This is quite something. Sixteen scientists, including such names as Richard Lindzen, William Kininmonth, Wil Happer, and Nir Shaviv, plus engineer Burt Rutan, and Apollo 17 astronaut Dr. Harrison Schmidt, among others, write what amounts to a heretical treatise to the Wall Street Journal, expressing their view that the global warming is oversold, has stalled in the last decade, and that the search for meaningful warming has led to co-opting weather patterns in the blame game. Oh, and a history lesson on Lysenkoism as it relates to today’s warming-science-funding-complex. I can hear Joe Romm’s head exploding all the way out here in California.
Excerpts:
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
…
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
…
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
…
Signed by:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
Full letter is online here at the Wall Street Journal
16 scientists? Yikes! Gleick might be scrambling already to find 518 signatories in order to restore the “97%” fiction!!
cueing slander campaign in 3…2…1
Good show, though!
What is the objective in providing this special group letter to this journal?
One can hear the mob being roused & torches lit already!
Romm grinding up glass & brewing vitriol, Mann writing to any paper that’ll publish his allegations of “Big Oil/Coal” funding.
All in all, it’s a very measured piece, that rational and open-minded people would struggle to disagree with.
There are 31,000 signatures on the petition project. My answer to the 16 scientists…Where have you been? The facts haven’t changed. It just isn’t popular to preach the gospel of Global Warming anymore. Next you’ll hear them say.. “I was never for it in the first place.. it was those crack-pots at the IPCC. Pulllllleeeeeezzzze!!
A bit late to the party doncha think?
http://www.petitionproject.org/
31,000 signatures….
Yeah but one of the signatories has a loyalty card for his local petrol station and gets a free cappuccino every month.
How much clearer could it get? Loyalty card to a petrol station run by Big Oil™ with monthly kickbacks.
The letter states;
“In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years.”
Putting the ever changing climate into a historical context is a subject I write frequently about, most recently here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/a-short-anthology-of-changing-climate/
tonyb
AGW is dead. Just a matter of hammering in the nails, and those nails we now have.
What have we allowed ourselves to become, men who give our minds to others for safekeeping. We should pity ourselves as well as them.
Markus Fitzhenry.
When such cracks appear in the dam, be sure the flood is not far behind … there’s a lot of pressure behind such eruptions into the public sphere.
These scienists are showing great courage although one wonders why it is necessary to show great courage if they disagree with a public announcement. Surely anyone should be able to dissent and be not held to ridicule for their views.
I think that most of the above signatories have also signed the 31,000 list. Proj. Lindzen has been outspoken about this for years and posted many blogs supporting the non-AGW side.
(Re•duc•tion•ism
noun
1. The practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon, esp. a mental, social, or biological phenomenon, in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, esp. when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation
Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents
[Wiki] )
That is the wiki on reducto, some simplifications do lead to greater understanding, imagine trying to teach kids the Science of Atmospheric without relating it to their understandings.
I have previously posted a little ditty, hopefully something like that can be taught to kids, so they understand more. And frankly, some of those lyrics that have been deposited by me, have also helped some of the greatest minds in the field to understand, the wrongness of the greenhouse paradigm.
The art. Roger Tattersall posted on Baron Fourier, and Hans Jelbring’s comments, nailed it for me. When I thought about the N&K principle, it clicked immediately. He did not distinguish the manner of mass, between its different composition, in the crust of the Earth. Looking on Fouriers observations, it was obvious Co2 meant very little to heat distribution in a straight line within the Earth.
Casting off greenhouse, I quickly saw the relationship of refrigeration when Rog posted that graph about the temperature throughout the atmosphere as stratified, I then imagined the greenhouse, as the glass only, and hence a new perspective.
But what mechanism drove our system. Clearly not a greenhouse, as its hotter at TOA. Then it struck, refrigeration heat pumps thermostats, condensers and evaporators, when logically applied to the natural systems of atmosphere, it gelled, like a bolt from Heaven.
To to be sure, I’m not sure it wasn’t.
Roger Tattersall, was the reason for my understandings, enough for a conception of an Idea. And Willis Eschenbachs perpetual motion machine made me think real hard, I don’t think people realise the advances that were made by many, because of his exercise. He is admirable.
Markus Fitzhenry.
They could have got thousands of scientists to sign the letter.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climate/
“The climate is changing. This means we are likely to experience more flooding, faster coastal erosion, more heat-waves, droughts and extreme weather events. We need to take action now to prepare for these changes”
Scare tactics from the UK govt, I wonder where they get the data to support this statement?
I completely agree with this fine letter.
What is depressing is that it is only signed by 16 people….several of whom are the “usual suspects” i.e. long term sceptics like Prof Linzen, Happer etc whose names are very familiar to me. Where ARE all the newly converted scientists?
This is not really going to impress anyone who follows the debate and is presently undecided.
By the knowing that I know, a proclamation is made.
Arrhenioshansenous has been slain, by the hand of a man.
Rejoice, for the fear of climate is no more.
The most powerful force in the universe, is the reasoning of a man.
Well, we do not accept anything the IPCC puts its blackened name to but even convinced alarmists cannot argue the logic and thrust of the above argument but alas some still try – it’s always about the money – human nature I guess.
I do not believe at all in the science of MM global warming, it is computer generated poppycock.
But I am [so too – the above gentlemen] able to perceive the reasons behind why the politicians clasped their grubby hands to the flag and raised the AGW banner and it [AGW] is first and foremost – a bureaucratic vehicle based on a political fiction – let us not equivocate here.
AGW, it’s a man made Godsend for hucksters, panhandlers and shyster advocates to show how much they ‘care’ about the lil ole critters and mother Gaia…. manna from heaven indeed. Yes to show you ‘care’ a big lie about a chimera – so easy, “I promise you the earth……tomorrow…..maybe………… soon!” Perfect and at the same time, bleeding the taxpayer dry to fund a massive bureaucracy [empire building as it is known in the UK] for and only for the purpose of feeding the big government monster, small wonder the UN embraces AGW so wholeheartedly.
I congratulate the [above – undersigned] esteemed gentlemen, one and all are true scientists – it does take guts and integrity but then, they only aver real truths. And in the end, the truth will out, it simply cannot be denied.
The very reason, I started blogging on this
subjectoutrageous postulation [that of AGW], was that I could see the whole process and supposition of AGW had been hijacked by alarmist ‘Chicken Littles’ – taken on board by MSM hacks with an agenda and by the snake oil purveyors [in other words] – the elitist political claque of the Western world. Someone had to say something and fortunately sites like this one gave voice to millions of like minded people [thank you Anthony].We should never give in, the fight is still on but we are winning the battle of hearts and minds with the wider public – make no mistake about that.
Finally, for the politicians to have their way, the arm twisting, pillorying and bad mouthing by those ‘men’ behind the AGW consensus and aimed at objective observers and pure scientists is; not only appalling but more importantly, is truly antithetical to all that is good in science and they should hang their heads in shame.
Look beyond the oceans, for there you will see, your brother, for they are yee.
Markus Fitzhenry.
So does the editor of the WSJ fall on their sword for publishing such heretical views?
Paul Westhaver says:
January 27, 2012 at 1:10 am
A bit late to the party doncha think?
Umm , I think You`ll find a LOT of these guys have been flying the sceptic flag for a long time ,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/16/burt-rutan-engineer-aviationspace-pioneer-and-climate-skeptic/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/
http://nationalobserver.net/2009_81_kininmonth.htm
http://www.powermag.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/25/will-happer-we-need-more-co2/
I`m sure You get the idea so I won`t spam the blog with the rest of the list
Paul Westhaver says:
January 27, 2012 at 1:10 am
“There are 31,000 signatures on the petition project. My answer to the 16 scientists…Where have you been? The facts haven’t changed. It just isn’t popular to preach the gospel of Global Warming anymore. Next you’ll hear them say.. “I was never for it in the first place.. it was those crack-pots at the IPCC. ”
Please google Richard Lindzen or Nir Shaviv and what they’ve been saying the past few years. You’re talking rubbish.
Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K was a member of the Russell Muir UEA whitewash investigation (ok cheery coffee morning) and the only sceptic voice on the panel.
Preference Cascade, get your umbrella boys
Doesn’t matter how many heretics speak. They’re still heretics who must be burned, not heard.
Academics and bureaucrats do not comprehend facts. They only respond to social status. Academics and bureaucrats will not change their minds until their High Priests recant. Their High Priests will never recant.
Therefore: No point in wasting time on the utterly pointless and fruitless task of persuading academics. They are beyond salvation.
The only thing that will change the actions of the bureaucrats is complete bankruptcy, and several Western countries have already reached that blessed and heavenly condition. We can finally see the dawn of an era without these grotesque tyrants, but only because the tyrants have eaten up their own food.
Good to see it published. I will enjoy the reactions and sputterings 🙂
Do they realize they are going to get kicked off the Team’s Christmas card list?
JohnH, minor correction, Kelly was on the Oxburgh whitewash not the Russell one. (The Oxburgh Report was the one that claimed that they looked at papers suggested by the Royal Society, when in fact the papers were suggested by UEA itself).
I have written to some of the authors of the letter to suggest they put it somewhere that others can sign it.
Note that the petition project was only USA, this letter is multi-national.
WRONG LINK. That’s to Australianclimatemadness’ article about the letter.
The actual WSJ link is: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
From the letter:
“If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data.”
Here, here, I second that motion. Public funds have already paid far too much and received far too little for our money in useless climate models and junkets and boondoggles for the well-connected.
Fad ideas come and go the Man-Made Global Warming fad is wearing thin. It has done enough damage and it is time we all came back to our senses.
Thanks Anthony,
This is a good editorial.
The original is at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
I wonder if Dr. Giaever was approached to sign.
The president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva! That’s a new one for me …
RTWT, and note to whom this letter is addressed:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true.
…
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
Many pols are still unable to name or identify any “real scientists” who are opposed to AGW/Warmism/Mitigation. This letter is specifically aimed at them.
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
Bah! Copy-paste error. Mea culpa (my bad)..
Should end after “aimed at them”.
as above- I wait for the screams of the “believers”
and claims the 16 are all mad etc etc.
but hot damn! it’s good to see it and in something approaching mainstream which may at least get some wider spread.
so many of the sheepies and converteds only read the msm views and nothing else.
WSJ is’nt exactly common reading but the other press will pick it up with luck.
even criticizing it will raise profile:-)
There’ll be a short delay while the BBC decides how to spin this news to its viewers/listeners as either a ringing endorsement of CAGW or the ravings of a minuscule minority of scientists who are “climate change deniers”. More likely, the BBC will ignore it altogether.
Jack Savage, one possible answer to your question can be found in recent (excellent, and much-discussed) WUWT posts by Willis Eschenbach and Robert Brown.
GHE
AGW, and the (very useful) upshot of these WUWT discussions is that skeptic and nonskeptic alike appreciate that the GHG
GHE
AGW relation is mathematically deep and physically subtle.
These WUWT posts discuss the foundations in mathematical physics of the relation GHG
Viewed in light of these recent Eschenbach/Brown WUWT posts, one evident problem with the WSJ letter is simply this: the signatories include zero first-rank mathematicians and/or mathematical physicists.
The reason for this lack isn’t clear, but the Occam’s Razor explanation is very simple: the world’s first-rank mathematicians and physicists simply disagree with the letter’s conclusions.
WUWT, indeed.
REPLY: “…the Occam’s Razor explanation is very simple: the world’s first-rank mathematicians and physicists simply disagree with the letter’s conclusions.”
Allow me (or rather, Dr. Freeman Dyson) to puncture your myopic world view bubble:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/25/freeman-dyson-speaking-out-on-global-warming/
I suppose now you’ll argue that because he wasn’t a signatory, he’s changed his mind. Occam’s Razor would suggest he simply wasn’t contacted.
I suppose the reason you don’t put your name to every comment is due to the strength of your own conviction, right? – Anthony
100% of the scientists are skeptics.
100% of the skeptics is greater than 97% of the extremists.
The hippie socialist extremists lost. But, of course, if nobody else turned up for the race they could’ve won. :p
The Koch brothers are at it again, buying mouthpieces to speak for them. It’s not the first time they did it either.
( /sarc)
Great day.. one senses that even MSM is now giving up on global warming reuters huffington post etc are mentioning climategate and uncertanties as well as Nature published a letter stating that model have grossly exagerrated warming. Also UAH temps are certainly pushing the cart! LOL
The AGW debate cannot be decided by a signature count, but even a low number of “official” dissenters is very important. I am reminded of the Challenger disaster, the o-ring expert engineers at Morton Thiokol were adamant that the o-rings would not seal at low temperatures, but we’re overruled by their management for reasons beyond the physical limits of the o-rings. When NASA was informed of the decision to launch, they asked if anyone disagreed and they were met with total silence on the conference call. Unfortunately, sIlence to this question was assumed to be tacit approval when in fact it represented engineers bullied into submission. One voice would have changed everything.
Global Skepticism and Global Change
http://www.berfrois.com/2012/01/the-editorial-climate-pilkey/
I think 16 is about the right number. You want quality, not quantity.
Well, they could have added my name as well,
but heeeh,
who am I?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Meanwhile, Obama backed electric car company, Ener1, files for bankruptcy. Another massive waste of money at the altar of gaia.
Whether this is 16 or 31,000 signatures is not important. What is important is that the letter which is signed by some respected scientists has been published in the WSJ. This is a newspaper with wide circulation even extending outside the USA.
The important fact is that many will read this letter and a few people who are undecided may become even more skeptic or even to now conclude that AGW is overhyped and not of real concern. Eventually, drip by drip, the public’s perception of the validity of AGW and the need to do something about it will wane, and with this waning the public’s acceptance of green taxes and subsidies will decline until such time as they openly oppose the idea of green taxes and subsidies. As this happens, the political agenda will change since politicians will see being ‘green’ not as a vote winner but as a vote loser. The politicians will then distance themselves from the green agenda.
Slowly the tide in public opinion is beginning to change. The Daily Mail today published an article on how those who were convinced that climate change was real and happening has fallen since 2006 from 86% to 76% and those who were fairly concerned about the issue has fallen from 81% to 65%. See further http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092375/Climate-change-No-people-willing-green-change-way-live-falls-10.html
Of course, UK political policy is still firmly behind the AGW myth and the need to do something about it. As oldgifford says: January 27, 2012 at 2:24 am the UK government is still peddling the scare tactics with a view to justifying policy and expenditure. As usual, they exaggerate. They give the impression that the UK will become like southern Spain when any school boy should know that southern Spain is about 10 degC warmer than the UK, not 3 to 5 deg C warmer as the IPCC computer projections would have one believe will occur. IF (and as we know this is a very big IF) the UK warms by about 3 to 5 deg C then what will happen is that Scotland will become more like the midlands, the midlands more like southern England and southern England more like the Channel Isles. This would in practice be a very pleasant shift in climate. Materially, for geographical reasons rainfall patterns will not change that much over the UK. For sure, there may be less rainfall in the South and even in the midlands. However, the UK is a small island surrounded by lots and lots of water. Its weather and rain is dominated by the Atlantic and the mountainous regions of Scotland, North West England and Wales. These mountains will not move, nor will the Atlantic and there will always be rainfall as weather fronts coming off the Atlantic meet these immoveable mountain ranges. There will always be rainfall here as any geography student would recognize.
What will kill AGWism is the present economic problems which for ordinary people is of far more significance and concern, and a continued period of cold weather with unaffordable energy/heating costs. The UK has had at least 3 cold winters in a row. This has severely dented confidence in AGW despite the PR being put out by one of AGW most committed believers, the BBC. However, this year, the winter has been mild but it appears that this might now change and winter will close with a cold spell which may last for a month. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092487/UK-weather-Siberian-snow-storm-bring-5C-temperatures-Britain.html
Regrettably this is what is needed, the realities and problems of a severe financial crisis combined with a series of cold winters. It is only this that will make the wider public and the politicians smell the coffee and appreciate that nature rules, that you cannot fight nature and must work with it. Most importantly, you should not throw away good and hard to earn money on socialist dreams which in reality were worse than dreams because in stark reality they are the stuff of nightmares; how many of us would truly wish to wake up in 18th century poverty with all industry and with it hope exported to China, India and the other fast developing nations.
I fear that that, although the realist case is at last getting a better airing, the Catastrophe theory has a great deal of momentum behind it. Not easily eradicated from the spirit of the times and the mind of man.
There may well be a crack in the dam; but the dam may take years to break; and even when it does, we will be very wet for quite a while afterwards.
There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. (From the frequently mentioned “Petition Project”
Whoa!
There really is a consensus!
In cases like this, the QUANTITY of the signatures is irrelevant. It is the QUALITY which counts. For example, had we seen the name, Sir Paul Nurse, at the end of the paper, this would, have been the equivalent of a magnitude 20 earthquake.
The signature that was missing, and which I would dearly have liked to have seen there, was that of Dr.Judith Curry. I mean no disrespect to Judith, for whom I have tremendous admiration, but had her signature been there, it would have only been the equivalent of a magnitude 10 earthquake.
With billions of dollars in government Climate Ca$h ™ at stake, you can bet your tree rings that the climate science rapid response teams will be swinging into action!
Sadly for them, their cabal will be coming to an end (in the U.S.) in November…
Running out of “gas”, the Global Warming Fame & Gravy Train has been shunted off the mainline and is being re-routed into a marshaling yard for some much needed re-thinking.
The conferences in Bali, the interviews on local and national news shows, the fast promotion and tenure tracks . . . all going bye-bye.
The last battle in this war for the soul of honest & real science will be fought by all those who jumped on the train for a free ride and now will have to fight like hell to salvage tarnished, varnished and ruined reputations.
Pull My Finger says:
January 27, 2012 at 5:18 am
“Meanwhile, Obama backed electric car company, Ener1, files for bankruptcy. Another massive waste of money at the altar of gaia.”
Whoa! Another Solyndra!
Ener1, Parent of U.S. Subsidized Battery Unit, Seeks Bankruptcy
January 27, 2012, 8:25 AM EST
By Phil Milford and Dawn McCarty
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Ener1 Inc., which owns a company that received a $118 million U.S. Energy Department grant to make electric-car batteries, filed for bankruptcy protection after defaulting on bond debt amid Asian competition.
—
I want everyone to realize that these “green” companies (along with our climate science elites) got millions of dollars in “stimulus” cash while our economy was tanking. Now they are bankrupt. And what did YOU get? YOU got stuck with the bill!!
All will change in November…
To those who haven’t noticed, there’s good reason why “global warming” is unmentionable in Washington these days. How many times did you hear it referenced in the latest State of the Union speech? They KNOW! “Knowing” and “admitting you’ve been had”, however, are two different things. Politicians as a whole have never been interested in truth. They are interested mostly in things they find useful to their political ends. Recall how AGW got political “legs” in the first place. Margret Thatcher (of all people) dredged up the then obscure theory and used it in her battle against the U.K. coal miner’s unions’ resistance to nuclear power.
AGW theory has been so useful to so many on such a multitude off fronts that I would not expect “the story” to go quietly into the night.
@ Paul Westhaver
Research some of these names Paul, they have been doing a lot of work arguing against AGW, and for many years. Including my Heroes Harrison Schmitt and Burt Rutan, real men in a world of chickens.
“Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue?
The core group of scientists and politicians that started the grant money machine may have initially believed the AGW science was sound. Now that there are serious questions about the soundness of the science, the money has corrupted their moral compass and they can not bring themselves to pull the IV from their veins (wallet). The public at large has been sold global warming as a moral imperative. This sales job has created a new religion that people now dogmatically follow. Well intentioned friends, family and neighbors are under the spell of this religious experience and getting them to “see the light” will be a slow process. People will have to confront the realization that they followed a false religion and reconcile all the emotions and trauma that goes along with an experience like this. I feel it’s critical for those of us that believe in science to treat family, friends and neighbors, even politicians to some extent with compassion. They did nothing wrong but were duped by this false religion and the corrupt scientists and politicians on “the team”. We must get people to reject the dogma of “global warming” and once again embrace the scientific process of measuring and analyzing the climate one step at a time.
“Shooting the Messenger” appears to be standard operating procedure for climate “scientists”.
In the recently released email, (1625.txt) we find Phil Jones discussing with senior University of East Anglia (UEA) staff, the idea of giving Professor Jonathan Jones (not to be confused with Phil Jones!) and I the same treatment as he (Phil Jones) gave another UK academic, for us having the temerity to send a FOI request to UEA.
Subsequently (1812.txt) Phil Jones asks the Head of Communications at UEA “The thought is whether we should follow the same course with these two”
Fortunately wiser council prevailed with UEA Head of Communications replying on the same day “Do you know the heads of department at (their universities). Are you sure that they would dissociate themselves from their colleagues who have written? We want to avoid any accusation that you are trying to get people fired because they disagree with you. This (Keiller) chap appears to be deputy head of department and could, I think, cause a huge stir if he got wind of it.
As it happens I did.
[Thank you for the courage of your reply. Robt]
Recently met a senior climate scientist at CSIRO in Melbourne who jets around the world to climate change conferences. He assured me that none of his team actually now believe the man made bit any more but with families, mortgages etc what can they do? He has to remain in the ‘priesthood’ until he either retires or gets offered a job elsewhere.
‘How many Imams get to survive if they come out as Christians?’
“BargHumer says:
What is the objective in providing this special group letter to this journal?”
When warmistas know they’ve lost on the message, they attack the process. When they can’t attack the process, they attack the source.
As Ghandi said,
“First they ignore you,
then they Laugh at you,
then they Fight you,
Then you Win.”
Henry@RichardVerney
True. Increasing coldness is far worse than increasing warmth.
But the AGW crowd have already come up with a solution, to that problem,
when it comes.
They changed names from AGW to ACC and if it gets too cold, then they will say:
it is man made climate change.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-term-climate-change-is-hiding-the-fact-that-global-warming-has-stalled
Philhippos says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:10 am
“Recently met a senior climate scientist at CSIRO in Melbourne who jets around the world to climate change conferences. He assured me that none of his team actually now believe the man made bit any more but with families, mortgages etc what can they do? He has to remain in the ‘priesthood’ until he either retires or gets offered a job elsewhere.”
Got a name for this guy? What could he do? He could have the balls to say enough is enough. But he chooses to perpetuate the fraud.
But not one of the scientists is a climatologist, so we can ignore their statements. (sarc)
“There’ll be a short delay while the BBC decides how to spin this news to its viewers/listeners as either a ringing endorsement of CAGW or the ravings of a minuscule minority of scientists who are “climate change deniers”. More likely, the BBC will ignore it altogether.”
Of course they’ll ignore it – it’s not news. What exactly do you think they should say – “a group recognised for their skeptism today made another skeptical statement…”
I’ve learned much by reading this blog. I’m not necessarily fond of distilling arguments down to bumper sticker size, but the most telling statement about AGW I’ve read here goes something like: “AGW is about taking the money from poor people in rich countries and transferring it to the Swiss bank accounts of the rich people in poor countries.” That really is it in a nutshell.
LOL. This is an opinion piece. Notice the scientists. Only one of them can be considered an expert published climatologist – Richard Lindzen. Lindzen published the “Iris hypothesis” which proposed that, like the iris of an eye, the earth’s cloud systems will act to lessen global warming. Other climate researchers believe that further research has not supported this hypothesis (see below). Lindzen also has claimed how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. I encourage you to check out the rest of the scientists on your own. Burt Rutan, for instance, is aerospace engineer and the designer of Voyager Mars Probe and SpaceShipOne. So does that mean that inversely a climatologist is qualified to design the Voyager Mars Probe? I think not.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1164
They wrote:
“The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause.”
_____
That anyone who would call themselves a scientist would sign their names to this kind of declaration is such a shame. This is not science, but politics. The flattening of temps (at high levels) over the past decade is not at all an indication that the models have exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause, but rather, is an indication of how poorly the models can capture the natural variability of the climate. No one, in fact, is certain what the equilibrium response will be to a doubling of CO2, and certainly no one therefore knows if the models have “greatly exaggerated” how much warming will occur. Where are these scientists models that refute this? Are they basing their judgement (and that’s what it must be as it is not science!) on the level temperatures of one decade? (Despite the fact of course that it was the warmest decade on instrument record!). Numerous attribution studiies have all shown the underlying forcing from the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is still there once the natural variability is removed. These attribution studies represent the real science. This diatribe these 16 scientists have signed their names to is nothing but poltical rhetoric.
Frame this WSJ article on your wall, and look at it in twenty years. It will be a good lesson as to the extent that the politics of our era had mixed with quasi-scientific thinking. I think these scientists, and or their descendants might be a bit embarassed.
Philhippos says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:10 am
“Recently met a senior climate scientist at CSIRO in Melbourne who jets around the world to climate change conferences. He assured me that none of his team actually now believe the man made bit any more but with families, mortgages etc what can they do? He has to remain in the ‘priesthood’ until he either retires or gets offered a job elsewhere.”
OK, I’m calling this a highly unlikely. The statement is outrageous, and you’d be doing the world a favour if you named him/her. But I’m betting that you won’t…
Harrison Schmitt has previously spoken out too.
Loved the succinct description of the attachments of alarmism to climate science in the last paragaraph. Metaphorically, sunlight on vampires. When you still have large sections of the press promoting the alarm and settled science*, educational activists attacking scientific skepticism in the same breath as creationism, and Al Gore and Jim Hansen posing in summer in front of metling ice, you need the truth to be restated time and again.
* e.g., Chicago Tribune front page article 1//22/2012 – Carbon dioxide expose of power plant complete with water vapor smoke stack image. Carbon dioxide makes a location the “worst polluter by far”? Not so very long ago, CO2 was the ecologically desired benign product of combustion. Papers selling climate alarmism turned a desirable outcome into false danger and destroyed the meaning of the word “pollution.” That’s just plain dangerous and unhelpful to more important enviornmental concerns.
Fred Allen says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:27 am
And that’s what gives it 10 times the credibility than had it done so. (Does anybody believe anything those “climsci” say anymore?)
R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:54 am
“It will be a good lesson as to the extent that the politics of our era had mixed with quasi-scientific thinking. I think these scientists, and or their descendants might be a bit embarassed.’
You can’t see that you are talking about ‘The Team’ here?
“LOL. This is an opinion piece. Notice the scientists.”
Address their arguments, if you can, Fred.
“Where are these scientists models that refute this?”
What’s the fascination with models? Blunt fact: the “climate models” have failed to be predictive. They are failures. They are falsified. Continuing to cite them is not a scientific response, but a political and/or religious one.
No alternative model is necessary.
Sixteen scientists? Sixteen?
Holy God. That’s incredible. This changes everything.
The Sceptical Science site, mentioned by Fred, has brought ‘1984’ to life. Altering the meaning of real sceptic comments to suit their anti-sceptic bias has been revealed, and supposedly corrected. i remain sceptical!
Readers beware this is consensus site!
Mr Gates, nobody has to refute that CO2 causes significant warming. The onus on proof is with those who maintain that it does and it really looks now that there isn’t a lot of evidence to support it theoretically or in practice. I’m sure you’ll agree that the concept is taking a bit of a pasting everywhere now? I note you add the bit about levelling off at a high level but temperature does oscillate and what we are seeing is just typical of the curve reaching a maximum. The interesting thing is what it will do next.
BargHumer says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:38 am
What is the objective in providing this special group letter to this journal?
*****
The objective of the letter is conveniently defined in the letter. You just have to read it.
R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:54 am
You see it as all politics because you’re trying to kill the messenger rather than listen to the message.
But that’s what you do all the time, R. Gates. What a dispicable (yet laughable) retort you’ve written here, and it only more clearly illuminates the position you always take for your fond “Team” who are the biggest fakes and frauds I’ve ever run across. (Oh yes, please worship Mann, Jones, Trenberth, the IPCC and all their ilk if you like, but they’re disgusting, little money-grubbing people; I’d never EVER call them “scientists”!)
Indeed, I’ve coined the term “climsci” as applicable to you and yours–the term is short for part “climate” and part “scientist”, but not truly either of those so it’s shortened to “climsci”–it is YOUR TEAM that are the real charlatans–they don’t believe in or practice real science and they’re not that interested in the climate as long as their funding gravy train keeps rolling along.
But more to the point, R. Gates–You’ve made a number of allegations on these threads at WUWT and I have repeatedly asked you question after question regarding your information and you have never once replied to my questions. NOT ONCE! You ignore all such inquiries, and inquirying minds demand to know! All you do is continue to spew artfully phrased, Alinsky-like retorts and objections that often carry soft threats and alarmism. YOU are no scientist; YOU are no truth-teller; and YOU are disgusting in your participation here, sir.
For example, you say:
Is that what someone with SCIENCE on their side would say? No–and I know that for a fact. What you’re doing is letting your brainwashed feelings rise to the surface for everybody to see since this weakens your cause and is embarassing to YOU and I tell you:
Your comments are laughable because it is “The Team” promoting “The Cause” that does this–not us! Your comments are full of all sorts of lames excuses, misdirects, and invectives. But keep them up, because thinking people want to hear what excuses your fraudulent side will keep coming up with. They get a kick out of seeing someone so stubborn they can’t see what’s truly happening–and it simply confirms what most people now know, which is we’ve spent and wasted literally $Billions on cult science just because those at the top could rig the system. And rig it they did! And anybody that digs into what the UN represent and how the IPCC goes about their business are sickened with the obfuscation of fact and reliance on politics–pure putrid politics, R.
As before, I don’t expect you to reply to any of this, which only confirms my suspicions that you’re not into dialogue at all but also it underscores that I’m correct in my excoriating assessment of you and yours, R. Gates.
(It must be dreadful being on “The Team” or one of its acolytes right about now. THAT you can post on your wall and recite daily, R. Gates. YOU remember it in 20 years, my friend.)
“Michael Vaughmit says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:32 am”
A bit better than 6, sorry no 1 tree, YAD061.
“Philhippos says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:10 am”
Bogus! The CSIRO are well and truely in the incestuous bed of AGW believers.
Michael Vaughmit says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:32 am
No, it is their message that does. Were it just one truthful scientist, that would be sufficient. Or are you one who continually goes with the fad populace, regardless of how wrong they are?
R Gates “but rather, is an indication of how poorly the models can capture the natural variability of the climate. “. Clearly R Gates is a “hockeystick” believer and has forgotten about previous warm periods such as a thousand years ago. My betting is that there is as good a chance of global cooling over the next 20-30 years as warming. I am amazed that first GISS and now HadCrut (V4) can get away with making adjustments depressing earlier and hiking recent temperatures in order to show AGW. Adjustments to global sea levels and claims that severe weather is increasing. Moving out the yardstick for temperature standstill as having any importance from 10 to now 17 years (Santer) and probably longer as required whereas Ramsdorff and company can show that the standstill is not really a standstill but caused by this and that which has only manifested itself recently. It reallly beggars belief and as a simple bystander I just cannot understand how the totality of it can be allowed to continue.
Fred Hillson says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:42 am
“So does that mean that inversely a climatologist is qualified to design the Voyager Mars Probe? I think not.”
Neither do I.
[Paul Westhaver says:
January 27, 2012 at 1:10 am
“I was never for it in the first place.. it was those crack-pots at the IPCC. ”]
I say that already, only I’d add: it was those crackpots and R. Gates.
The WSJ has been bifurcated in its coverage of AGW and alternate energy – but that’s changing. The editorial page has been consistently opposed to AGW theory and wasteful “green” energy boondoggles – they are point-man on debunking ethanol. Meanwhile the rest of the paper ran nonsense articles and special sections on “the future of energy, yadayada” all of it acquiescing to the inevitability, if not the truth, of AGW and cap and trade. But – last year they quit. If the WSJ runs “energy” features its about natural gas and fracking and oil production. And a couple nice pieces about federal obstructionism on the development of domestic energy – Even a piece on the hopeless economics of wind energy recently. Anyway – no surprise the editorial page is still strong on refuting any substance or consequence to AGW. Now you can get real news on tempuratures and energy from the rest of the paper too. I hope it lasts.
R. Gates says:
“That anyone who would call themselves a scientist would sign their names to this kind of declaration is such a shame. This is not science, but politics.”
I am truly staggered at the hypocrisy of this statement.
I mean climate “scientists” would never sign a political statement would they? Just like they would not attempt to “hide the decline”, or append real temperature data to reconstructed-just like Mann did with his “Hockey-Stick”.
A small note. James McGrath’s university affiliation is incorrect. There is no such place as “Virginia Technical University”. It should have been Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University often called Virginia Tech.
More interestingly, McGrath has received funding from petroleum interests, so I am surprised they included him. As the rap song says, he it not a climate scientist.
Coach Springer says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:12 am
Harrison Schmitt has previously spoken out too.
**********
Yes, all of Geologist Schmitt’s peer-reviewed papers on climate-science that he has published in respected scientific journals are so convincing. Plus he’s been to the moon- how much more of an expert on climate science can one be?
Edward David is a former science advisor to Nixon and Executive Director
Bell Telephone Laboratories. Probably a bright guy. Not a scientist however. Not politically independent. You guys are gonna need to better.
R Gates: I paraphrase: The models are not wrong, they are just not right.
I guess that covers what you really wanted to say.
As to there being only 16 signatories: perhaps they just wanted to put a hex on the ‘science’.
(I’ll go now….)
R. Gates says:
“That anyone who would call themselves a scientist would sign their names to this kind of declaration is such a shame. This is not science, but politics.”
I’d say “LOL” but everyone knows that when someone writes that the last thing they’re doing is actually laughing. LML would be more accurate, as in “losing my lunch.” Are you serious? Your side isn’t engaging in politics? Not trying to influence policy? What do you suppose the IPCC is? Do you even think before you write?
As to the letter, I say bravo. But must add, we need more of this stuff. We’ve been quiet for far too long. 13 years with no warming. The time is right. Let’s bring the fight to them with everything we have.
R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:54 am
This is not science, but politics.
It took you long enough to call the kettle black. Once again, R., you have outdone yourself. Why aren’t you on a ship to Antarctica? Oh….right. Silly me.
and, I might add, R., nice hijack.
The major proponents of AGW have always had a down on the Wall
Street Journal , considering it’s access to history with corporate
America a source of corruption to reporting “news” in an unbiased fashion.
Expect to see blasts from the directors of various NGOs writing letters to
both the WSJ and New York Times to complain about the decision to give
voice (and column space) to a tiny, unrepresentative segment of their world
of science.
Other venues will receive snarky remarks as to how the WSJ caters to Big
Oil, Big Coal, Big Nuclear, and Big (insert name here) by promoting more
confusion among the populace on climate topics.
We can also expect to see a letter or maybe a bunch of letters to the WSJ
from Ben Santer, Jim Hansen, Ray Bradley, Wigley, Cook, Trenbert, and
Mann with a call to arms to their sympathetic fellow followers in academia
and government to drown out the deniers.
Most of these advocates will have to be careful in what they say, since many
of them had large roles or at least made cameo appearances in the emails
from/to Mike Mann currently involved in the Virginia courts. Should those
emails ever escape into public circulation, a whole lot of folks will have to
spend their time explaining why what they’ve said publically (and signed off
on in various letters and petitions) appears to be so very different from what
they were saying among themselves.
If Mike Mann can call deniers “liars”, then what epithet can we assign to
his personal type of liar ?
Will the letter from the WSJ 16 spark a trend in open discussion of the
“science” ? One can only hope.
Considering the tunnel vision and single mindset of the global warming crowd and the fetish for and fear of carbon, if there were a climate disaster in the making no matter the cause, the global warming crowd could not possibly know it.
And the fact they have to resort to unsavory tactics to ward off opposition in scientific argument proves their single focus on carbon is without merit and they know it otherwise they would welcome review and argument to their research.
The sixteen who signed are proof that while numbers matter in science the only numbers that matter where support is concerned are those who are right and have the courage and integrity to say so without fear of opposition.
Fred Hillson: “Yes, all of Geologist Schmitt’s peer-reviewed papers on climate-science that he has published in respected scientific journals are so convincing. Plus he’s been to the moon- how much more of an expert on climate science can one be?”
So you cannot dispute what they SAID and must, instead, attack the speakers.
Since I kind of pooched my post above, perhaps it’s understandable no one took on board the main point: The letter is addressed to politicians and “candidates for office”. That is, it is specifically intended to provide a basic toolkit and cover for those who might consider rejecting the AGW political orthodoxy. Thus the lack of “hard science” content, and thus the limited number of names. Note, e.g., the (alphabetically arranged) last name: Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
Here’s what the previous post should have looked like:
P.S. Re above.
I suggest therefore forwarding the original letter to any and all politicians you have any contact with or interest in. That’s who it’s for.
polistra says:
January 27, 2012 at 3:38 am
Doesn’t matter how many heretics speak. They’re still heretics who must be burned, not heard. … Academics and bureaucrats do not comprehend facts,they only respond to social status. Academics and bureaucrats will not change their minds until their High Priests recant. Their High Priests will never recant. …. They are beyond salvation. …The only thing that will change the actions of the bureaucrats is complete bankruptcy …
Verily polistra, thou speakest a mouthful. Well said.
Douglas
R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:54 am
In its “State of the Climate in 2008” report, the NOAA said about climate computer models
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
The translation is that a flat trend in global temperatures for 15 years is all that is required to say the models are incorrect. We are now approaching a 15 year trend (since 1998 El Nino) of flat global temperatures and thus also approaching the disqualification of the current global climate models.
So saying that natural climate variability is hiding the background trend of rising temperature is a defense of the models that cannot be sustained for much longer. And your suggestion that these scientists produce models to refute the present models is just absurd. Come on, R. Gates, your partisanship is showing through your cloak of alleged rationality. Where is is the R. Gates that once claimed to be 25% (if I recall correctly) skeptical?
TomB says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:41 am
“I’ve learned much by reading this blog. I’m not necessarily fond of distilling arguments down to bumper sticker size, but the most telling statement about AGW I’ve read here goes something like: “AGW is about taking the money from poor people in rich countries and transferring it to the Swiss bank accounts of the rich people in poor countries.” That really is it in a nutshell.”
That is one part of it. The other part is taking money from one’s political adversaries (and everyone else) here in the US and giving it to one’s political allies in return for campaign contributions.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-877034
they threw me off off at sceptical science’
because they did not want to believe me
so what do you think,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
“So does that mean that inversely a climatologist is qualified to design the Voyager Mars Probe?”
Only if it doesn’t require the use of Excel.
Don Keiller says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:08 am
=====================
Don Keiller, sir, you have my utmost respect.
Perhaps I should expand on some of your efforts you have taken to ‘get to the facts’ but I’m not the most articulate in doing a proper summary. So hopefully someone else will as many readers here may not be aware of your efforts to look into the CAGW issue, and most recent accomplishment in singlehandedly (with one ‘friend’ being David Holland) taking on the ‘best’ that the AWG crowd had to offer.
For readers not familiar with the story, it was covered here @ WUWT and at Bishop Hill “A major FOI victory”. It is worth the read.
Mr. Keiller, thank you again.
Denials and the Denying Deniers Who Tell Them.
/
Musical aside: I was wondering what the wording and cadence of the posting title reminded me of. It’s from “Riding on The City of New Orleans”:
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors, twenty-five sacks of mail.”
Was that deliberate, Anthony?
😉
Anthony, please let me commend to your attention (and to the attention of WUWT readers) the extended, verbatim email transcript that The Examiner provides, titled “Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson.”
These emails reflect Prof. Dyson’s present (as of 2011) views, which have evolved to be more nuanced than the earlier views that are sometimes still ascribed to him. So it’s no surprise that Dyson is not among the signers of the WSJ letter (which expresses more one-sided opinion than Dyson’s).
Notice too, that this skeptic-versus-nonskeptic email exchange is scrupulously respectful … admirable, isn’t it?
As for the science, it’s evident that if James Hansen’s sea-level rise numbers are right, then Freeman Dyson’s humanitarian concerns are wrong, and vice versa. In this regard, Hansen is on-record as predicting that global sea-level rise and global temperature rise both will accelerate markedly in coming decades. Broadly speaking, if a substantial global climate-change acceleration is observed in coming decades, then Dyson’s views are almost certainly wrong; otherwise, Dyson’s views very plausibly are correct.
So really, time and Nature will tell.
REPLY: Good job at ducking the question of why you don’t have the courage to put your own name to your convictions here. I think that before you criticize others for putting their names to their convictions, you should have the courage and integrity to do it yourself. Besides, you already accidentally (and hilariously) self-outed yourself on another blog, so there’s nothing to lose. I challenge you to man-up like these scientists have. I will accept no further
thread bombingcommentary from you until you address this issue.As for Dysons, evolved, nuanced response, this speaks volumes:
From: Freeman Dyson
To: Steve Connor
First of all, please cut out the mention of Einstein. To compare me to Einstein is silly and annoying.
Answers to your questions are: yes (1), yes (2), yes (3), maybe (4), no (5), no (6), no (7).
There are six good reasons for saying no to the last three assertions. First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer. Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past. Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs. Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects. Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it.
That will do for the first set of questions. Now it is your turn.
Public policy is all about politics.
~More Soylent Green
Let me stick up for the trolls and add my $.02 to their insistence that the logical fallacy of “an appeal to authority” is a valid leg to stand on. (All apologies, W.C.)
$.02
[SNIP: A little courtesy, please? -REP]
January 27, 2012 at 4:47 am
###
Once again you demonstrate that you have no clue.
Fred Hillson says:
January 27, 2012 at 8:12 am
Geologists are one of the main groups of scientists with a lot of members skeptical about the effects of climate change. Some of the more activist warmists like Heidi Cullen try to dismiss them, but of all the scientists, geologists have the best concept of how wide a range “normal” conditions fit into and are a welcome voice of sanity when people talk about Earth passing a tipping point into runaway warming that end with Earth being another Venus.
James Hansen started out as a astrophysicist and worked with James van Allen, so feel free to criticize him too.
One of the beauties of climate change is that its such a hugely multidisciplinary system that no one scientist can understand it all. The system needs people from all these disciplines, and it needs people with a shallower but broader understanding too.
Given how politicized climate research has become, Dr. Schmitt’s tenure as a senator may be as important as his geological knowledge. I listened to him speak at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change and much of his talk was about looking at the US Constitution and how or whether organizations like the EPA fit in.
I’m pleased to see he’s involved with the WSJ letter.
R. Gates: “This is not science, but politics.”
Correct! CLIMATE SCIENCE is NOT science, but politics. And climate scientists are acting accordingly.
(Please let your UCAR friends know…)
And…all will change in November…
Henry@A phycisist
ET,
please go home
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
and tell me why you do not like it there?
Comic relief. On par with the “AL GORE WAS WRONG!!!”, for the 47 thousandth time, threads.
Jimmy Haigh. says: January 27, 2012 at 7:24 am
R. Gates says: January 27, 2012 at 6:54 am
“It will be a good lesson as to the extent that the politics of our era had mixed with quasi-scientific thinking. I think these scientists, and or their descendants might be a bit embarassed.’
—
You can’t see that you are talking about ‘The Team’ here?
=====
Would it best to be remembered as Nero watching the world burn or a person who put in more fire hydrants than was necessary to put out the fires?
Which is the better outcome – burnt city or safe city?
Many believe in the cyclical nature of climate in particular the presence of a 60 year cycle. This analysis shows such a cycle. it is on a downswing until 2016 but then the heating starts in earnest.. If this is true then talking no action now will leave us open to “big problems” in 6 years – is insurance not valid?
http://climateandstuff.blogspot.com/2011/06/reconstructions-with-limited-signals.html
Louise says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:31 am
[“There’ll be a short delay while the BBC decides how to spin this news to its viewers/listeners as either a ringing endorsement of CAGW or the ravings of a minuscule minority of scientists who are “climate change deniers”. More likely, the BBC will ignore it altogether.”]
Of course they’ll ignore it – it’s not news. What exactly do you think they should say – “a group recognised for their skeptism [sic] today made another skeptical statement…”
I don’t know, almost daily I see “a group recognised for their alarmism today made another alarmist statement…” and it gets covered worldwide. Why is that, Louise?
Commenting about a non existent problem it is a propaganda of such non existent problem….
You must be joking. The WSJ editorial board leads the way with this sort of opinion piece. It’s all political.
I see the SkS crew has shown up to attack the messengers. Say guys, how about you define what a “climate scientist” does. I’d like to check against the education these guys have received. I mean hey, if you’re really skeptical you should have already done this, right?
I wonder who produced this letter? Does this mean the skeptical community is finally getting better organized?
Re: R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:54 am
“The flattening of temps (at high levels) over the past decade is not at all an indication that the models have exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause….”
You might wish to check out the UAH site showing current global average temperatures as measured by satellite. Pick any altitude you wish. Current temperatures are the lowest since such measurements began over three decades ago and, by implication, the lowest for over a century. The entire claimed CO2 forced warming over the past century based on the land record was some 0.7 deg. C. Current readings at 14,000 feet are a full degree C. below peak satellite readings for comparable dates.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Henry@richard M
Well, if you are good in organizing stuff,
why don’t you add my name to the list?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
“Leading Scientists” eh. Let’s just look at the first name on the list – Claude Allegre. Here’s a blast from his past: French Researchers Ask Science Minister to Disavow Climate Skeptic
2 April 2010, 5:08 PM
PARIS—More than 400 French climate scientists want science minister Valérie Pécresse to take a clear stand against the country’s most vocal climate skeptic, geochemist Claude Allègre of the Institute of Geophysics of Paris (IPGP). On Wednesday, the group sent Pécresse a letter denouncing Allègre’s latest book, L’imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud), and asking her to express confidence in the climate research community. Allègre was science minister from 1997 until 2000.
Do we need to go any further?
CLAUDE HARVEY SAYS
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-877236
good for you
I actually looked at all the measured resuts..
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
jjthoms says:
January 27, 2012 at 10:36 am
“…no action now will leave us open to “big problems” in 6 years – is insurance not valid?”
_________________________
Spending $Trillions now on “insurance” which produces no measurable effect is valid?
Kristian Berg says
Do we need to go any further?
Henry says
Well,
why not look at my results,
and say something about that?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Also in today’s Wall Street Journal: Another Green energy company (backed by U.S. government) is going bust:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577185591620344190.html
The article notes that this is the third “green energy” company to declare bankruptcy under Obama, who
Climate scientists actually believed the sun revolved around the Earth.
They called it a Hot House when it was hotter on the outside. Man could not survive the heat of the moon without atmosphere, what made them think the earth could be hotter with atmosphere?
As wrong, as the consensus in Galileo’s time.
The atmosphere protects us by cooling the heat from the Sun, not warming it.
Markus Fitzhenery.
“Robert Austin says:
January 27, 2012 at 8:55 am
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
We are now approaching a 15 year trend…”
In my opinion, we will have hit the mark with two data sets, RSS and HadCrut3, once the January stats are in.
See
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.17/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1997.08/trend
#Time series (hadcrut3) from 1850 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.17
#Least squares trend line; slope = -0.000101357 per year
#Time series (rss) from 1979 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.08
#Least squares trend line; slope = -5.60668e-05 per year
So to the end of December, it is 14 years and 10 months for HadCrut3 and 14 years and 11 months for RSS that we have an insignificant negative trend.
And a very recent article on WUWT tells us what to expect in January. Brrr!
So I believe I can safely say that at present, we have reached the 15 year mark on at least two sets.
P.S. We are now going down the other side of the 60 years sine wave, so each month can add more than one month to the period in question. This has happened lately for both RSS and HadCrut3.
Claude Harvey says:
“Current temperatures are the lowest since such measurements began over three decades ago and, by implication, the lowest for over a century.”
___
Absolutely no foundation for stating this. There is no “by implication” from recent satellite measurements to what the entire last century of temperatures were.
I am glad that *somebody* finally had the nerve to make the connection to Lysenkoism. I feel I am watching a ‘cinema verité’ performance of the Life of Trofim Lysenko, starring Al Gore as Josef Stalin.
To “a physicist”
I read over the email exchange between Freeman Dyson and Steve Connor and I do not see where Dyson has softened his views at all. Computer simulations are inadequate representations of real world processes and their predictive abilities are notoriously suspect. The “belief” of the amount and severity of AGW is based on a tenuous set of theories that is not supported by the real world data.
I also was quite put off by the crass way Connor wrote his comments(questions?). Conner manages to get the attention of one of the top minds of our lifetime and then preaches to him versus actually trying to understand Dyson’s position. A pathetic exposure of Connors lack of ability as a journalist. How does this guy keep his job!
Robert Austin says:
January 27, 2012 at 8:55 am
“So saying that natural climate variability is hiding the background trend of rising temperature is a defense of the models that cannot be sustained for much longer. And your suggestion that these scientists produce models to refute the present models is just absurd. Come on, R. Gates, your partisanship is showing through your cloak of alleged rationality. Where is is the R. Gates that once claimed to be 25% (if I recall correctly) skeptical?”
____
Please refer back to my post and my complaint about the statement of scientific “fact” that these 16 scientists are attesting to in their WSJ article. They are claiming:
“…computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause.”
And my point is, they can’t possible know this, nor can Lord Monckton, who has made a similar claim. If they can claim this with such scientific authority and certainty, then it means they know the equalibrium response to the current and future CO2 forcing, and this would mean that they know something that no one else in the world seems to know. (thus they’d better have the scientific proof as to how they know this). They are saying that they know how sensitive the climate is to CO2 forcing from the levels of CO2 we currently have and are likely to see in the upcoming century. As this sensitivity issue is the central issue of the climate change debate, of course they would like to know the answer to this, but they have no scientific proof to back up their claims that the models have exaggerated the amount of additional warming we are likely to get. The very best they can do, and most honest thing they could say, if scientific honesty was what these scientists cared about (and not political pundantry) is that computer models are doing a poor job at modeling short-term variability. This failure to model short-term variability has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of future warming to expect from the continual, long-term forcing from the geologically rapid rise in CO2, CH4, and N2O caused primarily by human activities.
Kristian Berg says:
January 27, 2012 at 11:04 am
“Leading Scientists” eh. Let’s just look at the first name on the list – Claude Allegre. Here’s a blast from his past: French Researchers Ask Science Minister to Disavow Climate Skeptic
2 April 2010, 5:08 PM
PARIS—More than 400 French climate scientists want science minister Valérie Pécresse to take a clear stand against the country’s most vocal climate skeptic, geochemist Claude Allègre of the Institute of Geophysics of Paris (IPGP). On Wednesday, the group sent Pécresse a letter denouncing Allègre’s latest book, L’imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud), and asking her to express confidence in the climate research community. Allègre was science minister from 1997 until 2000.
Do we need to go any further?
Are there really 400 climate scientists in France? Who pays their salaries and what exactly are they doing? What would they be doing for a living if the alarmism went away?
Do we need to go any further?
Time you answered me, R. Gates
State it now, or leave this place;
Do you believe the Sun revolves around Earth.
Markus Fitzhenry.
I’m sure that you appreciate, Anthony, that on forums where courtesy and respect are the norm, I invariably post under my own name. Otherwise, not.
This turns out to be a matter of family safety. My sons, my wife, and I have had unwelcome dealings with strangers whom we had good reason to regard as less-than-stable mentally, in contexts relating variously to teaching, scientific opinion, civil rights, and USMC service in Iraq and Afghanistan … the far-left and the far-right extremes of the political spectrum have both been represented in these incidents. The protection that anonymity provides is the sole protection that my wife (in particular) has from these persons.
Anthony, although your post used the word “hilarious” in regard to these matters, please let me remind you of what I am sure you appreciate, and everyone else appreciates too: when these events happen within a person’s own family, they are not hilarious.
WUWT is far from the worst forum when it comes to incivility and ad hominem attacks, and should it happen that (what I perceive to be) a welcome trend toward greater civility and objectivity continues here on WUWT, then I will consider posting under my own name.
Needless to say, you yourself, Anthony, are by far the most important person when it comes to exemplifying WUWT standards of civility and objectivity.
Having posted your question publicly, please let me express the hope, Anthony, that you will see fit to post this answer too, as these issues are relevant to every citizen who posts here on WUWT, or on any public forum.
[REPLY: WUWT recognizes that some people may have a legitimate reason for anonymity and unreservedly condemns stalking and attempts at intimidation for expressing views. At the same time, intellectual honesty and moral courage require critics to face their targets in their own name and face. Anthony has also had the experience of unwanted visitors. All the commenters using their real names face the same risks and in many cases are more visble and prominent than you. Your call, but don’t whine. -REP]
Kristian Berg says: January 27, 2012 at 11:04 am
So, instead of demolishing Allegre’s shoddy work in the literature, 400 French climate scientists resorted to political pressure to try and discredit him. Why does this conjure up the image of 400 torch-and-pitchfork-armed peasants chasing the only real scientist in the picture?
Kristian, your argument-from-authority refutation is sooooo-o-o-o-o compelling.
These 16 “scientists”, are not necessarily qualified. Who these people actually are:
Roger Cohen
retired from ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company.
http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=252
Edward E. David
President of Research and Engineering for Exxon Corporation, serving until 1985
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_E._David_Jr.
Claude Allègre
discredited by 500 of his peers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Allègre
Scott Armstrong
professor of marketing, not climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Scott_Armstrong
Jan Breslow
a doctor, not a climate scientist
http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/faculty/labheads/JanBreslow/
William Happer
Likened environmentalists to Nazis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Happer
Michael Kelly
Electrical engineer, not a climate scientist
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~mjk1/
William Kininmonth
Can’t find much on him, but appears to be a legit meteorological scientist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kininmonth_(meteorologist)
Richard Lindzen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen
A real climate scientist Lindzen’s graduate students describe him as “fiercely intelligent, with a deep contrarian streak.”
James McGrath
Ethyl Chaired Professor of Chemistry – Ethyl Corp was formed by General Motors
http://www.files.chem.vt.edu/chem-dept/mcgrath/
Rodney Nichols
his career appears to have little to do with climate science
http://www.atlanticlegal.org/person.php?conid=2433
Burt Rutan
Literally, a rocket scientist, not a climate scientist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan
Harrison Schmitt
Former astronaut, and Republican politician, likens environmentalists to Communists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt
Nir Shaviv
A scientist with an alternative theory that warming is caused by cosmic rays
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv
Henk Tennekes
supported this decisions by referring to biblical texts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Tennekes
Antonino Zichichi
Nobel Prize laureate Hans Bethe has been quoted saying about Zichichi “eccellent organizer, mediocre physicist”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonino_Zichichi
“”Some Guy says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:25 pm
These 16 “scientists”, are not necessarily qualified. Who these people actually are:””
They do not believe the Sun revolves around Earth.
Ezra Levant interview with Patrick Moore – Greenpeace co-founder
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/green-gone-good-part-1/1416496328001
“A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:31 pm
“To my, both Hansen’s view and Dyson’s view are reasonable, the WSJ-16 view not so much.”
But you are blind and cannot see, so you will never agree.
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:16 pm
[SNIP: Markus, I fully understand, but site policy does prohibit name calling. -REP]
To repeat my broken record impersonation,
What evidence do you or anyone else have that the climate models work the way the real climate works?
“These 16 “scientists”, are not necessarily qualified. Who these people actually are:”
Still can’t address their arguments, eh?
To follow R. Gates’s argument you must understand that to believers natural climate variability works in only one direction viz. to mitigate the harmful warming due to human CO2 pollution of the atmosphere.
“As for the science, it’s evident that if James Hansen’s sea-level rise numbers are right, then Freeman Dyson’s humanitarian concerns are wrong, and vice versa. In this regard, Hansen is on-record as predicting that global sea-level rise and global temperature rise both will accelerate markedly in coming decades.”
Physick, Hansen’s on record predicting that Manhattan would already be experiencing flooding. It didn’t happen. His prediction was WRONG. FALSIFIED. SHOWN TO BE IN ERROR.
He’s no different than the guy who predicts the Rapture every six months, yet we’re supposed to reorganize all civilization because of this doomsaying?!
Sorry it’s three parts.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/green-gone-good-part-2/1416501197001
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/green-gone-good-part-3/1416497175001
R. Gates: “And my point is, they can’t possible know this, nor can Lord Monckton, who has made a similar claim. If they can claim this with such scientific authority and certainty, then it means they know the equalibrium response to the current and future CO2 forcing, and this would mean that they know something that no one else in the world seems to know. ”
It means no such thing. If you predict than an object dropped in a vacuum here on Earth will fall with an acceleration of 100m/s^2, then when tested your prediction fails, it does not mean the person who said you’re wrong knows the actual value. They just need to know that your prediction failed.
The climate models have failed to be predictive; they have been falsified and treating them as the truth no longer qualifies as “scientific”.
Thank you sincerely, REP.
Should you ever observe that I (or for that matter any WUWT poster) am mainly criticizing persons, rather than opinions, then it would be fully appropriate to require that personal criticism to appear under my own name, or not at all.
This is in accord with my own strongly-held view, that best kind of science, and best kind of skepticism too, are both of them concerned with the rational criticism of ideas, not of persons.
“A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:16 pm
[SNIP: Markus, I fully understand, but site policy does prohibit name calling. -REP]”
It is they, who smite me.
[REPLY: Don’t worry, Markus, I’ll try to keep “them” from calling you bad names, too. -REP]
Rob Crawford says:
January 27, 2012 at 1:30 pm
R. Gates: “And my point is, they can’t possible know this, nor can Lord Monckton, who has made a similar claim. If they can claim this with such scientific authority and certainty, then it means they know the equalibrium response to the current and future CO2 forcing, and this would mean that they know something that no one else in the world seems to know. ”
It means no such thing. If you predict than an object dropped in a vacuum here on Earth will fall with an acceleration of 100m/s^2, then when tested your prediction fails, it does not mean the person who said you’re wrong knows the actual value. They just need to know that your prediction failed.
The climate models have failed to be predictive; they have been falsified and treating them as the truth no longer qualifies as “scientific”.
———-
Rob, if you think that climate models are dealing with the same simple non-chaotic system as the dropping of a object under a simple gravitational field you really ought to do a bit more reading about complexity, nonlinear systems, and chaos theory. No model will ever be able to fully incorporate natural variability, and thus all models are wrong in the sense of being incomplete. But they can still be quite useful. So you probably ought to throw in study of what models can and can’t do as well.
Christopher Hanley says:
January 27, 2012 at 1:20 pm
To follow R. Gates’s argument you must understand that to believers natural climate variability works in only one direction viz. to mitigate the harmful warming due to human CO2 pollution of the atmosphere.
——-
Not in the least. Natural variabilty can also mean that factors such as the sun, ENSO, and volcanic activity (or lack thereof) could be working to accentuate the warming as well. I think in fact we’ll get chance to see this in action between now and 2015 or so.
Lysenko did a lot of terrible thing, which can’t be excused. However his basic scientific premise was that environment of the parents can alter the characteristics of offspring. This is now well established in epigenetics. Environmental conditions can turn genes on or off even in the current generation. And Lysenko did discover vernalization, which is much more useful than anythng climate modellers have done. So some of Lysenko’s reason was intact for some of his life. Of course no current scientist is remotely willing to entertain that possibility as Lysenko has been expunged from the scientific pantheon, case closed. However, Lysenko’s case does not address why in so many cases, so many scientists have been willing to deny the truth (plate tectonics, mitochondria as endosymbionts, H1N1 non-pandemic, savanna theory of human evolution, AGW, etc.). Furthermore, Lysenko’s tragedy is a perfect example of what happens when a scientist receives so much attention and support from the government that he develops pathological megalomania. And that is the moral of the Lysenko story that is really relevant to the AGW issue.
To all of you who criticized my criticism. I receive your correction well. and do recognized some of the work done by these people so thank-you for correcting me. Mae Culpa.
The article is written as if these guys did an about face, in my opinion. There is a bit of “inside baseball” at work here. There then is nothing revelation about these 16 people doing this? To those in the know? Ok. So what is the big deal then…the fact that it was in the Wall Street Journal? Maybe it was a self-serving publicity stunt? Well OK then. Good enough for me.
“[REPLY: Don’t worry, Markus, I’ll try to keep “them” from calling you bad names, too. -REP]”
Yes (REP), it has been an age, where deniers were protected from name calling.
Has it not?
[REPLY: My reach is limited. I do what I can. -REP]
DesertYote says:
January 27, 2012 at 10:02 am
[SNIP: A little courtesy, please? -REP]
###
Sorry, this is just an expression of frustration with someone who continually spouts nonsense and seem to not have the rationality necessary to engage in discussion. I have periodical tried to ask serious questions, only to be ignored because the discussion had been high-jacked by brain-washed trolls. At least I wrote half and not whole.
R.Gates and A Physicist: Thank you for continuously providing the evidence that you come here soley to promote the anti-Science, anti-human beliefs of “The Hockey Team”. You clearly are fine with the contemptible ideology that the Scientific Method is an impediment to “climate science” and to the catastrophic political policies those you defend here want imposed on Americans.
Trofim Lysenko would be proud of you.
Some Guy: Thanks! You saved me a lot of trouble.
Keep the good news coming!
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:16 pm
I’m sure that you appreciate, Anthony, that on forums where courtesy and respect are the norm, I invariably post under my own name. Otherwise, not.
I can’t help but wonder if you don’t post under your own name on forums where you know you will be discourteous and disrespectful.
Since I’ve only seen you post here, I’m making an observation based on what I’ve seen.
Fred Hillson says: January 27, 2012 at 6:42 am
“So does that mean that inversely a climatologist is qualified to design the Voyager Mars Probe? I think not.”
———————————————————-
This statement is as valid as saying that only a medical doctor is qualified to give a urine sample. The nature of science is that theories can be invalidated by facts, not credentials; and the history of science has many examples of this. A recent example is plate tectonics starting as a ridiculed theory. And Burt Rutan designed the Voyager airplane, not the Mars probe.
R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 11:56 am
re: Robert Austin says:
January 27, 2012 at 8:55 am
It still appears that you are desperately trying to salvage the GCM’s that have as yet demonstrated no valid predictive capability. The goal posts have been moved back from the greenhouse gas concentration dominates natural variability mantra. Now we have the current retreat to the natural variability is dominating greenhouse gas concentration story. There is no plausible reason to credit GCM “projections” until they are validated by observation.
So what is your problem with a mere 16 scientists disagreeing with the consensus? Right or wrong, these people have the courage to put their names and reputations on the line for their beliefs. If your consensus climate science is so strong as to having the “vast majority” of scientists on side, can you not let the alleged overwhelming strength of evidence tell the story. Must you denigrate their opinions to advance the “cause”?
“R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Not in the least. Natural variabilty can also mean that factors such as the sun, ENSO, and volcanic activity (or lack thereof) could be working to accentuate the warming as well. I think in fact we’ll get chance to see this in action between now and 2015 or so.”
You should leave your bias at the door, when entering science halls.
You cannot predict, nothing more than a biased wit.
Do you not know, volcanoes cool Earth?
Prominent scientists need not apply – in Ontario.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/01/26/green-energy-the-auditor-isnt-impessed/
Dan in California says:
January 27, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Fred Hillson says: January 27, 2012 at 6:42 am
“So does that mean that inversely a climatologist is qualified to design the Voyager Mars Probe? I think not.”
———————————————————-
This statement is as valid as saying that only a medical doctor is qualified to give a urine sample. The nature of science is that theories can be invalidated by facts, not credentials; and the history of science has many examples of this. A recent example is plate tectonics starting as a ridiculed theory. And Burt Rutan designed the Voyager airplane, not the Mars probe.
************
Thank you for the correction, Dan in California. It is much appreciated. You are incorrect about my statement being invalid, however. You over simplified my statement. A better comparison would be is a gynecologist qualified to do a heart transplant?
If you are going to refer to these scientists when all but Lindzen can not be considered experts in the science of climatology, then please also consider that Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan are both proponents of AGW and the serious effects it will have on the climate. And since Hawking and Sagan are smarter than the scientists mentioned in this op-ed piece, the serious effects that AGW will have on the climate are correct.
Of course, AGW didn’t make it, it’s DOA. It is deceased for this very reason:
They added a new invalid principal to greenhouse, Co2 forcing, but,
They could not, even with that, explain how physics, models greenhouses, when it’s hotter on the outside.
You cannot match the Science of Physics, to an incorrect philosophical perception of greenhouse.
We are to back where we started;
“Why wouldn’t a man, think and analogy, could correlate to the creation of life on Earth, it’s vessel, the atmosphere?”
The inconvenient truth of the certainty of man to err.
Markus Fitzhenry.
Why is it always hilarious and eye bleeding to read the feeble attempts at defense of an unproven CAGW hypothesis, oh sorry, unnatural climate disruption what ever.
They’re grasping for straws, digging the hole, splitting the hairs, and using cheap semantics for crazy-glue to build a hen, out of an imaginary feather, that may supposedly spawn a golden egg that could be the beginning of the utopia of civilization, if only…everybody would believe in their crazy *what ever* socialist religion.
What’s so hilarious though is that the builders of the hens never believe in their own creation but leave that to the fundamentalist followers who defend their self proclaimed leaders no matter what. And then they wonder why the leaders of their socialist gathering are the only ones getting rich, and here’s when you know you’re dealing with extremists because they just keep on defending their self proclaimed leaders: those nazis, communists, fascists, did some real bad stuff, but…
help propel rockets into space, and then they went green.
Fred Hillson says: January 27, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Thank you for the correction, Dan in California. It is much appreciated. You are incorrect about my statement being invalid, however. You over simplified my statement. A better comparison would be is a gynecologist qualified to do a heart transplant?
————————————————————
Yeah, OK, I was over the top, but I thought the sound bite was too good to leave unsaid. I do think your statement is invalid, though. My point is that it doesn’t take a climate specialist to recognize the problems with the AGW argument. One of my favorite examples is the temperature and CO2 concentration plots over geologic time. Here’s a link http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html showing global temperatures varying widely while CO2 concentration also varies widely (certainly higher than now) and the two plots show no correlation. I have yet to hear a convincing explanation how CO2 did not affect temperature in the past, but it does now. The fact that I am an engineer rather than a climate scientist does not alter the question: “Why does CO2 concentration affect the temperature now, when it clearly did not in the past?”
Dan in California says:
January 27, 2012 at 3:37 pm
I have yet to hear a convincing explanation how CO2 did not affect temperature in the past, but it does now. The fact that I am an engineer rather than a climate scientist does not alter the question: “Why does CO2 concentration affect the temperature now, when it clearly did not in the past?”
********************************************
Dan, when you take into consideration the amount of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the past AND the output of the sun in the past, you get an excellent correlation. Instead of getting your information from the likes of Bob Carter, who is a retired paleontologist, you should be referencing the peer-reviewed scientific papers written by the expert climatologists. You proved my point with your question.
“Say it isn’t so”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/019115.html
You should leave your bias at the door, when entering science halls.
You cannot predict, nothing more than a biased wit
Oops:
Do you not know, volcanoes warm Earth?
Fred Hillson says:
January 27, 2012 at 3:24 pm
If you are going to refer to these scientists when all but Lindzen can not be considered experts in the science of climatology, then please also consider that Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan are both proponents of AGW and the serious effects it will have on the climate. And since Hawking and Sagan are smarter than the scientists mentioned in this op-ed piece, the serious effects that AGW will have on the climate are correct.
To continue the analogy begun above ….
Even a gynecologist can tell when an aging heart surgeon, punch drunk on public funds and peer-reviewed adulation, is going to deliberately castrate his patient’s economy then cut its throat.
All the actual evidence (more than 900 papers so far) shows that adding CO2 to the atmosphere does nothing but good for the earth, its plant life, and its inhabitants.
“Rob, if you think that climate models are dealing with the same simple non-chaotic system as the dropping of a object under a simple gravitational field you really ought to do a bit more reading about complexity, nonlinear systems, and chaos theory. No model will ever be able to fully incorporate natural variability, and thus all models are wrong in the sense of being incomplete. But they can still be quite useful. So you probably ought to throw in study of what models can and can’t do as well.”
You either missed, or purposefully ignored, my point: you say that the skeptics “must know” climate sensitivity to CO2, yet there is no such requirement. I do not need a better model to know when a model has failed to be predictive. I do not need to know the “proper” values for assumptions made in the model to recognize that it has failed.
I simply have to recognize that the predictions made by the model have failed to happen.
Climate models haven’t been “slightly wrong”. They haven’t been “incomplete”. They’ve been massively, horribly, off the mark by orders of magnitude. That they are complex models is inarguable — but that doesn’t matter at all. Given present conditions, their output did not match reality. Given historical conditions, their output did not match subsequent historical conditions. They don’t get partial credit for their complexity; they failed.
I spent eight years building a system that makes predictions that literally hundreds of thousands of people depend on for their jobs. Every week this system makes around 2500 independent predictions — and 51 weeks of the year, it’s within 5% of what actually happens. The underlying models aren’t as complicated as climate models, but they’re still models and still subject to the problems you cite.
“Complexity, nonlinear systems, and chaos theory” — are reasons to NOT trust a model, particularly when that model has been run out farther and farther in the future. The farther out you predict, the more the errors for all that build up; the less and less reliable the model becomes. You’re pointing to models that were wrong 5 years out from their initial conditions and saying we should trust what they predict 20 years, 100 years out.
They should not call themselves a scientist, if they are so biased, that it completely blinds them to truth of fact. There is nothing to proselytise in science, nothing at all. They really are a disgrace to their profession. And right now I really don’t care if they end up being lampooned.
They kept pushing crap into the face of my fellows, It is they who will be held up to ridicule, in front of their peers.
There has been enough destruction in our society, over the rubbish the greens have been trying to push down out throats, and it is going to stop. They are delusional, they have harmed my countrymen greatly.
You tell me what peace has been over the scientificmethod over the last 3 – 4 years. One lesson that will be learned from all of this, is the disgusting manner in which climate scientists appealed to authority as their reasoning. Academics my bum. Idiots that cause disquiet amongst men.
I do not want children being taught incorrect paths of reasoning. Liberal academia, have infiltrated learning, and they are the greatest pollution facing us. I want my brothers children, free of rhetoric.
I want them taught to think for themselves, so they can solve the great mysteries of the universe, and have freedom of thought, to love mankind.
Damn them, and their entitlement.
Markus Fitzhenry.
A ‘physicist’ says:
“the signatories include zero first-rank mathematicians and/or mathematical physicists.”
Professor Lindzen has a Masters degree in mathematics from Harvard
and
a Ph.D. in mathematics from M.I.T.
A Physicist. Bit rich claiming intimidation as as excuse for hiding behind a pseudonym!
I don’t think there has ever been a credible threat to a consensus pscientist! I’m not sure there has been a credible threat to a non-consensus scientist either, (apart from CG1 & 2,).
As I recall. Richard Lindzen was refused a valuation on some damaged art for insurance purposes because of his views. Does that count as intimidation?
DaveE.
Better watch it now A Physicist, Davo’s a real scientist.
Fred Hillson says:
January 27, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Dan, when you take into consideration the amount of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the past AND the output of the sun in the past, you get an excellent correlation. Instead of getting your information from the likes of Bob Carter, who is a retired paleontologist, you should be referencing the peer-reviewed scientific papers written by the expert climatologists. You proved my point with your question.
Actually, you pretty much just shot yourself in the foot. Recent analysis has shown the mass of the atmosphere was very likely much higher to support large flying reptiles. So, once again your correlation just bit the big one. Maybe your “expert climatologists” aren’t expert in enough fields to actually be expert climatologists. In fact, that statement is really an oxymoron as climate covers so many different fields of study it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to be an expert.
You really need to understand how skepticism works. If you did, you wouldn’t have fallen for the BS that you accepted so readily.
Presumably, this open letter appearing at this time is intended to influence debate around the Republican primaries.
I don’t have any particular problem with scientists going public with their views in an attempt to influence people’s thinking – even a rather blatant attempt to nudge the party political process. Scientists have a right, possibly a duty, to do so.
However, such public airings are scarcely “quite something”. They’re a rather ordinary part of the political process, and certainly should not be misinterpreted as the beginnings of a watershed or similar.
The letter’s reference to “growing” numbers of publicly dissenting scientists is in part an attempt to boost the writers’ case, partly an attempt to keep up the spirits of the troops, and partly an attempt to embolden any dissenters out there to go public.
In other words, they don’t really know the extent of dissent. So this is pretty much a shot in the dark.
In the land of the free, they coward and scorned, with a big red dragon, to ward off the horns.
Markus Fitzhenry.
Fred Hillson: “Dan, when you take into consideration the amount of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the past AND the output of the sun in the past, you get an excellent correlation. ”
Utterly false. Where do you get this nonsense from?
And “Instead of getting your information from the likes of Bob Carter, who is a retired paleontologist, you should be referencing the peer-reviewed scientific papers written by the expert climatologists.”
What peer review? The corrupt “pal review” of the Hockey Team has given us Upside Down Tijlander, Yamal, short-centered PCA, ad nauseum. You seem to be a fan of the philosophy of Phil Jones: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !”
Here’s a question for you, it’s one Willis Eschenbach asked of Judith Curry last July 25th: “What should my scientific response be when a prominent scientist says “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”?”
Anyone with an open mind and an understanding of the requirements of the Scientific Method know that your “expert climatologists” aren’t scientists. They are corrupt Lysenkoist frauds.
As Brendan H makes clear, when lacking the scientific facts, discuss the Republican primaries instead.
David A. Evans says:
January 27, 2012 at 4:26 pm
As I recall. Richard Lindzen was refused a valuation on some damaged art for insurance purposes because of his views. Does that count as intimidation?
*******************************
Personally, I wouldn’t have denied Lindzen a valuation based on his character because of his views on global warming. I would instead have refused to give Lindzen a valuation based on his character because he claimed how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking.
Some Guy says:
“William Happer
Likened environmentalists to Nazis”
Some Guy and a ‘physicist’ neglected to mention:
William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics
at Princeton University.
Richard Lindzen has by far the best scientific credentials among the WSJ-16. To my mind, a debate between James Hansen and Richard Lindzen would be well-worth attending, and (assuming it could be arranged) would benefit the skeptic and nonskeptic communities alike.
Of course, this debate *is* happening in the scientific literature (but very slowly). James Hansen has pushed a considerable stack of chips onto the table, with his new prediction that sea-level rise will accelerate sharply in coming years.
Partly, Hansen’s prediction is pure debate tactics: sea-level changes are smoother and easier to measure than sea-temperature changes, sea-temperature changes are smoother and easier to measure than land-temperature, land-temperature changes are smoother and easier to measure than stratosphere temperature.
Thus, my view is that Hansen is playing to win the AGW scientific debate outright, by a strategy whose pay-off period is 10-20 years — sooner if sea-level rise accelerates sharply, and is accompanied by temperature rises too.. Of course, by this win-all-lose-all prediction strategy, Hansen can lose the debate outright too.
Lindzen’s strategy is fuzzier (to me); his status as (arguably) the world’s foremost critic of climate models is unlikely to change much, no matter what future data show. The point being that models are always imperfect, and so there is always some “worst feature” of models to criticize.
Speaking personally, I have plenty of respect for both scientists, yet it seems to me that Hansen’s science and his prediction strategy both are stronger than Lindzen’s.
Fred Hillson,
Bearing false witness again, I see. What you just posted is no different than if I posted that Fred Hillson has pictures of naked boys on his hard drive. So what if they’re pics of his sons when they were a month old, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I could assassinate Hillson’s character by leaving out pertinent facts. That would make me a despicable vermin, wouldn’t it, Fred?
In Lindzen’s case, he never argued that smoking does not cause lung cancer. He questioned whether second-hand smoke was as deadly as claimed by some. But you left that part out, didn’t you, Fred? Were you being an ignorant busybody? If so, an apology is in order. Or were you being deliberately mendacious, in which case there will be no apology from you.
Brendan H says:
January 27, 2012 at 5:09 pm
In other words, they don’t really know the extent of dissent. So this is pretty much a shot in the dark.
Since you obviously must know “the extent of dissent”, why didn’t you tell us? Oh, you don’t know? In other words, your claim “is pretty much a shot in the dark” …
I really find it humorous to listen to true believers and their complete lack of logical skills. Amazingly, they have no problem demonstrating these skills to the world.
Kelly’s masters is in applied math & physics and PhD in (solid state) physics.
Which scientific item does this op-ed discredit????….
Oh wait….none so he attacks character and makes false claimes….
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_01/wsj_offers_climate_change_deni035040.php
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Maybe I should call myself “A biophysicist” and spout off grandiloquently as well. Nah. I chose my handle specifically because I’m not claiming credibility by title. I just want to talk about ideas and let the arguments stand on their merits, or not.
I only came by to report the WSJ piece is getting attention in academia.
[Moderator’s Query: If you’ve got a link to that attention we’d all be grateful. -REP]
“A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 5:24 pm Speaking personally, I have plenty of respect for both scientists, yet it seems to me that Hansen’s science and his prediction strategy both are stronger than Lindzen’s.”
You are clutching at straws, pal.
Where we have our hands tightly gripped on the handle of reality.
A physicist wrote;
“This turns out to be a matter of family safety. My sons, my wife, and I have had unwelcome dealings with strangers whom we had good reason to regard as less-than-stable mentally, in contexts relating variously to teaching, scientific opinion, civil rights, and USMC service in Iraq and Afghanistan … the far-left and the far-right extremes of the political spectrum have both been represented in these incidents. The protection that anonymity provides is the sole protection that my wife (in particular) has from these persons.”
KevinK (Kevin J. Klees, Rochester/Hamlin NY, USA, Easily found in the US Patent Department Database, BSEE 1980 Univ. of Delaware, MSEE 1981 Georgia Institute of Technology, MSEE Optics 1986 University of Rochester) says,
OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD; are you really telling us that there are a bunch of “climate change deniers” stalking your wife and family………….
This might be some news for you, but all of my family members do not wake up every day and spend all of their daily moments worrying about climate change. For the most part they are worrying about how to pay their bills, shovel the snow out of their driveway (as appropriate for those of us in the Northern hemisphere), when do I have to mow the lawn, when is the next paycheck going to clear, what nice fancy restaurant should we try next, can we afford that fancy new car, etc. etc. etc….
Good Lord Man, I have absolutely no interest in knowing who you are, where you live, or how big your family is. I certainly wish all the best for you and your family. And even though I disagree with your scientific conclusions, I would never wish any harm to ANYBODY who disagrees with me. Eventually the truth will be revealed, and I do hope that I have learned to admit when I was wrong, and to learn from the experience. I am only interested in the truth; I have absolutely no interest in stalking you or your family.
Oh, by the way we all see some “suspicious” characters around as we go through our daily errands, I think that jumping to the conclusion that they all mean to harm you because of your climate science beliefs may just be “jumping the shark” a little bit.
In my particular case, my employer, which I currently enjoy a healthy relationship with (let’s just summarize it by saying that the paycheck clears when I cash it) has among their customers those FINE folks at NASA. This is in fact a very good collection of folks who are correct most of the time. But, they do indeed make mistakes. Rather than embarrass them, I choose to post with a subset of my name so it’s not so apparent that I am throwing darts at a (very) few of them.
Cheers, Kevin.
@physicist
It is disturbing to see James Hansen compared with Freeman Dyson.
Dyson is one of the greatest thinkers and physicists ever.
Hansen and other “prominent” climate scientists, coauthored a bizarre paper like this – and that tells you so much more about their expertise on sea-levels than anything else.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/03/the-secret-of-the-rahmstorf-non-linear-trend/
“”A physicist wrote;
“This turns out to be a matter of family safety. My sons, my wife, and I have had unwelcome dealings with strangers whom we had good reason to regard as less-than-stable mentally, in contexts relating variously to teaching, scientific opinion, civil rights, and USMC service in Iraq and Afghanistan … the far-left and the far-right extremes of the political spectrum have both been represented in these incidents. The protection that anonymity provides is the sole protection that my wife (in particular) has from these persons.””
Put your name on a page, or leave none.
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Of course, by this win-all-lose-all prediction strategy, Hansen can lose the debate outright too.
No he can’t. Mainstream Climate Science’s Propaganda Operation “science” is not falsifiable. The Climate Scientists simply won’t let it be falsified – by using their Propaganda Operation’s excuse and diversion generating mechanisms, including its neverending 10-20 yr. “pay off” periods, which play to the psychological needs of people such as you.
Otherwise, Hansen has already lost at least once, given his and Climate Science’s 1988 10-20 yr. “strategy”, when the street Hansen’s office occupies did not flood 10-20 years later.
But given Climate Science’s perfect record of relevant prediction failure in the world of real science, which has already falsified the Propaganda’s CO2 = CAGW “science” on its own particular terms, Lindzen can’t lose either.
On the bright side, though, the recent two feet of snow in your Seattle “region” will probably help you to “prove” the glaciers in your region are really really really melting like crazy when the blue berry picking season arrives and you go out and hear it yourself!!!
Fred Hillson says: January 27, 2012 at 3:49 pm
“Why does CO2 concentration affect the temperature now, when it clearly did not in the past?”
********************************************
Dan, when you take into consideration the amount of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the past AND the output of the sun in the past, you get an excellent correlation. Instead of getting your information from the likes of Bob Carter, who is a retired paleontologist, you should be referencing the peer-reviewed scientific papers written by the expert climatologists. You proved my point with your question.
—————————————————————-
Fred, it’s my turn to be offended. I do not get my information from “the likes of Bob Carter” or any other 10 sources. I watched that video and did some independent digging. The first 10 minutes look like an excellent example of confirmation bias. “The geological record says this, so here’s a plausible explanation. Must be true”. But the last minute completely drove me away from the commentator. He uses the temperature history of the past 1000 years as an example of CO2 forcing. But the history he uses is the IPCC AR3 report that includes the hockey stick which rewrote temperature history. The AR1 report showed the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, both well documented historical facts. An argument that needs bogus temperature data does not convince me or other knowledgeable skeptics.
With respect, Manfred, James Hansen’s reputation rests on forecasts like this:
Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality.
What is conspicuously missing in the track records of the “WSJ-16” is any thirty-year scientific prediction that is comparably successful to Hansen’s (unless someone can point to one?).
If in the next thirty years, Hansen’s predictions remain similarly accurate as they have been in the past thirty years, then (with good reason) Hansen will enter into history as one of humanity’s greatest and most foresighted scientists.
Dan in California says: January 27, 2012 at 3:37 pm
. One of my favorite examples is the temperature and CO2 concentration plots over geologic time. Here’s a link http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html showing global temperatures varying widely while CO2 concentration also varies widely (certainly higher than now) and the two plots show no correlation.
==================
here we are – we cannot even agree about LIA MWP RWPs yet the site referenced has plots of temperature and CO2 going back 600My. And these are of course to be believed, without question.
The CO2 of course is derived from a MODEL (we don’t believe in models – do we?)
The temperature are obviously just indicators of hot/cold periods – they should not be taken seriously!!
KevinK says January 27, 2012 at 6:19 pm
OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD; are you really telling us that there are a bunch of “climate change deniers” stalking your wife and family………….
All I did was a simple letter to UEA which got published with my private email address in the second release of emails. We do not have private emails in our family and these could have been read by my wife or daughters.
No death threats but I got a couple of obnoxious emails from Aus and the US. There are true loonies at the end of the WWW. Email addresses of these obnoxious people are available on request!
An example:
… Much worse, he [dellingpole] published the man’s name and home address.
Delingpole’s bootboys took the hint and immediately swung into action. Within a few minutes of the comments opening, they had published the man’s telephone number and email address, a photo of his house (“Note all the recycling going on in his front garden”), his age and occupation. Then they sought to tell him just what a low opinion they had of “stalking” and “bullying”.
One commenter wrote: “I tried to telephone *** *** on the number helpfully posted in this blog, but he’s out until tomorrow. Perhaps he is out ‘tackling climate change’? – anyway his missus didn’t seem to know where he was.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jan/27/james-delingpole-climate-change-denial
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Take a closed container of air at room temperature and inject into it sufficient CO2 to raise the CO2 concentration to 5,000 PPM. After two weeks time what will be the temperature inside the container? After one month? One year?
Smokey: “As Brendan H makes clear, when lacking the scientific facts, discuss the Republican primaries instead.”
Smokey, I have not accused Lindzen and Co of lacking scientific facts. I have merely placed the letter in the context of current events.
physicist,
science is about the scientific method and not about predictions. The publication of Rahmstorf et Hansen et altri tells you everything you have to know about their use of the scientific method and the state of the peer review process.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/03/the-secret-of-the-rahmstorf-non-linear-trend/
With that and climategate and beyond that, I would strongly recommend to build chinese walls between those who make projections and those who control the data.
The actual identity of ‘a physicist’ has already been posted, so his complaint is moot.
And ‘a physicist’ defends Hansen’s failed predictions as being almost accurate. They aren’t. Furthermore, Hansen has GISS “adjust” the past temperature record in order to make his wrong predictions appear to be almost correct.
jjthoms, well, I’m sorry if you got unwarranted e-mails, I’ve released my real name and if anybody wants to hassle me I say, go ahead.
The difference is, I’m not telling everybody else how they MUST live, am I?
I live on a dead end street and we still have the right to protect ourselves here in the USA.
So, anybody that wants to come here and enforce your views about what my “carbon footprint” should be, come ahead…..
Kevin.
The heat stratification of the earths surface is uniform, regardless of its composition, as are the oceans and atmosphere.
The path to today´s destruction of Science into Junk Science, and the Global Warming Hoax, started with the Birth of Environmentalism in 1962 with the release of Rachel Carson´s “Silent Spring,” and then the neo-Malthusian book “The Population Bomb” in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, as well as, the foundations of WWF in 1961, The Club of Rome in 1968, EPA in 1970, Greenpeace in 1971, EPA´s banning of DDT in US in 1972, largely due to Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich, the 1960s: The Beginning of the End for DDT, and Malaria As Population Control, Immorally Killing 35 – 40 Million Humans, the conference “Study of Man´s Impact on Climate” in 1971 in Stockholm, Sweden, the 1975 “Endangered Atmosphere” conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, US, led by Anthropologist Margaret Mead (= Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born), the foundation of IPCC in 1988, James Hansen´s testimony on climate change (= Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC)) in Congress in 1988, UNFCCC/the Kyoto Protocol in 1992, and the emerging of AGW/Global Warming Hoax propagandists as Al Gore, Michael Mann, Phil Jones since the 1990s, et cetera, emerging into Climategate 1 and 2, in 2009 and 2011, with a major crisis for Science, due to the violation of the Scientific Method, due to “MBH98s” (= Michael Mann´s et al infamous “hockey stick” graph) non-reproducible scientific data, and turning Science into Junk Science, as well as, its final objective of a Global Governance. (The inception of the uneffective, and unreliable “Green Energy,” and the anti-Free Market “Green Economy” since the 1970s – 1980s are further turning Science into Junk Science, with its final objective of a Global Governance.)
SAY NO TO GLOBAL WARMING HOAX
SAY NO TO JUNK SCIENCE
SAY NO TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
DEFEND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
DEFEND FREE MARKET CAPITALISM
>> Lindzen also has claimed how weakly lung cancer is
>> linked to cigarette smoking.
“Smoking causes lung cancer” is the accepted mantra.
As an part-time philosopher, and a professional analyst of survey
data, I am obliged to point out that Lindzen’s misgivings are correct.
How can one claim that A causes B, when 90% of potential instances
are non-conforming ??
jjthoms says: January 27, 2012 at 7:10 pm
here we are – we cannot even agree about LIA MWP RWPs yet the site referenced has plots of temperature and CO2 going back 600My. And these are of course to be believed, without question.
The CO2 of course is derived from a MODEL (we don’t believe in models – do we?)
——————————————————————————————
No. The historical data plots are based on measurements, not models. The measurements have large error bands, but they are based on reproduceable and verifiable data. And as for the recent rewriting of Medieval Warm Period, I point to the 13th century farms in Greenland as evidence of higher temperatures then than now.
@ A physicist (7:00 pm):
….Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality….
===========================================================
Thirty years later, any warming due human CO2 emissions is still buried in the noise and there was little or no net warming during the 80s: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:1990/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:1990/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/to:1990/plot/uah/from:1980/to:1990/trend
Makes you wonder about the scientific basis for his 1988 predictions:
http://www.climate-movie.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/hansenjan20091.gif
There’s nothing “fabled” about the Northwest passage.
A Soviet ship crossed in one season during the early 30s.
The passage was reported ice free in 1940 but most of the developed countries in the region were otherwise engaged at the time. A Canadian ship made the crossing in 1942.
A Physicist: “If in the next thirty years, Hansen’s predictions remain similarly accurate as they have been in the past thirty years”
You mean like his prediction 20 years ago that today NYC’s West Side Highway would be underwater from CAGW warming?
That you cite an anti-human, anti-science far left political activist (and bought-and-paid-for toady of George Soros) for your beliefs says far more about you than it does about Hansen.
Richard M: “Since you obviously must know “the extent of dissent”, why didn’t you tell us?”
My argument doesn’t depend on my knowing the extent of dissent (although that’s not to say that I can’t make a reasonable guess). I’m saying that the signers don’t know the level of dissent.
I say that because I have read the relevant claims, namely:
“Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse.”
The “growing” claim is the first giveaway. If the number of publicly dissenting scientists is substantial, you don’t need to append “growing”. The term “growing” is a pollyanaish modifier one uses when the actual number is relatively low, but you would really like to think it will go higher.
Another giveaway is the “many” young scientists with doubts. How many is “many”? Ten, 100? (And note the fudge on “young scientists”. Not young climate scientists.)
The third is “furtively”. This implies that the dissent is very deep, only to be revealed in secretive, late-night confessions. But in that case, how much can the signers know about such deeply buried dissent?
Fourth, the signers provide no empirical evidence, not even a survey, to support their claims. So we’re very much in the realm of the anecdotal, or “I once met a man on a boat, and he told me some stuff”.
So I think I’m on pretty safe ground in claiming that these scientists don’t really know the extent of dissent.
Sorry, but this is hypocrisy. Anthony doesn’t demand the same of supportive commenters such as Smokey or Crosspatch, or any of a hundred others. Either you have a policy of real names only or you don’t. And you don’t, so berating people for being “anonymous cowards” while condoning anonymous cowardice by your supporters is, IMNSHO, bullshit.
[REPLY: Jeff, WUWT does not have a “policy of real names” but the policy page does encourage the use of real names. Anthony’s targets are usually those who claim some special status or engage in extended personal vilification. As it happens, Smokey does have a very good reason for anonymous comments and, to the best of my knowledge, crosspatch has never claimed special status or engaged in vilification and has been pretty much polite and on-topic. THIS will be the last word on this topic. -REP]
“”Rex says:
January 27, 2012 at 9:16 pm
>> Lindzen also has claimed how weakly lung cancer is
>> linked to cigarette smoking.
“Smoking causes lung cancer” is the accepted mantra.
As an part-time philosopher,””
Philosophy, hmmm, if they knew exactly what causes cancer, they have it licked.
Richard Lindzen and others are NOT latecomers to this debate. Read this WSJ article by Lindzen and note the date – June 11, 2001.
I’ve included the excerpt from Lindzen for one more reason – the man writes with true beauty and precision.
Excerpt:
The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document. It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations’ Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.
Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that there is still a vast amount of uncertainty — far more than advocates of Kyoto would like to acknowledge…:
Scientists’ Report Doesn’t Support the Kyoto Treaty
By Richard S. Lindzen,
Wall Street Journal
June 11, 2001
http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/OpEds/LindzenWSJ.pdf
How can any rational person question the creditably of these 16 scientists?
How many of these scientists have:
– Dodged FOI requests (and are now in court fighting their release)?
– Refused to release their Raw Data?
– Refused to release their Adjusted Data (and explain why it was adjusted)?
– Refused to release the Model that produced the end results (Graphs)?
– Have admitted that no one would likely be able to replicate their results (including them)?
– Black-balled scientists who questioned their results?
– Deleted emails?
– Deleted data?
And on and on…
Who would you trust? Seriously.
How can anyone in their right mind ever believe anything a climate scientist has to say?
A phycisist says:
Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality.
Henry says to a great phycisist:
you are right about that being a fable,
because as we now know, it must have been OPEN ca, 1000 years ago, during the Medeviel Warm Period….So that fable was not a myth.
That is why one of my countryman, Willem Barentz, in the 16th century, was convinced it (must have) existed. He lost his life trying to find it. Hence, it is now called the Willem Barentz sea.
So there is nothing new under the sun, and without any figures from you from any actual physical testing showing to me the exact warming and cooling properties of the CO2, (both radiative) and the cooling itproduces by taking part in the photosynthesis, how do you know for sure that the warming is due to the CO2? Was the warming of the MWP also due to an increase in CO2?
What about if the warming is simply caused by the increase in greenery on earth?
Is that not much more probable?We know that vegetation traps heat. In fact, a lot. That is why you donot find trees where it is cold on earth.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
“HenryP says:
January 27, 2012 at 11:39 pm
A phycisist says:
Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality.”
Henry, we know, in their hand, is but sand.
Asking this question may seem to be a bit like asking CAGW supporters if they have stopped beating their wife (or husband) yet, but the question I would to ask of CAGW scientist/supporters (Physicist? Brendans? jjthoms? others?)
In regards to Mann’s famous Hockey Stick would you say
1) It is an accurate representation of temperature over the past 1000+years
2) It is a poor representation of temperatures over the past 1000+ years as there was clearly a MWP and the LIA.
As any knowledgeable person knows, Mann’s Hockey Stick has been thoroughly discredited, even among many members of the “Team” as exposed in private emails, yet CAGW supporters will never admit to 2, because if they do, then the whole concept of “unprecedented” goes up in smoke and current temperatures are nothing out of the ordinary for earth’s recent history. Instead of admitting to #2, they would rather destroy any ounce of credibility they might have and go for #1.
By the way, I would agree that the WSJ article is pretty much politics, but CAGW is pretty much all politics too so? Hansen is still predicting the real possibility of 5m of sea level rise by 2100 I hear. Guess you CAGW supporters on board for that prediction as well?
I would like to see a website (WUWT?) with a list of scientists throughout the world who are prepared to state whether or not they believe in AGW. The definition of “Scientist” and the details of their belief will be as stated in the Petition Project:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Each person should hold a science degree from a recognised and reputable university.
With each name, please state if any of the following subjects were studied and passed as part of their degree at any level.
Physics, Statistics, Geology
People who claim to believe in Creation or “Intelligent Design” shall be excluded from the lists, to save arguments.
There will of course be two lists. If there are, say, 300 scientists who believe in AGW, they will be about 1% of the 30,000+ scientists who have already stated that they do not believe in AGW.
Scientists are free to add or delete their names from either list at any time.
The website shall regularly calculate and publish the percentage of scientists who do not believe in AGW. i.e. probably around 99% of all scientists on the lists.
A Physicist says “Thus, my view is that Hansen is playing to win the AGW scientific debate outright, by a strategy whose pay-off period is 10-20 years”
Have to disagree with you, Hansen is simply scare mongering again, trying to keep the CAGW Titanic from hitting an iceberg and sinking beneath the waves with all hands on board. Hansen’s latest sea level rise graph shows little-to-no sea level rise until 2040. He has given himself 30 years of essentiallly no sea level rise (essentially admitting that contrary to models and earlier predictions, sea level rise has stopped). At his age, I doubt he will still be around in 30 years. HIs kids/grandkids will be though, to revel in his fame. Unfortunately for them however, I more suspect it will be a much less fond memory and no celebrations come 2040.
I think a lot of people are missing the point. The importance is not so much the credentials of the authors but more the fact that it was published.
@Peter Phail
It is important that it was published. It has become legitimate to question the dogma, though the warmists become yet more shrill and bizarre as they lose their grip. In 1988 Newsweek announced that ‘all scientists agree that…..’ Clampdowns started around that time.
It is also signficant that an eclectic international group of recognized scientists and engineers came together to stand behind this document. It could have been others, or many more, but they did. It recalls Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses on on door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg,
I have posted the following on Wall Street Journal comments board …
My understanding is that there are at least 31,000 scientists (9,000 of them with PhD’s) who have signed a similar statement.
However, I consider it unfortunate that the message has not yet “got out” that any radiation from cold layers of the atmosphere cannot have any effect on a (significantly) warmer surface – neither converting to thermal energy nor slowing its loss of such energy. This means that an atmospheric greenhouse effect is not caused by the assumed backradiation, whether or not it actually exists.
The IPCC has never produced empirical evidence that there is any warming effect from any backradiation. It does not, for example, melt frost that can lie in shady spots without melting all day long. And yet it is supposed to be about a quarter as powerful as direct sunlight at noon.
Last year Claes Johnson (a Professor of Applied Mathematics with many published papers to his name) published a note entitled “Computational Blackbody Radiation” in which he proved computationally that there is insufficient energy (as determined by frequency) in radiation from a cooler body for that radiation to be converted to thermal energy. The frequency of radiation from the cold atmosphere falls below a cut-off frequency which is proportional to the absolute temperature of the receiving body, that is the surface. When this is the case it will not warm the surface and it exits the surface with the same frequency (hence energy) and intensity that it arrived with, rather like having been reflected, though the process is different.
This is the real reason why we see absolutely no warming by carbon dioxide. All warming can be fully explained by natural cycles.
Furthermore, when short-term cycles are “corrected for” the longer-term (~1,000 year) cycle may be seen to be increasing at about 0.05 degrees C per decade, but its rate of increase is reducing, indicating a maximum within 200 years which would be only about 1 degree C warmer than at present. After that the world can expect about 500 years of cooling.
And there is nothing that mankind can do about either the warming rate or the cooling rate of the future.
I think there are several paragraphs which should be in italics, otherwise they don’t look like a quotation.
The letter in IMHO is written to investors, bankers, business people. Not scientists, not skeptics,
You see the battle is over the source funds. The goal is to free up the dollars, let the next great bubble start, we are at the starting line of a major economic boom. AGW is one of a few major obstacles to this coming boom. You see in the business world very few actually believe in AGW, but they are capitalists so they make money any way they can. I work in the renewable energy business and have made a good living thanks in part to government subsidy for that business.
Yet I can count one hand the peers that actually believe in AGW. What is most amazing to me and will always be a lesson to the wise, is how so few players actually started this entire AGW scare.
By the way, government subsidy when done carefully can be a good thing for the governed. There is more to renewable energy than wind and solar, with out subsidy we small players would not be able to get our non wind, non solar RE projects off the ground. We are the folks who are actually capturing waste energy and converting it to useful energy. We make good use of that subsidy.
My fear is that the greatest harm caused by the AGW crowd is the harm they have done to all good science.. Every time bad science is perpetrated on the regular non science majority, the less and less we believe new science. It is the cry wolf story. The AGW crowd needs to be prosecuted.
Back to the topic, one final thought, IMHO, the 16 scientists were picked for their titles and location. Sometimes 16 is all you need. I hope anyway.
I like Jaymam’s idea,
it could take take the form of a simple excel file, to which everybody must have excess,
in which on the far left the names of people who signed up appear in alphabetical order.
Mind you , I am not interested in knowing the qualifications. People with PhD have never been a great help to me in the past. All I think we need to know is the field(s) of expertise, like in my case, analytical chemistry and statistics. Then columns for contact details and pseudonyms, etc.
(BTW, I think most people write under false names because they don’t want their employers to know they wrote a comment in the bosses’ time. Does WUWT have to display times?Mind you, note that for some comments a time display is given that was not the real time when he/she wrote it. That means they could be falsely accused of this. I think it would be best if WUWT could remove the time when the comment was put up and just keep to a numbering system for tracking responses)
Then, a column whether CAGW or AGW or LW (lukewarm, don’t know for sure), or SCEP
As I ponder this idea, at this point a question arises:
Suppose, as has been proven in real green houses, that the increase in CO2 does cause some extra vegetation to grow, and that without this extra CO2 on earth this vegetation would have withered and died; and furthermore, that this extra vegetation does cause some actual additional entrapment of heat, as I have postulated (but not yet completely finally proven),
meaning that indirectly the adding of CO2 by man could have caused some additional warming due to the increased vegetation; also of course by man adding to this by planting more trees, gardens and crops;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
then, if I believe that this increase in vegetation by man and extra CO2 could be a contributory factor to global warming in addition to the natural warming (by the increased intensity from the sun and/or less clouds)
then, what does that make me? AGW or SCEP?
Brendan H says:
January 27, 2012 at 10:08 pm
[Richard M: “Since you obviously must know “the extent of dissent”, why didn’t you tell us?”]
My argument doesn’t depend on my knowing the extent of dissent (although that’s not to say that I can’t make a reasonable guess). I’m saying that the signers don’t know the level of dissent.
…
So I think I’m on pretty safe ground in claiming that these scientists don’t really know the extent of dissent.
No, all you did is spew useless generalizations based on nothing but what you WANT to believe. You have yet to post a single fact to back up your statement. Obvious example of confirmation bias. You simply don’t WANT to believe what was stated so you manufacture scenarios to discount what was said. This is typical for religious beliefs.
Folks who respect equally solid science and solid skepticism, always like to go back to the original documents of science and skepticism. In a post above, we saw that James Hansen and his colleagues, in their 1981 article in Science, titled “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”, made some pretty accurate predictions about future climate change (for example, Hansen predicts the opening of the Northwest Passage).
It is natural for skeptic and nonskeptic alike to wonder, are any of the WSJ-16 on-record with similarly accurate predictions? As it turns out, James Lindzen went on-record in his 1989 article in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, titled “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming” (a PDF of Lindzen’s article is available here).
Although Lindzen’s article is well-written, and makes many valid points, it is evident too that:
(1) Lindzen’s predictive reach is shorter than Hansen’s. Lindzen’s predictive reach is 23 years versus 31 years.
(2) Lindzen’s predictions are vague compared to Hansen’s. The most nearly specific is “These, then, are my (and other people’s) reasons for believing that greenhouse warming may be much smaller than currently publicized estimates.”
(3) Lindzen’s key 1989 predictions ahve turned out wrong. In particular, Lindzen’s review harshly criticizes climate models that predict pronounced warming at high Arctic (but not Antarctic) latitudes (see Lindzen’s Figure 3). Moreover, Lindzen’s review shows temperature anomaly data that are flat for 1900-1985 (see Lindzen’s Figure 4). As is well-known, these anomalies now are showing a pronounced upward trend (that some call the “hockey-stick”).
The Hansen-versus-Lindzen, 1981-versus-1989, skeptic-versus- track record is the rational, objective reason why Hansen’s scientific reputation presently eclipses Lindzen’s.
And so our inspection of the original nonskeptical and skeptical scientific literature leads us to a simple elevator summary:
In balance, Hansen’s 1981 (nonskeptical) climate predictions are more impressive than Lindzen’s 1989 (skeptical) concerns, yet both are valuable.
“R. Gates says:
January 27, 2012 at 11:56 am
Robert Austin says:
January 27, 2012 at 8:55 am
“………They are saying that they know how sensitive the climate is to CO2 forcing from the levels of CO2 we currently have and are likely to see in the upcoming century. ”
Nir Shaviv, on his website, DID calculate climate sensitivity.
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
Of course, as he said, we hasve no knowledge of ACTUAL feedback factors but taking geological history into account, the feedbacks are NEGATIVE. Over the last 3 billion yeaes the sun’s luminosity has increased about 20%, and yet we have had life and liquid oceans for all of that time.
When will we be warned of man made global cooling caused by CO2 and the coming ice age. Oh yea, I’ve already seen that movie too!
Oh dear, this idea of stating your position on AGW is going to be difficult! What sort of skeptic are you?
An out and out nutter – you actually know where Einstein went wrong, and if only you could do the maths people would listen to you. You feel the same way about climate science…
Its not warming – you aren’t convinced its warming. This of course includes “its not really warming, its a 60 year cycle”, as well as, “all the temperature data is faked to show warming that isn’t there.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics means there is no greenhouse effect, and of course you can’t believe in something that isn’t there.
There is a greenhouse effect, but there is a negative feedback which makes climate sensitivity about 0.5 C for a doubling of CO2.
There is a greenhouse effect, but there is no feedback, so climate sensitivity is around 1 C for a doubling of CO2.
There is a greenhouse effect, but the rise in CO2 is not of our doing, so there is nothing we can do about it.
There is a greenhouse effect, but it is such a complex nonlinear system that we can’t possibly understand it.
Warming is good, CO2 is plant food, and burning fossil fuels is our sacred duty.
There are so many shades of gray, but I think its important to sort out at exactly what point each persons views differ from (obviously corrupt and deceitful) accepted climate science.
For myself, I accept AGW, and hope that climate sensitivity is at the low end of the estimates.
Doug, please let me refer to the above mentioned 1989 article by (WSJ=16 skeptic) Richard Lindzen titled “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming“, which discusses this point in-detail.
GHE
AGW.
Richard Lindzen’s critical review affirms that the atmospheric greenhouse effect is caused (in substantial part) by precisely the backradiation mechanisms that you criticize (as shown in Lindzen’s Figures 5 and 6).
Elevator Summary: Even the WSJ-16 skeptics have accepted (for more than 20 years!) the overwhelming mathematical, theoretical, experimental, and observational evidence for the reality of the link GHG
PVE says:
By the way, government subsidy when done carefully can be a good thing for the governed.
Henry@PVE
I do agree! I am a sceptic (I think – I am waiting for the experts to decide)
but saving or re-using energy is always a good thing.
In South Africa we had subsidies to put up solar geysers. I now save 40% on my electricity bill.
At my last visit to LA, I was amazed to find how few people actually have solar geysers there.
Don’t they know that the sun can give warm water for free?
I you are worried about getting caught with cold water when the sun doesn’t shine:
the geysers switch to electric heating when the water temp. falls too low.
“Some Guy says:
January 27, 2012 at 12:25 pm
……….
Henk Tennekes
supported this decisions by referring to biblical texts.
Makes an ad hominem attack by smearing Tennekes as a religious nut. I see WUWT addressed this previously:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/scientist-i-don%E2%80%99t-want-to-remain-a-member-of-an-organization-that-screws-up-science-that-badly/
Tennekes is quoted after resigning from the Danish Academy of sciences:
“In my induction speech for the Academy, in January 1984, I introduced the limited predictability of the weather as a prime example of the uncertainties associated with the sensitive dependence of nonlinear systems to initial conditions and to mismatches between Nature and the models we use to compute its evolution. I told my audience that the prediction horizon, in 1950 estimated by John von Neumann at 30 days, in fact is only three days on average. I dwelt only a little on the implications of this for the myth of endless progress in science. Apparently, meteorology is approaching the no-man’s land between the unknown and the unknowable,”…
“Unfortunately, mainstream theology continues to propagate a similar myth, i.e. the stupid idea that one can talk with insight, and write scholarly publications, about God himself. That, in my mind, is an unforgivable epistemological fallacy. Readers not versed in the Bible might find it useful to read the story of Moses stumbling into a psychedelic thorn bush in Exodus 3. Moses hears voices and asks: “please tell me your Name, so I can tell my people who sent me.” The Voice answers: “I am whoever I want to be, that should be good enough for you.”
HenryP says “In South Africa we had subsidies to put up solar geysers. I now save 40% on my electricity bill.”
By that logic, why not increase the subsidies so that everyone gets a check in their electric bill! Imagine, the subsidy is so HUGE everyone is getting rich!
Come now, you are NOT saving 40%, it is just is being paid in a different name…. something called a tax.
By the way, I am not necessarily against all subsidies. Government funded development (such as for fusion energy) can be beneficial in the long run for certain projects, but to claim the subsidy is saving people money in real time is not true.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#more-55508
Reg Nelson says: January 27, 2012 at 11:12 pm
How can any rational person question the creditably of these 16 scientists?
How many of these scientists have:
– Dodged FOI requests (and are now in court fighting their release)?
– Refused to release their Raw Data?
– Refused to release their Adjusted Data (and explain why it was adjusted)?
– Refused to release the Model that produced the end results (Graphs)?
– Have admitted that no one would likely be able to replicate their results (including them)?
– Black-balled scientists who questioned their results?
– Deleted emails?
– Deleted data?
And on and on…
Who would you trust? Seriously.
How can anyone in their right mind ever believe anything a climate scientist has to say?
_____________________________________________________________________
Reg – to clarify and answer to your questions:
To my knowledge, NONE of the signatories committed these unethical acts.
These unethical acts were fully exposed in leaked emails now called Climategate 1 and Climategate 2, and we all know who participated – a small but powerful cabal of scientists who actively conspired to manipulate science and incite public opinion to implement extremely costly and unnecessary measures to “fight catastrophic humanmade global warming”.
A trillion dollars of scarce global resources has been squandered on global warming hysteria.
I know that some of the signatories, including Shaviv and Lindzen, have spoken out for more than a decade to try to bring some sanity to this toxic global warming debate.
Sanity is now starting to prevail. There has been no global warming in more than a decade.
My Predictions:
A natural global cooling cycle will soon become obvious*, and the last vestiges of global warming hysteria will just fade away. I wrote this in 2003.
Probability: 99% within 10 years or less.
The “mainstream debate” will agree that global temperature is relatively insensitive to increases in atmospheric CO2 and that “climate feedbacks” are negative. We wrote this in 2002.
Probability: 99% within 10 years or less
Later, the mainstream debate will be derailed by the realization that atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and increasing atmospheric CO2 is primarily a natural rather than a humanmade phenomenon. I wrote this in 2008.
Probability 80% within 20 years or less.
Alcheson says:
but to claim the subsidy is saving people money in real time is not true.
Henry @ Alcheson:
I am not sure how you can say that.
If you use electricity to heat water, and you put up a solar geyser (of which the government utility pays, say, 25% of the total cost in subsidy)
and you subsequently save 40% on your total electricity bill, on consumption, every month,
how can this not be saving energy and money for us all?
mind you, be sure to buy a closed (indirect) system if there is frost during winters in the area where you live
this
phycisist
keeps saying the same things, over and over,
as though we are all idiots here,
and he is not answering you when you respond.
I think he is hoping that all people looking in here will read what he has to say?
We had a very smart Dutch sea farer by the name of Willem Barentz and he knew from his history lessons that the northen passage did exist at some time in the past/.. Otherwise he would not have risked his life for it. Also, how otherwise, did Vikings got at all the places where we know they went?
Enfin, you can read how I responded the first time to this phycisist here; I will repeat the whole post again because that is what he is doing and apparentlty it is allowed here.
A phycisist says:
Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality.
Henry says to a great phycisist:
you are right about that being a fable,
because as we now know, it must have been OPEN ca, 1000 years ago, during the Medeviel Warm Period….So that fable was not a myth.
That is why one of my countryman, Willem Barentz, in the 16th century, was convinced it (must have) existed. He lost his life trying to find it. Hence, it is now called the Willem Barentz sea.
So there is nothing new under the sun, and without any figures from you from any actual physical testing showing to me the exact warming and cooling properties of the CO2, (both radiative) and the cooling it produces by taking part in the photosynthesis, how do you know for sure that the warming is due to the CO2? Was the warming of the MWP also due to an increase in CO2?
What about if the warming is simply caused by the increase in greenery on earth?
Is that not much more probable?We know that vegetation traps heat. In fact, a lot. That is why you donot find trees where it is cold on earth.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
[SNIP: if you can reword this without the insult and ad hominem we’ll approve it. -REP]
Henry@phycisist
Maybe you did not get it again.
I will repeat my question:
I am looking for the actual figures from you from any actual physical testing showing to me the exact warming and cooling properties of the CO2, (both radiative) and the cooling it produces by taking part in the photosynthesis.
You are a physicist, are you not, so you have them?
I spent 2 years trying to find and had to conclude that they don’t exist.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Trenberth wrote about the energy discrepancy between incomming and outgoing energy and was not refering to global surface temperature as wrongly claimed in the article. And regarding the global temperature it rises quite as expected, the worst case IPCC scenario is not to be compared with as Nox and Metane levels has not risen as fast as predicted in that scenario. We are as well leaving solar minimum and Laninas also contributions to the “lack of warming” The temperature signal has noise, that filtered away warming is correlating to a 3C° climate sensivety. Comparing climate science with lysenkoism is dirty rhetorics, but that will not change the science.
Jaymam says:
People who claim to believe in Creation or “Intelligent Design” shall be excluded from the lists, to save arguments.
I am off the list? I seemed to have been the only one here supporting your idea…
[REPLY: This is NOT permission to discuss thevalidity or relative merits of ID versus anything else. -REP]
fredrik says:
as Nox and Metane levels has not risen as fast as predicted in that scenario.
dear Fredric,
Like I said to our great physicist here, I am looking for the actual figures from you from any actual physical testing showing to me the exact radiative warming and radiative cooling properties of the CO2, Nitrousoxide and CH4
Please do tell me where they are and how the tests were performed.
HenryP;
re saving with subsidies: whose pocket(s) pay(s) for the subsidies? What’s the net? How much is lost to admin (government) overhead? Bribing people with their own money doesn’t work forever.
There’s a benefit ONLY if the subsidized activity/technology pays off (big) before the costs of the subsidies overwhelms the system. Politicians are notoriously egregiously incompetent at picking such winners. Various EU countries have had to face the near certainty that they’re never going to reach that Promised Land, and are frantically slashing FITs, etc. The UK’s insane 80% wind/renewables power sourcing targets are going to detonate with massive casualties. Fools and their money …
Richard M: “No, all you did is spew useless generalizations based on nothing but what you WANT to believe…This is typical for religious beliefs.”
I offered several explanations for why I think the signers are groping in the dark. You have opted for a personal attack rather than a reasoned response to my arguments.
PVE: “The letter in IMHO is written to investors, bankers, business people.”
What does the text say?
“A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming. Candidates should understand…”
“…we have a message to any candidate for public office…”
“If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate…”
“Every candidate should support rational measures…”
My guess is that the letter is addressed to candidates for public office.
Dear Henry, your request is very reasonable, and the information you seek is available (free-as-in-freedom) from the US Air Force’s high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database (HITRAN) … a Google Search for “HITRAN” will find it.
GHE 
AGW link.
For a broad overview on how to use this data, a good starting point is the American Institute of Physics web site “Basic Radiation Calculations.
If you want to measure these numbers for yourself, you want to get yourself a fourier transform infrared spectrometer (a google search for “FTIR spectrometer” will find plenty of vendors).
You should be aware, however, (as I said above in particular with reference to arch-skeptic and WSJ-16 author Richard Lindzen’s 1989 review “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming”) there is a nowadays no professional climatologist (even among the skeptics) who doubts the mathematical and physical foundations of the GHG
With particular regard to various non-GHE “gravito-thermal” theories that recently have received much attention here on WUWT; these “gravito-thermal” theories are (as even most AGW skeptics agree) just plain wrong.
A physicist says: January 28, 2012 at 6:58 am
Folks who respect equally solid science and solid skepticism, always like to go back to the original documents of science and skepticism.
—————————————————————-
That’s not going back far enough. Folks who respect science (which includes skepticism) go back to the original *data*, then try to duplicate the original documents. This cannot be done with climate science because the data have been “adjusted” and the original computer models are not available. FOIA requests to see them are being stonewalled.
The ‘a priori’ premise of those IPCC centric advocates of the CAGW ’cause’ is that CO2 production by man must be severely curtailed. They are committing an argument fallacy. They have a circular reasoning process that uses any means to support their ‘a priori’ premise. Their conclusion wrt CO2 is stated in their premise.
A useful strategy for independent thinkers (a.k.a. skeptics) to show the root errors of the arguments by the CAGW ’cause’ supporters is to merely identify where the CAGW ’cause’ supporter arguments are circular on a most fundamental level.
Without their ‘a priori’ premise the CAGW ’cause’ supporters are forced to look at climate observations. In the struggle between the climate observations versus a false ‘a priori’ premise, the premise loses every single time.
And yes, the circular argument fallacy of the CAGW ’cause’ supporters includes the CGMs of IPCC centric assessment.
I think the 16 independent thinkers who authored the WSJ letter to the editor do a good job of removing the false ‘a priori’ premise of the CAGW ’cause’ supporters.
John
Dan in California, please let me say that I agree with you 100%! Both climate data and the models based upon that data should be wholly open.
Fortunately, there are several open-source climate models available, and they are listed in an excellent on-line talk by Ian Foster titled “Open Source Modeling as an Enabler of Transparent Decision Making.” All I can say is … more please! 🙂
This is one area where skeptic and nonskeptic alike are solidly in agreement. Good!
In coming years, as more-and-more climate-change models become open source, and more-and-more climate-change data becomes freely and publicly accessible, the most likely outcome by far (AFAICT) is that the 1981 (nonskeptic) climate-change predictions by James Hansen and colleagues are going to continue looking stronger-and-stronger, relative to the 1989 (skeptical) climate-change criticisms of Richard Lindzen and his WSJ-16 colleagues.
The point is that skeptics and nonskeptics alike can spin and dance, but neither side can change what they published back in the 1980s. And by that measure of scientific merit — which is public, open, unchangeable, and traditional — Hansen and his colleague are doing pretty darn well. Whereas the
The point is that skeptics and nonskeptics alike can spin and dance, but neither side can change what they published back in the 1980s. And by that measure of scientific merit — which is public, open, unchangeable, and traditional — the research of Hansen and his nonskeptical colleagues has shown outstanding quality and foresight.
The research of the WSJ-16, not so much.
A physicist, you do sound a bit whiny today. In my humble opinion, you might get more respect if you practiced here, more of what you now seem to be preaching.
“…both of them concerned with the rational criticism of ideas, not of persons.” Amen.
Can you oblige us and critize the following ideas presented, please? (Maybe you have already, in some other forum, my mistake, if you have).
ClimateGate email: Warmist Tom Wigley proposes fudging temperature data by .15 degrees C
2009 ClimateGate email
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. [Tom Wigley, to Phil Jones and Ben Santer]
Allan MacRae said:
“There has been no global warming in more than a decade.”
_____
How long is this meme going to be repeated? The last decade was the warmest decade on instrument record. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on record were in the past decade, and 2010 was the warmest year on record. Hardlly sounds like “no global warming in more than a decade”
That’s easy, Steve! The many folks (and I am one of them) who advocate open climate data and open-source climate models — nonskeptics and skeptics alike — are 100% right! 🙂
In particular, the surface temperature data from Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Project has been a solid move in the right direction!
It’s true that the 2011 BEST data disconfirm the skeptical criticisms of Richard Lindzer’s 1989 article in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming” …
… but like the navigator says in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove:
Elevator Summary: The open-source climate data of the 21st century have disconfirmed the 1980s skeptical criticism of the WSJ-16.
‘a physicist’,
“I’m sorry, sir. The second graph shows the real numbers.”
Elevator summary: Don’t trust Richard Muller.
R. Gates says:
January 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
///////////////////////////////////////
Mr Gates
The point is simple: If as a mattter of basic physics an increase in the concentration of CO2 leads to an increase in temperature (basic phusics of the properties of CO2 does not allow for no change or a drop in temperature) then for each and every year that there is an increase in CO2 levels unles there is corresponding warming, an explanation is required as to why there was no warming (such explanation being consistent with the underlying theory that an increase in CO2 levels leads to an increase in temperature).
Your point about the top of the curve does not deal with the issue in hand and whilst the last decade may be the warmest decade on record during the instrument period (one which is not certain due to margins of error and other issues with the data set) it is in fact an irrelevant point when considering the fundamental issue behind the theory, namely that as a matter of basic physics an increase in CO2 leads to increase in temperature.
It is because of this, that people repeatedly point out that there has been no statistical warming these past 10 to 15 years or so.
A physicist, I do not see any criticism from you on the Wigley to Jones email from 2009, I referenced earlier. However, since you reference BEST, don’t forget their analysis of the 1940’s warming Tom Wigley proposed “reducing” was primarily due to a very strongly positive AMO. Moreover, BEST shows strong correlation between AMO and land temperatures. Since AMO was strongly positive in the 1940’s, why would anyone need to “reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean”?
Moreover, BEST had this to say about possible uncertainty to man made global warming
“…however, it is also possible that some of the land warming is a direct response to changes in the
AMO region. If the long-term AMO changes have been driven by greenhouse gases
then the AMO region may serve as a positive feedback that amplifies the effect of
greenhouse gas forcing over land. On the other hand, some of the long-term change in
the AMO could be driven by natural variability, e.g. fluctuations in thermohaline
flow. In that case the human component of global warming may be somewhat
overestimated.”
HenryP says
“Henry @ Alcheson:
I am not sure how you can say that.
If you use electricity to heat water, and you put up a solar geyser (of which the government utility pays, say, 25% of the total cost in subsidy)
and you subsequently save 40% on your total electricity bill, on consumption, every month,
how can this not be saving energy and money for us all?”
HenryP, if the actual cost of producing electricity from you solar geyser was cheaper than producing electricity from hydro or coal, you would NOT NEED subsidies to get people to buy it. It would by default go into mass production and distribution! Lets take an example. In this example the base cost of electricity from commercial is 10cent/kwh. The real cost of electricity produced from your solar tower costs 14cents/kwh (factoring in production costs and lifetime of unit and disposal of worn out units). The government then decides to offer an 8cents/kwh subsidy in order to get people to use them. As a purchaser you are now getting electricity from your solar geyser at 6cents/kwh and it LOOKS like you are saving 40% on your bill compared to having to pay 10cents/kwh for it.
Indeed YOU are saving money, but the extra 8cents/kwh is being paid by the general population. As soon as EVERYONE takes advantage of that subsidy rather than just YOU, everyone will be paying 14cents/kwh for electricity rather than 10cents/kwh once you include the cost of increased taxes needed to pay for the subsidy.
richard verney says:
January 28, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Yes. Unless they can run an experiment and get data that shows a corresponding increase in temperature to an increase in CO2 concentration as their theory predicts, then I must conclude their theory is incorrect. Simple, really.
….and the attacks begin:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/
Interesting interview of Happer, about the letter etc.:
http://online.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-global-warming-hoax/B951E1BE-01A3-4F92-B871-A4AB9B171419.html?mod=opinion_video_newsreel
He says he got many calls from scientists asking why they hadn’t had a chance to sign it, and were quite offended to be left out!
R. Gates says:
January 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
italThe last decade was the warmest decade on instrument record. …Hardly sounds like “no global warming in more than a decade ital
(I hope the ital works for me!)
As a retired physics teacher, let me try to explain it this way. I will define displacement and velocity in the process. Displacement is the change in position. So if you started at sea level and climbed to the top of Mount Everest, your displacement would be 29,029 feet up. Now suppose you rapidly reached the top in 1998 and then started to slowly walk down at the rate of 10 feet per year. Velocity is the rate of change of position. So in this example, the VELOCITY is 10 feet per year DOWN. Now if you walked down for 12 years, your velocity would be down, even though you would still be very HIGH UP during those 12 years.
So there is no contradiction as you claim. It is perfectly possible to be high up (nine of the hottest years), and at the same time be going down (or possibly cooling in our analogy).
Also see
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.17/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1997.08/trend
#Time series (hadcrut3) from 1850 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.17
#Least squares trend line; slope = -0.000101357 per year
#Time series (rss) from 1979 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.08
#Least squares trend line; slope = -5.60668e-05 per year
So to the end of December, it is 14 years and 10 months for HadCrut3 and 14 years and 11 months for RSS that we have an insignificant negative trend.
I feel the best way to look at the big picture is as explained in this post which shows that the rate of change in the trend gradient for sea surface temperatures (since 1900) is decreasing. I’d appreciate any support for my comment on SkS http://earth-climate-com/SkS120129e.jpg
Correction
I feel the best way to look at the big picture is as explained in this post which shows that the rate of change in the trend gradient for sea surface temperatures (since 1900) is decreasing. I’d appreciate any support for my comment on SkS http://earth-climate.com/SkS120129e.jpg
Henry@Alcheson, BrianH
You guys still don’t get it. I agree that the solar panels that convert sunlight to electricity is a total waste of time. But the solar geyser I am talking about works on a different principle. It works like the opposite of a radiator in your car. You have two riffled glass panels that concentrate the sunlight on the flat metal (copper) underneath. The metal heats up quickly and the water inside gets warm. Rising water goes to the top, through the panels and pipes into the solar geyser, which is usually standing bove the 2 glass panels. There is a series of pipes inside the solar geyser, heating the main body of water. The cooler water drops, gets heated again, and so on. If there is no sun and the temp. in the geyser drops too far, the geyser switches back to the electric power. So you always have warm water.
Let’s say the geyser costs $1000. I get a $250 subsidy, leaving me with a bill of $750.
I subsequently save $60 on my monthly electric bill of $150. After a year, the investment I made is beginning to pay back for me. I guess the the $250 that was paid by the GU is earned back mostly by the simple fact that if everyone is able to make a saving of 40% on their power consumption they can put more customers on the same grid. That is where they save the money.
Everybody wins!
mind you, like I said before, in areas where you have frost during winters, be sure to buy the indirect system as opposed to the direct system.
“2010 was the warmest year on record”
Where? Certainly not here, and my relatives in England were complaining about how cold both winter and summer were.
Meanwhile we’re having an unusually warm winter here this year and it’s a heck of an improvement over shovelling snow at -40C during the ‘warmest year on record’. Roll on the ‘Global Warming’, I say.
HneryP,
In that case you didn’t need the subsidy to make the purchase. Even without the subsidy you are coming out way ahead because obviously the cost of energy the thing is producing is less than the 10cents/kwh. Therefore, it seems like you should make this thing on a large scale and put all of the energy companies out of business because you can provide energy 40% cheaper than they can.
A phycisit (finally) speaks:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-878067
Henry@A physicist
Well, to start off with, that was the question that I posed to Freric. The question I posed to you is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-877972
It includes the question that I have with the CO2, because it takes part in photosynthesis, namely
(more) CO2+Chlorophyl+UV= ( more) vegetation (food).
Otherwise, why would people add CO2 in (real) green houses to stimulate growth..?
So the CO2 is taking some energy away. Cooling. That gives us our food and wine. Vegetation is increasing, as we have noted before.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
You conveniently ignored that question by jumping to the question I posed to Freric. So I ask again: how much is the extra cooling caused by the CO2 by the increase in vegetation?
The references that you gave unfortunately don’t give me any answers, in the right dimensions.
In fact, they don’t even mention anything about any radiative cooling that may be caused by the GHG’s. So let us start there. I suggest you carefully study this paper here.
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/644/1/551/pdf/64090.web.pdf
They measured the re-radiation from CO2 and other GHG’s as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon-earth. For CO2, follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. You can see that it all comes back to us via the moon in fig. 6 top & fig. 7. Note that the CH4 is cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine at between 2.2 and 2.4 um.
I suggest you finally study fig. 7 and make sure that you understand why I say that GHG’s like O2/O3, CO2, H2O and CH4 are also cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine in the 0-5 range.
The question is now: how much radiative cooling (by re-radiating sunshine) and how much radiative warming (by re-radiation of earth shine) is caused by each of the GHG’s?
You have to come to me with a balance sheet on each substance. So you have that balance sheet on each GHG? Where is it?I could not find it.
(The minute that you come to me with a balance sheet where I see “time” somewhere in the dimensions, I will get very interested. Because what all these so-called great people that you mention apparently never realized is that you have 12 hours sunshine per day and 24 hours earthshine. )
I never follow the crowd. I suggest you do the same. …
If you still don’t understand what I am saying, I suggest you read this report here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
I tried to keep it as simple as possible so that everyone can gain some understanding about the problem of the green house effect.
Alternatively, you can start doing some stats and see for yourself why I say that warming caused by an increase in GHG’s is a myth.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
e.g. the ratio’s of minima and maxima and means are not right, and the global warming is not really “global” at all
A more comprehensive report of mine is here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Hope this helps.
@HenryP;
Your “guess” about where the GU “earns” its money back is baseless. It makes money by selling power; if it sells less, it earns less.
And if the geyser is cost effective, you shouldn’t need to be bribed to use it. If GU wants to LOAN you the money to install it, and collect payments off your bill till it’s paid down, fine. Otherwise the subsidy ends up in higher rates across the board for everyone. Necessarily. I.e., you’re collecting your “benefit” from all the other users who don’t or can’t use geysers (often it’s not useful or feasible).
Consider the finances if EVERYONE had one. Their subsidies and extra charges would balance by necessity. They’d still eventually benefit from lower consumption, assuming the tech performed as advertised. But meanwhile all that payment/collection thrashing about thru the GU just achieves some admin/bureaucratic overhead enhancement.
I have suggested having a list of scientists both for and against “AGW’ along the lines of The Petition Project. The latter of course does not include those who believe in AGW, and appears to be mainly US scientists. I would like to see scientists around the world on the list.
The Petition Project is often criticized for including people who are not “climatologists”. Basic physics is enough to check the data on which the claims of climatologists depends, and I’d rather not include anyone on the skeptic list without a physics qualification (but maybe I’m being too harsh). In addition, knowledge of statistics would be very useful and is notably lacking for certain well-known climatologists.
I think a knowledge of geology is also useful when checking long-term data. This is why I’d like the scientists to state whether they have expertise in physics, statistics and geology. I will agree that a PhD in medicine for example is of little relevance to climate science.
Some of the names on The Petition Project were for major proponents of Creation and ID, and that has caused a distraction which I would rather avoid. But the AGW proponents can believe anything they like and have no particular experience in anything. I certainly don’t want to exclude them.
The Petition states in part:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
I think that is a good statement that scientists can agree or disagree with and be included on one side or other in the proposed list.
Perhaps to start with it would be adequate to simply include the Petition names and add the AGW believers.
There will be a bias against the skeptics since their jobs may be at risk if they sign such a list.
The Petition currently has tens of thousands of scientists prepared to put their names against AGW. So let us have the names of the AGW supporters. I imagine there will be hundreds. Will there be thousands? Tens of thousands? Let us see. Put your names forward.
BrianH says:
Your “guess” about where the GU “earns” its money back is baseless. It makes money by selling power; if it sells less, it earns less….assuming the tech performs…
Henry@Brian
the government utility (GU) in our area is a not for profit.
It does work, I have one on my roof. It did cut my bill by almost half but we are lucky with our weather. A lot of sunshine. But so is CA and other places in the US. Note that in most areas here we do not have flowing gas to the houses, nor is there an abundance of natural gas. So we use electricity for just about everything in the house for energy.
Alcheson says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-878377
Henry@Alcheson
I agree. It works without the subsidy as well. The subsidy was put up in a period when the GU must have realized that its grid was not big enough to cope with increasing demand.The subsidy period has ended now.
I think it was a good incentive to make people realize that energy costs money, and that we should make good use of what is coming from the sun for free.
Werner Brozek:
I appreciate your basic math and physics lesson ( really your attempt to school me), but I certainly understand rates of change principals quite well. The skeptics would like to believe that we are indeed at some cyclical peak of temps– I understand that. I am however ” skeptical” of that contention. Rather, I have to believe what numerous attribution studies have shown, and that is that the leveling of temperatures over the past decade is caused by natural variability, (i.e. solar, ENSO, etc) and that the underlying forcing from the buildup of CO2, CH4, and N2O is still present, but has been muted by natural variability. The result would be of course, the rather than at a peak, we will rise to higher levels once the natural factors align with the GH forcing. Given this position, one would expect to see new modern instrument temperature records set in the next few years–when ENSO and solar conditions align with GH forcing– meaning of course that we have not reached any sort of peak, nor are likely to for quite some time. Of course the skeptics will always have their laughable fallback position that we are still in a recovery from the Little Ice Age.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:22 am
WOW!
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:00 pm
If in the next thirty years, Hansen’s predictions remain similarly accurate as they have been in the past thirty years, then (with good reason) Hansen will enter into history as one of humanity’s greatest and most foresighted scientists.
Indeed, A physicist, as clearly demonstrated by his past record of pronouncements in regard to his CO2 = CAGW “hypotheses”, there is surely no doubt that Hansen’s “predictions” will continue to be just as “similarly accurate” as they always are. In other words, since they are always “consistent with” everything that happens and are thus not falsifiable, they will all continue to say nothing of empirical/factual relevance – a method which seems to be your particular area of proficiency, as well, and obviously just as equally gratifying to the both of you, as well as to people such as John Brookes, etc.; and in fact to the 75/77 = “97%” of “mainstream” Climate Scientists who make up the “Consensus”!
Therefore, concerning your 2nd, transcendent question: by now there is likewise no doubt that the value of Hansen’s valiant efforts, well preceding the call of duty but now even officially directed toward achieving the primary mission of President Obama’s “transformed” NASA,
~”to help raise the self-esteem of the Muslim nations in the area of science”, will eventually make his historical value to Humanity very similar to that of your own Prophet’s…and perhaps even approach the magnitude of Comrade Jimmahi Carter’s impact in this most sacred area… directed,as they all are, toward producing Social Justice’s Holy Equality between nations and thus the achievement by Activists of “World Peace through Struggle”.
Indeed, Hansen’s mighty mantra, “CO2 = CAGW”, easily transforms with similar accuracy into “Mecca is the Center of the World!”, or to whatever other verbiage your needs “scientifically” require as the “similarly accurate” TRUTH!!!
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:22 am
The result would be of course, the rather than at a peak, we will rise to higher levels once the natural factors align with the GH forcing. Given this position, one would expect to see new modern instrument temperature records set in the next few years
I agree! But exactly how much higher and in how many years? GISS, for example, has a slope of 0.0087 per year from 1940 to date. (It was around 1940 that carbon dioxide levels really started to increase.) If this rate were to be continued for the next 88 years, the temperature would only go up by another 0.77 degrees by 2100. And even the IPCC agrees that added carbon dioxide follows a logarithmic effect (law of diminishing returns). Furthermore, due to a cyclical 60 year cycle that temperatures have been following over the last 130 years, we may be in for twenty years of cooling at this point. This is despite the fact that global carbon dioxide levels have been rising steadily over the last 15 years, especially from China. There are indications that solar cycles and global ocean currents are much more important drivers of climate than carbon dioxide.
Werner Brozek says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:13 pm
There are indications that solar cycles and global ocean currents are much more important drivers of climate than carbon dioxide.
But ocean currents and solar cycles don’t present an opportunity for crony capitalism, graft and taxation to mitigate the ‘crisis’ that is CO2.
Brendan H says:
January 28, 2012 at 12:30 pm
[Richard M: “No, all you did is spew useless generalizations based on nothing but what you WANT to believe…This is typical for religious beliefs.”]
I offered several explanations for why I think the signers are groping in the dark. You have opted for a personal attack rather than a reasoned response to my arguments.
Not surprised you confused an accurate description of your actions as a personal attack. You have no idea what the authors know and don’t know. All you did was try and come up with rationalizations that supported your desire for their statements to be false. This is seen in religion all the time.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:22 am
“Of course the skeptics will always have their laughable fallback position that we are still in a recovery from the Little Ice Age.”
Why laughable R. Gates? There have been times during the Holocene when temperatures were higher than those of the present and times when the Arctic ice was likely completely melted in the summer season. What evidence can you cite proving that the climate has finished recovering from the Little Ice Age? Have you considered that your hypothesis, that natural climate phenomena are hiding the AGW induced warming trend, is also a fallback position from an earlier consensus? Back in the last century when the temperature record was telling the “correct” story, AGW was touted to dominate any natural climate fluctuations.
This was published in this weekend’s Daily Mail. More refuting of the Global Warming theory.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.htm
Where’s Al Gore when we really need him???
Gates opines:
“Of course the skeptics will always have their laughable fallback position that we are still in a recovery from the Little Ice Age.” Thanx for making clear that you are not a skeptic – the only honest kind of scientist. You should try it some time, you might like it.
Question for Gates: do you believe there is no rising temperature trend from the LIA? Because there is ample scientific and historical evidence showing such a trend exists.
I am not one who thinks we are at a temperature peak. Until the trend line from the LIA is decisively broken, I think we are still on that rising trend [which must be largely, if not entirely natural, since CO2 did not start rising until after about 1800]. But all I need are a few facts, such as several year-over-year declines, to make me start to question whether the trend has reversed.
The trend from the LIA is not a “fallback position,” it is the skeptical position, because it shows the null hypothesis remains unfalsified: the rising temperature trend is natural, not man made. And just as trees don’t grow to the moon, trends don’t go on forever. At some point the planet will enter a cooling cycle, and burning all the fossil fuels available will not change that. But timing is everything, and we don’t know when the trend will reverse.
@Smokey says:
We are beginning to think that WUWT is becoming WUW…G (GATES)? 🙂
Werner Brozek says
GISS, for example, has a slope of 0.0087 per year from 1940 to date.
Hi Werner
Spencer reports an increase of 0.14 degrees C per decade when you look at the past 33 years. So, if the same trend were to continue, we are looking at ca. 0.5 degrees extra by 2050.
I have done a statistical analysis of 20 weather stations, randomly chosen, but I kept a balance as per + & – latitude and 70% of stations near – or islands in – the oceans and 30% inland.
The average slope I found for the past 37 years is 0.0137 degrees C per annum, which is the exact same result as Spencer’s.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
The interesting thing about my results, reported in the link above – if you would care to have a good look – is that I am also able to report on the increase in maxima and minima. So far, the score is follows:
MAXIMA: rising at a speed of 0.0369 degrees C per annum
MEANS : increasing at 0.0137 degrees C per annum
MINIMA: increasing at 0.0055 degrees C per annum
HUMIDITY: decreasing at a rate of -0.02% per annum
PRECIPITATION: increasing at a rate of 0.16 mm /month /year
The ratio of the rate of increase in Maxima, Means and Minima is 7:3:1
Surely anyone looking at these results, will understand that it was the maximum temperatures, that ocurred during the day, that pushed up the mean average daily temperatures and minima?
This means that, on my pool table, the global warming that is observed on earth is largely natural and is not caused by an increase in greenhouse gases. If it had been the other way around, i.e. minimum temperatures pushing up the average temperature, (i.e heat being trapped), minima rising faster than maxima and means, then we should agree that the increase in greenhouse gases on earth was the cause.
Note that the so-called ”global warming” is not global at all.
In the Southern Hemisphere (SH) there is almost no warming. Clearly, you can see a big difference in the results for means between NH and SH? Check out these two weatherstations’ results from the antarctic.
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/gjma/amundsen-scott.ann.trend.pdf
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/gjma/vostok.ann.trend.pdf
They are remarkably flat.
(I got these graphs from someone here, does anyone perhaps know where the original data are of these two graphs?)
We know from real science and experiments that the CO2 is distributed everywhere exactly the same. So, if increased CO2 or increased GHG’s were to be blamed directly due to it causing an increased greenhouse effect, should not the warming be the same everywhere in the world? So, we conclude (again) it never was the increase in GHG’s that caused any warming.
Looking at the differences between the results from the northern hemisphere(NH) and the southern hemisphere (SH), what we see is happening from my dataset is that more (solar) heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by water currents and/or weather systems to the NH. That is why the NH is warming and that is why the SH does not warm.
Now, if we could only get R.Gates and A.Physicist to do their own testing, they might get the same results and come to the same conclusions.
But I suspect they are on a payroll by someone to keep sowing doubts.
HenryP
Even your 37 year period is not long enough. You need about 100 to 120 years of data to be able to make a realistic compensarion for the 60 year cycle in order to get down to the underlying ~1000 year cyclic trend.
The best plots I have seen (in several thousand hours of research on all this) is that plot at the foot of my Home page http://climate-change-theory.com on which I have added the yellow line using an “axis trend” for the obvious, 60 year cycle after visually completing the incomplete part. I justify this having some knowledge that temperatures were declining slightly between 1880 and 1900.
Note that the plot is not of temperatures but of gradients of 30 year trends calculated each month: ie Jan 1900 to Dec 1930 then Feb 1900 to Jan 1931 etc. For each period a linear trend was calculated and its gradient plotted at the end of the period. (I would rather have seen it in the middle of each 30 year period, so you should visualise a 15 year shift.)
What we see is a rate of increase of 0.06C per decade in 1900-1930 reducing to 0.05C/ decade in recent years, based on my yellow line. This will keep decreasing as the top of the cyclic trend is approached with the next 150 to 250 years I would guess, before a 500 year decline.
Richard M: “Not surprised you confused an accurate description of your actions as a personal attack.”
The reality is that I offered several specific points to the effect that the signers of this attempt to influence the political process (not that there’s anything wrong with that) were fudging their lack of knowledge.
You have been unable to offer any evidence to challenge my arguments, hence your resort to personal abuse.
The defects in this letter are further exemplified by the poor thinking skills where the authors attempt to liken the current climate science scene with Lysenkoism, under whom, “Many [scientists] were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death”.
I’m not aware of any western scientists who have been sent to the gulag for their views on climate, much less condemned to death. The analogy is therefore disproportionate and gives one little confidence in their views on climate.
“Brendon H. said: I’m not aware of any western scientists who have been sent to the gulag for their views on climate, much less condemned to death. The analogy is therefore disproportionate and gives one little confidence in [the WSJ signatories] views on climate.”
I’ll grant that talking about the Soviet Gulag and death penalties seems a bit hyperbolic on the surface. But I’m not sure you’ve correctly represented the meaning in their use of those statements. Those statements were meant to show how politics can dictate to scientists and corrupt the process. I hope you would not deny this simple notion, even if you think there might be a better way to state that concept. To me, the fact that a totalitarian nation state from the recent past used it’s political power to dictate what is and is not “acceptable” truth, makes for a pretty clear and unambiguous example of the point they were trying to make. So, I’d not criticize the letter’s use of this rhetorical device. The authors could also have used the example of the Roman Catholic church’s punishment of Gallileo’s heresy (which might have been more appropriate, now that I think about it), or many other cases from history. But the meaning in their example was clear: in cases where honest disagreements with “orthodoxy” occur, those who think themselves in charge of the orthodoxy must defeat and punish challengers to their power, and that punishment has nothing to due with the merits of the heretical statement, only with maintaining their monopoly on power to decide “truth.” I can see some similarities between previous attacks on scientific “heresy” and some behaviors of the climate alarmists in protecting their rice bowl.
But let’s focuson your very sensible point that hyperbole can damage the credibility of scientists (or anyone trying to make a logical argument). That’s correct, and I agree with you 100%. Thank you for helping make the case for climate skepticism. I think when climate modelers say their models can accurately predict future climate, they are engaging in hyperbole. In fact, much hyperbole has been published (and peer reviewed) under the guise of AGW, now climate change. James Hanson’s professional life has been one huge hyperbole, first predicting catastrophic cooling (it warmed), then catastrophic warming (now no longer warming), 5 meter sea level rise (not happening), etc. And then there’s the IPCC, the CRU, the hockey stick, Al Gore. There were not 3 or 50 million climate refugees in 2010. And here’s a brand new howler, some idiot says GCC is even responsible for exacerbating human sex slavery in Cambodia. He says women in rural areas with no running water might have to walk further to get water, making it more likely they’be be kidnapped by slavers. That’s part of his argument. I kid you not.
Hyperbole kills credibility. Bow Howdy, does it ever.
Mickey Reno: “Those statements were meant to show how politics can dictate to scientists and corrupt the process.”
The letter suggests that we are seeing today what occurred under Lysenko. But for the sake of argument I accept your hypothetical case.
The issue is: how likely is it that in the foreseeable future dissenting scientists living in Western democracies will be hauled off to the gulag and executed in their hundreds? I would say it’s on the very low side.
And the Galileo gambit is no more convincing. In the present day, how many dissenting climate scientists have been hauled before investigating committees, been subject to official enquries, or been pursued by zealous prosecutors?
And remember that it was Galileo who had the big new idea, not his opponents, who were defending the traditional view.
In effect, you are defending your preferred alarmism. But if “hyperbole kills credibility”, then you’ve pronounced your judgement on this letter.
HenryP says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Spencer reports an increase of 0.14 degrees C per decade when you look at the past 33 years.
True, but he only has 33 years of satellite data to work with. I believe that things go in 60 year cycles, so we would have to go elsewhere for that. And GISS gives 0.11/decade for the last 60 years. And since we have presumably gone up 0.8 C so far, at the rate of 0.11/decade, we would not even reach an increase of 2 C by 2100. I do not believe this would be bad, but that is another topic.
As for your difference between maxima and minima, since I live in a cold country, I would have thought the minima would be higher with the furnaces going all night. But in light of what you say, I wonder if the air conditioners in hot places partly drive up the maxima.
Even lower rates of increase (at least in sea surface temperatures) are apparent if you look at a plot of rates of increase since 1900 as at the foot of my Home page http://climate-change-theory.com
There you will see a rate of 0.06 deg.C / decade which (by the green line) reduces to 0.05 deg.C / decade at present. These rates effectively take out the influence of the 60 year cycle and just show the longer-term (~1,000 year cycle) which looks like it’s heading for a maximum around 2200 before declining to a LIA around 2700.
So, at around 0.05 deg.C/decade or more likely 0.04 deg.C / decade, 2100 should only see about 0.4 deg.C extra in the trend. The 60 year cycle will of course take it higher for the maximum around 2058 to 2060 but possibly cooler in 2100 due to a minimum in the previous decade.
It is unfortunate that this statement does not address the real physics. The best statement I have ever read on all this is Dr Latour’s which points out that the atmosphere is actually cooling the Sun’s incident radiation – compare the temperatures in the Thermosphere which are much hotter than the surface, in fact over 100 deg.C …
,i.”Here is the science for what is happening. Thermal T is a point property
of matter, a scalar measure of its kinetic energy of atomic and molecular
motion. It is measured by thermometers. It decreases with altitude. The
rate of thermal energy transfer by conduction or convection between hot
Th and cold Tc is proportional to (Th – Tc).
Radiation t is a point property of massless radiation, EMR, a directional
vector measure of its energy transmission rate per area or intensity, w/
m2
, according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law. It is measured by pyrometers
and spectrometers. Solar radiation t increases with altitude. Black bodies
are defined to be those that absorb and radiate with the same intensity
and corresponding t. Real, colorful bodies reflect, scatter, absorb, convert
4and emit radiant energy according to the nature of the incident radiation
direction, spectrum and body matter reflectivity, absorptivity, emissivity
and view factors. The rate of EMR energy transfer from a hot body, th, is
Q, w = 5.67Ae(th + 273)
4
, where A is radiating area and e is emissivity
fraction. But it may not be absorbed by all bodies that intercept it, as
GHG theory assumes. In particular, hotter radiating bodies do not absorb
colder incident radiation and reemit it more intensely, as GHG backradiation theory assumes.”
R. Gates says:
January 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Allan MacRae said: “There has been no global warming in more than a decade.”
_____
How long is this meme going to be repeated? The last decade was the warmest decade on instrument record. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on record were in the past decade, and 2010 was the warmest year on record. Hardly sounds like “no global warming in more than a decade”
___________________________________________
Nonsense Gates – you must just make this stuff up.
2010 was certainly not the warmest year on record, unless you are cherry-picking from bogus surface temperature data that are contaminated by UHI and other artificial warming biases.
In the modern era, only the UAH or RSS satellite temperature data has credibility. The surface temperature data are relatively worthless, evidence only of Mann-made global warming.
Furthermore, when there is a sinusoidal pattern of warming and cooling, it must include a flat peaking crest. Global temperatures are peaking and will soon decline, if they are not already doing so. That is what you are describing – it is a plateau, and no cause for alarm – for rational people.
The problem with you global warming alarmists is your religious fervor blocks out all logic and facts that contradict your “be-very-frightened, trust me” mantra.
The fact is that the IPCC and all other acolytes of the global warming “Cause” have NO PREDICTIVE TRACK RECORD. None of their scary global warming scenarios have materialized.
In fact, their predictive track record is 100% false – a truly remarkable achievement!
Here are predictions I/we made in 2002 and 2003.
1. There is no global warming crisis.
2. Earth will soon enter a natural cooling cycle.
Global cooling will be much more dangerous to humanity and the environment than the recent, natural warming cycle.
Repeating, “there has been no global warming in more than a decade.”
Our predictive track record is infinitely better than yours. Suggest you bundle up.
Werner Brozek says
I would have thought the minima would be higher with the furnaces going all night. But in light of what you say, I wonder if the air conditioners in hot places partly drive up the maxima.
I am afraid that the reports of any such influence by AC’s or heaters are greatly exaggerated.
I have not studied the effect of the removal of snow by man, but I suspect that that alone is larger than any energy consumption by anyone, whether for heating or cooling. (Man “interferes” with the natural state of earth by removing snow, causing more absorption of heat than would normally be the case)
I did pick up a few interesting results: if you cut forests, like they did in the south of Argentina, you will get cooling.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/de-forestation-causes-cooling
I have also been able to establish that the opposite, i.e. planting of trees and/or more natural vegetation, does cause warming, like I found in Grootfontein (Namibia), in the “Kgalagadi Basin”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
I might even be able to find a correlation coefficient between the leaf area index (LAI ) and warming if I could get hold of those three Liu’s who wrote the paper quoted above. ( I need actual figures for the LAI)
Hi Doug
Your work is impressive.
I gather you did see my post here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-879203
I would love to go back further in time, but my finding was that before 1974 there are not many weather stations that have complete daily records. So I don’t trust your data/graph (yet)
For example, how did you get that result of 0.125 degrees C/decade for 1916-1946 and how do you know that your sample of weatherstations was more or less representative of the whole world?
I merely wanted to establish the linear trend, I did not really wanted to predict the future. I agree that it might not be right to make big predictions from my data set.
Generally speaking I believe the future (natural warming) could be found here in this graph:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
If you want to know where that graph came from, look here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/25/predictions-of-global-mean-temperatures-ipcc-projections/
On top of that, it seems likely to me that the increase in greenery, caused by more warmth and more CO2 and human activities, could trap some heat, causing some contributory warming, on top of the natural warming, as reported here,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-880341
Thanks HenryP – I’ll look into what you say and read the links tonight. My sources are linked on http://climate-change-theory.com
Regarding greenery etc, bear in mind the “thermal inertia” of the whole Earth as discussed on my “Explanation” page and some earlier posts here. To increase the ocean and surface temperatures requires a lot more energy because underground temperatures would also have to be raised all the way back to the core in the long run – like many thousands of years.
I must write in Serbian but I don’t know English enaught.This is very important
Zao mi je sto dosadasnja nauka nije odgonetnula prave uzroke ovih pojava cije su brojne posledice za nas na Zemlji, a u koje spada i problem klimatskih promjena.Nista ovo sto se navodi kao uzrok ovih promjena nije glavni uzrok.Postoji nesto sasvim drugo fundamentalnije koje je vezano za ukupnu konstelaciju cijelog Suncevog sistema.Sigurno je da su magnetna polja osnovni pokretac promjena svih energetskih stanja, ali treba znati zbog cega se magnetna polja tako za nas nepredvidjeno ponasaju.Sa poznavanjem tih izazivaca moguce je odrediti cikluse gotovo svih tih fenomena u svim vremenskim periodima, te bi se tako moglo i predvidjeti sve u buducnosti, a time i usporedjivati sa prosloscu.
Ja opet, po ko zna koji put , moram reci da sam na puti da mi je to dovoljno jasno , samo ja nemam tehicke mogucnosti a niti dovoljno podataka da mogu vrsiti predvidjanja.
Kada bi kojim cudom i slucajem npr. NASA pristala da pod ugovorom ovo pokusamo rijesiti, nauka bi zaista dobila mnogo na ustedi vremena na istrazivanjima koji ne donose nikakve sigurne rezultate.Ovo sto se sada nudi je samo neka nesigurna prognoza zasnovana na nesigurnim podacima i pretpostavkama.
Imam vise problema da ovo sto imam iznesem, a najvazniji je taj sto ne zelim kao penzioner pokloniti nesto sto vrijedi triliona dolara sa nauku i svijet, pod uslovom da je ovo dobro kako sam ja u to ubijedjen.. Mislim,gospodo, da vecina od vas ovo nece ni primijetiti kao sto nauka nije primijetila ovaj prost put da krene njime i dodje do pravih rezultata.
PLEASE , TRANSLATE THIS MY COMMENT, IT WILL BE VERY USEFUL!
Well we could all do with an education in statistics. Reading comprehension and logic would also be good.
The 16 eminent climate skeptics claim this:
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause
Briggs interprets this as a claim that there is is no evidence of global warming. Wrong interpretation. It very definitely claims lack of global warning as a proven fact.
Briggs claims there is no statistical justification for claiming the time series shown in his Plait graph is evidence for global warming. My eyeball says otherwise and my eyeball is skilled at this kind of thing.
Briggs presents no statistical calculations to show that the straight line fit is wrong. He just tries to speculate it into doubt.