengineering on a scale never before attempted.
For each ton of aerosols used to build the Great Pall of China there is a much greater tonnage of CO2 that is essentially black over about 20% of the thermal emission spectrum of the earth. We have already increased the amount of CO2 and will continue to do so for the indefinite future. 20% will become 22% (just making stuff up here).
So we are already geoenginerring the climate.
Przemysław Pawełczyk says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Addendum
After I wrote about the “polls” on WUWT pages I have checked the WUWT homepage and what I see – YEAH!- another f*** poll on what public think on climate matters. Pathetic.
Mr Watts, give us more polls, and only polls. They are Science of the Future. Better be ready.
===================================================================
Oddly enough, there’s a Rueter’s poll that runs counter to the poll referenced by Anthony! lol…… yes, we’re polled, surveyed, and consensused to the extreme. And, they are of little value or meaning, unless you’re a politician that wants to know what the public wants him/her to think.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:02 pm
“@ Seth, your Snopes link doesn’t say what you seem to infer. You should read all of the link.”
——————————-
You’re right, I made my point poorly. If you were to go back and take a test that you took in high school today, you will probably do worse than you did originally. I think this is a disingenuous tool.
What I always thought was that people used to learn advanced math on a chalk board and now they truck hundreds of computers into classrooms to “help” teach and get the opposite effect. Children today struggle with basic concepts in science and math and that leaves them open to all sorts of manipulation. We’ve spent the most money per student in the world and created some of the worst students in the world.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:13 pm
“For each ton of aerosols used to build the Great Pall of China there is a much greater tonnage of CO2 that is essentially black over about 20% of the thermal emission spectrum of the earth. ”
Look up Kirchhoff’s Law and come back when you have understood it.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:13 pm
> …unless you’re a politician that wants to know what the public wants him/her to think.
Just like the US puppet, a Tony Blair was his name as I recall correctly, who reportedly started days reading popularity polls. That Tony Blair, cute boy…
Regards
Theo Goodwin says
Why is it that when people discuss the teaching of evolution in high schools they never refer to the facts.
——
Err the point being made was that intelligent design is a religious theory and not a scientific theory. Therefore it should not be included in science classes.
And in response you produced an irrelevant rant about the limitations of science teaching with respect to Darwinism. This is an argument to improve the teaching of evolution.
It is not an argument to insert into science classes your favorite creation myth via some bogus Trojan horse theory.
It is not argument to allow you to insert your favorite debating points into science classes with the intention of discrediting the science of evolution.
Debating points are about convincing people. People who care a lot about debating points typically don’t care a lot about telling the truth.
SethP says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:21 pm
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:02 pm
“@ Seth, your Snopes link doesn’t say what you seem to infer. You should read all of the link.”
——————————-
You’re right, I made my point poorly. If you were to go back and take a test that you took in high school today, you will probably do worse than you did originally. I think this is a disingenuous tool.
=========================================================
I hadn’t seen that Smokey had already addressed or I would not have mentioned it. That said, it could be that it does mislead. But, the point I take from it, is that we often like to think we’ve progressed in knowledge well beyond what was known a century ago, when, in fact, in many ways we’ve regressed.
I think you nailed it as to spending. In this country, we equate a proper education with the amount of money we spend towards our educational system. But that isn’t true. As you stated, we’ve spent an enormous amount of money and we’ve produced some very lack-luster generations.
I was contemplating this just the other day. With the internet and other information exchanging technologies, we have nearly all accumulated human knowledge at our fingertips. This is very disquieting for me. We’ve given the citizens of this world great power to wield, yet, we haven’t properly trained them in its use. There is no discernment as to what is true and what isn’t. We haven’t taught logic or critical thinking. Is there such a thing as a course in philosophy, anymore? We frown upon moral teachings. Even worse yet, the principles of liberty and democracy, if taught at all, are twisted and bastardized into unrecognizable concepts. Further, as you’ve pointed out, we’ve brought them computers to “help” them think.
Nothing illustrates these difficulties better than the current climate debate. Many people believe computer models actually are good substitutes for reality. I try over and over again to explain there is no such thing as AI, but the idea persists. They are programs, they will render the results they were designed to render! Even earlier in this very thread there are people confused as to the nature of the abortion debate. It hasn’t a thing to do with science, it has everything to do with ethics and morals. (For anyone wondering, I don’t consider it murder, but I understand and respect the ideas of the people that do.)
BTW, thanks to you, Seth and Smokey, you’ve given me a nice idea for my next posting. 🙂
Bulldust says
——–
Secondly there is this miraculous thing in economics called “substitution.” Long before oil is exhausted substitutes shall be taking its place
——–
But I thought you climate skeptic guys were dead set against giving up oil and coal.
Afterall the whole thrust of AGW legistlation has been to:
1. Increase energy use efficiency, thus reducing the price of fuel via supply and demand
2. and to find economical substitutes for oil and coal,
3. and to remove market barriers to new technologies that may eventually be cheaper.
Instead lots of disparaging remarks here directed at discrediting any attempt to ensure that any transition to new energy sources is not economically disruptive.
The other Brian says
He says planets with a high albedo are cooler than planets with a low albedo – WRONG.
———
That doesnt sound right. Theoretically higher albedo means more sunlight reflected and therefore lower temperature.
Seth P says
This is just one example of the stuff placed in your head in high school by teachers who are just self deluded and also lack critical thinking skills.
———-
I think it more likely that the teacher was playing a practical joke and your relative failed to notice.
I am glad that you were both
1. Skeptical
2. Knew how to test whether the idea was right or wrong
Seems your education was ok.
[REPLY: Consider this your only warning for the evening. Your comments have been a series of one-liners and put-downs. Contribute substantively to the discussion or be snipped. -REP, mod]
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:39 pm
You did not understand a word that I wrote. Everything you said was an ad hominem. I really recommend that Anthony ban you.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Bulldust says
——–
Secondly there is this miraculous thing in economics called “substitution.” Long before oil is exhausted substitutes shall be taking its place
——–
But I thought you climate skeptic guys were dead set against giving up oil and coal.
Afterall the whole thrust of AGW legistlation has been to:
1. Increase energy use efficiency, thus reducing the price of fuel via supply and demand
2. and to find economical substitutes for oil and coal,
3. and to remove market barriers to new technologies that may eventually be cheaper.
Instead lots of disparaging remarks here directed at discrediting any attempt to ensure that any transition to new energy sources is not economically disruptive.
==========================================================
LT, first, we must find an suitable substitute first. Skeptics aren’t dead set against giving up coal and oil, we’re dead set against giving up human progress. Find something as cheap, plentiful and effective as either and I’ll stand behind it. Heck, if I had my way, we’d all be driving hydrogen fueled vehicles by now.
Secondly, your list of 1,2, and 3 ……… if that was the thrust, they’ve entirely botched it in their execution. So far, the only effective measure to reduce energy use has been to increase the cost. This has had a devastating effect towards your numbers 2 and 3, and the world’s economy in general. How does one expect to find economical substitutes when the entire world is destitute?
We haven’t removed market barriers, we’ve built them by backing known failures. The overwhelming majority of our capital has been spent in true Quixotic fashion, in terms of R&D and venture capital. Presently, if one wants some capital to pursue alternative sources of fuel and energy, one must suggest known failures that do nothing but either increase cost, lower availability, and decrease efficiency. There also has been the added benefit of decreasing the world’s food supply.
These are the things that cause people such as myself to engage in an attempt to thwart this madness. If your 1,2,3 list was truly the intent, it shows how little the ideas were based in reality and a complete failure to understand what drives markets and innovation.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:53 pm
I think you have made a few errors.
1. > I was contemplating this just the other day. With the internet and other information exchanging technologies, we have nearly all accumulated human knowledge at our fingertips. (…) We’ve given the citizens of this world great power to wield, yet, we haven’t properly trained them in its use.
First af all, the true knowledge is hidden behind paid services, registers, and other logical barriers. Even Encyclopedia Britannica is guarded by subscription. FOIA and Wikipedia are two exemplary items of the remedies for the problem. Alas, Wikipedia is of such poor quality some called it Crapedia.
For the second, “the world at your fingertips” is also a myth, conjured up by Mr Bill Gates of Microsoft. So it is not the lack of skills, but first – the lack of free flow of knowledge, second – primitive software tools to search the “accumulated human knowledge”. For example IBM developed IBM/OS 2 desktop/home operating system in 90s which was controlled by voice (to some extent). The technology was implemented then it simply vanished from the market. And so on and on…
> Even worse yet, the principles of liberty and democracy
These are two opposite concepts. Democracy is a tyranny in nature, contrary to liberty. The tyranny of mobs where one votes against 10 or 100 milion voters. The U.S.A. was once a republic where the personal liberty were guarded by Law, not by the People. Now they have pointed out a Democracy and they ended up with the greatest police-state in the world. In short one should say that Republic is the rule of Law, with Democracy being the rules of Mobs.
> Even earlier in this very thread there are people confused as to the nature of the abortion debate. It hasn’t a thing to do with science, it has everything to do with ethics and morals.
Your views contradicts your words in your comment. It IS Science. When someone dies it is science which decides if the sad event has happened. It IS science which says that fetus lives, like me and like You. Fetus is not a bunch of tissues it is a small Man. Abortion kills Him and that fact certifies (settles) Science again. You are dead wrong on abortion but of course you have the “liberty” to have such beliefs, however wrong.
> (For anyone wondering, I don’t consider it murder, but I understand and respect the ideas of the people that do.)
How come? Another contradiction, this time very popular one. You cannot understand and respect the ideas in this matter. It is impossible. You neither understand, nor respect. BTW, how can you respect IDEAS in this matter. Fetus or Small Man is not IDEA, his a MAN. Either you respect other’s life or not. Even abortion is not an IDEA, but an ACT, of killing.
> We haven’t taught logic or critical thinking. Is there such a thing as a course in philosophy, anymore?
Correct, and you are the uneasy example. Of course, it wasn’t my goal to offend you. Just another claim from my side in the course of the discussion.
Regards
Theo Goodwin says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:12 pm
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:39 pm
You did not understand a word that I wrote. Everything you said was an ad hominem. I really recommend that Anthony ban you.
————–
If I misunderstood I apologize. But you need to look up the definition of ad hominem.
I attacked what you said (or I think you said). I did not attack you personally as a way of avoiding addressing what you said in a reasoned manner. Therefore i do not believe I subjected you to a ad hominem argument. If you feel personally upset or denigrated because I demolished your argument that is another issue entirely.
I will read what you said again to try to establish if I made a mistake. Or in addition you can explain why I misunderstood you.
[REPLY: Slightly better, but look up the term “demolished”. I don’t think it means what you think it means. -REP, mod]
“LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Seth P says
This is just one example of the stuff placed in your head in high school by teachers who are just self deluded and also lack critical thinking skills.
———-
I think it more likely that the teacher was playing a practical joke and your relative failed to notice.
I am glad that you were both
1. Skeptical
2. Knew how to test whether the idea was right or wrong
Seems your education was ok.”
————————————————————
No, we still keep in touch with a lot of people from that school, and I also went there. The class was told in a lecture about what the solstice was that as an “effect” you could balance an egg on end. There was also a health teacher whose class consisted of reading “weird but true” new articles that he thought were interesting.
My brother is just as smart or smarter than I am and is much more well read on history. When somebody hears something from a teacher, especially when they are younger, it is usually believed until proven otherwise and my brother just happened to remember it years later as a piece of trivia because it happened to be the winter solstice.
I was able to quickly recognize this as suspect because of skeptical and critical thinking, not my “middle school level” science education.
I don’t appreciate the fact that you think my “relative” was the subject of a “piratical joke” by a science teacher and was none the wiser.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Seth P says
This is just one example of the stuff placed in your head in high school by teachers who are just self deluded and also lack critical thinking skills.
———-
I think it more likely that the teacher was playing a practical joke and your relative failed to notice.
I am glad that you were both
1. Skeptical
2. Knew how to test whether the idea was right or wrong
Seems your education was ok.
[REPLY: Consider this your only warning for the evening. Your comments have been a series of one-liners and put-downs. Contribute substantively to the discussion or be snipped. -REP, mod]
————-
You misunderstand.
My remarks were in defense of school teachers.
I suggested a plausible alternative interpretation of events that reflected less poorly on school teachers.
It was not a put down of anybody.
It was more than one line.
If you want to ban me for defending people who are not here to defend themselves go right ahead.
[REPLY: The suggestion that a teacher would play that sort of a practical joke on students is hardly a defense of them. You are more than capable of contributing substantively to this blog, for example on the If you are getting a Virus message on WUWT thread, where your expertise would be appreciated. Reply with reasoned arguments and links supporting them and your input, even if contrary to the prevailing sentiments here, will be treated with respect. -REP, mod]
LazyTeenager says:
“Err the point being made was that
intelligent designCO2=CAGW is a religioustheoryconjecture and not a scientific theory. Therefore it should not be included in science classes.” There. Fixed it for Lazyboi.LT also says:
“People who care a lot about debating points typically
don’t care a lot about telling the truthare those who consistentlylosewin the debates.” FIFY again.And LT also says:
“Afterall the whole thrust of AGW legistlation has been to:
1. Increase energy use efficiency, thus reducing the price of fuel via supply and demand
2. and to find economical substitutes for oil and coal,
3. and to remove market barriers to new technologies that may eventually be cheaper.”
That is a complete misrepresentation, based on LT’s psychological projection [imputing his own faults onto others]. The fact is that the barriers to the free market are the government’s subsidies of totally inefficient “green” energy scams, such as windmills and solar [Solyndra, anyone?]. The free market will easily provide alternatives to fossil fuels when and if such alternatives are cost-effective. It always has, and it always will.
The government is the only “barrier” to new technologies. But Lazyboi can’t understand the free market, because he has been spoon-fed indoctrination in government schools for his whole mentally lazy life. LT’s belief system is due to the same government interference that got us into the current economic mess. CAGW is only simple-minded Malthusianism, doubled and squared. If LT had any sense, he would understand that.
Gates, I’m not sure what to make of your confidence about U.S. schools. Yes, they are looking for “qualified” teachers of science and math; but what they really mean are “certified” teachers, and being familiar with the courses the K-12 teachers are required to take to become certified, I can say that certification is a pretty low bar to clear.
A few years ago I spent some time in a consultative meeting with the PTSB (Professional Teaching Standards Board) staff from ETS (Educational testing service) and a number of H.S. physics teachers. I was the only college instructor who bothered to attend. We all had to take the PTSB exam as part of our meeting, and I know that the HS teachers had a lot of trouble with it. Perhaps they were once very proficient at physics and have simply become rusty, but I also know that many of them have been teaching physics without much benefit of formal education in the subject. Look, I know for a fact that community colleges in our region have used people to teach transfer courses in physics, who have never, themselves, taken any college-level course in physics. How’s that for qualified?
The high school teachers in the PTSB meeting told me that they actually teach very little physics in high school because the students can’t do very much. They were almost unanimous in stating that they only teach linear mechanics. In the colleges we expect that incoming students have studied some rotational mechanics, some statics, a little thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and perhaps a little optics in addition to linear mechanics. Students are escaping real science completely through “concurrent enrollment” programs.
There is no doubt there are some great HS science teachers, and the propaganda from the K-12 system tries to sell the story that everyone is above average, but in fact, the outcomes are not very good–and that is what matters in the end, isn’t it?
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:16 pm
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Ostensibly Monckton and Nurse are saying the same thing…the only difference being the scientists they each choose to believe…i.e. if you don’t believe “my” scientists, you are anti-science. In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?
———-
Er no.
Its really about the balance of evidence. If there is a whole lot more evidence favoring one position than another then it is likely that the position with more and better quality evidence is correct.
_____
If I recall my history correctly, Milankovitch was largely ignored when he first proposed his “rediculous” notion that astronomical cycles could drive the climate…the consensus was against him, and only came around after the overwhlelming evidence proved his hypothesis correct. So one ought not base their weighing of likely validity based on the consensus, but rather, on the science. In the case of anthropogenic climate change…I happen to concure with the consensus, but not because they are the consensus, but because I’ve looked at, and continue to look at the science.
Smokey says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:49 pm
I know it’s a fabrication because it was stated by Smokey says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:49 pm
LT says:
“And how would you know if that is a ‘fabrication’ or not? …pick up a mirror and ask yourself have you ever made unsupported claims about the motivations of climate scientists along the lines of ‘they are making stuff up to get fame and fortune’.”
I know it’s a fabrication because it was stated by the inventor himself. When he was fabricating 13 years of missing temperature data, Harry the programmer wrote: “I can just make it up as I go along. So I have.”the inventor himself. When he was fabricating 13 years of missing temperature data, Harry the programmer wrote: “I can just make it up as I go along. So I have.”
———–
Smokey, I know this is your favorite thing but as I have argued before I think you are over-interpreting this. I claim Harry is not likely to be a climate scientist, he is not a professional programmer and he is not likely to be an expert in data analysis.
A plausible scenario would be that Harry was asked to execute an infilling algorithm for missing data. If this is done properly this is perfectly correct as far as I can tell. If Harry was ignorant of this process he might cynically but inaccurately refer to it as “making data up” especially as I detect a measure of arrogance in his writings.
You might disagree that data infilling is not a valid process, but it is not the same a fabricating data.
You don’t even know what the effect of the supposedly fabricated data was on the temperature trend. If it had no effect on the global temperature trend or made the warming trend less than otherwise what have you got?
To extrapolate from an ambiguous statement by Harry to all climate scientists is just too much of a stretch.
“You misunderstand.
My remarks were in defense of school teachers.
I suggested a plausible alternative interpretation of events that reflected less poorly on school teachers.
It was not a put down of anybody.
It was more than one line.”
———————————-
“School teachers” is not a term that can be used to quantify all teaches. Some are bad some good. It is not your responsibility to defend a man, who you don’t even know, what you don’t even know he taught at the expense of someone else you don’t know. If you want to make the case that our education system in the US is fine, try that one. My brother also happens to be married to a high school teacher.
I don’t believe you are intentionally malicious but I try not to insult someone unprovoked when I disagree with them. This is the kind of thing that has polluted blogs like climate.etc where you get reflexively attacked by people who scroll through all the comments and feel duty bound to launch an attack on every one who doesn’t see their point of view.
Now people have to scroll through dozens of comments that serve no purpose as to the content of the thread.
Kevin Kilty says:
September 17, 2011 at 8:17 pm
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Nuke Nemesis says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:53 pm
“Our schools are dumbed-down for a reason. How are you going to turn our kids into little community activists if they are taught to ask questions?”
___
Not to pick specifically on you, but this is perfect example of the extreme divide in thinking in our society. Schools (both public and private) across the U.S. are always looking for most qualified science and math teachers they can find. If you’re a qualifed math or science teacher, especially at the High School level, you’re in great demand. …
Gates, I’m not sure what to make of your confidence about U.S. schools. Yes, they are looking for “qualified” teachers of science and math; but what they really mean are “certified” teachers, and being familiar with the courses the K-12 teachers are required to take to become certified, I can say that certification is a pretty low bar to clear.
_____
My “confidence” in U.S. schools was related to their intentions, not necessarily their results. Nuke Nemesis was implying that there was some kind of intential plan to dumb down kids to become community activists. This has strong political overtones which are just way off base from the reality of what is going on in our schools. There’s is not a high school in this country that would not like to have a whole group of top-notch science and math teachers that can really teach to the core of these subjects and get kids to be excited about these topics and be able to go on to a college or university and major in one of the science or engineering fields. The notion that all they want to do is pump out “community activists” is flat out erroneous, and so that was the essence of my point.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 4:56 pm
“I reckon if Obama claimed that the world was a sphere and the sky was a thin film of gas surrounding that sphere, the republicans would immediately claim the world was flat and the sky was a huge blue tent.”
LT,
Your commentary is getting more strident and irrationally overheated, as the scientific evidence refuting AGW mounts. You petty viciousness is escalating as the socialist ‘green’ agenda melts like Obama’s approval ratings. Given those correlations, which do you ‘reckon’ are cause and which are effect? (hint: That’s a rhetorical question.)
Your anger is the natural result of your inability to accept reality, given your deep seated indoctrination in the ‘settled science’ of AGW. Your belief systems are not being validated by reality, and the conflicts lead you to pointlessly lash out. You could overcome this…. but the 1st step is admitting you have a problem. You could be a founding member of ‘Global Warmers Anonymous’ (GWA)….
If you aren’t ready for healing yet, please continue to contribute nothing constructive, only venal spite. Your empty, deliberately rude commentary only leads more folks to question, investigate, and refute what you are unable to defend.
And have a Rainbow Day!
[REPLY: MtK, I can appreciate your frustration here, but I’d like to suggest that LT has been chastised enough for tonight and redirect commentary toward the thread topic. -REP, mod]
Przemysław Pawełczyk says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:36 pm
PP, I think you’ve perceived things of me which I have not stated…….
I won’t quibble with your bemoaning the fact that there are pay and subscription sites, but the volume of information out here is beyond one’s ability to assimilate it all. Further, just because wiki isn’t a good source, it doesn’t mean useful information isn’t there. Which, was my point in that we haven’t properly taught people to discern truth. The truth is here on the internet, but it is mixed with as much untruths. So, in that case we stated essentially the same thing. Again, there is enough out here that one can spend several lifetimes trying to assimilate it all and never get there. Bill Gates and IBM or not.
As to the “liberty and democracy” part. Thanks, I find it refreshing to see that someone understands the nature of democracy without proper constraints. I imagine then, you would agree with me when I stated, “if taught at all, are twisted and bastardized into unrecognizable concepts.”. We could go the opposite direction with liberty, too. I have a favorite quote of FRIEDRICH HAYEK from his “Constitution of Liberty”, forgive the length……. “The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.”
As to the final part of the discussion, I’ve no intention in getting into an abortion debate. But, I would point out, the mere existence of living tissue doesn’t constitute, in my mind, a human life. My perspective, boils down to the question of what makes a person a person. I find that many definitions vary, mostly according to beliefs. Is a caterpillar a butterfly? Some would think this is a proper analogy, others would be repulsed at even the consideration. I further find, that science doesn’t adequately answer the question. Nor, should science attempt to do so. To answer your question as to how I reached this conclusion, I turned from the circular debate of knowledge and I turned toward Wisdom, where it seems the valuation is different. However, in Wisdom’s admonishment as to not become a stumbling block, and for the peace of mind of the moderators, I’ll leave it at that.
Prz, you’ve no idea what I can understand and what I can’t, nor, can you know what I respect and and what I don’t. I do love your absolutism in your convictions. But, as I demonstrated above, your assumptions were plainly off about me. Perhaps, if we continue to exchange thoughts and ideas about actions and other things, we can come to a better understanding of one another.
Best regards,
James
Lazy T says:
“Smokey, I know this is your favorite thing but as I have argued before I think you are over-interpreting this. I claim Harry is not likely to be a climate scientist, he is not a professional programmer and he is not likely to be an expert in data analysis.”
LT, it is you who is over-interpreting. Harry candidly admitted that he fabricated 13 years of temperature data. Further, he is the CRU’s “professional programmer”; he was paid to program for them.
You are squirming like a guilty eel caught in a net. The admitted fact is that Harry, on behalf of his superiors, fabricated more than a decade of temperature data to promote an alarmist agenda. When this reaches a court of law, which it ultimately will, your side is going to be exposed as the self-promoting, money hungry, dishonest climate charlatans that they are.
Pass the popcorn!
LazyTeenager – watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
If you don’t want to watch the rest of Monckton’s “scientific truth” it starts around 9 minutes 20
James Sexton says
———
Responding to your points i think we do agree that the world needs to maintain a high level of prosperity to transition to other technologies.
However i think the world is prosperous now and that therefore now is the time to experiment with new technological systems for energy use.
You think many of the current attempts are failures and are therefore worthless. I think many of the current attempts are failures that point the way to success.
You think it’s just a matter of putting efficient technologies into place and they will be successful. I say the incumbent technologies are so entrenched that any new technology comparable or better than what’s currently available has a huge market barrier to cross. Just the disparities in economies of scale are a huge problem even after the issues of technological maturity are solved.
I claim that even a successful technology will take time to become accepted and even appear to be a failure during it’s initial entrance to the market.
I think there is a lesson to be learn’t from the life cycles of corporations here. Some corporations have one product, they become very successful and then they die. Other corporations diversify, they experiment with new products and some of those products fail, and when the principle line of business is no longer viable they change their business model. I want western society to be the second kind of corporation.
Failure is not necessarily a bad thing.
The fundamental weakness in weekly media AGW hyperbole and propaganda is the general public will notice if the planet starts cools, as opposed to no longer is warming. Stating the science is settled and calling those who point out obvious scientific errors in the extreme AGW hypothesis “deniers”, does not leave any room for facing saving.
The forcing functions are aligning to produce a significantly colder planet. The question is not will the planet cool, but rather how much and how quickly.
In addition to increased low level cloud cover due to higher GCR and the reduction in electroscavenging, Tinsley’s analysis indicates that higher levels of ions in the stratosphere will reduce the lifetime of cirrus clouds. The net effect of the high altitude wispy cirrus clouds is to warm via the greenhouse affect particularly at night at higher latitudes. We can look forward to significantly colder winters particularly at higher latitudes. Happy polar bears will have very thick late melting Arctic ice.
The increase in low level cloud is from latitude 40 to 60 degrees and is greater in regions where the jet stream pushes and accumulates bands of low level clouds against the continents, for example along the west coast of North America and the east coast of Europe.
Curiously, in the past when the sun abruptly changed the ocean level abruptly dropped. The ocean level drop cannot be explained by thermal contraction or by increases to the ice sheets. The physical reason for the abrupt drop in ocean level is the same physical cause for the past abrupt increase in volcanic activity.
When a new medicine is being tested, double blind trials are used.
Not only does the patient not know if they are GETTING the real drug or the placebo –
the researcher does not know if they are GIVING that person the real drug or the placebo.
In matters of life and death, scientists have worked out ways to eliminate their opinions, biases. fears and hopes from the research process. In light of this I think the ringleaders of the AGW movement barely deserve the name scientists.
(I do not denigrate here the thousands of honest hard working and decent people studying in this field, I suspect that many of them are quietly skeptical themselves!)
Not only is all Climate Change Research carried out by self declared activists/evangelists, but because there isn’t another PLANET EARTH, conveniently un-populated by a fuel buring species to compare with – no double blind comparison can be made.
Climate scientists have replaced the twin planet with Computer Models…that in itself was an act of faith based on the widespread optimism, or hype if you prefer, that as computers became more powerful…there would come a point where they could duplicate complex systems. Hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions has been spent on getting computers to recreate the behaviour of the atmosphere and the oceans….all use as inputs: a few ice core measurements, a few tree ring proxies, two or three sets of records greater than 200 years, and of course the satellite and scientific records of the last fifty.
It would be funny if it wasn’t such a preposterous waste of money.
I note with some amusement the barely concealed bile and venom of the anti-Monkton posters above, most of whom focused entirely on ad-hominems, in the time honoured Warmist tradition.
That’s only to be expected…when it comes to ‘S’cience ‘M’ethod they’ve not got a lot to offer.
I’m encouraged by the discussions Drs. Dessler and Spenser are having.
So far it seems to be opening up the dialog to question settled science.
This could be the start.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 9:07 pm
James Sexton says
———
Responding to your points i think we do agree that the world needs to maintain a high level of prosperity to transition to other technologies.
=====================================================
LT, I think we’re in much agreement, but probably differ on the approach. While I agree, there is much to learn from failure, I perceive that we are not learning from our failures. I don’t disagree that there are barriers to overcome. I just don’t believe our government can properly discern what needs to happen and no amount of money they throw at it will change the realities.
First, the soft alternatives being marketed today are simply not mature enough to mandate displacement of our current energy makeup. We should quit pretended that it is and wait for the maturity. Wind, will not be ready for likely over a century. Unless we have a breakthrough and figure out how to store AC power. Solar power has promise in certain areas of this country…… but it still has a way to go, and there is no point in pursuing the technology until one of two things happen. Either we figure out how to get a high return without REE or we start digging our own. But, in the mean time, we’re planting huge solar arrays with the false promise they will do anything other than be bird dropping catchers. And we’re planting huge whirlygigs across this nation, all the while we know the effort will never come to fruition. My point is, we’re forcing square pegs into round holes. And the cost is enormous. Sure, continue to test, continue to develop, continue to research. But, we should have never attempted to force implementation.
This is one of the reasons why our economy can’t pick back up. The success of our economy is dependent upon manufacturing and commerce. The cost of energy is too prohibitive to bring any new serious manufacturing to point of production. We are now to the point of punishing utilities for selling too much electricity during peak months and peak times of day. This action necessarily constrains growth.
I’ve much more to state, but this was long winded enough, I’m just left wondering, if we hadn’t chose this course of action, and chose a different avenue, what would have been accomplished? I think, this nation, indeed, this world would be much better off if we just walked away from all of this and took another run at it with a different approach.
James
charles nelson says:
September 17, 2011 at 9:30 pm
“…………
In matters of life and death, scientists have worked out ways to eliminate their opinions, biases. fears and hopes from the research process. In light of this I think the ringleaders of the AGW movement barely deserve the name scientists.”
=============================================
Indeed. I would go as far as to say some are not scientists, but, political advocates. This may interest you. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/the-travesty-of-trenberth/
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 9:07 pm
——————————–
I don’t think anybody doesn’t want to see new cleaner, more efficient energy technology but I don’t think that is happening as it is being reported. I think the vast majority of the money being pumped into the green energy market is being taken advantage of by regular businessman who morph into a “green” company to take advantage of the money stream.
I wish more money was spent on increasing the efficiency of PVC instead of erecting huge fields of low efficiency panels. If you want to promote alternative energy technology, you can’t just dismantle our current oil and gas industry and hand out cash to people who “say” the will create green energy.
In the context of Global Warming (In its political state, and in my opinion), the thrust of the issue is that it is to find a reason “oil is bad” and to regulate “air” basically. We have made great progress in creating engines (Tier 2, and soon Tier 3) at least in the marine industry, that put out almost no emissions (soot, sulfur etc.) but still CO2. If you want to keep marine transportation going and think the inland fleet can afford to capture CO2, you are dreaming. Most of the companies are barely hanging on with the cost of low sulfur No. 2 fuel.
If, “IF” CO2 turn out to be a minor, or no problem, then why stop using the most abundant energy resource available until it runs out and then we must use alternatives?
Don’t equate simply taking money from one company and giving it to another company to increasing our technology.
“A consensus in science is firstly about a consensus of evidence and a consensus of professional judgement about what the evidence means and how reliable are the conclusions from that evidence. ”
Anyone who believes that consensus has any value in science knows nothing about science. In science, any consensus can be obliterated overnight by one experiment that disproves it, and ‘scientific consensus’ has been completely wrong on many occasions in the past.
‘Anthropogenic Global Climate Warming Change’ is not science precisely because nothing can disprove it; regardless of whether the weather becomes warmer, colder, wetter, drier, less windy or more windy you can always find some ‘climate scientist’ eager to claim that it’s proof of AGCWC… even when that claim directly contradicts earlier claims by other ‘scientists’.
This is a quote from the director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre made in an article yesterday.
”People say we need to make a decision about climate change. We’ve made that decision that we’re just going to let it happen. We just have to hope it is more benign than we think it might be.”
Doubt is not creeping into scientist’s minds – but fatalism is.
MarkG says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:05 pm
‘Anthropogenic Global Climate Warming Change’ is not science precisely because nothing can disprove it…
____
Incorrect. If, over the next 30 years:
1) Global tempertures decline for the period
2) Ocean heat content returns to where it was in the late 1970’s
3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970’s
4) The stratosphere begins to warm back up
5) Greenland and Anarctica slowly return to growing in mass again
6) Permafrost stops melting
You could then begin to make a strong case that AGW just isn’t happening. But again, it will take a few decades of reversing the changes we’ve seen since the late 1970’s to begin to disprove it.
The other Brian says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:08 pm
This is a quote from the director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre made in an article yesterday.
”People say we need to make a decision about climate change. We’ve made that decision that we’re just going to let it happen. We just have to hope it is more benign than we think it might be.”
Doubt is not creeping into scientist’s minds – but fatalism is.
_____
Perhaps they sense the coming dark ages…
Gates,
You’re babbling again.
Smokey – it seems to be popular on this site.
DirkH says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:25 pm
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:13 pm
“For each ton of aerosols used to build the Great Pall of China there is a much greater tonnage of CO2 that is essentially black over about 20% of the thermal emission spectrum of the earth. ”
Look up Kirchhoff’s Law and come back when you have understood it.
——–
Ok done that Teach. Now please explain the connection to what I said.
Smokey says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Gates,
You’re babbling again.
=============================================
Indeed…….. Gates why would you think returning to the climate of the 70s would be significant of anything? I think the ice was abnormally large at the time. We’ve finally gotten closer to where we should be! We don’t want Greenland and Antarctica ice to start growing. And, recall the dark ages came during a cooling spell…… immediately after the RWP.
SethP says
———
I don’t appreciate the fact that you think my “relative” was the subject of a “piratical joke” by a science teacher and was none the wiser.
———
Fair enough but I was not intending to insult your relative. I was reminded of being sent on a wild goose chase by a scout master at a jamboree. Told to find a “sky hook”. When you are young you tend to assume adults are serious and not playing tricks.
It does sound like you have a problem with your education system.
“You could then begin to make a strong case that AGW just isn’t happening.”
That’s fine then; we’ll just forget about the whole thing for thirty years and see what happens.
But in the real world you would find ‘climate scientists’ willing to claim that every one of those things is PROOF of AGCWC or whatever they’re calling it thirty years from now.
“Perhaps they sense the coming dark ages…”
The only ‘dark age’ coming is the destruction of institutionalised science when the Global Warming scam collapses. The backlash will be tremendous and no-one who lived through it will trust the word of a scientist again.
Which is not a bad thing. Science is good, but the blind worship of scientists is bad and taking billions of dollars from taxpayers every year to pay scientists to support political ambitions is at least bordering on evil. It’s a shame that we didn’t listen to Eisenhower’s warning all those decades ago.
Frankly, as a trained scientist I’m profoundly sick of what passes for ‘science’ these days. Tax funding has corrupted science just as much as any other field of human endeavour, and we’re well past time for a thorough de-funding of the scientific-technological elite.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
“Gates why would you think returning to the climate of the 70s would be significant of anything? I think the ice was abnormally large at the time.”
____
The question was asked about whether or not AGW was falsifiable, and I gave this as example of one of several things that, if it happened, would be evidence against AGW. As the Arctic sea ice has been declining since the late 1970’s, should this trend reverse in a significant way, it would cast a signficant doubt on AGW. Hence the reason that skeptics got themselves a bit excited when 2008 and 2008 extent was greater than 2007. However, of course, those were not signficant increases, and hardly a recovery, and now 2010 and 2011 seem to be showing that the long term trend remains down, just as global climate models factoring in anthropogenic warming have forecast.
Smokey says
LT, it is you who is over-interpreting. Harry candidly admitted that he fabricated 13 years of temperature data. Further, he is the CRU’s “professional programmer”; he was paid to program for them.
————
So is this data set available yet? I recollect that there was a move to make it available. So what happens if the data set is matched against Harry’s comments?
It should be then be possible to prove what you say is correct. If there is a spatial and/or temporal interpolation to fill in the missing data points it will prove my speculative guess correct. If there is a massive rectangular block increase of temperature across that missing data period and that makes a significant difference to the trend with the effect of increasing it then you will be proved correct.
Is that a fair contest?
P.S. Being paid to program and being a professional programmer are not exactly the same thing. Professional standards do come into it. Simply faking data is not professional irrespective of whether you were told to or not.
MarkG says:
September 17, 2011 at 11:05 pm
“The only ‘dark age’ coming is the destruction of institutionalised science when the Global Warming scam collapses. The backlash will be tremendous and no-one who lived through it will trust the word of a scientist again.”
____
This is exactly the kind of reaction you would expect in an age of anti-reason (aka “dark age”).
_____
Then MarkG says:
“Frankly, as a trained scientist I’m profoundly sick of what passes for ‘science’ these days. Tax funding has corrupted science just as much as any other field of human endeavour, and we’re well past time for a thorough de-funding of the scientific-technological elite.”
______
Again, another sign of a dark age– at least for the western world. You can be certain however, that the Chinese don’t have such feelings about funding their “scientific-technological” elite, as they know quite well this is what has propelled them to the modern world power they are. So as the western world squabbles, China will continue quite steadily forward, investing heavily in fully funding the “scientific-technological” elite.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Indeed…….. Gates why would you think returning to the climate of the 70s would be significant of anything? I think the ice was abnormally large at the time.
————-
So I guess you are going for a plateau from now on as being evidence of a disproof of a AGW. That’s fine it would also work.
I think Gates was referring to a downturn in temperature also being a disproof of AGW.
Considering the emotional investment in cycles and the number of people who get excited about the “we have finally reached the peak of the temperature/ice melt/whatever” I think that would both be a reasonable disproof of AGW and makes cycles more plausible.
But it would take a sizable fraction of a cycle to prove that.
When the history of the period is written, the readers of the future will be astonished by how the anti-science/engineering elite managed to con the population into accepting serfdom and the early deaths of tens of millions by the CO2-AGW scam. What’s more it’s the first time in History the hard left have linked with the hard right to shaft the population.
It was planned in 1988 by Bernie Lay of Enron with Al Gore. The idea was to push the crackpot ideas of a few scientific zealots eager to boost their careers and who had previously been claiming we were heading into a new ice age. So it was a Faustian pact was forged: bias all climate research to support the fictitious CO2 mantra and the early investors in carbon trading.
Think Obama think Goldman Sachs. Think Malcolm Turnbull think Goldman Sachs. Think Blair, think Deutsche bank.
So, the science was false from the start; highly plausible but false. There is no ‘back radiation’. There is no significant ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling to hide it. The supposed 33K present greenhouse heating against which CO2-AGW it is calibrated is about a third of that level.
A properly run science should have self-corrected. This one didn’t. Thus we have a Trotskyite as president of the Royal Society currently persuading scientists to act politically not scientifically..
Our scientific community has been complicit in this fraud. It goes to the top. Green jobs are low technology designed as a sop to the serfs.
“This is exactly the kind of reaction you would expect in an age of anti-reason (aka “dark age”).”
Exactly. When ‘scientists’ stop performing science and start pushing politics, the people lose any trust in science; we are already living in a ‘dark age’ of politically-motivated ‘anti-reason’ science.
Today we see governments giving taxes to scientists to produce results that support political agendas. If the government doesn’t end it, then the backlash against ‘anti-reason’ in science will.
It’s no better than the fake charities in the UK, where the government gives million of pounds of tax money to charities which have little to no other income so the ‘charities’ will demand that the government does what they wanted to do in the first place.
“You can be certain however, that the Chinese don’t have such feelings about funding their “scientific-technological” elite, as they know quite well this is what has propelled them to the modern world power they are.”
I still remember when Japan was going to take over the world, back in the 90s. By now we were all supposed to be speaking Japanese and working for Japanese companies which would have beaten all their competitors. One thing we should have learned from history is that doomsayers are usually wrong.
Cheap labour has temporarily given China a rich middle class by third world standards. It will be lucky to become a ‘world power’ before manufacturing moves to cheaper nations and the economy collapses; the vast majority of people are poor and unskilled and nothing else is likely to replace those jobs any time soon.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 8:53 pm
1. “useful information” hide behind constraints is not useful.
2. “but the volume of information out here is beyond one’s ability to assimilate it”
JS, you states platitudes. The same refers to libraries. You are artificially glorifying Internet. First I thought you wrote about “the kind of information one needs” but it appeared you generalized which led you astray. I do not like people using expressions of the kind like “information at your fingertips” which from practical point of view is a downright lie.
3. “Which, was my point in that we haven’t properly taught people to discern truth. The truth is here on the internet, but it is mixed with as much untruths. So, in that case we stated essentially the same thing.”
No, JS, we didn’t. Which “we” (in the first line) and what a “truth”? It seems to me your “truth” is in opposition to my “truth”.
4. “Thanks, I find it refreshing to see that someone understands the nature of democracy without proper constraints.”
Wow! Handy Hayek! Let it be. Anyway you wrote about market liberties, in the meantime I saw contradiction in “liberty” and “democracy”. So we touched two subjects, intertwined but not the same. Let me specify my former statement on democracy vs. liberty as I see it.
Democracy has become New American Idol but democracy is bad from its inception – any bunch of people may and can vote to cut my throat via referendum for example. Casting a vote is a tenet, THE foundation of democracy. Imposing constraints on democracy in that point means you will get rid of it (democracy).
5. “I’ve no intention in getting into an abortion debate. ”
Lier. You put that issue plain if not intentionally (to provoke a discussion in the field you feel strong in your view).
6. “My perspective, boils down to the question of what makes a person a person. ”
“Person” in the meaning of “living human being” is defined by SCIENCE whatever you think of it or pen down about. The rest of your paragraph on the subject is simply pathetic without a pinch of logic in it.
Your adherence to wisdom (“I turned toward Wisdom”) is an empty banner which confirms my earlier premonitions that you like to hide behind words like wisdom, truth, science, logic, philosophy, knowledge, etc.
But both issues – abortion and sort of hubris in dealing with opponents – create your own picture better than I would do it.
7. “I do love your absolutism in your convictions.”
Last but not least. Fine you noticed that. The Truth can be grasped only in the context of the Absolute not the Relativity where a LIFE is concerned. (see point 3)
8. “Perhaps, if we continue to exchange thoughts and ideas about actions and other things, we can come to a better understanding of one another.”
I beg your pardon but I think just contrary.
Regards
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 4:56 pm
The current crop of republicans in the us seem to have gone right wing radical and have become obsessed with the left wing. Any thing that they can categorise as left wing seems to be gut reaction rejected.
Anything they can “categorise” as left wing? You don’t think high taxes and redistribution of wealth are left-wing policies? You think rejecting these things makes someone a “right wing radical?” Hahaha! Remembering my teens, I guess to a teenager it would do!
Friends:
I have been amused by this thread and the various excuses and nonsense presented by trolls who have used any irrelevant distraction they could imagine to deflect from the subject then – when that failed – have been forced to consider the science of AGW. And the so-called science of AGW fails.
The best that can be said for AGW so-called science’ was summarised by R. Gates at September 17, 2011 at 10:36 pm who responded to MarkG having pointed out that:
“Anthropogenic Global Climate Warming Change’ is not science precisely because nothing can disprove it…”.
R Gates replied by asserting;
“Incorrect. If, over the next 30 years:
1) Global temperatures decline for the period
2) Ocean heat content returns to where it was in the late 1970′s
3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s
4) The stratosphere begins to warm back up
5) Greenland and Anarctica slowly return to growing in mass again
6) Permafrost stops melting”
But each of his points is plain wrong. I explain this as follows.
“1) Global temperatures decline for the period.”
The “period” is not relevant. Either AGW overwhelms natural variation or it does not. AGW could be said to be happening but not discernible from natural variation. Indeed, global temperature has not risen significantly this century despite the “committed warming” of 0.2 deg. C per decade that AGW says must occur over the first two decades of this century (ref. IPCC AR4 Chapter 9).
“2) Ocean heat content returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
There is nothing special about ocean heat content in “the late 1970’s”. Either AGW is heating the oceans to increase “ocean heat content” or it is not, and it is not.
“3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
This is simply wrong. AGW says polar (n.b. polar and not “Arctic”) ice cover will reduce. But polar ice cover is not discernibly reducing. Arctic ice reduced to year 2007 but Antarctic ice has continued its increase. The existing polar ice cover is now misrepresented by pretending that only Arctic ice should be compared and, therefore, the state of polar ice 30 years in the future can be misrepresented. Anyway, Arctic ice varies for natural reasons so its variation proves nothing about AGW because its variation cannot be attributed as proof of an effect of human activity .
“4) The stratosphere begins to warm back up”
That stratospheric warming started years ago.
“5) Greenland and Anarctica slowly return to growing in mass again”
Antarctic ice is increasing. There is no reason to conflate “Greenland and Anarctica” except as a device to obscure the fact that there is no significant change in polar (i.e. Arctic and Antarctic) ice.
“6) Permafrost stops melting”
Melting permafrost is induced by rising temperature. It is evidence of rising temperature. It is not an indication of AGW.
Climate realists know global temperature varies: it always has and always will.
AGW advocates deny that global temperature varies except when the variation is caused by humans (as is clearly demonstrated by R Gates’ point 6).
AGW so-called science is pseudoscience used as justification for political goals. People, including me and Chris Monckton, who support science have, do and will oppose AGW so-called science for the same reason our forbears opposed the so-called science of eugenics. And people at opposite ends of the political spectrum – such as me and Chris Monckton – are united in our support of science by opposing AGW pseudoscience.
Richard
Given that the previous UK government was in favour of, and adept at, dumbing down the British education system, and that they spiritually and financially supported the practice of trendy bunkum such as homoeopathy (including within the NHS at taxpayers’ expense), it is no wonder that the current UK government is still devoutly kneeling at the altar of AGW.
But it’s worse than that. Unlike the US and Australia, here in Britain we are constrained by the same political pseudoscience, plus money-laundering carbon taxation, imposed on us by the EU.
If only the changes currently being made to the education system, which I hope will result in a new generation with better knowledge of science and with a healthy questioning and rational approach and with better ethics, could be applied to today’s crop of gullible and corrupt politicians.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 11:39 pm
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Indeed…….. Gates why would you think returning to the climate of the 70s would be significant of anything? I think the ice was abnormally large at the time.
————-
So I guess you are going for a plateau from now on as being evidence of a disproof of a AGW. That’s fine it would also work.
================================================
Yeh, I was just needling a little. While I am of the belief things of nature are cyclic, the timescales aren’t nailed down, nor do I expect them to be any time soon. I usually argue the about the “C” of CAGW. If it wasn’t for the alarmism of all of this, I wouldn’t engage. I really don’t care if the ice melts on the arctic or if the temps rise a degree. I think it would be healthy for humanity. Sadly, because of such alarm and such extreme measures proposed, I’m obliged to study this stuff.
You guys have a good morning.
Response to Mac The Knife: I have never seen an entire paper reproduced by someone else without specific attribution, until I read Monckton’s post. Maybe, Monckton would like to write with the same style and focus as Sir Paul, but certainly I have to agree with Sir Paul, and Monckton, that scientific positions should not be politicized. For Monckton, however, this is a profoundly disingenuous position.
Hugh Pepper says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Miss this bit did you Hugh?
“Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.”
Dick.
>>Robert E. Phelan says: September 17, 2011 at 3:44 pm
>>My argument is essentially that until a society can afford to mechanize
>>its agriculture and develop a robust distribution infrastructure (and thus
>>set in motion the forces that reduce population) it needs a large enough
>>population to build that infrastructure and afford the means to mechanize
>>agriculture. It needs people.
The problem in the Third World is not population, the problem is political.
The Third World has been given enough foreign aid to mechanise its agriculture 10x over, but they prefer to spend that money on kalashnikovs, whiskey, and Swiss bank accounts. Population is not a cure for Third World poverty – good government is.
Apologies if I jumped the gun on religion, but I have heard this population increase argument ad-nausium from the religious Right.
.
The always-correct low edge of the lowest band of the UN Population Projection has the peak at under 8 bn around 2030. Thereafter, the danger of population implosion will be the cri du jour.
>>James
>>Heck, if I had my way, we’d all be driving hydrogen fueled vehicles by now.
Except that hydrogen is not a fuel – it is only a ‘battery’, an energy storage medium. The real question, is what fuel would you use to power that ‘battery’. And if Germany really does close down its nuclear industry, well that is one more potential fuel down the drain.
.
Dayday says: September 17, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Further to your most excellent comment –
Eubathes:- ‘… and they flourished like the scenes in a new pantomime only to disappear. The great object of the hundred triflers in the science appeared to be to destroy the reputation of three or four great men whose labours were really useful, and had in them something of dignity. And, there not being enough of trifling results or false experiments to fill the pages of the monthly journals, the deficiency was supplied by some crude theories or speculations of unknown persons, or by ill-judged censure or partial praise of the editor.’
Humphry Davy (1947) Consolations in travel (chapter: Dialogue V The Chemical Philosopher)
Further dialogue continues where Eubathes states requirement of claim in the accuracy of detail. Some minute information, some proofs of what [you] assert. ‘..what you attribute to the chemical and mechanical arts, we might with the same propriety attribute to the fine arts, to letters, to political improvements, and to those inventions to which Minerva and Apollo, and not Vulcan are the patrons.’,
The Unknown: ….’I will be more minute. You will allow that the rendering skins insoluble in water, by combining with them the astringent principle of certain vegetables, is a chemical invention, and that without leather our shoes, our carriages, our equipages would be very ill made; you will permit me to say, that the bleaching and …..”
Gold Rush 😉
I thnk that scientists are sometimes to blame, sometimes they find themselves cuaght in an imperfect situation.
Take predicting earthquakes in Italy. Sceintists are now on trial for being honest about the uncertainties in their predictive powers, which I think led the authorities to say: ‘no imminent danger’. Those scientists might think: ‘better to cry wolf than to risk perdition.’
Take funding translational research. This is that applied research necessary to underpin basic discoveries as a prelude to commercial applications. In the 1990s, Britain neither acknowledged its necessity nor had adequate funding streams dedicated to it. do you give up, emigrate or sell a story to the City? Tough call….
IN my judgement the failures lie in Western Governments, Establishments, Bureaucracies and Parliaments. They have been housed by scientific illiterates, largtely. They have not been, in the main, able to challenge robustly the assertions of scientists pitching for cash. Or they have used them for political purposes (carbon dioxide as the scare to justify nuclear power, for example). They have become slaves to computer modellers (foot and mouth diseas management may be less well known in that regard globally, but it was a shameful piece of government), realsiing little the uncertainties and assumptions underpinning such scenario modelling (for that is all that it is…)..
As for astrology, it is probably a religion which grew out of a few perhaps correct assumptions:
1. The gestation of a foetus through the winter may be different to that during the summer.
2. The experience of warmth before cold or vice versa in the first year of life may affect how the brain develops.
3. The quality of milk produced in the winter may, in antiquity, have been different to that produced in summer, thus affecting early newborn experiences on the planet.
Whether anyone could possibly do any really scientific stuides on astrology without invoking a ‘placebo effect’ (subjects aware of astrological predictions may be more likely to conform to them than if unaware etc etc) is perhaps the most difficult challenge when trying to determine whether there is any scientific validity to astrology.
But population studies on cohorts inh the 1960s and late 1980s, when great ‘large planet conjunctions’ took place, is probably the best place to look. If you think it worthwhile in the first place.
Lazy Teenager,
Yep ! I guess that was in school.
Earlier in 2011, I had a short discussion with Lord Monkton about Graves’ Disease, as I had a difficult year with hyperthyroidism. He told me that he was essentially in the clear, but that his treatment could not prevent his eye bulge (ophthalmopathy). It has certainly not affected his brain. At the time, he was wearing a tie with the elements of the periodic table. I asked him if that meant that he had heard the Tom Lehrer song from 1969 of “The Elements”. Without a pause, Lord Monkton sang the song, with each one of the (then known) 102 elements perfectly in place, no stammer, no stutter, no calls to stop filming (though there were no cameras, just the 2 of us).
A person with that capability has to be shown credibility.
ben says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:07 pm
“the Stern review bunkum”.
—————————————–
And how many times did we hve that rammed down our psychological throats by the MSM. Just before the ‘credit crunch’, IIRC.
Sometimes I think they play us like a bunch of children at a birthday party: the hired magician. The figures are all frigged, the books are all cooked (climate and ‘economy’).
Gates wants to wait until they start arresting scientists.
By then it is too late.
History, lessons, not learn, repeat…….
Ralph says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:54 am
>>James
>>Heck, if I had my way, we’d all be driving hydrogen fueled vehicles by now.
Except that hydrogen is not a fuel – it is only a ‘battery’, an energy storage medium. The real question, is what fuel would you use to power that ‘battery’. And if Germany really does close down its nuclear industry, well that is one more potential fuel down the drain.
==================================================
Sorry, I may not have been clear, I was refrerring to vehicles run by hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines, where, the fuel is indeed, hydrogen. My point was, how much further down the road could we have been on this if we hadn’t thrown all of our money at ethanol, windmills and solar panels?
Ralph, I really don’t expect Germany to close down their nuclear industry. But, if they do, be sure that they will be burning coal instead.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/avta/light_duty/hicev/index.html
Today’s headline at the BBC
Again! Decreasing technology perceived as a social advancement. Not only is infrastructure being lost, but an important expertise is gone for nuclear development and design. It will be much more difficult to undo. The 21st century seems to be quickly sliding back into the 20th. GK
Przemysław Pawełczyk says:
September 18, 2011 at 12:18 am
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 8:53 pm
1.&2 Sigh, just because you find no use for it only proves my point about discernment. Yes, like a library, except, the library isn’t literally at our fingertips. I don’t care if you like that term or not, it is very literal description of the use of the internet. If you have to pay people to tell you how to interpret information, so be it. But that isn’t a requirement for all of us. I’m sorry about your hindrance to understanding. Do you think the requirements of information is the same for all of us? You seem to be suggesting the internet can think for us. Can you not infer things from the basic physics laws that are adequately presented on the internet?
3. “No, JS, we didn’t.”…… As to what truth, I was more generally discussing the nature of things we see here and other places, where some of it is true and some of it is not. As to the “We” I was speaking towards society in general, I thought that clear, but perhaps it wouldn’t be for one that must pay to have someone give him the information he needs. I do appreciate your agreement, even though I didn’t charge you for it. You didn’t run to a pay site to confirm this did you?
4. You didn’t come away from the quote with what I wished to convey. Perhaps a simpler one would suffice. Here’s one I’ve used several times here on WUWT. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”———- oft attributed to Ben Franklin.
5. Uhmm, no sis, I wasn’t the first to mention it here, as my statement reflected. And, what one could infer from my earlier statement, I don’t feel strongly about it. (There are reasons for the use of parentheses.) And, you’ve made it clear, your feelings regarding the issue are much stronger than mine. If you’d bother to take off those hate filled glasses and read what I was saying, you could probably come to the reasonable conclusion that I advocate ending such practices. But, I didn’t offer to charge you for that information, so you probably ignored what I was trying to communicate.
6. Ok, I’ll bite, show me where science has settled the question of when and how a person becomes a person. I’m really on the edge of my seat here, because I’d had always thought we’d have to wait until the bye and bye to get a proper answer. Once you post it here, be sure to send it on to the Pres and the Surgeon General, we can all rejoice that science has settled the question! Now we can all move on to other issues. I wasn’t hiding behind any words, I chose them carefully as to no illicit an emotive response. I see I’ve failed in that attempt. BTW, I didn’t then, nor do I now, consider you an opponent. If and when I regard you in that manner, you’ll see a clear difference in the way I converse with you.
7. I’m left wondering why you inserted the caveat to your statement? “The Truth can be grasped only in the context of the Absolute not the Relativity where a LIFE is concerned.” Absolutism is relatively applied? I believe you need to refine your thoughts on this. Perhaps one of your subscription sites can provide some insight towards this dichotomous application of absolute and relative. What of the poor rocks and other inanimate objects? Does absolutism cease to apply when regarding them?
8. Perhaps you are correct. Exchanging thoughts and ideas is a two-way street. Further, it requires an effort to attempt to do such for both parties. I see your are more interested in making illogical assumptions and then arguing against them rather than ask for a clarification.
Best wishes,
James
James Sexton says:
September 18, 2011 at 6:18 am
Ralph, I really don’t expect Germany to close down their nuclear industry. But, if they do, be sure that they will be burning coal instead.
============================================================
They are going back to coal because coal is cheaper.
They signed contracts with African coal mines…………..
“3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
==============================================================
The early satellite versions had a higher ice bias…………………….
They have been constantly “tuning” the results, reading melt ponds, etc………………….
Jessie says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:54 am
You forgot to turn off your italics!
REPLY: I fixed that now, Anthony
Latitude says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:07 am
They are going back to coal because coal is cheaper.
They signed contracts with African coal mines…………..
======================================================
lol, well Merkel said they would. I just don’t see how they’re going to pull this off. This should be very interesting.
Mods, is there any reason why everything is in italics? I thought I was just me for a moment. 🙂
@Ralph – 50 or 500 hundred years for peak oil? That sounds more like clay than stone. But the point of this discussion about peak oil being nonsense is being missed. We will someday experience peak oil. So what?
The real point of that post was regarding technocracy, and it’s belief that scientists and engineers should rule over the rest of us because of their expertise.
@Lazy Teenager – Do you know there was once a whale oil crisis? A substitute was found. Nobody worries about peak whale oil anymore (but many of us are concerned about the many endangered whale species). I don’t believe you read the article at the Wall Street Journal, but then again, I’m not sure it’s available without a subscription.
The first time the world was concerned about running out of oil was in 1880. With every looming oil shortage, new deposits have been found and new technology developed for extracting more oil from existing resources, Do you know that known oil reserves are many times more than the total of all oil so far consumed humans and more oil is being discovered on a regular basis? One more fact — as the price of oil goes up, more of these reserves become recoverable.
@R. Gates — You’re right that my criticism was not constructive, but I do stand by my comments. The government-education complex has ruined public education in this country. The blame starts with unconcerned parents then takes a strong left turn through the Education Schools at our colleges and universities and goes straight on through to all levels of our government. The teachers unions oppose virtually every meaningful reform. The notion that more spending equals support for education is a false notion.
Our schools have undeniably been dumbed down. Self-esteem and social engineering should not be the focus of education. How many universities now offer remedial classes for incoming freshman, and why? How do our test scores compare to other nations? Why is our achievement so low? Why has there been no improvement since the Department of Education was created? Why has spending increased so much but results have not?
I come from a family of educators. I once took education classes (for an education degree) and found them to be completely useless. I changed my major to something else. I now teach computer programming part-time at our local community college. Strange isn’t it, that I’m qualified to teach college but not high school?
The internet has also brought a world of disinformation right to our fingertips. People have come to believe they don’t need to know anything, just how to use Google to find it. Learning has suffered and so has the ability to use critical thought to sort the wheat from the chaff.
James Sexton says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:18 am
lol, well Merkel said they would. I just don’t see how they’re going to pull this off. This should be very interesting.
=========================================================
Claim is new reduced emissions coal plants…………..
Analysis: German coal imports to rise despite green lobbying
Reuters) – Germany’s coal imports look set to increase until at least the middle of the decade, despite carbon pollution concerns and anti-coal lobbying that has succeeded in stopping many new coal-fired projects.
Coal supplies 42 percent of German power, and as the economy accelerates, steelmakers and utilities are stepping up their use of imported coal.
Some new coal-fired power capacity is still starting up and needs firing over its long lifetime.
“Germany can only maintain its industrial activity in the recovery with competitively priced power,” and coal imports are easily available and do not involve taxpayer subsidies, said Wolfgang Ritschelm the managing director of hard coal importers lobby VdKI.
“For a number of years it looked as if there were no new coal-to-power plants possible, but the fact is that some 8,300 MW are under construction to replace old units,” he added.
The increase in imports to fuel this capacity will come in the form of hard coal, which is already mainly imported.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/02/us-germany-coal-imports-analysis-idUSTRE6812GQ20100902
Latitude says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:11 am
“3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
==============================================================
The early satellite versions had a higher ice bias…………………….
They have been constantly “tuning” the results, reading melt ponds, etc………………….
_____
Latitude, I don’t know if you’re trying to suggest that in fact seasonal sea ice has not actually been declining over the past 30+ years, but it is in fact all satellite bias…but if you are, it is an absurd notion. Yes, satellites have been getting better, but so too, the ice has definitely, unmistakenly, undeniably been declining. Skeptics (such as Joe Bastardi) would posit that this decline must turn around soon, based on natural cycles, but in that estimation of course, there’s been no room for calculating the effects of increased greenhouse gases, which the global climate models do. Joe is a very good weather forecaster, and should stick with that.
Hmm, Monckton is still in the game, eh?
Nuke Nemesis says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:32 am
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:53 pm
…I was contemplating this just the other day.
———————————————————————
“The internet has also brought a world of disinformation right to our fingertips. People have come to believe they don’t need to know anything, just how to use Google to find it. Learning has suffered and so has the ability to use critical thought to sort the wheat from the chaff.”
========================================================
Nuke, thank you for articulating the thought I was trying to convey. Apparently, I’ve suddenly lost the ability to properly express thoughts to where people can understand what I’m stating. Maybe its the beer. Yes, there’s a huge difference between having information and having discernment to use said information. For those that possess such skills, even disinformation can be quite instructive.
@Nuke Nemesis who said:
“We aren’t running out of oil this decade, or next, or the one after that. Oil production may peak during that period, but so what? Do you think we won’t advance technologically?”
I fear for our ability to advance technology so long as scientifically-illiterate politicians are in control. Their capacity for obstructionism appears to be infinite. If technology were advancing, we would already have operational breeder reactors and a solution for the nuclear waste that current reactors create. As it is, we are dependent on other countries to advance technology. Not a happy thought, is it?
Latitude says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:39 am
James Sexton says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:18 am
lol, well Merkel said they would. I just don’t see how they’re going to pull this off. This should be very interesting.
=========================================================
Claim is new reduced emissions coal plants…………..
Coal supplies 42 percent of German power, and as the economy accelerates, steelmakers and utilities are stepping up their use of imported coal.
………………
“Germany can only maintain its industrial activity in the recovery with competitively priced power,” and coal imports are easily available and do not involve taxpayer subsidies, said Wolfgang Ritschelm the managing director of hard coal importers lobby VdKI.
======================================================
Well, at least Germany understands it. Economies cannot progress without more cheap, reliable, and readily available energy. Presently, if you don’t have nukes, coal is the answer. And visa versa. If someone really wanted to get rocking with industry, they’d do both……..China comes to mind.
As always, I am pleased to see Monckton step into the fray. Indeed it is a pleasure to see the so-called consensus and so-called settled scientists squirming and sputtering with righteousness and indignation.
Monckton is a world class protagonist who sees Nurse as an ungainly apologist for authoritarian science. Nurse is accelerating the loss of confidence in science and Monckton calls him on it.
John
This is the real problem with “Peak Oil” — We may voluntarily and arbitrarily put so much of our resources off limits that we will be unable to supply enough oil to meet our needs.
Smokey, your exam is just typical internet. The exam has its own facts that show it was not from 1895. Cars were beyond uncommon and 40 miles an hour was not something that anyone could relate to. And that value for the speed of light probably was not available in 1895.
Mark S, I find nothing in those videos that affects Monkton in any way. The first 5 minutes are filled with lies and half truths. The last 14 years have been cooling despite what the video says. And to say that the current period is the hottest in the last 150 years doesn’t change the point that it is cooling. The video tries to say that it is still getting warmer. That’s wrong. But even if it were true, that it’s now warming at a lesser rate, that would debunk the notion that humans are responsible for the warming since human activity toward burning fossil fuels has not diminished. So human activity cannot be the main driver of climate.
Monkton’s claims are still valid.
END OF STORY!
To Bruce Cobb and Mac the Knife: The reason writers use quotation marks is to set off those words which are their own, from the words borrowed from others. It is highly unusual to use whole paragraphs, without quotation marks and a direct referenced attribution. A reader who had not read Nurses’s article might think that only the last paragraph, or the third, or maybe the fifth, were Monckton’s. In fact most of Monckton’s piece uses Nurses’s words. This is not satire.
This PNAS paper shows no correlation between CO2 and Temperature over the last 500 million years:
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4167.full
Refer to figure 4.
Looking at the link provided by Smokey, it is clear that we once knew about climate but have simply forgotten that knowledge (from this “1895 8th Grade Final Exam”) …
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
What I would like to know is what the correct answer was defined to be?
The difficult thing with the CAGW hypothesis is not finding something that can falsify it but finding something that actually supports it.
Billy Liar says: September 18, 2011 at 8:14 am
Jessie says:September 18, 2011 at 1:54 am
You forgot to turn off your italics!
REPLY: I fixed that now, Anthony
Muchly appreciated on both accounts.
Billy this link below FYI and the work of Luigi Galvani [& Alessandro Volta who is not mentioned].
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2002-09/itsalive.html
Humphrey Davy’ dialogue from which I provided quote is the 1838 publication, NOT at all 1947, as I incorrectly stated. Sorry.
Hopefully Anthony will place an erratum against that one!
@richard S Courtney says: September 18, 2011 at 12:52 am
Excellent exposure of R. Gates misdirection’s and lies.
James Sexton, my views are very considered and I’m quite prepared to defend them rationally. They do not arise from bigotry. Your reference to “Newton, Planck, and Monsignor Lemaître” makes the common mistake of giving Christianity credit for their science merely because they were Christians. Likewise your reference to the founders.
Like any social organization, Christianity must be examined in terms of itself, as a system, rather than in terms of the behavior of a few individuals. Christianity, as a system, has always been hostile to free thought, whether philosophy, “heresy,” or science. I can refer you, for starters, to Charles Freeman’s “The Closing of the Western Mind” for a description of the relentless and violent suppression of any thought that threatened Christianity’s power, after it achieved political power in Greco-Roman times. That’s not to say that a majority of Christians today, as individuals or even as ministers, would support such intolerance. Those in the West, at any rate, have had their values leavened by the Enlightenment. However, Christianity as a system still contains all the principled theological absolutism that would lead right back to that intolerance, should Christianity ever again achieve political power as a state-enforced religion.
Islam is worse, I might add, because unlike Christianity Islam explicitly permits no possible distinction between religion and state and includes that a vicious religious intolerance is divinely mandated. Bat Ye’or’s, “The Dhimmi” is required reading here, as is Ibn Warraq’s “Why I Am Not a Muslim.” Islam is also hostile to free thought, and can no more take credit for the accomplishments of scientists who happened to be Muslim, than can Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any religion for the accomplishments of its believers.
James Sexton. While you are correct that in mediaeval (and other) times Christianity was guilty of the the suppression of free thought and scientific endeavour, Christianity extols virtues that are counter to those of the globalists behind the push for world government, the 911 attacks, every other major terrorist event, the carbon trading scam world governance infrastructure etc.
These criminals, i.e Rothchild, Rockefella, Morgan, Soros, Kissinger, Strong etc have orchestrated a massive atheist anti-Christian crusade online and in the media/hollywood that they own to destroy absolute morality, family values, the role of the patriarch and to promote a dog-eat-dog evolutionary competitive, materialistic, selfish mindset to corrode the social fabric of society. They also created feminism toward this end.
They also want to replace it with an eco-fascist, Gaia Mother goddess, new age religion to control the masses, it also ties in nicely to their eco-fascist, enviro-nazi carbon trading world governance infrastructure, thus the priests of the new age world religion will be the criminal cabal at the head of the new world government. They want the allegiance of world populations, especially the youth to be toward the state, not a God.
While I am not a Christian I recognise the agenda behind the massive recent attack on Christianity. It also serves to divide society, the globalists have been making sure the religions, races and genders have been too busy fighting each other to focus on the real enemies, the bankers behind the federal reserve and the bank of England, IMF etc. Divide and conquer is one of their primary tools, after all, they intentionally created the credit crisis, 911, London train bombings etc, the gulf oil spill, the three sets of trapped miners, the bay of plenty oil spill recently, all in the name of destroying local industry, the economy, and demonising fossil fuels to rationalise their carbon trading scam. Once world economies are in ruins as per their plan, they’ll step in with world government.
It’s funny how everything degenerates into a religious discussion nowadays….I wonder why…
Anyone that wants to rant against me because their cognitive dissonance or allegiance prevents them from acknowledging the truth of my post, don’t. Do the research. I’m right.