Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
Current attacks on those who question the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are signs of desperation. You can detect the exasperation in this comment by President Obama.
“So unfortunately, inside of Washington we’ve still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but they’re wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate,” Obama said, doubling down on remarks made during his State of the Union Address this year by adding that, “Climate change is a fact.”
Whoever said it wasn’t a fact? Does the President believe that if humans disappeared climate change would stop? If he does, it is a reasonable, but ludicrous conclusion to draw from the IPCC claim that 95+ percent of climate change since 1950 is due to human production of CO2.
Why is the most powerful person in the world ranting against a few people expressing different views? If they are so wrong why does he bother? He insults people by suggesting they are dupes. John Kerry made even more irrational comments.
“We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.”
These are uneducated, intemperate, dismissals, even for politicians. Why do they feel so threatened by what the deniers are saying? It is a classic example of protesting too much.
There is clearly a counterattack emanating from a siege mentality White House driven by four major conditions.
- It is the avowed primary policy driver for President Obama’s domestic and foreign policies.
- The last chance for a global climate policy occurs December 2015 in Paris (COP21).
- Polls, especially from the UN, show the public does not consider climate change a concern.
- Major countries, such as India, are already announcing ambivalent positions on CO2 reduction and refusal to limit burning coal.
Responses to claims by scientists who challenged IPCC science were always political. IPCC defenders know a scientific response to the scientific challenges were a waste of time because of the general lack of scientific knowledge. They know the IPCC Report of Working Group I The Physical Science Basis is indefensible because the document lays out all the severe limitations of the science. They know the science is wrong because the predictions are always wrong. If they don’t know these things, then their ignorance is willful. Something apparently confirmed by their failure to acknowledge the problems and correct the science. Instead, they ignore the evidence and resort to ad hominem[1] attacks.
Labeling legitimate scientists as “global warming skeptics” exploited the public failure to know that skepticism is the role of science and scientists. Those pushing the IPCC claims did not look at the scientific evidence that skeptics produced to contradict the hypothesis. They knew the public didn’t realize the implications of the fact that CO2 continued to increase, but the temperature didn’t. It was only when cold winters conflicted with claims of global warming that they acted (Figure 2). They could no longer ignore their frozen lying eyes.
Figure 2 (Published in 2008)
Evidence of the impact appeared in a 2004-leaked CRU email from the Minns/Tyndall Centre on the University of East Anglia (UEA) campus that said,
“In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media.”
To which Swedish Chief Climate Negotiator Bo Kjellen replied,
“I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming.”
They didn’t address the science. They changed the label to “climate change” and amplified the personal attacks, as skeptics became deniers, with all the holocaust connotations. The name “climate change denier” is wrong on many levels. Its creation and use prove the creators and users do so to exploit the public lack of understanding. As usual, IPCC proponents ignored or deflected all scientific challenges. The overarching theme of the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) illustrates a similar response. Ignore the scientific questions and attack the individual. One of the most egregious examples disclosed by the emails was the attack on Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas by John Holdren.
Holdren moved the goalposts again in 2014 and launched a full assault with the 840 pages “National Climate Assessment”. In that publication, he initiated the term “Climate Disruption”. It achieved Holdren’s objective as CBS News explained in, “Report Uses Phrase ‘Climate Disruption’ As Another Way To Say Global Warming.”
Climate change’s assorted harms “are expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond,” the National Climate Assessment concluded Tuesday. The report emphasizes how warming and its all-too-wild weather are changing daily lives, even using the phrase “climate disruption” as another way of saying global warming.
It is interesting because it is the first label that is not just scientific. A disruption is a break or interruption in normality, so the inference is that an abnormal disruption in climate is due to humans. So far, an ad hominem name is not attached. Maybe it’s because denier still works, but more likely it is built in and unnecessary. The ad hominem attacks prove that the entire IPCC process was and remains political. If it were about science, it couldn’t fulfill George Will’s comment that,
“When a politician says, “the debate is over,” you can be sure of two things: the debate is raging, and he’s losing it.”
If you are in the group who call challengers, climate change deniers, it implies that you deny that climate changes. The distinction between human-caused change and natural change is irrelevant at this point because the public knows virtually nothing about natural change. If they did, they would not be so easily misled. I wonder how many understood what Dr. Philip Lloyd said in his assessment of temperature records?
Holocene century-on-century changes have a standard deviation close to 1 deg C, so if there is a signal due to carbon dioxide, it still has not emerged from the background noise.
You are also in the group that believes “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”, which allows you to ignore the evidence and pursue personal attacks. People in this group, including the mainstream media, have a political agenda,.
In the countdown to Paris and the end of the Obama administration we see; increasing personal attacks on scientists doing their job properly; false claims about extreme weather; continued denial that current climate change is within the range of natural variability; and continued denial or avoidance of contradictory evidence. We are experiencing the supposed, but unnecessary, emancipation from fossil fuels. Irving F Stone (1907-1989), a true investigative journalist, described what is happening.
Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.
[1] Ad hominem; (of an argument or reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic. 2. relating to or associated with a particular person:
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For 25 or more years, it has been Global Warming and CAGW. It does well to make them stick to it. When anyone says “climate change”, the response should be “do you mean Global Warming?”. Then take it from there. Going along with “climate change” lets them frame the debate, and is a disservice. It is Global Warming, make them own it.
In fairness, the IPCC was not named the IPGW.
Let them own their failed predictions and don’t get trapped into semantic arguments.
Hmmm….I wonder if they knew then that the whole “Global Warming” meme was going to go bust. “Global Warming” was just to set the hook?
Establish in the public’s psyche that Man is responsible for high temperatures so Man needs to be controlled (by “us”). When the temps stop rising, shift to Man is responsible for any change in the weather. Therefore the control (of Man) still need to remain in place.
Since this is “Global”, who better to benevolently oversee the controls than the UN?
The IPCC – is that the one that stands for Intergovernmental Panel of Corrupt Climatists?
It is important that the theory is and remains global warming.
The so called settled physics/science is that an increase in greenhouse gases MUST (all other things being equal) always lead to warming.
The science and physics of CO2 is and has never been that an increase in CO2 leads to climate change, especially as temperature is but one component amongst many that defines climate and climate variations on a regional basis.
Precisely. I never let them get away with it when I debate.
You are very lucky to let you debate them. I usually find the warmists turning away or running away from debating the science. Then they bring out the emotional blackmail card-‘its for the children and grandchildren” to which the reply is destroying human technology will mean that vastly fewer people can be supported, including said precious children and grandchildren. Mind you, the warmists ALWAYS reserve the right to pick up their bat and ball and leave in a huff when they know they have been soundly beaten
6- The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.
Dalai Lama
Is he wrong then?
TonyL:
Agreed: I never use ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’, but I like to take it a step further: ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ really nails it!
“Unprecedented, Catastrophic, Anthroprogenic, Global Warming”
I like to use “anthropogenic global warming”, it really makes them spin:)
Since it used to be called Catastrophic man-made Global Warming (CaGW) this should now be referred to as Catastrophic man-made Climate Change (CaCC) to capture the real, hidden meaning in the deceitful phrase – Climate Change.
TonyL – right on the mark !!! Dr. Ball is using ‘Climate Change’ in the sense of ‘Natural Climate Change’ (NCC), but the IPCC, Obama, etc., are using it in terms of ‘Global Warming Climate Change’ (GWCC). I would love to be at an Obama press conference and ask him if he is referring to GWCC or NCC.
As Joe Bastardi stated (my words), you shoved Global Warming down our throat for many years – you said it, you own it.
Holocene century-on-century changes have a standard deviation close to 1 deg C
=================
As such, temperature swings of +/- 3C per century are well within the range of natural variability. The figure of 2C CO2 limit is a nonsense figure, because natural variability exceeds that.
In effect the IPCC is trying to limit tidal changes to 2 feet, when natural tidal changes are 3 feet.
Good way of putting it.
Just look at the former ports, now high and dry, from the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.
And the ports from the same period that are now under water. There is no simple way to describe changes in sea level globally. Eustatic changes are presumably global in extent, but they are generally affected and partially masked by isostatic adjustments that result in shifts in both directions locally and also alter basin volumes on larger scales.
Isn’t it normal for a lawyer to defend his client irrespective of the evidence?
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell”
― Carl Sandburg
As in doing what you are being paid to do ??
That is it exactly. It is all about the money. Money for big government, money for world government, and money for thousands of universities and non-profits, and of course, money for the self-designated elite.
“Climate change” and “climate crisis” are phrases that fit more easily into the religious chantings of the duped and ill-informed than does “anthropogenic global warming”.
… and so it is written.
I am sick and tired of the government-induced “climaphobia”, being foisted upon people, that are not willing or able, to think for themselves. Vote out the Climate alarmists, before they destroyed our economy, our landscapes, and our affordable energy. This scam has got to end!
Love that term. “Climaphobia”…and by extension, ” climaphobics”. Perfect!
How about “climakleptomania”?
This isn’t about science. A frame-based philosophy that avoids reasoning through inference (i.e. created knowledge) and is strictly limited in both time and space by virtue of the scientific method. A philosophy that is rarely respected and routinely violated during political maneuvering.
This is about real or coerced political/social consensus. This is about Flat Earth decrees by a desperate establishment that seeks to secure capital and control (e.g. left-wing establishment of monopolies) to marginalize and neutralize competing interests. Separation of Church (i.e. organized moral/behavioral consensus) and State is a fantasy in both principle and practice.
It will take a change in the US government administration to address the science of AGW properly and openly. There is too much at stake politically for it to change on its’ own. A real open debate must occur even though ‘debate’ is not part of the scientific principal but neither are most warmists.
No it will take even colder temperatures than the USA has been experiencing or repeatedly cold temperatures over many years.
The public will eventually wise up when the reality that they experience really no longer matches what they are being told to believe. Until then the Politicians controlling the Scientists and the MSM can just carry on lying as if they are correct.
Something that many people seem to forget is that this whole movement only really got traction because the world really was warming up. Or at least the part of it inhabited by university educated liberals. I remember the winters of my childhood when I accompanied my Grandfather on his trap line. I remember each Christmas the first big Snowmobile expedition of the year was to travel over the lakes and marshes to my Aunt and Uncles for Christmas dinner. Something we have not been able to do for the last thirty years.
It was easy to believe in Global Warming then.
I think you underestimate the general population. There will be dyed in the wool fanatics for years to come, and Politicians will continue trying to leverage it for money. But for the most part your everyday voter is no longer interested. It has become an academic debate and once politicians realize it will cost them more votes than it will get them, they will pretend it never happened.
Speaking as a warmist, ‘global warming’ is fine by me, stick with it, but as I know you guys just love factual accuracy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (that’s ‘climate change’, not ‘global warming’) was founded in 1988.
I agree with you. And we ought to study climate change as it does change.
Plus it’s hard to talk about global warming as anything but an historical event anyway.
No one is disputing the nomenclature of the IPCC
However, it is the role of the IPCC that is the root of the problem:
“The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the
scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of
risk of human-induced climate change.”
Nowhere does it say that the IPCC should take account of natural climate change.
“Nowhere does it say that the IPCC should take account of natural climate change.”
It’s all very very strange. In order to measure “human-induced climate change” they have to measure natural climate change.
But they don’t?
This is a very strange and weird flavor of science?
Yes we should hold the warmists to their claims…they say CO2 is a green house gas that must be controlled (by restricting carbon based fuels) because it causes more energy to be trapped in the earths ecosystem causing the average global temperature to go up. Then the leap that a small temperature increase is dangerous or catastrophic.
Then when the temps don’t increase, don’t follow the model, fit the projection, don’t let them morph the issue, make them explain why the original hypothesis (instantiated in the models) was wrong.
If that was wrong why should we listen the the next line of BS explanations so they can redistribute wealth and control the energy of the world !
Right now the Temperature on Earth is somewhere between about -94 deg. C (179.15 K) and about + 60 deg. C (333.15 K) , and I for one would not be too happy if it goes too far outside of that range for any appreciable length of time.
The FAR was in 1990. This was several years before the discover of the PDO, an natural mode of climate variability. So, they made pronouncements about the cause of the observed warming at the end of last century but didn’t even then understand the natural determinants of the global mean temperature anomaly. Hmmmm. Without being ad hom, the word ‘gullible’ jumps out at me when looking at the letters of your name.
They are only just beginning to discover the oceans and the role it plays in controlling climate here on planet Earth (which happens to be a water world)!
Another great post Dr. Ball.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~~ H. L. Mencken
Skeptics are called “deniers” to associate us with the Holocaust. A holocaust of unimaginable proportions will come to mankind if we dismantle our industrialized societies based on affordable energy. Deaths in the billions is coming if they win.
An astonishingly large fraction of all the sensible things ever written in the English language was written by H.L. Mencken.
chris riley commented:
“An astonishingly large fraction of all the sensible things ever written in the English language was written by H.L. Mencken.”
True statement.
Not only a skeptic but a libertarian and a cynic about human nature.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menckenh.htm
Journalist H. L. Mencken described himself as “absolutely devoid of what is called religious feeling.” He attended a Methodist Sunday School as a child but only, he wrote in “The Schooling of a Theologian,” to allow his father—an unbeliever—to have free time for a nap. The human race is so obviously imperfect, he asserted, that man could not possibly have been the creation of an omnipotent God, but—at best—the bungled effort of “an incompetent committee of gods.”
Surveying American religious life, Mencken found it to be a nearly endless source of material for his iconoclastic pen. A recent Mencken biographer calls him “one of the last American intellectuals to speak out forcefully, pungently, and satirically against the follies of religion.”
The most frequent targets of Mencken’s flamboyant wit were fundamentalists—largely because of their constant efforts to employ the power of government to enforce their moral views. Like Darrow, Mencken could not tolerate intolerance. He believed deeply that individuals should be left to pursue happiness as they saw fit, with as little interference as possible from government or anyone else. In 1922, Mencken declared, “In am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth.”
Fundamentalists, in the view of Mencken, belonged to the great masses of Americans who neither appreciated, nor contributed to, the best of American culture. They, like most people, were ignorant, ignoble, and cowardly. Moreover, fundamentalists lacked the intelligence to understand their own follies and superstitions. “Homo boobiens is a fundamentalist for the precise reason he is uneducable,” Mencken wrote. Fundamentalists, he believed, found comfort in the imbecilities of their creed and “no amount of proof of the falsity of their beliefs will have the slightest influence on them.” They accepted Genesis because it offers a cosmogony “so simple that even a yokel can grasp it”—it holds “the irresistible reasonableness of the nonsensical.”
Mencken contended that if “Genesis embodies a mathematically accurate statement of what took place the week of June 3, 4004 B.C.” then “all of modern science is nonsense” On that point, he had no dispute with most other intellectuals of his time. Mencken differed from other critics of fundamentalism, however, in his insistence that science and Christianity in general could not be reconciled. One supernatural event is just as implausible as another, he believed, and once one part of the Bible is rejected the “divine authority of the whole disappears and there is no more evidence that Christianity is a revealed religion than there is that Mohammedanism is.”
chris riley, I’m afraid sturgishooper’s selections from Mencken give me a picture of a rather mean-spirited, angry little man. I note he mentions his father was without religion which suggests the possibility that had his father been a fundamentalist, Mencken would likely be a religious zealot given his propensity for bullying lesser lights. If he is, indeed, so libertarian to a fault, perhaps it was in later life he relaxed his meanness toward the “yokels” and directed his barbed jibes at himself since toleration didn’t seem to be an obvious strength of character through much of his life. “Mencken could not tolerate intolerance (accept his own toward Fundamentalists). He believed deeply that individuals should be left to pursue happiness as they saw fit (unless they were a fundamentalist), with as little interference as possible from government or anyone else. In 1922, Mencken declared, “In am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth (unless you are a fundamentalist.”
Why would the American intellectual love such a man? Oh well, he was only a journalist, I guess.
Like Darrow, Mencken could not tolerate intolerance.
================
so, they were intolerant of intolerance?
Only because I have yet to publish my own memoires.
🙂
Gary Pearse,
It’s clear to me that you are offended by the disparaging characterization of “Fundamentalists” made by sturgishooper and ascribed to Mencken.
It’s equally clear that you direct your displeasure at Mencken, rather than quarrelling with the accuracy of sturgishooper’s portrayal of his views.
The problem is that your own counter-attack on the putative anti-fundamentalist sentiments of Mencken is focused not on his words but on the paraphrasing done by sturgishooper.
I am at a loss to understand how you came to conclude that Mencken was a “rather mean-spirited, angry little man”; especially in light of his improbable self-sacrifice in submitting to the tedium of Sunday School to permit his father some rest.
Not mean-spirited, not angry, not little.
Nothing to suggest he was a bully nor that he would have been a fundamentalist zealot if only he hadn’t been so averse to that creed.
Perhaps, your implied disdain for journalists is projected on Mencken when he describes Genesis as “so simple that even a yokel can grasp it”. This is insulting to Genesis, not to yokels.
You should not marvel if others perceive you as a literalist if you cannot appreciate that intolerance of intolerance (not Mencken’s words) is not a perverse oxymoron but, actually, an illustration of the contextual nature of language. It is, furthermore, an admirable social attitude, whose antithesis is tolerance of intolerance.
Which view do you espouse?
Chris
Add Shakespeare, Kipling and Churchill and you’ll increase the fraction IMO
They aren’t winning in China, or India, or the Middle East, or Russia, or Africa (African countries say what the Western establishment wants them to say to keep the aid flowing, but they also want China to lend them the money to build coal-fired power stations).
Thus they aren’t winning. It just looks like they are from the perspective of a couple of parts of the world that matter less every day on the global scale.
Maybe “Skeptics” should adopt some bumper sticker-style catchphrases of our own. “I believe climate change is real, is occurring now, and has been occurring for millions of years” or “I believe global warming is real and has been occurring for tens of thousands of years” or “I believe mankind should stop burning fossil fuels over the next 2 or 3 hundred years”, something along those lines.
How about “Stop energy apartheid”
Support pseudo-science and get nowhere … FAST
How about”Politicians love to tell others to do what they themselves would never do”.
How about:
“Anyone who thinks their ideas are so great should lead by example. Anyone who does not should shut the hell up.”
(OK, that last part was a tad gratuitous.)
I can’t decide whether o is the duper or the dupee. Either way he is 97% WRONG.
It matters not at all whether he believes it. It is his path to control over the rest of us, because we are too benighted to decide for ourselves…
Mankind should stop consuming ‘fossil’ fuels when there is a viable cost efficient alternative. So get to work science, stop flapping your jaws and spend your material and non-material gifts productively and make THAT happen.
Why should mankind stop consuming fossil fuels, and what is the viable cost-effective alternative?
I think cnxtim means that until there is a viable cost efficient alternative we should continue to use fossil fuels.
“Mankind should stop consuming ‘fossil’ fuels when there is a viable cost efficient alternative.”
exactly….what they are advocating is we should stop eating apples right now because one day there might be an apple blight
Our children will not know what apple pie is!
Why on earth should we do that ??
Fossil fuels are an economical way of getting widely available energy to masses of people all over the world.
People, if left to their own free will, will usually choose to do things economically, and often as economically as they are able to.
So what is the purpose of exchanging that scenario for a less economical one.
People will stop using fossil fuels when and if it becomes less economical to continue using them.
And they will adopt any and all alternatives to fossil fuels, if an when those become available.
It is that simple.
If cow dung is your most economically available energy source, you will use it to get energy.
If refrigerator sized thermo nuclear fusion power supplies become economically available; say at Fry’s, I will buy one and use it to supply me with energy.
But I’m not going to pay so much as a brass razoo, to try and get somebody else to develop some other form of energy for me to use.
All forms of energy that are available in very dense form, are inherently dangerous in some way or another. In most cases those dangers are well understood, and control methods are widely known.
So we have no pressing need to develop non fossil energy supplies.
But if you do and it is economical, I will be glad to pay you for you to supply me with your alternative energy.
Silly cnxtim. It doesn’t work that way. So many people, especially those who worry that we must do something or we are going to run out of fossil fuels or zinc, get in a panic over fears of being buried in Malthus’s road apples. The beauty of the way things work is you needn’t do anything. What have you done so far to ensure you can heat your home, cook your meal or fuel yourself from A to B. It is all done for you. Without interference by government or anybody else, it’s automatic. Long before the last gallon is pumped, the price signals that we need alternatives. Price magically gushes forth an economic alternative. It is only the centrally planned thinker that interferes with this magic.
What is this unfailing magic? Why, its human ingenuity and the pursuit of profit. Some wise wag once said, we didn’t leave the stone age because we were running short of stones. We continually found better and better ways to do things. I see no reason for this to stop unless, horrors of horrors, the centrally planned totalitarians take over and bury us in horseshit. They are wired to destroy this magic. We aren’t waiting for the oil to stop flowing. We are lining up alternatives all the time – unless we let the central planners design a windmill, solar panel or some other antediluvian future for us. Smile! We wouldn’t even let global warming harm us if, one fine day it were to actually emerge as a problem. You guys’ve got to stop reading the reams of garbage that is coming out of our new Core subject matter educated clones.
“Mankind should stop consuming ‘fossil’ fuels when there is a viable cost efficient alternative. So get to work science, stop flapping your jaws and spend your material and non-material gifts productively and make THAT happen.”
The idea of catastrophic antroproghenic global warming is just the Agent and means for another idea. International socialism/Marxism. It’s not really about climate but more about global government and global control.
Bingo!
By accepting the term “climate change”, skeptics have opened the door for catastrophists to mscharacterize our position. We really need to stop using that term altogether.
The hypothesis is that mankind’s contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere will result in catastrophic global warming, and we’re skeptical of that claim. Period. That’s all this is about. But that is only evident when we use the proper term “global warming” when discussing it. Using “climate change” obfuscates what it is we’re skeptical about.
+1
I agree. When “climate change denier” comes up, it seems the PC response from a skeptic is to say “I don’t deny climate change”. Bunk. I do deny climate change.
In my 50+ years I have not seen the climate change. I’ve experienced heat waves in Texas so hot I carried around a hand towel in my car because the stick shift was too hot to touch. And my air conditioner didn’t work. I’ve tried to scrape ice off my windshield in Houston using a credit card because I didn’t have an ice scraper, and I blew out two hair dryers thawing pipes in my attic. I’ve seen drought, floods, heat and cold and all of it is normal climate.
What is climate anyway? Seems to me the Earth’s climate varies around fairly narrow limits. The further back one goes, the wider these limits, to a point. Was the Little Ice Age climate change or was it normal variability? Roman and Medieval Warming Period natural variability? These were colder and warmer than today.
As pointed out, “climate change” was nothing but a propaganda newspeak. It isn’t theory and it isn’t science. Ask anyone if they have actually experienced “climate change” in their lives.
Dirty little secret. Climate changes slowly except when it doesn’t.
===========
In all of these discussions it pays to have some definition of the terms being used.
‘Climate’ is a man-made term for consolidated weather data over an arbitrary 30 year period which is then compared to current weather data. Never mind that each 30 year period would give a different baseline and change the comparative values or that 30 years may be too short a time for meaningful comparisons.
As you say, you empirical personal 50 year observations show ALL weather is possible at all times and the Earth’s longer history shows even worse is naturally possible without human influence.
My bumper sticker (suggested above) would be ‘Mother Nature is a b1tch. Live with it’
“Ask anyone if they have actually experienced “climate change” in their lives.”
As an exploration geologist I’ve experienced desert climate in central Australia, California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico; sub-arctic climate in the Yukon Territory and Alaska; Mediterranean climate in coastal California, Italy, France, Turkey and Australia; tropical climate in NE Australia, SE Asia and Papua New Guinea; and alpine climate in New Zealand, Austria and Colorado. All this was done by traveling by airplane. But just staying in one spot I never experienced a change in climate – only a change in weather.
Clay,
I feel I have experienced climate change. Some winters in my native region were definitely colder in the 1960s and ’70s than in subsequent decades. Summers, however have not been noticeably warmer.
IMO it’s the PDO, so “natural”, rather than man-made, climate change, however, and only marginally different. The climate classification for the Pacific NW however remains the same.
On the scales of not decades but centuries, millennia, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of years, there is of course more substantial climate change. Some major biomes of glacial intervals go extinct during interglacials, as now. And as recently as the first two epochs of the Cenozoic Era, crocodylians lived in the Arctic.
Does the “climateric” count? ; )
Climate change is measured over at least a 30 years period. It’s actually scientifically always about the past and never about the future. Climate change about the future is an oxymoron?
“But that is only evident when we use the proper term “global warming” when discussing it.”
No, the proper term is Catastrophic Anthropogenic (or Man-made) Global Warming.
Without the impending catastrophe, there is no need to take any action, or indeed, any room for debate because no sensible person disputes the fact that, over the long haul, climate always changes, and within those changes are periods of global cooling, and global warming.
Spot on Steve !
Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming is the correct term which we should all be using. The use of this phrase will add to the bed-wetters’ pains as they try to vomit their beloved Mann-made hockey-stick up their gullets.
We have them on the run but don’t shoot, let ’em burn.
“Catastrophic Anthropogenic…” may be more technically correct, but “global warming” is better for a lot of reasons, not least because its a term from 12 to 15 years ago that sounds as out-dated as the theory is. The switch to “climate change” was intentional, I would love for skeptics to intentionally change it back and use it in all public discussions.
As in, “No I’m not denying climate change, but if you want to talk about man-made global warming, then I have some questions for you…”
When someone says “climate change” I ask, “Do you mean global warming”? From there depending on the reply, you can as natural or man-made. And from there, do you also mean caused by women in addition to men?
Wait, now we are against it when women turn up the heat?
I may have to re-evaluate my position…
The hypothesis is…that a slight increase in CO2…would cause a slight increase in temp…..that would cause a sight increase in humidity….the slight increase in humidity would cause temp to slightly increase again….which would cause humidity to slightly increase again
The hypothesis was run away global humidity
Except increased humidity leads to increased water vapor absorption of incoming solar energy, and increased cloudiness. Both of those reduce the amount of solar energy that reaches the surface and gets converted to waste heat trash in the deep oceans.
So increased humidity (if) caused by increased CO2, is a global cooling process. So it can’t runaway thermally.
George, they didn’t know that then….that was the original hypothesis
and where are we now?…..they still don’t know what humidity and clouds do
Why do intelligent people even pay attention to this crap?
Climate is an artificial construct of man in his desire to develop an average or normal weather condition. There is nothing special about a 30 year average of weather variables we use to “define” climate.
What’s the difference between the Theory of CAGW and a net?
With a net, the holes are tied together!
I think of it as Computer Climate.
“Catastrophic Anthropogenic…” may be more technically correct, but “global warming” is better for a lot of reasons, not least because its a term from 12 to 15 years ago that sounds as out-dated as the theory is.
You said the term global warming was better for “a lot of reasons,” but failed to provide even a single good one.
The issue is allowing the alarmists to move the goalposts, as well as mischaracterize the skeptical position. You make that point yourself about “climate change,” but fail to recognize the same process is ongoing with the term “global warming.”
There is no proof that global warming is necessarily a bad thing. We do know that there has been warming over the relative short term since the Little Ice Age, and also over the longer term since the continental ice sheets receded some 10,000 years ago, give or take, so global warming is an established fact and should not be a point of contention.
One simply needs to recognize that “change” is an inherent attribute of climate.
Not a lot different from lynching.
First, people can be bought…
Occupy people were lining up to get their checks…..
….Ferguson people demonstrated again because they didn’t get their checks
This is about a lot more than just temperatures………..
The rent-a-mobs in action!
Yes, and soon as Obama was elected the Occupy movement ended. Strange coincidence?
Why ‘ranting’?
Because there are people who take snowballs into a debate to try to prove a point. That’s why.
Wrong. Thanks for playing, though.
Do you think Inhofe’s snowball proved something? Let me know.
A magical, theatrical point. I still wanna know how his basket of bread turned to roses.
============
Hey Wagen-
Inhofe’s snowball joke proved that a lot of you warmunists don’t have a sense of humor.
I see! He is a comedian, not a politician. Thanks for clearing that up.
No Franken is the comedian!
And there are other people who turn off the air conditioning to grandstand.
Likely, the Club of Rome is right, and many need to die off. But Obama driving their energy costs up seems a cruel way to accomplish this. Isn’t enlightened education a better choice?
NO, NO, NO.
Perhaps you would be willing to educate by practical demonstrate?
No?
Then stop wishing death to others,
Hope this is meant sarcastically but if not, it is sick.
You first.
Credentialed to moronically destroy. And a fine educational joke, Enginer.
A hypothermic death is a gentle one, doncha know? He’s always a step ahead of the game.
==========
No, many of us do not need to die off. If so, let the Club of Rome and those who believe in them go first.
Global warming was just another tired attempt by the global marxist cabal to attack capitalism. They got caught, and will switch gears to a new “sustainability” theme. Same marxists, same goals, new meme. Same as it ever was.
+1
What’s up with this: “If they don’t know these things, then their ignorance is willful.”? If what the media presents is so one-sided, I don’t think it takes willful ignorance to get caught up in a groupthink.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/04/european-biofuel-bubble-bursts/
Obama really isn’t going to like this… Perhaps he will just deny that it has actually happened.
he’ll be really mad when he hears about it on the news….
I am a climate change denier. I believe that by adopting the warmists’ language, “skeptics” have conceded intellectual ground unnecessarily. Climate change is being used to denote a difference from climate. We undergo climate every minute. If the climate is “changing” normally, why is it called climate change? It is redundant and an indicator of acceptance of the argument. I deny it all.
The International Panel of Corrupt Climatists (IPCC) defines climate change as;
Therein lies the problem. They craftily re-defined the term.
“””””…..observed over comparable time periods.”……”””””
Well there you see the problem.
“Observed” means that it actually happened, so it excludes the output of some computer model run.
And “over comparable time periods” means it is a total waste of time carrying on about what may or may not have happened, a million years ago.
Obama just told a bunch of captive listeners, that the atmospheric CO2 was the highest it has been for a million years.
Who cares. I’m sure that there is nothing that today compares with what it was like a million years ago.
There also weren’t as many humans on the planet a million years ago, so we don’t have any idea whether they liked or hated their CO2 back in those days.
The number of flavors of Ice Cream available at the local 7-Eleven is at a 4.5 billion year high.
Well, to be fair, poor Mr. Obama simply doesn’t know that wikipedia isn’t a very trustworthy source with regard to controversial questions… 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
I lost interest in CAGW very quickly but more from a cynical political view. As soon as I realized there was a way to get rich from carbon trading, I knew it was horse hockey. Then I did the research. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted. AGW is an artifact of poorly designed computer models.
Bingo!
“In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled-nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001), Section 14.2.2.2, page 774
What puzzles me is, why don’t the skeptics (deniers) release all or even one of their scientific peer reviewed papers. Join the scientific discussion and leave your conspiracy theories out.
What “discussion”? I thought the “debate is over”.
You are correct in thinking “the debate is over”..It is. The science isn’t settled. We still have much to learn. What are the deniers doing? Denying the facts and pushing the conspiracy theory.
Oh, it is ON now! Gloves of Mr. Cobb!
1350 and counting.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
@BenSturgis
What ever happened to “burden of proof” and “innocent until proven guilty”? Where is the “smoking gun”?
Sorry Ben, I am still waiting for “unprecedented” EVIDENCE. (I know, the media will say the rain in Texas today was “unprecedented”. But the media have probably never looked at a rainfall intensity nomograph either.)
Having a family that has been close to the land for 150 years, and having a personal life long education in environment, no one has shown me anything substantial enough to believe in CAGW. Yet.
But I am will to consider it given an adequate “proof”. Hasn’t happened so far and like many here, I have thousands of hours of “experience” of one sort or another.
Read about situational bias and you and many other similar articles on this site.
Wayne, don’t forget “An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.”.
Why bother?
The Warmists made predictions.
They didn’t come true
Hansen’s scenario C was for no further CO2 release and that’s the temperature change that happened (with lots of CO2 released).
So The Warmists have already published – CO2 is not a big problem.
How small a problem it is requires very sensitive measurements and some means of distinguishing natural and anthropogenic forcing. Neither of which we Sceptics nor the Alarmists have.
P Lloyd was correct, then, to point out that all we know about natural temperature movement for centuries is +-1 Deg C, and the fluctuation is still within that range. If CO2 is going to move it outside that range, there is not yet any proof od it. All we know for certain is that forecasting models based on CO2 increases and 3.7 Watts/m^2 are demonstrably incorrect. Mathematical catastrophe has been mathematically averted.
@Ben Klijn Sturgis
You obviously don’t know the scientific literature in climate science very well. Though some prominent journals, like Nature, which are biased by the ruling political “zeitgeist”, do often confuse “peer review” with “pal review”, there are a lot of peer-reviewed papers available in the literature by prominent CAGW skeptics. Here are just some recent examples:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-014-2342-y
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n4/full/ngeo
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-014-0011-z
And there is an other recommended reading for you, though I’m afraid that this won’t cure your personal bias in this topic:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2011/06/16/peer-review-and-pal-review-in-climate-science/
Sorry, the second link was not complete. This is the correct version:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n4/full/ngeo2375.html
I was hoping for something scientific about global warming written by a climate scientist.
The classic on what you would mislabel ‘conspiracy’ is ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madnesses of the Crowd’, though there certainly are those who’ve breathed together encouraging this madness. All together now and one, and two.
================
Well Ben, that explains a lot about your “expertise” in the climate debate when you don’t know that Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. Roy Spencer are very well known climate scientist which are rather critically with the usual scare mongering by the IPCC. And Dr. Willie Soon is a astro-physicist whose main research interest is the solar influence on Earth’s climate and who was heavily smeared by people like you quite recently because of his work in this field. And of course: All three cited papers deal with important details about climate change and its different possible causes. If you don’t realize that, you are completely disqualified to discus this topic here further…
But for your personal benefit, here you can read another recent paper with Dr. Willie Soon which shows that the Medieval Warmth Period was warmer than today, and that without any significant man-made CO2 contents in the atmosphere. Maybe you can understand the message of this peer reviewed research result somewhat easier:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825214002232
An excellent suggestion Ben.
How about this one (peer reviewed)
In Geophysical Research Letters, Jan 1 2001, by Professor John Christy, and other researchers at the University of Huntsville, Alabama (UAH).
You might find a report of that paper by generally recognized skeptics at http://unisci.com/stories/2011/0109014.htm
But I’m sure you already know about that one paper, since you seem to be so knowledgeable about the peer reviewed literature on climate.
And if you don’t know about it, then I wouldn’t tell anybody that you don’t, because it has been widely publicized in the media.
It has even been alluded to here at WUWT on many occasions; and this is reputedly the most widely read information site on climate science that there is.
Well there’s one for you.
I guess you never read any of Wei Hok (Willie) Soon’s peer reviewed papers, or Dr. Sallie Baliunas either. Both of them are considered to be global warming skeptics.
I’ve never seen anything relating to conspiracies coming from any of those three.
I know all about that “paper” by soon and Sallie. It’s infamous and severely flawed. She and willie claimed “the climate hasn’t changed in 2000 years.” Those are your denier scientists. There you have it.
Ben Sturgis says:
I know all about that “paper” by soon and Sallie.
Based on your comments, I would be willing to bet money that you have never even read the paper, which describes the past climate as being different from now.
Keep posting, Ben. Your comments are amusing to the highly educated readers here. We see in your comments the typical mouth-breathing head nodders who know nothing. They only “know” the political narrative that the media tells them.
Drs. Soon and Baliunas were targeted ever since their peer reviewed Harvard paper cam out, stating that the 20th Century is not unusually or abnormally warm. That violates the Narrative, so Dr. Soon has been attacked ever since. Numpties like you are just media tools that assist with your mindless attacks.
I note too that the institutions the Dr. Soon works for have received a lot of money for his research. Companies don’t pay big bucks for nonsense. You’re not being paid for yours, right?
Keep posting, Ben. We need some amusement on a slow Sunday afternoon.
Your link doesn’t work George, not for me anyhow.
Ben Sturgis
Well, you were doing OK until now
I think you will find that they said the exact opposite, that climate is always changing and, annoyingly,
Ben, it’s much more fun watching the alarmist apologia get blown up in days if not hours by the like of JeanS and StevieMac. It’s also probably more effective in the long run to let the likes of Nic Lewis and Judy Curry goad the masters of the universe into examining the universe, whilst twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.
==============
Sorry Bruce, I must be going cross eyed after reading here all day. Mistook you for making the comment from Sturgis.
The problem is that the science on climate/weather is so policy based that it at the moment, is mostly a only political/ideological debate there. And that debate is definitely over. How do we debate scientifically when the theme/subject has been politizised?
Here’s some discussion:
All Warmists, please point out any empirically measured evidence of CO2 causing temperature rise.
Show me some, point to it. Just one example.
Sea-ice level is always in flux.
There is no Tropospheric warm zone.
There is no acceleration in sea level rise.
Co2 is a natural trace gas necessary to all life. CO2’s LWIR absorbing qualities are seen in laboratories but in the atmosphere, it’s signal is not enough to rise through the noise in the system. It’s effects are overwhelmed by the natural stability of our atmosphere. Stability that is evidently gained from negative feedbacks(water vapor?). Feedbacks ignored or flat-out wrong in the simulations(models).
Show me some, and make it CATASTROPHIC.
Whatever happened to the coming Ice age? Remember that? That was before Global warming. Now we have Climate change. Thus any kind of weather can now be blamed on climate change. As for Obama and his ilk in panic mode, its clear when he’s trying to convince the coast guard graduates that the a new Ocean is coming. Makes me wonder what Obama is really smoking. Climate change is worse then ISIS. I bet if ISIS set off a nuke in this country Obama would blame it on climate change.