Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
In Aesop’s story of the boy who cried wolf the consequences included him losing his sheep and his credibility, even if he later told the truth. Today, environmental and climate alarmists who cry wolf don’t lose anything. There is no accountability. In fact, they continue to have credibility, keep their jobs and receive funding as millions of others suffer in a multitude of ways. Failed climate predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continue as the basis for regulations and policies, that profoundly affect thousands of people’s lives. What is happening confirms H.L. Mencken’s observation,
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars: the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
Environmentalists, now including the Pope, accuse humans of acting unnaturally by creating a trail of destruction everywhere. However, because they decide what humans do is unnatural, doesn’t make it so. Does the Pope believe that humans and their activities are unnatural? It is as Goethe said, “The unnatural, that too is natural.” Despite that, a major technique of environmental and climate alarmists take natural events and present them as unnatural. The Popes Encyclical includes many examples. Alarmism is amplified by implying, either this has never occurred before, or it is occurring at an unprecedented rate. This works because most people don’t know what is natural and there is an endless supply of natural events.
Some events are better for alarmism than others. Animals are an ideal target because people don’t know the size of animal populations or how much they vary naturally. They also elicit emotionalism that distorts objectivity. Imagine Gore’s arctic ice alarmism without the polar bear. Skeptics provide the other side, but, as with any rejoinder to a false media story, it doesn’t get coverage or is tucked away in an obscure corner of the newspaper. It certainly doesn’t get matching headlines.
A major reason for media distortion is science degrees are rare among journalists, so political bias becomes dominant. Science degrees are also rare among most government bureaucrats, particularly senior bureaucrats, who are invariably graduates of environmental studies programs. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is a classic example with a 1976 Bachelor of Arts in Social Anthropology and a 1981 joint Master of Science in Environmental Health Engineering and Planning and Policy.
So hundreds of stories appear, but how many of them are true? Aaron Wildavsky wrote about the gap between the media story, public understanding and the reality in Yes, But Is It True?
Working with his students at a risk analysis center, Wildavsky examined all the evidence behind the charges and countercharges in several controversial cases involving environmental health and public safety. Here he lays out these cases in terms an average citizen can understand, weighs the merits of the claims of various parties, and offers reasoned judgments on the government’s response.
The graduate students chose topics and pursued their origin and validity. The issues chosen did not withstand examination, yet they triggered laws and public policy. Rarely, are the damages done by those laws or policies, assessed. Accountability for those involved, especially if they are bureaucrats, are rarer. There are two Canadian examples of alarmism that resulted in laws and policies that did extensive social and economic damage. It is time for accountability, but it won’t happen.
Over 30 years ago Roger Pocklington, Oceanographer at the Bedford Institute in Nova Scotia, asked me about weather conditions in eastern and arctic Canada. He studied water temperatures in a transect from Newfoundland to Bermuda and noted a steady decline. At the time, it fit the concern of global cooling, so Pocklington spoke at several conferences. Temperatures in eastern arctic Canada had declined for over thirty years and resulted in a cooler Labrador Current. Colder denser water was pushing further south.
We determined this would impact the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks, but nobody would listen. Then everything changed. Global temperatures began to rise, but Roger’s water temperatures continued to fall. Now he wasn’t even invited to conferences.
Cod numbers declined, and they blamed humans. Overfishing is a small part of the problem because quotas are set with little knowledge of the natural variation in stock numbers. The best study of variations in fish populations and climate by Klyashtorin and Lyubukshin is virtually unknown outside of Russia.
If you assume populations are relatively constant then a natural decline makes fishing harmful at a certain level.
The Canadian government effectively banned cod fishing in 1992. For comparison imagine the US government banning corn production in Iowa. It is 23 years since the ban and although some very limited fishing occurred Fisheries and Oceans report,
Cod populations remain depleted, and the reasons remain disputed.
They finally acknowledged what Roger and I knew from the start.
When water temperatures in many Atlantic areas cooled in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that was part of a wider change in the ecosystem. Cod live within a narrow range of temperatures. If their habitual waters get too warm or cold, they can migrate till they find a comfortable zone. But will they find, for example, the right levels of oxygen? And, if broad environmental changes are taking place, what’s happening to their food?
Animals migrate when the food supply changes. Fish have greater options because they move in three dimensions. The cod moved away from the waters around Newfoundland, but where did the cod go? They migrated into warmer international waters, where Europeans continued to fish them. The question was why weren’t Canadian fishermen allowed to fish in international waters? I understand a secret [pact] with Europe kept them from Canadian waters and Canadians from international waters. They also migrated to shallower warmer inshore waters where they were already off limits to Canadian fishermen because of government regulation. In 1996, I stood on the dock at Fortune Harbour in northern Newfoundland with an 84-year-old fisherman. He told me cod were more plentiful and larger than he could recall in the bay, but he was banned from catching even two to feed his family because of regulations from Ottawa. As a result of the ban, many of the historic fishing ports surrounding Newfoundland and Labrador were abandoned. I urge you to watch this documentary of how the people see what happened to them. The great irony of the story is that oil drilling at Hibernia on the Grand Banks saved the Newfoundland economy, but as the songs relate, this only masked the real damage.
On the west coast of Canada, the story was the same but different for the salmon fisheries. Again salmon numbers declined because of changing water temperatures and the government dramatically curtailed fishing. It is difficult to determine the numbers because the government bureaucrats used their estimates of anticipated numbers to determine fishing quotas. They were consistently wrong and grossly under-estimated the numbers, which allowed them to cut quotas dramatically. No investigation or accountability of grossly inaccurate science and policy occurred. People damaged by the policies complained, but were treated like criminals because they worked in the industry or business. They weren’t collateral damage, they were the problem. As a result, bureaucrats began to give meaningless estimates such as this one in 2010,
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) predicts a summer run of between 4.5 to 30 million sockeye salmon to the Fraser. However, the Pre-season run size forecasts for Fraser River sockeye salmon in 2010 predicts, and the run will most likely be around 11.4 million sockeyes, a forecast that is eerily similar to the 2009 forecast.
The range of 4.5 to 30 million is indicative of no understanding and wide enough to justify anything, especially if you are unaccountable. In some years the Canadian fisheries estimates were wrong by up to 70 percent. The estimate was always low to justify draconian actions. There is no question the number of salmon declined as the natural cycle developed. However, government bureaucrats overstated the severity of the decline to justify severe, unnecessary, restrictions.
Research of the oral tradition of Haida people about weather and climate patterns produced stories about changing patterns that presaged drought. This was followed by a decline in salmon populations and created periods they called the time of “full stomach”. This referred to the distended stomach of starvation, not the fullness of adequate food. The tradition also reported the changing weather pattern that marked the end of the drought conditions and return of the salmon. Apparently cyclical drought patterns correlate with changing ocean water temperatures, low river flow, and poor spawning conditions. The oral tradition indicates the natural pattern of salmon populations.
Declining salmon populations led to the designation of most salmon species as endangered species in Canada and the US. Drastic, restrictive fishing legislation seriously affected communities and lives. Now the natural pattern reasserts itself and record numbers of salmon are reported. One report in 2014 suggested the run might be too big for the Fraser river to accommodate.
These are just two examples of restrictive policies based on a failure to understand natural patterns and populations. They are fuelled by the hysteria of environmentalism, inadequate data, inaccurate knowledge of natural processes, bureaucracies stocked with environmental graduates of the 1980s and 90s, and if all else fails, application of the precautionary principle. Any specific example is problematic but not enough to generate anger and response to what is going on. It is as if every shepherd boy is crying wolf across the country, which creates the illusion the problem is real. Add that to the idea that they believe that humans behave in unnatural ways and you have a recipe for government devastation of people, their economies and their ways of life. All this while the bureuacrats and politicians continue to get paid. The boy is no longer tending the sheep, but he is on government allowance and disability for the stress he experienced when the wolf attacked.
US EPA Chief Hack Gina McCarthy’s lack of science foundation was on display when she was asked by Senator ,”What percentage of the atmosphere is CO2?”
She couldn’t answer that. But she knew the talking point that CO2 broke 400ppm again this winter. For those pushing Climate Change policy based on “science”, science literacy is not required. And the simple math of moving some zeros is too much for them
EPA head: We don’t need to justify our regulations with data
McCarthy: “There is much information we don’t have the authority to release.”
McCarthy stressed that the science is generated through the peer-reviewed process and not by the agency itself
So she does not have the authority to release peer-reviewed science??
Read the link, it will make your head explode……………
http://www.examiner.com/article/epa-head-we-don-t-need-to-justify-our-regulations-with-data
McCarthy: ‘Data, we don’t need no stinkin data.’
What kind of “personal information” could possibly be in these reports? That makes no sense whatsoever.
You’re right, my head has exploded. She’s as bad as John Koskinen. Contemptible, all of them.
If you remove who actually wrote the papers, then to whom do you address any questions? Do you send them to the EPA, who then forwards the questions on to the authors, whose response is then sent back to the EPA, who then provides the answers to the questioner? Isn’t that a rather slow and error prone route? Especially in light of a 60 day limit on the comment period.
No, the authors and contributors to scientific papers that act as the foundation of policy should NOT be redacted.
How on earth can someone know that CO2 is 400 parts for every 1,000,000 parts and NOT know how to convert that to a percentage? It seems as if she’s lacking more than just a science foundation because that issue is just basic math. I’m thinking that she doesn’t even know that ppm means parts per million or know that how few 400 is compared to 1,000,000.
Not math. Math is symbolic logic, like Taleb’s draft paper in Willis’ post. Ppm to percentage is arithmetic. Round about third grade division, 400/1000000. Remember being taught to cancel zeros? And how decimals worked in base ten? Gina doesn’t. 🙂
Percentages are simply beyond the comprehension of many. Examples are easy to find. There was a significant drop in housing sales, for instance – close to 90% in some categories. A couple of years later they had risen 50%, leading to many stories about how the recovery in the market was well underway. Of course, the market was only at fifteen percent of pre-crash. It was just bottom-bouncing.
Then there was a journalist who wrote that crime in an area had fallen 110% (the crime rate had been 110% higher the previous year). I had images of thieves returning their loot of previous years.
Sometimes I think there is just a thin layer of intelligent people holding our society together, and they are being overwhelmed by the others right now.
ristvan:
Arithmetic is also symbolic logic. It is a SUBSET of mathematics.
Anne, yes. You are right, and the history of the evolution of math is fascinating. I highly recommend the popular books on zero, i, and e. Not to mention the golden triangle, fractals,,chaos… Or on guerrilla math (an MIT primer on stuff like dimensional analysis). I was just trying to make a simpler, lighter hearted point. Sorry if my inexactitude offended in any way.
She doesn’t have that many fingers and toes.
She obviously can’t do the math. It’s more than moving zeros, you also have to know how to divide, i.e., 100 by 1,000,000. Her background is BA in Social Anthropology and MS in Environmental Health Engineering and Planning and Policy in 1981. Bureaucrats are not required to do math.
If I may: I think you mean EDUCATION not required to do math.
Bureaucrat, especially in this position, most definitely required to do math.
Therefore: this bureaucrat is not qualified for the job. (But we already knew that; this is evidence.)
Right now the only consequence we can muster is our vote. However I do believe more people differentiate alarmist statements from reality than we think.
Here’s what we all can do. Contact Senate Majority, Leader Mitch McConnell and S+House Speaker John Bohner via their website email portal an demand that the EPA be defunded. Then do the same with your US Senators and congressmen/women.
The more people do this, the re they will pay attention and respond.
Defund the EPA? I can only assume you’re not a big fan of breathable air and drinkable water, energy? Before the Republican Party instituted the EPA, we were well on our way to Chinese-class air pollution. Reform the EPA? That’s a reasonable discussion. Defund it? That’s moronic.
Nobody is talking about removing environmental protections. But an agency out of control needs to be reined in. Defund it entirely. Rewrite environmental law to make polluting a crime. Make environmental monitoring and criminal prosecution of polluters a DOJ function. So you move the funding from an ungovernable regulatory agency to a law enforcement agency – one with the power to enforce law but does not have the power (in theory) to make it up as they go along.
Even if you couldn’t actually accomplish that in the long run, a plausible threat that you might actually give it a serious try would have the desired effect.
I am thinking that one kind of reform of the EPA that would help a lot is a simplification of the meta-rules of evidence for Findings. The way the rules appear to be written, they should be an easy safeguard against the current excesses of the EPA (and other regulatory bodies as well). I cannot fathom why Congress cannot truly oversee regulation by requiring open, public satisfaction of these rules. If a regulation cannot be shown to be based on legal research (which I understand the law requires EPA to do in-house and out in the open), according to the standards of the governing research legal framework, then the oversight committee(s) should be able to quash the regulation by demonstrating that it is illegal, or else be able to immediately take the agency to court.
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars: the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/young-americans-more-sceptical-of-climate-change/story-e6frg6so-1227329084083
You actually PAY to read nonsense like that??
‘Village Idiot,’ indeed.
“It is as if every shepherd boy is crying wolf across the country, which creates the illusion the problem is real. ” Great image; one for Josh to draw.
If they want credibility they should start by being precise and by making falsifiable predictions – by being scientific.
They should also replace inductivism with the empirical method.
Karl Popper in “The logic of scientific discovery” Page 103:
“what I call the empirical content of a statement increases with its degree of falsifiability: the more a statement forbids, the more it says about the world of experience.”
http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
(First part is easy reading and quite soothing.)
When heating, cooling, more rain, less rain and anything else is possible within the theory of climate change it tells us that the empirical content of the theory is very very low.
The politicians can’t tell the difference between the various types of reasoning. Beyond that, they don’t care.
All that they care about is that the “scientists” give them the answers that will justify their desire to increase the size of govt, and at the same time increase the power of the politicians and the size politicians bank accounts.
With all respect, many politicians don’t know reasoning from oral sex under the desk. With few exceptions, they didn’t get elected for their reasoning. They got elected for saying the right things to the right people at the right time. Little reasoning is required for that; good public pollsters have often sufficed.
” … As a result of the ban, many of the historic fishing ports surrounding Newfoundland and Labrador were abandoned. …”
This is the saddest story I have read in a while, and that is saying something. It all reminds me of the following quote.
Yes, it is the things we think we know because “scientists” and bureaucrats tell us — but are not really so.
Add Artemus Ward to the list of improbable authors of this quote, which has been attributed to Mark Twain, Josh Billings, Will Rodgers, Kin Hubbard, and others.
Butler Shaffer had it that Ward did say it, but did Ward say it first? Ah, there is the rub because the Taoists were saying the same thing (not in English of course) over 3,000 years ago.
I seem to recall the Buddha saying almost the same thing, but it was more like, “to gain wisdom you must unlearn some false thing each day” or something like that.
markstoval, You must unlearn what you have learned. -Yoda
It got pretty ugly
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/canada-and-spain-take-fish-war-to-un-1613076.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-03-19/news/9503190138_1_estai-northwest-atlantic-fisheries-organization-turbot-war
it was one of the “cod wars”. Odd how these things are so little known but so far reaching.
michael
I thought this was a Yogi Berra quote. Goes with “Half the lies they tell about me ain’t true.”
Good article Dr. Ball. It is very frustrating. Is it getting worse and worse or am I just getting older, wiser and more cranky?
I would guess that it is getting much worse and you are getting older, wiser and more cranky. 🙂
I think the answer would be yes and yes and yes and yes and yes.
Oh, and welcome to the club.
We are being led by a bunch of morons Over a cliff. Great article Dr. Tim
The cod example is a little off from what I have read. I have been following the cod story for years, and overfishing Grand Banks is a part of it. A healthy population of adults in one inshore bay is hopeful for eventual repopulation, but the ecosystem has changed. Cod no longer the top bortom feeding predator in places. OTH, the decline of cod has been good for lobsters.
There are many natural examples of regulations lagging environmental reality, but eventually carching up. More like sockeye salmon than cod. Take white tail deer in Wisconsin. Used to be when I first bought the farm, one buck only in a short hunting season after the rut. Worked so well, they changed to one buck or one doe after we got overrun with deer. That did not work so well. They changed to bonus tags for a second deer and lengthened the season using different sections like black powder, rifle, second rifle… That did not work. So now we are doe first to earn a buck, with unlimited bonus tags thereafter, with multiple seasons. And, you can donate unneeded venison to the state for their school and prison food programs. I suspect the only thing that will work in Wisconsin given the decline in active hunters (but not on my farm) is the fact that timber wolves are re-establishing ever further south from the northern national forests. We had a breeding pair with 3 cubs two years back. But they moved on. Eerie how different the wolf and coyote sound at night. Wolves howl. Coyotes yap yap.
It won’t be long now, and we will hear of the first human death due to a wolf – or a pack of wolves.
Would that be the climate “science” wolf pack?
Wolves are still acting very human shy, at least in Wisconsin.
Issue in dairy country (Wisconsin) and cattle country (Montana) is calves. Domesticated cattle have lost the fighting instincts of their auroch ancestors, so do not have the ability to defend the calves. (Some comments on that in essay No Bodies. Domestication makes it infinitely safer for farmers to work aurochs. Not complaining-well not much. All farmers complain some all the time, by definition.) Try as we might to have all calving in the barns/corral pens, Ma Nature does not work that way. Last July 4 weekend, we had two cows calve one morning in my upper pasture. We went up on the 4 wheeler and took pictures/ movies as one calf tried to stand for the first time. (finally succeeded only to crash back down). Ma Cow, over 1000#, just stood there chewing cud. Took us darn near the whole day to round up and get to the barns the two cows and their calves. Was glad the wolf family (hardly a pack) had moved on.
Dairy calfs are much easier prey than whitetail deer; Cannot blame the wolves for that. But since in todays market a Holstein calf is worth over $400 the day it is borne, wolves tend to get farmer/rancher attention.
Wolf predation on humans in North America has been fairly rare, and almost always driven by local scarcity of their usual prey. That said, if you know you’re in wolf country a .40 S&W and a spare mag can be your best friends. And a couple knives for backup. And a heavy walking stick.
“Domesticated cattle have lost the fighting instincts of their auroch ancestors, so do not have the ability to defend the calves.” – Rud
=================
I lived on a farm when I was a kid, so I know that isn’t true.
As my granddaddy used to say to me, ‘It is either coyotes fighting over a meal or drunks arguing outside a bar.’
Thanks, Dr Ball. The point is that none of these people who want a clean river are signing on to the apocalyptic environmentalist nonsense but they are being politically used to advance it. They distrust corporate America because it has not demonstrated itself very intelligent. There is a difference between a stock trader and somebody who wants to build something.
To the left wing environmentalists, people are always the problem.
The goal is is to eliminate all fishing and all hunting in order to return nature to a mythical pure state that in reality has never existed. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is that the do gooders have to feel good about themselves regardless of how many real people get hurt.
No worries, very soon automation will be good enough that billions of people won’t be needed any more.
For eons man has perceived himself to be polluted with Original Sin. Countless rituals and quests emerged to attempt to cleanse him of his sin.
Now that people are becoming less religious in the traditional sense, Original Sin has been supplanted by man-made environmental pollution.
The new religion of climatastrophe again tries to whitewash man’s soiled soul.
(Now pass around the tithe basket.)
Max, yep
and the b@stards passing the new basket know what they’re doing same as them that passed the old basket … follow the basket
Max,
A great writer referred to original sin as “The Aboriginal Calamity”. I am writing on it myself in reference to man’s habitual conclusion that there can be no god greater than the mind of man. Maybe some day I shall finish it. I agree that man is becoming less religious, but in its place I see generally flimfalmery with underpinnings of ignorance both of history and theology, and of science.
Climatastrophe is a article of ritual amongst the ignorant. There are many others.
Original sin is at work and is the basis of the error here. Man, through and act of will, seeks and attains some knowledge, thereby he then believes that he is as wise as the make of all and therefore answerable only to himself.
For eons man fails by this simple error in will. I see no end to it.
Man cannot solve these problems, if they really exist.
What problem has man really solved? I give you Kurt Godel.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kw/crichton.html
Remarks to the Commonwealth Club
by Michael Crichton
San Francisco
September 15, 2003
Jtom – “Sometimes I think there is just a thin layer of intelligent people holding our society together, and they are being overwhelmed by the others right now.”
Agree completely, for more on that theme, try to find a great old scifi novella, “The Marching Morons” by Kornbluth. Incredibly prescient, if a bit non-PC.
Taylor
http://mysite.du.edu/~treddell/3780/Kornbluth_The-Marching-Morons.pdf
Reads a lot like ‘Idiocracy’.
In my limited experience I think Mr. Crichton is “right on”. He appears to have been a superior intellect. His remarks bring to mind two things. First, in the northwest years ago, there was a big push by the “environmental” people to cleanup the tributary streams, where the salmon spawned by removing dead falls in the stream, etc. Unintended consequence: this allowed the stream water to warm even more and reduced the salmon population even further. They finally realized their mistake and had to go back and cut down trees to fall into the streams. Limited Knowledge, results in bad outcomes!!!
Second, IMHO the big problem with not requiring environmental studies people to take some serious science, is that they never come to the realization of how complex the world/universe really is and just how much we really don’t know about it. They appear to be getting only the simplified version for the masses of everything, but they are convinced, that they know and understand everything there is to know. They become useful idiots/Progressives, but it is okay because they have been taught the correct feelings about everything.
The more I learn, the less I know.
P.S. (Off topic) I believe, I read somewhere, that Mr. Crichton took a writing class early on in his academic career and couldn’t get any good grades from the professor. To test the proposition that the Professor was not intellecturlly honest, he submitted an essay by George Orwell??? as his own, and the Professor gave it a B-. I guess we just don’t know how truely brilliant some or a lot of the Professors really are, or maybe they just think they are.
Dichotomy
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help with your problem.”
“Government IS the problem”
I graduated college when NASA put a man on the moon – how in 45 years did our government go from “the future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades” to “the future’s not bright, so we gotta be shady” – a sad decline
Taylor
F. Ross,
While I certainly appreciate the spirit of you comment, may I suggest we not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Government in a free society does has important roles to play. One role is to help maintain fixity in standards, for what is society without its myriad standards of length, weight, volume, pressure, etc.? And what are standards without fixity? An elastic standard is meaningless.
The most important standard a society has is the standard of economic value, because money intercedes in virtually all relationships — current and future — among society’s members.
So government has a key role in maintaining the integrity of — the fixity — of the monetary unit.
From this view it is easy to see that government becomes the problem when not only does it not maintain the integrity of the monetary unit, but actually deliberately debauches the monetary unit for its own aggrandizement, at the expense of society.
There is not better way to express this than with the following quote, which I have posted in the past, but which cannot be read and pondered too many times.
* * * *
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency [by eliminating gold redeemability]. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the existing distribution of wealth*. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers’, who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.“
I will add that there is every reason to see the insanity surrounding CAGW as but one manifestation of the destructive distortions induced by a debauched currency. At a minimum, is not all of the pseudo-science funded via funny money? People would certainly never hand over real gold for such nonsense.
Of course, you are right in many of your comments. Thanks for the feedback.
There are many good things which government does. The defense of the nation by the armed services is another example of a function done well (with caveats) by government.
It is just that there are also so many, many uncorrected (and possibly uncorrectible) bad things done by agencies and individuals in government. The civil service is largely immune to punishment for wrong doing.
Elected officials are mostly subject to correction almost exclusively in the next election.
This is exactly the concept I’ve been trying to detail in my numerous comments. We we must start promoting is a Scientific Data and Conclusion Validation Administration that removes the bias of scientific research through double blind testing. Right now the people doing the research are doing so to satisfy a predetermined conclusion desired by their government employer. Eisenhower warned about this educational/research industrial complex in his farewell address. Right now all the institutions entrusted to be the watch dogs are the perpetrators of this fraud. The highest level of government, government agencies, academia, researchers, NGOs, the media and now even the church are all in bed together. This is modern day fascism, true to its definition. This is modern day lysenkosim, modern day eugenics with even a hint of McCarthyism.
I would ask Dr Ball and Dr Watts to write an article detailing the smoking guns that should be answered in front of congress. We need to have public hearings on this “Science.” It also should be done in a manner of a discovery court hearing so one person can not give the complete answer. Here is an example:
Expert #1: Q: What is the normal variation of Ocean pH and at what level does life get impacted?
Expert #2: Q: How much CO2 is required to alter the pH of the oceans to reach the level previously details as the level that would impact life?
Expert #3: Q: How much CO2 is in the atmosphere? How much CO2 has been produced from fossil fuels since the 1850s? Determine the X amount of CO2 produced in man’s history.
Expert #4: If X amount of CO2 was added to the oceans, what would the pH be?
Expert #5: If the pH of the ocean was to reach X, would it impact life? Does that variation to the current pH represent a value outside the ocean’s standard deviation of pH?
Break each question down into its individual pieces so that the experts don’t know what they are testifying to. It is like a prisoner’s dilemma or Byzantine Generals problem.
Questions that we should strive to get answered in a congressional inquiry:
1) Why do the ice core data for the holocene demonstrate that current temperatures are well off their peaks?
2) From those same ice cores, why is the past 50 and 150 years variation in temperature well within statistical norms?
3) Mt Kilimanjaro and the Western Antarctic ice sheet is claimed to be losing its glacier due to climate change? How is that possible when both those areas are exposed to continual sub-zero temperatures?
4) How does CO2 localize its affect and effect? How can CO2 impact only the Western Antarctica?
5) CO2 absorbs IR radiation between 13 and 17 microns. That range of IR represents a black body of -50 to -110 degree C. Given heat travels from hot to cold, how could trapping -50 degree C warm a body of 18 degree C?
6) The oceans are warming. How can CO2 and 15 micron IR warm the oceans?
7) By what mechanism can CO2 lead to cooling?
8) Methane has no dipole, a necessity for the green house gas effect, how does it impact temperature?
9) With 100% of the IPCC models over estimating the current temperatures, how and why should we rely of such garbage science?
10) Run a stepwise regression analysis on all the climate data sets used by the IPCC in their models. Do the unbiased computers assign a significant level of confidence to CO2? What are the factors the computer identifies as the most significant variables that should be included in the models?
Bottom line, I would recommend real scientists to craft a list of smoking gun questions that are directed at getting at the heart of this hoax, and find someone in congress that will host the investigation. I’m 100% certain that if the average American got to understand just how nonsensical this science is,it would be easy for them to see that this emperor has no clothes. IMHO this climate science fraud is the greatest opportunity to expose the political left as the frauds they are, and prove to the American people the extent they will go to push a misguided agenda. Billions if not trillions of dollars are wasted on this nonsense, let alone the countless millions of ruined lives. The left acts as if the public treasury is their piggy bank to fund everyone of their nonsensical and destructive agenda items. They have corrupted government, academia, the media, NGOs and now even the Church. Their agenda isn’t worth undermining the most important institutions of American society, they are destroying the very fabric that holds us together, and bankrupting us as they do so.
There’s a “pact” missing from this sentence in the head post:
“I understand a secret [pact] with Europe kept them from Canadian waters and Canadians from international waters. ”
[Edited. .mod]
‘Secret’ can be a noun or adjective, though.
Guess it’s time to tell the alarmists:
The earth is 15 years from a “mini ice-age” that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over, scientists have predicted.
Solar researchers at the University of Northumbria have created a new model of the sun’s activity which they claim produces “unprecedentedly accurate predictions”.
They said fluid movements within the sun, which are thought to create 11-year cycles in the weather, will converge in such a way that temperatures will fall dramatically in the 2030s.
Solar activity will fall by 60 per cent as two waves of fluid “effectively cancel each other out”, according to Prof Valentina Zharkova.
• Fiddling with temperature data is biggest science scandal ever (31,000 comments)[IEJ: there is a link in article]
In a presentation to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, she said the result would be similar to freezing conditions of the late 17th century.Earth heading for ‘mini ice age’ within 15 years, telegraph.co.uk 11:35AM BST 11 Jul 2015
The media is not helping. Read the following to see how Canadian Press did not follow ethics in accuracy:
The article, “International Arctic fish deal close to reality”, in the July 11 Free Press and other news media by Bob Weber of The Canadian Press contains a significant error which should not have escaped editing.
Weber stated ” Research has found more than 800 commercial species are moving poleward at 26 kilometres a year”. (Note he said “moving”)
His report was based on a study by University of Faculty of Science British Columbia.
The study stated “In the worst-case scenario, where the Earth’s oceans warm by three degrees Celsius by 2100, fish could move away from their current habitats at a rate of 26 kilometres per decade. Under the best-case scenario, where the Earth warms by one degree Celsius, fish would move 15 kilometres every decade.”
The study did not say the fish are moving; it said “Cheung and his colleague used modeling to predict how 802 commercially important species of fish and invertebrates react to warming water temperatures, other changing ocean properties, and new habitats opening up at the poles.”
So in reality it is a prediction based on the IPCC temperature forecast which itself is based on models which have proven to be faulty in exaggerating the forecast temperature increase due to CO2.
From a model we go to a fantasy of reality.
And just how the bloody Hades do “they” (those self-declared catastrologists running the fish fairy tales in their computer simulation) create a 3 degree increase in ocean temperatures in the next 85 years?
There is perhaps a 10% chance the global average AIR temperature might increase by as much as 3 degrees in the 100 years, but the ocean temperature could increase by no more than 1/1000 of that due to the product of the ocean’s greater thermal mass and thermal heat capacity.
Sorry for the caps. I MUST ASK, HOW CAN THE GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERTURE increase by 3 C if the oceans do not? The divergence between the oceans and the surface air has never been anywhere close. The dog wags the tail. AFAIK, the ocean surface T is warmer then the land.
David A
OK, let’s go back to the basics you might have missed in the college and grad school Heat Transfer, Fluid flow, Thermodynamics, Mechanical Engineering and Physics classes that I took.
Your argument is that global average air temperature anomaly WILL go up by 3 deg C in the next 85 years;
and therefore, you agree with these programmed assumptions for the fish movement program analysis that assume a global average ocean temperature increase of 3 deg C WILL happen;
and therefore the postulated (programmed) fish movement off of the Grand banks WILL happen.
The assumption of a 3 deg global average ocean temperature increase is nonsense.
Paper will not burn at 85 deg C, right?
From the basics, a large steel plate weighing 120 kilograms is 22 deg C (room temperature).
Calculate the final (ultimate) increase in plate temperature when a piece of tissue paper 1 meter x 1 meter at 85 deg C is placed under the steel plate.
The tissue paper touches the steel completely – so you can even eliminate everything but simple conduction from the paper to the plate! (To heat the ocean from “hotter” air, you have to include radiation losses and gains, evaporation, coonduction, convection, currents, ocean circulation, air circulation, clouds and LW radiation, etc, etc, etc.
You are the one telling me the oceans will heat up 3 degrees C in 85 years. Show us you can figure out an easier problem first.
Dear RA, I both respect and value your comments. However you have misunderstood my question, (perhaps due to poor articulation) which was not an assertion.
You stated, “There is perhaps a 10% chance the global average AIR temperature might increase by as much as 3 degrees in the 100 years, but the ocean temperature could increase by no more than 1/1000 of that due to the product of the ocean’s greater thermal mass and thermal heat capacity.”
Since you made the assertion, your response to my, “HOW CAN THE GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERTURE increase by 3 C if the oceans do not?” was not an assertion that this would happen, but an assertion that it in all likelihood cannot possibly happen, as the great thermal capacity of the oceans can and does easily modify the puny thermal capacity of the atmosphere. This is what I meant by the tail wagging the dog, so I see your 10 percent chance of this happening to be about 9. something percent to high.
Sorry for the confusion
DA
Quick question to those of you “contrarians” who call those of of us who understand and accept the vast evidence of AGW “alarmists.” Can we call you “ostrichists?”
[Stick to one login_id and email address. .mod]
Indeed. Rik has been appropriately Ostrichsized. 😉 Night.
Just as I was dropping of to sleep, I realized that rik said: “those of us who UNDERSTAND (caps added) and accept the vast evidence of AGW…”
Well I have been interested in “climate” since I first was educated about the travels of the Vikings some 6 decades ago and have followed and studied “climate” issues both for fun and for profit in my adult life. Since after 6 decades of casual study my only conclusion is that I do NOT understand the “vast evidence of AGW” and from my reading of the IPCC papers it appears the technical writers don’t either. A nice clear paper by “rik” would be appreciated as the “vast” amounts of information I have read over the years has lead me to believe that the more we know about climate the less we understand. So I would like to know how it is that “rik” was able to reach such a clear level of insight? Seriously. So submit a paper “rik” and we will add it to the “vast evidence”.
There. Now I can go back to sleep, listening to the thunder and rain on the roof top, watering my pastures and garden and filling my Rainbow Trout Pond. Thank you ‘weather’.
Quick counter rhetorical question to those of you true believers who still accept the CO2-forced models of “global warming” despite the refusal of the Earth to comply with the predictions of said models for around 18 years (a period accounting for ~1/3 of all human CO2 emissions):
With the Catholic church now defending the authenticity of your religious dogma that warns of eternal damnation if we don’t repent and pay indulgences for our crimes against nature, can we skeptics refer to you as “members of the inter-faith community“?
Back in 1996 Dr. Roger Pocklington noted that the ocean surface temperatures of the northern Atlantic Ocean were lower than the peak which occurred during the 1950s.
Conclusion
Surface temperatures in the extratropical North Atlantic are currently close to (or below) their long-term means, and below those reached in the warmest decades of this century (or earlier). In all cases, the warmest pentade came before the 1990s and the current decade is (so far) most uninteresting: there is no evidence that the region has warmed or cooled dramatically during the 1990s.
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/books/g_warming/ocean.html
Has there been any subsequent research on this to either agree or refute his findings?
You can explore the OHC and OMT data at http://climexp.knmi.nl for various ocean depths.
The brief answer appears to be that his statement holds up to the 1990s, since then temperatures rose by around 0.5C to peak around mid 2000s, since then declining somewhat
This is a timely piece, for me. I’ve been thinking a lot just recently about that whole ‘accountability in climate change claims’ thing. I’ve watched as global cooling changed into worries about greenhouse gases and a hole in the ozone layer, then became global warming, then (as by magic and a burst of rainbows and unicorns) something called ‘climate change’. These days, even that monika isn’t entirely decided-upon; I hear whispers of ‘climate disruption’ and ‘global weirding’…
Throughout all of this, hysterical claims have been repeatedly made by those seeking to ‘warn the world’ of some impending climate catastrophe. If we go from my earliest memories of climate disaster warnings, which would be somewhere around 1975-6, right up to now, 2015, that’s a good 40 years of continuous doom-laden predictions of approaching catastrophe.
I just want to know where exactly is the evidence for any of this? I’ve been waiting, patiently, for 40 years now for some proof…anything, really. As predicted by the global warming doomsayers, I was hoping for Mediterranean-style temperatures in Southern England… alas, so far this year (just like almost any other in the past 40 years – in fact, since that glorious summer of ’76, tbh) our ‘summer’ seems to be all but absent (again).
40 years of climate catastrophe alarmism. I really do think that by now the people who still make these ridiculous claims should be forced to deliver the evidence proving their case or be politely asked to refrain from making a nuisance of themselves by frightening people and wasting public money.
Thank you Tim for another excellent article.
The relationship of Pacific salmon with cooler ocean temperatures caught my interest circa 2008 – this post is from 2009:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/04/rss-global-temp-anomaly-makes-a-significant-jump/#comments
PDO Index, Year 2008 by month
-1.00 -0.77 -0.71 -1.52 -1.37 -1.34 -1.67 -1.70 -1.55 -1.76 -1.25 -0.87
2008 Year Average -1.29
PDO Index, Yearly 1900 to 2008
PDO 0.45 -0.13 0.77 0.16 -0.25 0.64 0.49 0.12 0.38 -0.12 -0.08 -0.16 0.15 0.57 0.16 0.18 -0.51 -0.43 -0.14 -0.10 -0.91 -0.10 -0.20 0.48 0.14 0.19 1.16 0.14 0.16 0.40 -0.10 0.74 -0.02 -0.68 1.18 0.80 1.73 0.32 0.16 0.07 1.77 1.99 0.47 0.11 -0.13 -0.19 -0.58 0.50 -0.87 -1.23 -1.81 -0.77 -0.87 -0.16 -0.29 -1.95 -1.80 0.23 0.64 -0.03 0.06 -0.82 -1.16 -0.69 -0.77 -0.31 -0.46 -0.73 -0.40 -0.10 -0.40 -1.29 -0.92 -0.80 -0.34 -1.10 0.01 0.23 0.24 0.34 0.60 0.92 0.11 1.65 0.84 0.45 1.24 1.82 0.53 -0.18 -0.36 -0.42 0.93 1.42 -0.15 0.64 0.64 1.46 0.25 -1.06 -0.59 -0.56 0.22 0.97 0.35 0.38 0.19 -0.20 -1.29
Data Source, monthly PDO Index
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
For more details, see:
Zhang, Y., J.M. Wallace, D.S. Battisti, 1997:
ENSO-like interdecadal variability: 1900-93. J. Climate, 10, 1004-1020.
Mantua, N.J. and S.R. Hare, Y. Zhang, J.M. Wallace, and R.C. Francis,1997:
A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon
production. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78,
pp. 1069-1079.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~mantua/abst.PDO.html)
Data sources for this index are:
UKMO Historical SST data set for 1900-81;
Reynold’s Optimally Interpolated SST (V1) for January 1982-Dec 2001)
*** OI SST Version 2 (V2) beginning January 2002 –
Note in the last 109 years, only 1950, 1955 and 1956 had lower average annual PDO Indices than 2008.
Let’s see what April and May 2009 bring in terms of LT and Surface Temperatures.
Regards, Allan
RE Accountability:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/24/uk-met-fastest-decline-solar-activity-last-ice-age/#comment-1972538
PROPOSAL – SUE THE WARMISTS IN THE USA UNDER CIVIL RICO
I have been considering this approach for several years and I think it is now time to proceed..
Civil RICO provides for TRIPLE DAMAGES. Global losses from the global warming scam are in the trillions, including hundreds of billions on the USA.
We would sue the sources of warmist funding and those who have significantly profited from the global warming scam..
The key to starting a civil RICO action is to raise several million dollars to fund the lawsuit, which will be protracted and expensive.
If serious funders are interested, please contact me through http://www.OilsandsExpert.com
Regards, Allan MacRae
Calgary
The operative word is accountability. When it comes to policy dictated by green sentiment, there is none.
Pointman
“The Canadian government effectively banned cod fishing in 1992. For comparison imagine the US government banning corn production in Iowa.”
While many of the points are good ones, this analogy was not. I understand the similarity………..both play a key role in the food supply that these locations produce, they have many more differences than similarities.
While “chicken little” behavior certainly needs to be exposed and condemned for what it is, the need to assess statements of fact on their merits remains. The fact that someone has been proven to have advanced a false data or spurious arguments in the past, cannot be used to dismiss other positions he or she might later support.
If crying “fire” in a crowded theater when there is no indication of such is to be condemned, it is even more reprehensible to make it a crime to ever cry “fire”, and that is precisely where this forum is heading…
In my opinion, this whole discussion is missing the essential problem – that academia has been politicized so thoroughly over the past century or so, that theory and even data is mostly tailored to achieve acceptance by the hierarchy and thus promote the “scientist’s” career.
This is why intelligent, educated people resort to all sorts of “scientifically” unproven remedies to protect and recover their health, while the less intelligent and/or uneducated masses are swayed like the tides by the mass media.
Replacing lock-step adherents to one climactic position with those who adhere to another won’t solve this problem. And this is a problem that, even without the help of mother nature, can definitely destroy humanity post-haste.
The “cry wolf” analogy isn’t quite applicable.
In our case the shepherds’ “communal government employer(s)” are actively encouraging, and paying, the shepherd to continue to cry wolf when there is only a rustling of the leaves and bushes. A large number of the townspeople also think they see wolves in the bushes, and for various reasons, also want to be part of the protection program (… and after all, the shepherd is the expert … who are we to question his interpretation of the way the bushes shake and move).
It is not as simple as ignoring a self-employed contract laborer until he harms himself. It isn’t, as some think, a problem with the “science” of the shepherd. It is a primarily a problem with the politics and the organization of the communal government employer(s) that continue to encourage the shepherds’ actions.
Something along the lines of a “National Science Accountability Act” would probably end most junk science overnight. After this, I bet there aren’t too many Italian Seismologists claiming the risk of earthquakes is low when in reality they actually don’t know:
http://news.sciencemag.org/earth/2015/02/why-italian-earthquake-scientists-were-exonerated
They may have been acquitted but I imagine that a stern lesson was learned. As a graduate student, one of the first things I learned was when to say “I don’t know.” Apparently they teach the exact opposite in climastrology.
It’s a bit like that great sage David Suzuki when asked, after extolling the virtues of accepting Global Warming, was asked a question about the pause, as evidenced by NOOA, NASA, HADcrut etc. He answered (my paraphrase) “wtf are they?”
Governors Wind Energy Coalition, July 11, 2015
‘Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown, U.S. mayors to travel to Vatican for Climate meeting with Pope Francis’
Article has more information on who will be attending this climate meeting July 21.
http://www.governorswindenergycoalition.org/?p=13728
Seafood is good for you.
Fishermen have brought us a wonderful diet in which iodine deficiencies are mostly a memory (iodized salt also helps). Refrigeration, flash freezing, canning, and probably nitrates and nitrites have stopped the waste of the bounty of the sea once it is caught.
Neurotransmitters have precursors synthesized in the human body. “Serotonin, a neurotransmitter found only in the hypothalamus and midbrain, relieves depression, reduces sensitiviey to pain, and induces sleep. Its chemical precursor is tryptophan, which is found in the protein in meat, fowl, and fish.”
Clams are a good source of copper.
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/copper
If more people who claim so many horrible effects of trace chemicals used to grow food would just look up the terrible effects of micronutrient, protein, fat, and carbohydrate deficiencies (both childhood and adult), they might be more thankful for the rich and varied diet we have here in the free West. So many deficiencies from food fads and phobias can cause mental side effects and nerve damage. Some of these effects are permanent.
So have that tuna melt, fish and chips, or clam chowder when it sounds good.
I just did today. And don’t forget that while Omega-3 (ratio vs Omega-6) fatty acids are good for you, eat that piece of cheese. Saturated fats are not so bad for you either. Just avoid the trans-fats, which tend to be in highly processed foods anyway. And are decreasing in the food supply as we speak.
This *IS* a bit off-topic. But go ahead and mix up that tuna with some miracle-whip, and a little bit of pickle relish, and diced or sliced tomato, and a bit of lettuce. Or grill it before adding the greens. And add that slice of cheese.
@RWturner
July 13, 2015 at 1:34 pm
“Something along the lines of a “National Science Accountability Act” would probably end most junk science overnight.”
In fact, the opposite position is already entrenched, at least with regard to the potentially most devastating man-made toxin – nuclear waste and fallout. There is no nuclear power generation in the entire world that is privately insured except in a token fashion. This situation exists because all the governments of such countries exempt the nuclear power industry from anything even approaching adequate liability insurance. And apparently the entire world community, as represented by the United Nations, also accepts this uninsured risk, since nuclear fallout and contamination does not respect national boundaries.
In the wake of Fukushima, it was reported that Japan actually has in place the most stringent liability insurance requirements for nuclear power plant operators. And it quickly became clear that even this relatively minor nuclear breakdown overtaxes the compensation funds in place.
I find it remarkable that the boosters of nuclear power in this forum persistently turn a blind eye to this situation, and are never taken to task for it. What is their explanation for the global insurance community’s reluctance to profit by the admirable “safety record” of nuclear power? Surely the insurers should be crying out to insure this risk, and governments should be overjoyed to take this contingency cost off their books?
There’s a huge difference between suffering ailments from environmental threats and nutritional inadequacies humanity has endured for millenia and those that have been introduced in the last few decades, are impossible to detect and identify except with high-tech equipment and procedures in the hands of specialists, and whose long-term effects have yet to be exhaustively determined.
A single high powered CME could conceivably turn our world of six or seven billion people back to “horse and buggy” technology, only without the horse or buggy, but with nuclear plants throughout the world in meltdown, hundreds of millions starving within days or weeks, if not freezing to death even sooner, and dying of disease spread by lack of clean drinking water, should they survive longer.
None of the technological advances of the last hundred years can offset that threat. But we could use those advances to mitigate the effects – IF we openly recognize the dangers of “globalization” (ie. “just in time” production and distribution of the essentials of life) and begin to make reasonable arrangements to offset them.
The great climate debate is a deadly distraction in this situation. By focusing all attention on this apparently slow-moving threat, a false sense of elbow room is created. If a large solar event destroys our electrical grid tomorrow or next week, it won’t much matter whether it’s the ice age or global warming that’s on the horizon. Unprepared as we are, humanity and its technical advances of the last thousand years will be toast.
i belong to a climate debate blog on facebook. i have repeatedly made the challenge that any alarmists must put up the deed to there house and the title to there car to be held in lieu just encase there dire predictions dont prevail . in 5 years or 10 years they must forfeit all in an effort to pay back all the money wasted. guess how many takers i have ? you guessed it . big zero .
Eric M. Sounds like a strange offer although I agree with your position generally. But not getting any takers…could it be because you do not have credibility. What are you offering to pay them if they are right.