Guest post by David Middleton
In my Internet “debates” with warmists, I occasionally encounter challenges like this…
We don’t yet not know the real global impact man has on the environment. It may be negligible. What we do know is that if the oil companies with their billions could disprove this manmade warming they could in an instance. They have not.
My response to this challenge is in the style of David Letterman…
Dave’s Top Ten Reasons Why the Oil Industry Doesn’t Spend its Billions on Disproving the Junk Science of AGW
10) It’s impossible to prove a negative.
9) The burden of proof is on those who wish to bankrupt these United States of America in order to reverse this…
8) The climate is always changing, always has, always will. There is absolutely no evidence that modern climate changes are exceeding the pre-human range of variability. There are anthropogenic influences which modify the climate’s natural oscillations. Very few scientists in the oil industry doubt that anthropogenic activities affect the climate. We just know for a fact that those effects are not causing the climate to change in ways that exceed the normal variability of the Holocene and that such effects are likely to be so small that they can’t be differentiated. Otherwise, the Warmists would have long ago clearly differentiated the anthropogenic from the natural. Furthermore, none of the proposed solutions are economically feasible, nor would they mitigate climate change in any measurable way.
7) The “oil industry” is composed of corporations engaged in the various aspects of oil & gas exploration, drilling and production. These corporations are owned by people, usually shareholders, who invested their own money for the purpose of making a profit on the exploration, drilling and production for and of oil and natural gas. They didn’t invest their money in science projects, particularly not junk science projects.
6) We already have full time jobs. I do this as a hobby because it combines my professional skills as a geoscientist and 25 years of experience (out of nearly 33) working in a Quaternary-Upper Tertiary sedimentary basin, with my longtime interest in palaeoclimatology.
5) The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong. The lack of global warming since the late 1990’s forced them to morph “global warming” into “climate change,” “global weirding,” “global climate disruption,” and other temperature-neutral descriptions.
4) The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong – Part Deux. Every conceivable weather, health, agricultural, botanical, zoological and even geophysical incident is “consistent” with the Gorebotic AGW “theory.” Thus rendering their “theory” un-falsifiable and rendering it unscientific. Kevin Trenberth of NCAR even declared the no longer scientific theory to be un-falsifiable when he stated that the “null hypothesis” principle should be reversed for AGW.
3) The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong – Part Trois: That pesky climate sensitivity thing. Gorebot Prime, James Hansen, formerly of NASA-GISS and now a full-time political activist, first proved that AGW was wrong 25 years ago and then delivered an endless stream of idiotic alarmism. Back in 1988, he published a climate model that, when compared to his own temperature data, substantially disproves AGW…
GISTEMP has tracked the Hansen scenario in which a Gorebotic utopia was achieved more than a decade ago. Hansen’s model used an equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of 4.2°C per doubling of pre-industrial CO2. The IPCC “consensus” is 3.0°C. The maximum physically possible ECS is no more than 2.0°C. The maximum physically possible ECS, consistent with the observations, is about 1.0°C. Recent papers have concluded that solar forcing has been underestimated by a factor of six and CO2 forcing is much lower than the so-called consensus estimate. “Scenario B” might be the most relevant prediction because CH4 and CFC’s have followed closest to the “C” trajectory, while CO2 has tracked “A”. If you look at the model results, there is little difference between “A” and “B” in 2010…
Hansen describes “A” as “business as usual” and “B” as a more realistic or “Lite” version of “business as usual.” “C” represents a world in which mankind essentially undiscovered fire in the year 2000. The actual satellite-measured temperature change since 1988 tracks below “C,” with the monster ENSO of 1998 being the only notable exception…
Since CO2 tracked “A”, CH4 and CFC’s tracked “C” and temperature tracked below “C,” the atmosphere is far less sensitive to CO2 than Hansen modeled. The atmosphere was essentially insensitive to the ~50ppmv rise in CO2 over the last 24 years. Hansen may have inadvertantly provided solid support for this “inconvenient truth.”
2) The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong – Part Quatre: A model of failure. Let’s give Gorebot Prime, Jimbo Hansen, a pass. His 1988 model reflected old science and old computers and surely the models have gotten better over the last quarter-century… Or not.
STILL Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models vs. Measurements, Running 5-Year Means June 6th, 2013 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. […]
In this case, the models and observations have been plotted so that their respective 1979-2012 trend lines all intersect in 1979, which we believe is the most meaningful way to simultaneously plot the models’ results for comparison to the observations. In my opinion, the day of reckoning has arrived. The modellers and the IPCC have willingly ignored the evidence for low climate sensitivity for many years, despite the fact that some of us have shown that simply confusing cause and effect when examining cloud and temperature variations can totally mislead you on cloud feedbacks (e.g. Spencer & Braswell, 2010). The discrepancy between models and observations is not a new issue…just one that is becoming more glaring over time. It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the coming years. I frankly don’t see how the IPCC can keep claiming that the models are “not inconsistent with” the observations. Any sane person can see otherwise. If the observations in the above graph were on the UPPER (warm) side of the models, do you really believe the modelers would not be falling all over themselves to see how much additional surface warming they could get their models to produce? Hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into the expensive climate modelling enterprise has all but destroyed governmental funding of research into natural sources of climate change. […] Dr. Roy Spencer
[Assuming whiny Gorebot voice]… Oh… That tricky Roy Spencer. That’s just the tropics and it goes way back to 1979… That’s unfair! The science is verified! The models are right! Or not… The following CMIP5 model was parameterized (fudged) to accurately retrocast HadCRUT4 from 1950-2004.
Eight years and out! Within eight years, the observed temperature is on the verge of dropping out of the lower error band. This model from Kaufmann et al., 2011 simulated natural and anthropogenic (primarily CO2) forcing mechanisms from 1999-2008. Natural forcing won by a score of 3-1. 
Although, the authors seem to have concluded that anthropogenic forcing related to global cooling were masking theanthropogenic forcing” related to global warming. This is to be expected because, obviously, the Earth’s climate was static prior to the incorporation of Standard Oil Company… Models are great heuristic tools; but they cannot and should never be used as substitutes for observation and correlation. I can build a valid computer model that tells me that a geopressured Cibicides opima sandstone at depth of 15,000′ should exhibit a Class 3 AVO response. If I drill a Class 3 AVO anomaly in that neighborhood, I will drill a dry hole. A little bit of observation and correlation would quickly tell me that productive geopressured Cibicides opima sandstones at depth of 15,000′ don’t exhibit Class 3 AVO anomalies. 99% of petroleum geologists and exploration geophysicists would laugh you out of the room if you seriously thought a model was superior to actual observations.
2) The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong – Part Cinq: That pesky climate sensitivity thing – Subpart Deux. In our last episode of climate sensitivity, we reviewed Jimbo Hansen’s spectacularly wrong Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of 4.2 °C. Now we will move on the current alleged consensusECS of 3.3 (±1.1) °C (Nothing like a 33% error bar to instill confidence!)…
The equilibrium climate sensitivity values for the AR4 AOGCMs coupled to non-dynamic slab ocean models are given for comparison (Box 10.2, Figure 1e,f; see also Table 8.2). These estimates come from models that represent the current best efforts from the international global climate modelling community at simulating climate. A normal fit yields a 5 to 95% range of about 2.1°C to 4.4°C with a mean value of equilibrium climate sensitivity of about 3.3°C (2.2°C to 4.6°C for a lognormal distribution, median 3.2°C) (Räisänen, 2005b).
For good measure, the consensus-teers of the IPCC toss in this bit of gratuitous alarmism…
Studies comparing the observed transient response of surface temperature after large volcanic eruptions with results obtained from models with different climate sensitivities (see Section. 9.6) do not provide PDFs, but find best agreement with sensitivities around 3°C, and reasonable agreement within the 1.5°C to 4.5°C range (Wigley et al., 2005). They are not able to exclude sensitivities above 4.5°C.
This explains the Gorebotic caterwauling from Climategate University…
“Our research predicts that climate change will greatly reduce the diversity of even very common species found in most parts of the world. This loss of global-scale biodiversity would significantly impoverish the biosphere and the ecosystem services it provides…
[…]
The good news is that our research provides crucial new evidence of how swift action to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases can prevent the biodiversity loss by reducing the amount of global warming to 2 degrees Celsius rather than 4 degrees.”
The Washington Post’s energy and environment inexpert…
“The current level of action puts us on a pathway towards a 3.5–4°C warmer world by the end of this century.”
And Third World poverty pimps…
The World Bank predicts that we are on track to a rise of 4 degrees Celsius in temperatures by the end of this century. This would mean a rise in sea levels of three to seven feet.
There is not one single scrap of evidence that the current rate of emissions will lead to more than 2 °C warming (relative to 280 ppmv CO2) by 2100 (we’ll get to sea level in subsequent posts). Every recent observation-based estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) to a doubling of the assumed pre-industrial CO2 level has been in the range of 1-2 °C and nearly 1 °C of this has already occurred. Asten, 2012 found ECS to be 1.1 ± 0.4 °C based on δ18O and δ11B records from fossil forams and the Eocene-Oligocene transition in marine sediment cores from DSDP site 744. Earlier this year, researchers at CICERO and the Norwegian Computing Center announced that when they incorporated the temperature and CO2 data from 2000-2010 into their instrumental record-based ECS estimate, they obtain a most likely value of 1.9 °C. This work has yet to be published. Lewis, 2013 found a most likely ECS of 1.6 °K (same as C for these purposes) using a Bayesian analysis and incorporating recent data. Masters, 2013 found a most likely ECS of 1.98 °K from ocean heat content and sea surface temperature data… Aldrin et al, 2012 and Forster & Gregory, 2006 also found the ECS to most likely be less than 2 °C. Yet the IPCC, Climategate CRU and other alarmist ideologues continue to prattle on as if the ECS in the range of 4-5 °C or higher…
1) The joke is just too damn funny for us to spoil…
Obama’s global-warming folly
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: July 4
The economy stagnates. Syria burns . Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him , even as a “29-year-old hacker” revealed his nation’s spy secrets to the world. How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change . Climate change? It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans’ concerns (last of 21 — Pew poll). Which means that Obama’s declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide: Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years — a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program. Now, this inconvenient finding is not dispositive. It doesn’t mean there is no global warming. But it is something that the very complex global warming models that Obama naively claims represent settled science have trouble explaining. […] For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God’s name is his massive new regulatory and spending program — which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras — going to do about it? The United States has already radically cut carbon dioxide emissions — more than any country on earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels. And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because — surprise! — we don’t control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind. […] Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty. But that’s not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won’t. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have […] For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.
Don’t forget: We’ve seen about two decades’ worth of insinuations from AGWers that skeptic climate scientists are paid by the oil (and/or coal) industry to knowingly push lies about global warming, but the AGWers have never once produced evidence to prove that accusation. Not once. Ever.
But what if you’re wrong and we all perish?
(/moonbat)
As long as coal is more demonized than oil and gas, why not let it take the heat?
It’s not as if the the demand for oil is going to evaporate, so the oil companies are not going to loose anything by doing nothing.
David Letterman needs to have more top 10 lists like this!
As observed by Richard Feynman, in the scientific method, if the models do not match the evidence, they are wrong. Therefore catastrophic majority AGW is not science.
Why should “oil” waste time disproving something so obviously unscientific?
We need a “red team” to fix the models to match the data and restore integrity to “climate science”.
The far greater challenge is finding sufficient liquid fuel to keep the lights on – which is essential to provide the alarmists’ with their functioning computers, jobs, health care and social security.
It’s cheaper to just give the Sierra Club a few million dollars to shut up than it would be to put up with A) trying to disprove an unscientific proposition & B) having your facilities bombed by eco-terrorists you’ve been funding for the last 20 years.
For the same reasons that the oil industry didn’t spend $billions or $millions or $anything disproving the existence of a 100 mpg carburetor — it was cheaper to just buy up the patents. In this case it’s cheaper to pay bloggers and conservatives and tea partiers and libertarians a few bucks to argue the point and keep the true believers busy playing whack-a-mole.
🙂
You have two items labeled #2:
The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong – Part Quatre: A model of failure
The Warmists have already proven that AGW is wrong – Part Cinq: That pesky climate sensitivity thing – Subpart Deux.
Otherwise, great post as usual.
I am letting you in on a little secret…the oil industry has decided to fight the proposed EPA rules on GHG. Why you ask? Because they have realized that they are next…
” it was cheaper to just buy up the patents. In this case it’s cheaper to pay bloggers and conservatives and tea partiers and libertarians a few bucks to argue the point and keep the true believers busy playing whack-a-mole.”
LOLOLOLOL!! Steve, you’re a friggin genius!!
how much money have energy companies given to green groups like The Sierra Club, WWF, etc? iirc, it is a substantial amount but those groups never seem to mention it…
Oil companies don’t fight back because they are benefactors of the AGW scare. Oil companies have few oil reserves. They are the preview of sovereign states. They do have a lot of natural gas reserves however. The AGW scare makes natural gas look to be a more acceptable alternative to burning coal. That increases their market share of fossile fuels used in power generation. If someone were calling me names but it dramatically increasedy sales, I’d probably be mute about that too.
they know the science is sound and thats why they do not attempt to disprove it!
Global Climatic Destabilization more to your liking?
“This drift is because of the changes in Earth’s mass distribution” http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2013/12/14/97-Climate-change-causing-Earth-s-poles-to-shift.html … …
The oil companies don’t care. They will add on any carbon tax just like they did with the other taxes and keep right on rolling in the money. It makes no difference to them.
Not to be cynical but Greenshirt carbon and environmental restrictions and regulations INCREASE oil and gas profits by artificially RESTRICTING SUPPLY. If you put the tin foil hat on long enough you could argue that AGW was invented by greedy oil and gas shareholders. It’s the net reality but I don’t think this explains their political correctness. You can trace populist hatred of oil back to J.D. Rockefeller if not further. More things are involved in AGW acquiescence to the meme.
If you were really out to get “big oil” and “corporations” we would deregulate them and watch them kill their profit margins and produce more like airlines. Of course AGW isn’t the only government centered fraud benefiting oil and gas. There is fiat money policy that inflates real goods and the cabal that is OPEC which sponsors cartel pricing, both forces creatures of government. Greenshirt politics were spun out of this reality also, it isn’t just about AGW or “pollution” no matter how it’s misrepresented. Regardless the point is seldom made regarding the benefits of the AGW meme to oil and gas margins.
Fixing hire carbon prices shifts fraud gains to “green energy” in a fairytale about a future without carbon but it increases established production profits….”big oil”. Since there is nothing cheaper about green energy everyone in the world suffers higher cost, essentially a policy tax. Although it can’t be proven but is clearly the historic pattern of regulation economies I would say the artificial high current prices is lowering innovations not sponsoring technology improvements. Green energy is largely a soft fat industry feeding off a cartel price.
1 b) Why should big oil kill the goose laying the golden eggs? Heating and transportation fuel are economically inelastic. Allowing government to limit supply, (e.g holding up the Keystone pipeline, keeping rich offshore reserves off limits), will increase prices without having any serious decrease in consumption thus resulting in more profit. Government collects 40% on those big oil profits making them an unwanted partner of big oil but a partner nonetheless. Limiting supply is good for BOTH of them – CAGW is a great cover story to help do just that.
Follow the money.
#11) The smart devils in e-e-evil oil companies have learned how to profit from hysteria. Collect subsidies to build wind and solar; sell natural gas to actually generate electricity.
Russell Cook says: ” about two decades’ worth of insinuations from AGWers that skeptic climate scientists are paid by the oil (and/or coal) industry to knowingly push lies about global warming, but the AGWers have never once produced evidence to prove that accusation. Not once. Ever.”
ExxonMobil has donated over $600K to Heartland. In 2008 or so, they publicly said they will stop their Heartland funding, although who knows what is happening now…
MY favorite reason for their stopping the funding is that the oil companies saw how the cigarette anti science campaign went, and decided to back off. Its not like they arent going to be able sell oil anymore…
As a scientist, I find this type of post uninteresting because it is so emotional and full of invective. I prefer Anthony’s calm exposition of facts. Even more reassuring is when a posting does not claim to have all the answers.
No.
Oil companies don’t fight ‘global warming’ hysteria, because ‘global warming’ hysteria benefits them.
The CAGW scare has facilitated the EPA’s attempts to cripple one of Big Oil’s chief competitors – Not So Big Coal. Coal has been regulated into an uncompetitive position vs natural gas for electricity generation. Makes coal too expensive.
The CAGW scare has also taken heat off of fracking – environmentalists are encouraged to support fracked gas, because it has a lower “CO2 footprint” than coal. Some of them do, diffusing effective opposition. Keeps gas cheap.
By these two effects, natural gas – owned by Big Oil companies and windfarm scammer T Boone Pickens (gotta have natural gas powerplants to back up those unreliable windmills that he gets millions in gov’t money to build) has already succeeded in pushing coal out of the top spot in electricity generation. It won’t be long before coal is effectively dead, and that means even more $$$$$$$ for oil companies.
Oil companies LOVE CAGW hysteria. If it didn’t exist, they would have a powerful incentive to create it…
As a sceptic, I am, obviously, funded by the fossil fuel industry. Big Coal in my case. Chas and Dave send me instructions nearly every day and a pay cheque each month. Also, obviously, I believe in conspiracy theories – just like the NASA astronauts who do not believe in the moon landings. They would know, right?
The epitome of Big Oil is Standard Oil – think Rockerfeller. The Rockerfeller Foundation funds warmists. So, it is clear that this is a fight between Big Oil and Big Coal. Big Oil is laughing up its pipeline at all the support the Greenies are giving it. It is a classic case of:
“”‘I don’t keer w’at you do wid me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘so you don’t fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas’ me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘but don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.”
#12. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Oh, and let’s not forget the Koch funding of the BEST study, which at the time were thought to be climate skeptics. That study didnt work out as planned, i.e., the BEST study ended up supporting the main stream. Hence another reason oil people don’t fund scientists, they often get the “wrong” result.
Why doesn’t Big Oil sponsor research into CAGW? Because when they have, the results are not believed, because it was sponsored by Big Oil.
Witness Willie Soon’s work, and his sponsorship by Exxon. Of course, his work was not really disproved. It was disregarded becuse he was assoiciated with Big Oil….
Edit:
“1.6 °K ”
No, there are no degrees Kelvin; Kelvins are degrees above absolute zero. You just said “1.6 degrees degrees …”
My explanation is that the oilcos know that AGW is a crock, and that come what may we will come back to fossil fuel when the renewables crash and burn, out of necessity. Rather than stand in the path of the Madness of Crowds, they are just waiting for nature and reality and the Invisible Hand to exhaust Warmist hysteria.
Every country that has tried to go beyond subsidized demo stage has discovered how futile and crushingly costly renewables are, directly and indirectly (e.g., backup duplication of all capacity). Stupidity kills.
Big energy WANTED a carbon trading scam to hedge future declining market shares.
Steve Keohane says:
December 14, 2013 at 9:15 am
As long as coal is more demonized than oil and gas, why not let it take the heat?
Because oil and gas will be next on the list right after Obama kills off coal. The regressives want to kill off all viable energy sources until we’re left with wind and solar.
Good catch-22 lawyering! If you disagree with CAGW, you must be funded (or duped) by the big oil companies, which proves you’re wrong — the “fact” that these greedy self-interested industrial giants pay for the evil research and argument that disputes CAGW shows this research and argument is tainted and can be safely ignored. (“Follow the money!”) No evidence is required.
But if you’re not funded (or duped) by the big oil companies, that also proves you’re wrong, because the simple fact that these greedy self-interest industrial giants don’t pay for the evil research and argument simply proves that it can’t be done. Again, no evidence is required.
I think you missed an important point — set out in books like this one — which is that corporations (at least, U.S. corporations) simply do not behave like the sinister (or should I say “dextrous”?) conspiracies imagined by the Left. But it may be your points are better tailored to your intended audience.
For #1 I’d add the pic of Obama’s Selfie with Michelle’s expression at the Mandela memorial service. X-D It really sums the entire Obama “administration” (i.e. junta). AGUFall is over so I’m done. Thanks for the feeds. Cheers 🙂
Mike M at Dec 14, 9:51 is right on. Add to that that companies such as Shell are indulging in Grant Farming for their Carbon Capture and Storage projects that are expected to earn them many cudoes (and $$$).
Erratum 1) I inadvertently listed two #2’s. I thought I had condensed the first #2 into #3. I started out with 18 and was posting from my phone early this AM.
Martin Mayer says:
December 14, 2013 at 9:56 am
#11) The smart devils in e-e-evil oil companies have learned how to profit from hysteria. Collect subsidies to build wind and solar; sell natural gas to actually generate electricity.
A tax break is not a SUBSIDY why can’t people see this?
Missed the big one. It’s not in the interest of oil producers to disprove global warming. AGW policy provides oil companies and oil producers fantastic opportunity for subsidies for new energy projects, green marketing campaigning, and protectionist policies that help ensure market share of current producers and prevent new competition.
With cap and trade, current producers are basically given a share of the production of future producers. As production peaks and declines, they sell the excess rights, taking a share of the income from their would be competition today. It constrains supply and keeps prices high.
Sean and Mike M hit the biggest two reasons right dead on. I’ve been explaining this to warmists for a few years now and they have no response.
Pippen Kool says:
December 14, 2013 at 9:57 am
“ExxonMobil has donated over $600K to Heartland. In 2008 or so, they publicly said they will stop their Heartland funding, although who knows what is happening now…”
At the same time, oligarchic Big Government hands out 1.2 billion USD a year to NASA alone to create the warming scare.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
You warmists pee your pants about 600,000? My, you must have some mighty science on your side.
Shell and BP have nice long-standing ties with CRU. Oil companies are energy companies.
lorne50 says:
December 14, 2013 at 10:37 am
“A tax break is not a SUBSIDY why can’t people see this?”
Across all of Europe and Canada there are SUBSIDIES, namely a subsidized FIT for wind and solar. I think some US states have copied the German FIT model as well.
The German FIT model has been copied by over 50 nations and 50 regions as the Germans proudly boast.
DirkH says:
December 14, 2013 at 10:55 am
lorne50 says:
December 14, 2013 at 10:37 am
I know this I was talking about the oil gas and coal company’s and sorry about the spelling stupid smart phone [sic]
One of the main reasons the big fossil fuel companies don’t spend millions disproving climate change is because they don’t have to. Excellent blogs like this one, Climate Audit, Bishop Hill and others are doing it for free. Sure, Anthony and others are mischaracterized as being in the pay of Big Oil, but people like me who come to this site with open minds can see that’s not the case. After all, we’re here because we’re skeptics, and that means we’re skeptical of anyone with an axe to grind, even if it’s our axe they’re grinding.
What’s really incredible is that Big Climate, having spent untold $billions hasn’t actually proven anything. They’ve made some hysterical claims and built plenty of models based on those claims, but somehow, reality just keeps getting in their way. Funny, that.
There’s no real revenue for the oil companies proving anything about climate. They will make their investments depending on their own advice and science, anyway.
Big Oil has nothing to lose, anyway. No matter what alternative source is dominant, the world still has to have petroleum to run its transportation industries. So far, there is NO reallistic alternative on the horizon. Plus, there is still plenty of oil to be had as they keep discovering more and more of the stuff, and the drilling and extraction technology keeps improving.
People will not stop buying petroleum products just because of the excess of Gore-like kooks out there screaming that the sky is falling. The CAGW advocates assume the stupid people hypothesie, and it just doesn’t work. When it comes to money, the people will always figure out what is best for them.
Dont forget that “carbon”enemy # 1 is “big coal” & if big coal goes down on power gen, nat gas will go up – generally a good thing for O&G companies.
I’ve wondered about this, too, and I think there might be an economic explanation. If you have a more-or-less finite amount of something, as do your competitors, would you rather dig it out of the ground and sell it all at once in a glut when prices are cheap? Or would you prefer government regulations that force you and your competition to trickle it out slowly at high prices? If the profit margin is relatively fixed, then the higher prices are what you want.
Why spend money disproving CAGW when with a little patience mother nature will do it for free.
I work in the oil sands and we soon found out we can use science all we want, but it is the Media who have bought into the AGW scam and is responsible for the overwhelming propaganda. Combined with a public with little to no science background it is an easy propaganda exercise as Joseph Goebbels once said during the Nazi era; “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” And the public have. Its there in the media everyday.
Moreover, every study the oil companies put out based on science is readily condemned because it does come from the oil companies. Plus the various US based so called groups like Tides, Greenpeace, and so on buy protesters to keep the myth alive. The real battle in this confrontation is being waged by people like these writing here on this site in newspapers, blogs, and WUWT itself.
Our ace in the hole is the least active sun in memory and winter! And this winter is going to be a hard one that I suggest will do more to defeat the AGW side than all of us combined!
David Middleton wrote in small part, “Thus rendering their “theory” un-falsifiable and rendering it unscientific. ”
Ahh, well said. After Popper’s solution to the Problem of Demarcation of science from nonsense, unfalsifiable is nonsense.
We don’t yet not know the real global impact man has on the environment. It may be negligible.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yet we can readily predict/observe the disastrous effects of green solutions. It’s unconscionable in my view that rich elites would consign perhaps billions of people to fuel poverty and in effect, deny people in the third world basic resources, such as clean water, adequate food, comfortable homes and electricity that they themselves take for granted. Not only do they advocate such policies, they go further and root for plagues, natural disasters and famines to kill as many of these people as possible. It’s really sick.
Speed says:
December 14, 2013 at 9:27 am
For the same reasons that the oil industry didn’t spend $billions or $millions or $anything disproving the existence of a 100 mpg carburetor — it was cheaper to just buy up the patents. In this case it’s cheaper to pay bloggers and conservatives and tea partiers and libertarians a few bucks to argue the point and keep the true believers busy playing whack-a-mole.
🙂
——————————————————
You forgot the /sarc.
I found this piece consistently spoiled by the author’s repeated rank name-calling, almost total lack of scientific or logical rigor, and — final straw — devolving into a political attack on the President. Not even his own opinion, but just a copy-and-paste attack from the Washington Post.
We learn nothing from this essay — except about the author.
@Kip Hansen says:
December 14, 2013 at 11:37 am
So the rebuttal is to attack the messenger instead of the message, got it.
Tad wrote: “Or would you prefer government regulations that force you and your competition to trickle it out slowly at high prices?”
Good point, Tad. For example, on the net its fun to act outraged over New York State’s banning of fracking, but in reality, every well that is NOT drilled in New York becomes a well that IS drilled in Texas, by and for a lot of the people I work for.
Solar and wind are a joke – everyone in the industry knows it, wind especially so – because at least 65% – 70% of the power generated by every so-called wind farm today actually comes from the Nat-Gas backup generators, because the wind turbines are so damned intermittent. So every one of those things is in fact a full time nat gas powered generator with some funny looking landscape sculptures that give whoever is running it a lot of complements for being such good people, and tax breaks, too!!!
The way things are going, we can’t lose no matter how things turn out.
“Big Oil” does not have one single position on this subject.
Shell and BP have been openly sympathetic to global warmist scaremongering. I believe the position of BP and Shell was based on political expediency, not on scientific evidence. Their senior management picked the “easy safe route” to avoid public criticism, and their successors will regret this expediency.
Exxon under former CEO Lee Raymond was scientifically opposed to global warming mania and fought it for a few years, and then capitulated to extreme pressure, including a boycott campaign launched by Greenpeace (and covertly financed by a few other oil companies, imo).
Recently Exxon’s CEO Rex Tillerson spoke out again, sensibly advocating adaptation to climate change.
In the end, I believe that Exxon’s public opposition to global warming mania, for which it was savaged in the media, will prove to be the correct scientific and ethical stance.
Here in Canada, Talisman Energy CEO Jim Buckee publicly opposed global warming alarmism. Jim has a PhD in Astrophysics from Oxford.
I was an oilsands man in my earlier career, and became Manager of Oilsands for CanadianOxy, now Nexen. I had responsibility our ownership interest in three large oilsands projects, including the large Syncrude Canada project.
I have studied climate science since about 1985 and have written about it since about 2002. I am a Professional Engineer and believe it is my professional obligation to write the truth as I see it about this false crisis.
I suggest that my (our) predictive record on this subject is infinitely better than that of the IPCC and the global warming alarmist camp. However, it is notable that every dire prediction of the warmist camp to date has been wrong.
Re-stating from 2002:
We knew decades ago that global warming alarmism was wrong. We confidently stated in 2002:
[PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals , the Globe and Mail and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae]
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
On global warming:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
On green energy:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
I suggest that our two above statements are now demonstrably true, within reasonable probabilities.
I also wrote in an article in the Calgary Herald published on September 1, 2002, based on a phone conversation with Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson:
On global cooling:
“If (as I believe) solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
Bundle up!
Regards, Allan
The ‘Green Industrial Complex’
—————————————-
They are actually ‘Energy Companies’. If the price of energy stays constant, then their business is constant, which is another way to say its shrinking on the global stage. (Compare the size of the oil industry to the entire economy in 1973 vs today).
Green Energy is a profit revolution like no other. You have governments handing out 20 year contracts with a ROI of 15% or more, and rising energy prices everywhere! Its a dream come true: They can increase profits and sales with guaranteed long term contracts! Furthermore, since the energy produced is of little use, sales of oil and gas are not affected!
Florida Light and Power (NextEra), BP, GE, Suncor, Enbridge, Dong Energy, E.ON and Masdar – these are just some of the companies at the forefront of this hugely successful program to increase profits.
There are two simple reasons:
1. Every major oil company makes money from wind energy. Indeed, when I was in the wind industry in the early 2000s it was very obvious just how much the scam was being led by the oil corporations.
2. It does the oil companies no harm whatsoever for the price of energy to rise.
– it is far easier to make money from selling 1million barrels at $100/barrel that 2million at $50/barrel … far less effort for just the same money coming in.
Further to point #9, the RSS value for November dropped so that RSS now shows no warming since September 1996 or for 17 years and 3 months. And for those who wish to talk about cherry-picking a point before the 1998 El Nino, the slope is also essentially zero since December 1999, or for an even 14 years. In the graph below, the two lines are shown. They are really right on top of each other so I offset the one so it can be seen.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.65/plot/rss/from:1999.9/trend/offset:0.005/plot/rss/from:1996.65/trend
Kip Hansen says:
December 14, 2013 at 11:37 am
Nothing wrong with the word “warmists”, it just means those believing in dangerous AGW. Not an offensive word, just describes the people correctly.
How should the group alternatively be called? Alarmists is the more appropriate word IMO, exaggerating everything that is possible and can get away with.
It is fair to conclude that there have been many exaggerations by the alarmists.
Noticed the wiki meaning of the word “warmists” is incorrect too.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Warmist
“Warmist is a snarl word used by global warming deniers to describe anyone who they perceive to be “believing” in anthropogenic global warming/climate change”
You will find hardly any skeptics that don’t believe in some form or other, that AGW has some influence either minor or insignificant. It is not an offensive word but its fine to call people not agreeing with it, a word that does not reflect the group?
It’s very easy to start pointing the finger at Big Oil, but let’s not take our eye off the ball. Green idealism is the destruction of capitalism first and all civilization second. If the whole world embraced gas instead of coal, that would get us off coal. If the whole world then embraced wind power and solar power instead of gas, that would take us off gas. If the whole world then embraced a no technological society, eventually that would get us all they way back to hunter-gather stage.
Don’t mistake it. Green Catastrophists are pushing windmills and solar as “sustainable” and “the cleanest” way now, but were windmills and solar to work and were we to adopt them as the way forward, the Greens would then tell us that windmills and solar are evil, after all, and must also be abandoned.
They are winding us backwards one step at a time, and Big Oil has nothing to do with that. The people behind all this aren’t interested in profits, they flat out want the human animal extinct.
A single reason would suffice.
B e c a u s e i t s e r v e s t h e i r i n t e r e s t s
Quite simple. Advanced nuclear technology is already killed for the time being (by a misguided environmental movement, yes). Alternative energy sources are non-players in an open market. Therefore it is only coal that should be eliminated as a competitor. As carbon dioxide emission, when burning coal, is twice as much for the same power output than for hydrocarbons, the easiest way to do that is vilifying that gas and having governments regulate coal out of the market.
The gains the oil industry is looking forward to have are two-pronged. There would be nothing to fear from coal liquefaction, plus the only viable way of electricity production remaining is burning natural gas (produced by fracking). Until the threat from coal is removed, its mere availability puts a hard cap on hydrocarbon prices, even if its presence is virtual in the sense that its market share is decreasing due to (temporarily) low hydrocarbon prices. However, as soon as it is no longer available as an alternative, there is no hard limit to increase market prices, and exactly that’s what big hydrocarbon is planning to do. The meme of peak-whatever is already here to justify that.
We are talking about many trillions of profit here, so the stakes are quite high.
Speed says:
December 14, 2013 at 9:27 am
“For the same reasons that the oil industry didn’t spend $billions or $millions or $anything disproving the existence of a 100 mpg carburetor — it was cheaper to just buy up the patents.”
Speed, you are using one urban legend to try to affirm another. Not even motorcycles could achieve 100 MPG because no carburetor can overcome the LFL of gasoline of Approx. 14,000 ppm of air at normal pressure (Thus, some improvements were made via higher compression engines). Carburetor improvements merely enabled gas/air mixtures to more closely approach the lower limit while maintaining reliable ignition. Computer controlled fuel injection allows an even closer approach, but still falls far short of achieving 100 mpg, because gasoline/air mixtures simply will not burn at lower concentrations, unless you use a diesel engine.
Note: Even at the LFL ratio, there is insufficient oxygen for complete combustion, producing soot.
Thus the use of oxygenating additives, producing more CO2 instead. These additives lower gas mileage…
Joseph W. says:
December 14, 2013 at 10:30 am
To which I say: absolutely!
SR
Well David, you sure brought out the inmates with this one… It’s hard to understand how anyone with a modicum of intelligence could believe the collectivist characterizations of Oil and Gas companies. They sound like their information has been carefully extracted from “Wall Steet,” and “There Will Be Blood.” This is not to say that there are no speculators betting on the future direction of the prices of oil and gas, there are, and there is a lot of money in it. There is so much money in it, that it moves markets around the world. An Exxon announcement can’t influence the market nearly as much as the report of crude on hand, or the natural gas stores.
For those who don’t know it, OPEC is modeled after the Texas Railroad Commission which regulates the production and sale of oil in Texas. OPEC has the luxury of not needing to produce oil or gas if they want the prices to rise. The peasants have nothing to say about what is done and when. Corporations listed on stock exchanges find it much more difficult to curtail production on a whim. Something about shareholders and dividends…
glad to see plenty of comments recognising what must be the #1 reason –
CAGW benefits the oil industry. period.
lorne50 says:
December 14, 2013 at 10:37 am
Martin Mayer says:
December 14, 2013 at 9:56 am
#11) The smart devils in e-e-evil oil companies have learned how to profit from hysteria. Collect subsidies to build wind and solar; sell natural gas to actually generate electricity.
A tax break is not a SUBSIDY why can’t people see this?
*****************************
nowhere did the post say that, it said collect them for wind and solar, which ARE subsidies if they did decide to, and sell NG.
I agree with B e c a u s e i t s e r v e s t h e i r i n t e r e s t s by Berényi Péter but for different reasons.
In a market economy oil prices go up and down with demand. But there is one thing that never goes down: the government’s need for money. AGW is about delinking oil company revenue from the economy and hitching it to government spending.
The precedent is tobacco. Tobacco has been taxed to death for fifty years, right? Yet no established industry has matched its profitability (measured by share price rise) over that period of time.
How?
Government announces a tax hike on tobacco to take place in two months. Thirty days later big tobacco imposes a margin increase. Smokers blame the government. When the actual tax hike arrives a month later the tobacco addicts blame the authorities again.
So the tobacco companies get a margin increase that goes straight to the bottom line. The government gets the blame. And if a few people quit smoking, so what? The companies can cannibalize cigarette machines for parts rather than buying new ones.
People are addicted to oil just like tobacco. If you live fifty miles from your job you are a gasoline addict. But unjustified price rises for oil benefit the oilcos even more than they help tobacco because big oil must drill in increasingly difficult and expensive locations. Even fracking is very expensive. If demand softens because of gouging , no problem — as long as the price keeps rising.
What is key is that the oilcos have someone to blame. Ortherwise people might demand government take action. If the public gets really upset and defeats politicians the latter are well taken care of.
Oil companies do not debunk AGW theory. They are behind it.
Note to Kip:
Reading truly is fundamental…
Pippen Kool says:
“Oh, and let’s not forget the Koch funding of the BEST study…”
The BEST study was thoroughly debunked.
And, “Koch” again? Run along now Pippen, back to your alarmist blog home. You need some new talking points.
Kip Hansen says:
December 14, 2013 at 11:37 am
“I found this piece consistently spoiled by the author’s repeated rank name-calling, almost total lack of scientific or logical rigor, and — final straw — devolving into a political attack on the President. Not even his own opinion, but just a copy-and-paste attack from the Washington Post.”
Krauthammer is in WaPo? What with solidarity amongst socialists? Obama should have a word with Bezos.
Great post, especially the slides of Hansen’s predictions vs reality. That one really nails it. He set up a falsifiable hypothesis. We have waited to see whether his hypothesis was falsified. It was. Surely that should be the end of the story!
Congrat’s Gordo!
I’ve never seen anything more thoroughly bass-ackwards in my life. It takes a very special ability to so get something as simple as supply & demand so thoroughly backwards.
Crude oil is a generally fungible global commodity. The price is the result of the market’s perception of two “balances”:
1) The global supply of and demand for crude oil
2) The supply and demand of currency.
Oil companies don’t raise or lower crude oil prices. Oil companies react to rising or falling oil prices by spending more or less money on exploration, drilling and otherwise acquiring more oil to sell. This is how the law of supply and demand works.
Oil prices are raised and lowered on commodities exchanges. The primary driver of oil prices since 2009 has been the devaluation of the US dollar and other major fiat currencies. The massive quantitative easing programs have caused the supply of such currencies to rise much faster than the supply of commodities and other hard assets.
St Louis Fed Adjusted Monetary Base
Adjusted Monetary Base vs Brent Crude Oil Price
Price of Crude Oil in Gold
The 2007-2008 spike in oil prices was primarily due to demand and a very low excess production capacity.
The spike in the price of oil since 2009 is due to a combination of Fed’s printing presses and a global decline in excess production capacity since 2009.
I’m a bit amazed here at how many people missed the entire point.
And for the record, our little PK troll managed to bring out the “Heartland” argument. Too bad he/she/it never actually followed up to see exactly what that money was for.
Nope, oil companies have absolutely NO interest in debunking AGW, and have financed the AGW machine quite well. Those who don’t get it are in denial of reality.
I agreed with you except for this.
My reasons are the following:
———————-
Shell and BP put money into the Climate Research Unit.
———————-
“Exxon-Led Group Is Giving A Climate Grant to Stanford”
Four big international companies, including the oil giant Exxon Mobil, said yesterday that they would give Stanford University $225 million over 10 years….In 2000, Ford and Exxon Mobil’s global rival, BP, gave $20 million to Princeton to start a similar climate and energy research program…”
Source: New York Times – 21 November 2002
———————-
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project
“Financial Support – Berkeley Earth is now an independent non profit. Berkeley Earth received a total of $623,087 in financial support for the first phase of work,…..First Phase
…….Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates) ($100,000) Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000)……”
Source: berkeleyearth.org/donors
———————-
More on oil funded green bodies.
I will now follow up with
May 2013
The Guardian
“The giants of the green world that profit from the planet’s destruction”
The Nation
“Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free”
The Nation
“Why Aren’t Environmental Groups Divesting from Fossil Fuels?“
Oil companies have a LOT to lose because of CAGW. They have been pumping Co2 into otherwise discarded oil wells for well over 30 years! This is done to get at the residual oil. Why not get paid to help save the planet? Warmists are just a bunch of suckers, big oil is one step ahead of the game. Pay them to do something they already do. Warmists are suckers or colluding crooks. Did I mention Pachauri set up Glorioil to extract help big oil extract residual oil? He was their scientific advisor while still head of the IPCC. What a con job.
More on residual oil recovery.
http://www.shell.com/kwt/aboutshell/media-centre/news-and-media-releases/archive/2007/reputation-co2-14062007.html
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/publications/EP/CO2_EOR_Primer.pdf
“Why the Oil Industry Doesn’t Spend its Billions on Disproving the Junk Science of AGW”.
It does spend billions doing precisely this. Exploration, production, refining and marketing of petroleum is very expensive. It causes the CO2 ppm to continue to rise, and as the predictions of the climate models deviate more and more from measured temperature, and the predictions of dangerous climate events diverge more from less dangerous reality so eventually it will become ever more clear what a farce the whole AGW scam is.
// Humor //
Al Gore’s Zombies Top 10 Reasons to reject this article:
(10) You’re NOT a Climatologist.
(9) It doesn’t fit the very accurate computer models.
(8) Scientific [Consensus] Proves you’re wrong.
(7) The sea is rising at such a rapid rate, you’ll be underwater in just a few years.
(6) You’re a denier.
(5) The oil companies pay people tons of money to write this.
(4) Your argument is just junk science.
(3) The data proves we are right, you must believe in a flat Earth.
(2) You hate children and don’t care about the planet Earth.
(1) Al Gore, who invented the internet, said so.
You forgot reason #11 (or maybe #0): It’s usually cheaper to just buy a Senator or two 🙂
(actually, this may not be sarcasm).
The author was quoting the paper. It’s in the abstract here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1
@ Brian H &.Polycicritic,
I was quoting the paper… However, 1.6 K is the correct notation.
Unless AGW believers CAN irrefutably separate natural cycles and the effects of human activity and prove it categorically, they have no case to put whatsoever.
Re the piece by Mr Krauthammer:
“How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change .”
“Obama’s declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide: Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years — a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.”
“For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible.”
No, it is not incomprehensible. It is good politics. Take a stance on stopping something that is thought to be BAD, and announce a major campaign against it. Two possibilities – it exists or it doesn’t exist. If it does exist there are two possibilities – you fix it or you don’t fix it. If you fix it, good. You may even get some kudos. If you don’t fix it you are in dead lumber.
But if it doesn’t exist, down the track you can show that it doesn’t exist. You can show that you have spend billions and it doesn’t exist. You can really show to everybody it doesn’t exist. Great! This means that you have done what you said you would and have ‘fixed’ a problem. Great kudos! Everybody is happy – you get re-elected, or at least your party does. Joy can be unconfined!
And Mr Krauthammer thinks President Obama’s action is incomprehensible? Compare Johnson’s War on Poverty. Compare Nixon’s War on Drugs. Real problems, total failure. President Obama has picked the soft option. In three years time he announces with great fanfare: “The World is NOT Warming!” His policies worked, didn’t they?????????????
I acknowledge and thank the others who have also made this point, but this is well worth repeating…
,
CodeTech says: December 14, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Nope, oil companies have absolutely NO interest in debunking AGW, and have financed the AGW machine quite well. Those who don’t get it are in denial of reality.
You can’t swing a cat without hitting a Rockefeller-funded enviro-activist group in Canada so I don’t know where this ‘big oil funds deniers’ meme even comes from … the opposite is true.
Thanks for sharing your “hobby” with us.
Reading this post, it is like the whole history of the Global Climate Coalition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Climate_Coalition) has been disappeared!!!
The fact is that the fossil fuel companies and other companies did indeed try to fight openly against the science for a while. However, around the turn of the millenium, the scientific evidence reached a point where it was no longer credible to oppose the scientific consensus…and the group fell apart (although some companies, like Exxon, continued to fund organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute that continued to attack the science).
joelshore says:
“…that continued to attack the science.”
There is no credible ‘science’ supporting catastrophic AGW. None.
To be credible, science must have testable measurements that show the degree of global warming per unit of CO2 emitted by human activity,
There are no such measurements.
I trust that sets the record straight.
I skimmed your APEGGA article. Too bad you didn’t have this New Zealand investigative report on Enron and Kyoto published in October 2005: http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html This linked article is a poorly formatted copy of the magazine original, and subject to the same formatting issues that were rife then. But bear with it. It is a trove of detail. Unfortunately the research links at the bottom are not longer available, although I read them at the time and saved them somewhere.
This appears to be an update of it: http://www.thebriefingroom.com/archives/2008/03/nov_05_au_editi_4.html
You will also find this 30-minute show with researcher Vivian Krause multo-interesting as well, specifically what’s happening with the US charity payoff of the tribes NE of Fort McMurray, and in the interior of BC that she discovered in US tax returns:
Joel Shore
fails test questions a refrigeration student can pass.
(1)Do you realize it’s impossible to illuminate a sphere, spinning, in vacuum, to stable temp
then immerse it spinning
in a frigid nitrogen/oxygen bath
and and have temperature go up,
rather than
down?
—-
Refrigerator technician: Yes I do.
—-
Joel Shore: “No – you- you don’t understand!!” “That happens all the time! Its in all the textbooks!”
“Honest!”
=======
(2)Do you realize it is impossible to wrap insulating, light diffracting media, around a sphere illuminated to stable temp in vacuum
removing 20% energy to sensors on the surface
and have heat sensors distributed across the surface,
show more energy arriving,
than when more energy was?
—-
Joel Shore: “Why that happens every single day! Every body knows that!”
—-
Refrigeration student: {Looks at Shore} “Woah. What a screw up.”
=======
(3)Do you recognize the impossibility
of wrapping reflective insulation around a sphere heated in vacuum until 25% energy in
is removed from sensors,
and have those sensors indicate
yet more heat
than when there was 20% removed
by identical physically reflective/diffracting media?
—-
Joel Shore: “Oh, yew just don’t understand the magic of
quantum bull shooting from a professional grant whore!”
—-
Refrigeration student: “LoL! That’s crazy. ZERO for t.h.r.e.e.”
=======
T.H.R.E.E. FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
which function as
——-
“Is Joel D Shore delusional?”
——-
checks.
People must cease using the meaningless term “climate change”.
The issue has always been about anthropogenic global warming … that carbon dioxide emitted by human activities is causing catastrophic global warming and is the key driver of climate change, otherwise known as “the IPCC mantra”.
Every time sceptics use the term “climate change” they are just adding to the confusion put out by propagandists about this issue, which just adds even more confusion over the issue to an already confused society.
If we all get back to basics, and talk about dangerous global warming (which isn’t happening), the easier it will be to neutralise the propaganda pumped out by global warming alarmists. But if people keep referring to climate change, well, they’re doing a disservice to the efforts of those trying to expose the propaganda pumped out by the alarmists.
Whilst it is impossible to prove a negative it is possible to check the models against the real world. Check the GHG theory predictions against reality. Look at ice core data, which shows that it is temperature that drives CO2 not the reverse. Check the IPCC egergy flow model, in AR4, which is so far from reality to be a real JOKE. Show that the GHG theory violates the laws of thermodynamics.
EASY, but impossible for a company that wishes to sell its products to a gullible public.
joeldshore says:
December 14, 2013 at 8:35 pm
around the turn of the millenium, the scientific evidence reached a point where it was no longer credible to oppose the scientific consensus.
Really? Do tell! Your view of history is as warped as your view of science is. That is, it isn’t based on fact, only pure emotion. The “scientific evidence” was scant then, and never improved, and the “scientific consensus” was pure hype-driven fantasy.
Okay, debunk anything you like. Wonder why the Pentagon is so worried, Also, did the continuing and significant rise in sea levels occur due to an icy comet crashing down, that hasn’t made the news yet…or because the ocean is warming and water is expanding?
The two main components of sea level rise are 1) thermal expansion and 2) glacial retreat (negative mass balance, ice melting/ablating faster than accumulating).
Thermal expansion only occurs when the climate is warming. There has been little to no net thermal expansion since the most recent phase of warming stopped between 2001 and 2003.
Glacial retreat will generally occur whenever the climate isn’t significantly cooling. The most recent period of significant glacial advance (positive mass balance, ice accumulating faster than ablating) was during the Little Ice Age. Most alpine/valley glaciers, like Glacier National Park, reached their maximum Holocene extent during this period. Most glaciers will remain in a state of negative mass balance until the climate begins to cool on a similar scale as the Little Ice Age.
This is why the average rate of sea level rise dropped from ~3.5 mm/yr to ~1.8 mm/yr since 2003. Since many other factors affect sea level, it’s not rising everywhere and the rate is extremely variable locally and regionally.
The oceans are the proximal drivers of climate change at sub-tectonic scales. Like the climate, sea level has oscillated on several cycles of varying frequency and amplitude throughout the Holocene. We have been in the positive phase of the ~1,000-yr cycle since can. 1600 AD and in the negative phase of the ~60-yr cycle since 2001-2003.
From a NatGeo article…
“Core samples, tide gauge readings, and, most recently, satellite measurements tell us that over the past century, the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters). However, the annual rate of rise over the past 20 years has been 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year, roughly twice the average speed of the preceding 80 years. ”
Just sayin’…
And, yes, as you said, sea level rise at any given point on the globe is variable, but only because the land adjacent to the ocean is rising and/or falling…
@Frish,
Sea level rose at the same rate in the early 20th century, before anthropogenic carbon emissions became significant, when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 315-330 ppmv. Then it stopped rising in the mid-20th century.
From ~1980-2003, sea level was rising at a rate of nearly 4 mm/yr. Since 2003, the rate has been less than 2 mm/yr. Sea level, like the climate oscillates on multiple cycles of different frequencies and amplitudes.
Sea level was roughly 2 meters higher than it currently is during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (~4-7 ka), when atmospheric CO2 levels were supposedly 270-290 ppmv.
Sea Vail et al, 1977, Blum et al., 2003, Jevrejeva et al., 2008 and the recent paper in GRL by the CU sea level team. I linked to it in a previous comment.
My next WUWT submission will deal with Quaternary sea level oscillations… assuming I find the time to finish it.
Terrestrial subsidence and emergence do not affect the height of sea level, the parameter measured by satellite altimetry. Go to the CU sea level site and look at the sea surface map.
Frish says:
Okay, debunk anything you like. Wonder why the Pentagon is so worried
What, pray tell, makes you think they’re “worried”? Can you wrap your brain around the concept “follow the money”?
Allan MacRae says:
December 14, 2013 at 11:55 am
Excellent point! Capitulation in the face of lies is never good and the oil industry has done so, in many cases. The green ads placed by oil, gas and coal companies are particulary obnoxious and since they are viewed by so many, simply help to support the lies. History teaches us that the left lives by the lie and only the truth can combat the lie. George W Bush, I am sure, was trying to be a gentleman and did not fight back against all the lies and personal destruction aimed at him during his presidency and look and how that worked out for the cause his party. I would say that history will judge this as his greatest mistake but, unfortunately, lies that go unchallenged become historically accurate. Those who win the wars write the history, even the war of words.
If people are going to talk about temperature and climate PLEASE get your units straight
A degree C has a larger temperature span than a degree F
A degree C is 9/5 of a degree F, a unit of Kelvin (K) is the same as a unit of C they just start at different points
K starts at absolute zero and C starts at freezing point of water (32 deg F)
The range between freezing point and boiling point is 100 degrees in C (Celsius)
0 deg C = 32 deg F = freezing point of water
100 deg C = 212 deg F = boiling point of water
Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same temperature at minus (negative) -40
Fortunately Canada started its switch to metric when I was in grade three and my grade was chosen as the grade to be switched over
I had new books throughout elementary school and grew up being fully versed in both systems.
Just some info to help those that don’t know temperature units.
“10) It’s impossible to prove a negative.”
Can you prove that it is not possible to prove a negative? If so, you will have proved a negative.
It is, in fact, often possible to prove negatives.
http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf
http://www.discord.org/~lippard/debiak.html
The fact is, energy companies provide much funding to alarmists and very little to skeptics. The reason is simple; those companies expect to make money trading carbon credits and allowances, as advocated by alarmists, which are nothing but adders to the prices ordinary consumers pay for energy. Inter alia, carbon credits are a very effective way of redistributing wealth – from average and low-income people to billionaire investors in green energy.
To Frish:
You wrote: “Okay, debunk anything you like.
Wonder why the Pentagon is so worried.”
You might consider this. The Pentagon takes orders from the CinC–who
just HAPPENS to be one Barack H. Obama. As in David
Middeton‘s point above, this individual Barack H. Obama
has declared that global warming is a huge problem. That means he has
ordered the Pentagon to consider it a huge problem. You don’t become
a general or an admiral without learning to play the political game. So
they salute and say, “Sir, yes sir!” and go off to find some lieutenant
colonel to head up a task force. Said task force will inevitably include
the usual suspects from universities and green organizations, whose
findings are predetermined by their funding.
I hope I’ve been able to clear up this point for you.
Oh, I see. This is an anti global warming site that uses little bits of immaterial information to bolster your anti science stance. All those climate scientists are wrong, and you are right.
Where’s YOUR Nobel?
Where’s YOUR millions of peer reviewed papers?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
REPLY: Well, I don’t know of a scientist in history that has had millions of peer reviewed papers, but I suppose your point is that volume matters over substance.
As for Nobel prizes, one only need to look at Al Gore, to see how useful that is to the debate: http://wp.me/p7y4l-pQp
– Anthony
Oh, and by the way, the pentagon was concerned about global warming long before Obama was elected. Republicans went out of their way to shut it down. But facts don’t get into the bubble, do they?
REPLY: Citation? Facts need to be presented, as we just don’t take the word of angry ranters – Anthony
To Mike:
You might want to remember, that 2007 Nobel prize was NOT
for Physics or Chemistry, but was the PEACE prize. IOW,
in the opinion of the awarding body, the work of the IPCC
and Al Gore were judged the most significant contributions to
“world peace” that year.
The Nobel prize committee used to be honest enough to admit
that there were years when they couldn’t find an excuse to
award the peace prize (e.g., 1972, 1967, 1966). Now–
not so much, even if they have to invent criteria.
Comment for A. Watts:
Poster Mike may have been thinking about the
October 2003 report An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and
Its Implications for United States National Security, authored
by Peter Schwartz & Doug Randall.
(link: http://www.s-e-i.org/pentagon_climate_change.pdf)
Considering that the authors are “futurists”, it’s clear they simply
uncritically took the IPCC’s writings and the speculative writings
of some advocates of extreme viewpoints and wrote from that
basis. (Peter Gleick is cited approvingly.) For example, their
premise is of rapid cooling in the Northern hemisphere
due to collapse of the thermohaline circulation.
Considering that the Bush administration allocated an increasing
amount of funding to both climate modeling and climate change
adaption & technology, I’m not sure where he gets his rant about:
“Republicans went out of their way to shut it down.”
(see, e.g., http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_management/issue_summary)
Mike says:
December 16, 2013 at 10:58 am
This is an anti global warming site
Mike says:
December 16, 2013 at 11:00 am
But facts don’t get into the bubble, do they?
Here are some facts. Do you dispute them?
It is 17 years and 3 months for RSS since September 1996 that there has been no warming. And if you want to avoid the El Nino, it is still an even 14 years since December 1999 that there has been no warming. As for statistically significant warming at the 95% level, that goes back 21 years for RSS to December 1992.
@wbrozek,
In Logical Fallacy-land (visualize SkepSci), appeals to authority, popularity, Straw Men and argumentum ad hominem are facts. {Sarc Off}
Allan MacRae says:
December 14, 2013 at 11:55 am
“Big Oil” does not have one single position on this subject.
Shell and BP have been openly sympathetic to global warmist scaremongering. I believe the position of BP and Shell was based on political expediency, not on scientific evidence. Their senior management picked the “easy safe route” to avoid public criticism, and their successors will regret this expediency.
Exxon under former CEO Lee Raymond was scientifically opposed to global warming mania and fought it for a few years, and then capitulated to extreme pressure, including a boycott campaign launched by Greenpeace (and covertly financed by a few other oil companies, imo).
This is true BP’s Lord Brown (former CEO) is a firm believer in agw but his emissions control vision
is to drastically reduce coal usage in power stations and promote the use of oil and gas instead; particularly gas from fracking as overall CO2 emissions will be lower.
@ cagwsceptic,
ExxonMobil was also directly threatened by the US Senate with a tobacco-style Inquisition if they continued to support groups like the CEI and Heartland.
Publicly traded corporations are also under continuous government pressure to be “socially responsible corporate citizens,” whatever the frack that is.
Even the AAPG has toned down its position in response to external pressure and a small, but very vocal, minority of our membership. The latest AAPG position statement remains skeptical, but is mostly neutral.