By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: The advocates for a massive public policy response to climate change have overwhelming political power, far greater than that of conservatives and skeptics opposing them. Temporary factors have prevented their victory, but weather or politics could change the situation quickly and soon. The illusion of winning keeps skeptics disorganized and ineffective. Skeptics have the ability to influence the debate now, and should use it while they have it.
Who is winning? That determines your strategy.
The histories of politics and war have many sad examples of people believing that their side had won — before a shattering defeat. In June 1863 many in the Confederacy believed they were winning the war; then came their defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. In May 1942 the Japanese believed they were winning WWII; then came Midway. In 1952 the French believed they were winning the Vietnam War; then came Dien Bien Phu. In 1967 Americans believed they were winning; then came the Tet Offensive (a devastating 4GW attack against US morale at home). In all these cases events revealed that the “correlation of forces” was against them.
False belief in a superior position leads to sloppy planning, weak organization, and failure to aggressively seek allies. It turns a weak position into a losing one. As it has done with the skeptics in the debate over America’s public policy response to climate change. The skeptics have almost every imaginable positional weakness, yet most believe they are winning.
The world’s major institutions of all kinds oppose them, seeking policy action. Almost every science institution. Major governments, as seen in their dedicated websites: Canada, Australia, the European Union, and the United States (the EPA, NASA, DoE, and many more Federal, State, and local units). The major international agencies, such as the UN (and its many agencies) and the World Bank. The major news media, such as the New York Times and The Guardian — and alternative media (e.g., Take Part. A large fraction of the West’s non-governmental organizations push for climate policy actions such as environmentalists (e.g., the WWF, the EDF, and Greenpeace) and science-related institutions (e.g., science museums, such as the American Museum of National History). Many of the world’s churches, such as Roman Catholic Church.
It’s an endless list, source of the massive flow of funds advocating climate policy action.
Relative to this the skeptics have a trickle of funding from conservative think tanks and foundations plus corporations (who tend to financially support both sides, as they do both parties, although unequally). The skeptics’ websites look (and are) amateurish, supported by advertising and donations — unlike those of activists (glossy, well-staffed, often professionally written). They’re astonishingly effective (especially Anthony Watts’) despite the lack of funding, but they reach only the tiny sliver of the public closely following this issue.
Where have the vast sums gone supposedly funding the skeptics’ movement? The most visible evidence (and perhaps the best use of the funds) are the Climate Depot website (daily links) and conferences to plan and coordinate their work (e.g., those by the Heartland Institute).
Why has the US taken so little action to fight climate change?
The obvious answer: because there is little public support for such intrusive and costly programs. While a slim majority of the public says they “worry” about climate change — polls show that they consistently rank it near or at the bottom of their policy concerns (also see this asking about “concerns about national problems”, and this asking about the “most important problem”).
Many factors have contributed to this failure in one of the most intensive and longest (28 years, dating from James Hansen’s famous Senate testimony) political campaigns in modern America. Americans are properly skeptical, having been consistently lied to about major policy issues (see these about foreign affairs). Our confidence in America’s institutions has been falling for 40 years. The Republicans have controlled some combination of the Presidency and one or both houses of Congress. The public policy campaign has been conducted incompetently, marked by exaggerations and misrepresentations beyond that supported by science (e.g., using RCP 8.5 to predict nightmares). — allied with doomsters who have a near-perfect record of being wrong.
Probably the most important factor: the weather has supported the skeptics during the past decade. The rate of warming has slowed since roughly 1998. Also, most kinds of extreme weather have diminished in frequency or intensity — or both (see the IPCC’s AR5, this by Prof Botkin, and testimony to Congress).
Public opinion can change quickly
The big battalions pushing for policy action have a slow but relentless effect, as shown in the latest Gallup poll (following a record warm wet winter in the US). The somewhat contradictory data shows a confused public, with the skeptics’ support slowly eroding. The key third graph suggests that it might be eroding fast. The climate policy debate might not remain deadlocked forever.
What might decisively change public opinion?
Skeptics fail to understand the first rule of insurgency: defenders of the status quo need to win every day while insurgents only need win once. Public policy measures are difficult to enact but are also difficult to reverse. What might defeat the skeptics?
First, we might get one or more major extreme weather events (not just a fraction of a degree rise over several years in the global average temperature). For example, a few large hurricanes hitting cities on the US East Coast, or East Asia — of course attributed to CO2 (whether scientists’ analysis eventually concurs is politically irrelevant). It could stampede public opinion into supporting new laws and regulations.
A second scenario of a decisive political change is a realignment election in the US that put the Democrats in power. This could happen in November, with major public policy action on climate change following in 2017.
What skeptics could do while they still have strength
Skeptics should use their political strength while they still have it. The 2016 campaign provides an opportunity that might not come again.
Their political supporters have only weak answers when asked about climate change. They give half-understood technobabble (any technical reply is babble to the general public), mumble about a conspiracy of scientists, and wave the uncertainty flag. Senator Inhofe tossed a snowball on the Senate floor to show that the Earth is not warming. These are pitifully weak rebuttals to the well-polished arguments of those advocating climate change.
There are clear, powerful answers that skeptics could give their political allies. For example, they could advocate for a fair test of the climate models (models are the basis for the predictions of climate catastrophe). This would force their opponents to explain to the public why the models should not be tested. Here is a description of such a test; this explains why it is needed under the norms of science and by the words of major scientists.
Or they can continue on their present course, and probably lose.
Effects of skeptics’ defeat after bouts of extreme weather
Political defeat following an election might change little for the skeptics. Defeat following weather-related disasters — billions in damages, perhaps deaths — might change skeptics’ lives for the worse. The insults and demonization from their foes that they experience today are like Spring rains compared to the thunderstorms of massive public blame and condemnation.
The damage might extend to conservatives and the Republican Party. That possibility is worth avoiding.
Who is right about the public policy response to climate change?
It’s an irrelevant question when forecasting near-term political events. We have no way to answer that now, and my experience suggests that both sides in the policy war are confident and intransigent — and so uninterested in research to answer it. It will become an important question for future generations of historians and political scientists.
This question will only become politically important if we force it into the debate. Congress can require NOAA or the NSF to test the models with independent oversight (i.e., a neutral multi-disciplinary team of experts). The results would tell us much.
Or we can wait for the weather or politics to decide the policy debate.
Conclusions
This is my 350th post about climate, ending this long series (as usual) with a prediction and recommendation. This post goes on my Forecasts page, and will eventually move to the list of hits or list of misses. My success rate is quite high, and I am confident this will add to that list.
My thanks to those who reposted these articles, especially Anthony Watts and Professor Judith Curry, and to the many climate scientists who generously assisted me — especially Professor Roger Pielke Sr.
Other posts about the climate policy debate
This post is a summary of the information and conclusions from these posts, which discuss these matters in greater detail.
- How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- My proposal: Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- We can end the climate policy wars: demand a test of the models.
- There will be little public policy action by the US to fight climate change – until the weather decides the debate.
- How climate change can help the GOP win in 2016.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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They’re losing the debate because there never actually has been a debate.
Actually HAVING a debate would be a good start wouldn’t it?
I think we’ll actually know where the American public stands after the 2016 election.
Regardless of public ‘opinion’, reality is still very much on our sides and that will become glaringly apparent over time. The more the alarmists ante up, the more they will lose.
A good place to start demanding model verificaiton is in the tropics. This is where the majority of the heat comes into the system and where were supposed to see mid-tropo “hot-spot” that was to be a key finger-print of global warming.
Note the TOTAL lack of volcanic cooling in reality and how it is just about the onely definable feature of model output apart from a slow AGW rise.
It has also long been established that there very little evidence of the famous “hot-spot”.
If you can’t model the tropics, you can’t model climate. It is that simple. The scatter-gun of output of ludicrous papers of the style “Rise in facial hair in old ladies shown to be linked to climate change” is just an avoidance of one central question:do models accurately reflect past, known climate change in the tropics.
Answer: not at all.
The volcanic cooling in the tropics has been exaggerated , probably by factor of ten. This counter-balanced the exaggerated CO2 warming… while both were present.
Now they have a divergence problem because the volcanic excuse for pumping AGW has been missing since 1994.
“I think we’ll actually know where the American public stands after the 2016 election.”
The only thing we will know after the general election is who the more noxious felon is.
With the political established UNFCCC the whole science base for the climate science debate was effectively politicized. The debate was over the day the political UNFCCC was established.
Real skeptics: those of us who told the entire world, it was all wrong, from the very first word, to the very last one – were immediately run out of the hijacking of climate sciences through the media savvy of those who staked their limited intellectual reputations it was real.
They were wrong, it’s not real. It’s proven,
With the advent of everything from the entire coterie of leadership who were purporting being exposed having manufactured every single tenth degree warming starting in 1998,
to others going online to show people the claim of there being ”Runaway Green House Effect” on Venus is nothing more nor less than absolute fabrication from letter one to letter last by simply and swiftly calculating the temps: of Venus, then Earth, then Mars – showing people the standard gas equations, verifying temperatures, fractions of gas species and pressures with instrument banks we now have on three separate planets.
Repeatedly the men who stormed science and covered the entire world with alarmism and the false science backing it have destroyed the actual skeptic movement by insisting that if you don’t believe with ‘most’ people it’s an evidence you’re likely wrong; and that’s simply not the case in science.
It’s why people hide extension chords. They think the science would say, that if they push them behind things, they won’t be torn through kicking, or cause people to trip, so it’s safer. But the actual science is that when people hide them, they get nicked, get worse and worse, they burn the place down.
Everyone who has a major presence in natural sciences media today, stopped telling the truth, said it’s plain the science backing it up is ‘sound’. But it wasn’t. And now those supposedly ”leading” the ”skeptic” movement,
are believers whose own scientific credibility is as ridiculously proven worthless as those they helped drive real science, out of science, in exchange for relevance, or media presence, or – simply alarmism traffic.
There is no real skeptics movement of any power because those who are really skeptical were driven away in hordes. In hordes, people telling the truth, were name-called and had their reputations trashed by monkeys with meters they weren’t qualified to turn on.
” Skeptics have the ability to influence the debate now, and should use it while they have it.” As the current el Nino wears out, coming DATA will no doubt influence the debate; however, as with religion, it will be believe systems against data. Depending on the quality of the education or maturity of the audience, the debate will be tilting to I hope the rational side.
That’s right. Because the believers in it took over and drove all the real skeptics out, and then pretended there was a debate about the end of the world due to it, so that was scientific debate.
That end of the world bullsh** was political debate.
Non scientists took to the internet like bedbugs and infiltrated every single millimeter of discourse space, driving out real scientists and injecting lunacy built on ignorance and driven by shameless self promotion and fame seeking.
Is there anyone who is in the climate debate on the scientists’ sides – the real ones, the ones driven out of even discussion of atmospheric chemistry – who actually is scientifically literate and told everyone this was a hoax from the beginning? No.
So called ‘scientific’ discussion is run as a circus, not like one. As a circus, designed to simply incite stampedes to click-bait any adult sees clearly is nothing but popcorn passed off as steak.
The price however is the complete dismantling of the natural sciences by such unscientific pseudo-skeptics and their professional politics ”theory generators.”
There are no scientists around the climate movement not because the scientists didn’t feel they were right: but because of the STORM of character assassination and media manipulation to turn the public on the scientists everyone sees now,
were right,
are right, and could have never lost the long term truth argument. The fact is not even the most basic premises of AGW are based in qualified science that can pass experimental test from stage to stage.
It’s why the modern scientific media doesn’t do experiments and discuss them. It’s why there are long lists of words, people are not allowed to say, or they simply aren’t allowed to participate in so called ”scientific” discourse.
Yet those very words ARE the laws of thermodynamics. You can talk of science but not refer to the laws of scientific method, the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics. You MUST assert you believe ”the basic science is sound” regarding this or you’re simply not allowed to talk here, and if we can seek you out, we’re going to follow and character assassinate you anywhere we find you. This is about the public perception and that’s much more important than your ”laws of thermodynamics.”
What kind of
”science” movement
has long lists of rules of science people aren’t allowed to mention because they derail the talk between those who agree it’s all real and there aren’t major errors?
The kind run by believers
passing themelves off as skeptics and the intellectual equals of scientists who corrected them.
All it will take is the seizure of the Presidency by Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
Both will exert their every effort to legitimize the fake science for reasons of control and political expediency.
Obama would’ve liked to have done more on Climate Alarmism but spent the majority of his political capital forcing National Health care upon the Nation. Plus he lost his allies in Congress after the 2010 elections.
It’s quite likely that if Hillary wins, she will push for devastating climate rules that will reduce the American economy to a shadow of it’s former self. And if she wins she likely will have at least one half of Congress with her.
Your vote in the Presidential election will determine the future of your children and their children and possibly the future of the world.
Don’t be fooled by concerns about the GOP elite. Yes they’re not conservative but for other reasons many do not see the necessity or advisability of more climate alarmism regulations.
its
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
“Dinsdale”.
Wrong – if you’re referring to the first word in Jakee’s sentence. ‘Its ‘ is possessive; ‘It’s ‘ is a contraction of ‘it is’. You don’t say “his’ ” or ‘hi’s ” when you mean ‘his’, and those are possessives.
I’ve no idea why you would interject this into the conversation. It didn’t clarify anything, except that some people ignored an English class or two. I realize I’m being pedantic, but I’m correcting a pedant.
She’s already threatened to essentially end coal mining in the US.
I wonder what effect the Brussels terrorist attacks will have on that “slim majority of the public says they “worry” about climate change”.
It is no longer a slim majority, it is 64% of tof
How is the climate supposedly changing that has you so concerned?
Furthermore, do you believe the media has given a fair portrayal of global warming so that both sides of the debate are known and understood by those polled? If not, might that skew the results?
More nonsense.
The 2015 United Nations ‘My World’ global survey of causes for concern currently covering 9,722,020 respondents shows ‘action on climate change’ flat last, 16th of 16 categories.
http://data.myworld2015.org/
And don’t forget, it will be decided – is being decided right now, in fact – by the biggest AGW sceptic of all.
Uh huh. Here’s 17 countries and how they rank what concerns (worries) them-
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/29/global-issues/
I notice that the monuments of other European cities are being lit up as a show of solidarity with Brussels.
I highly poignant gesture and effective show of strength. (sarc)
But it’s a good thing that this symbolic lighting things up did not coincide with Earth Hour.
The European liberal elite would have found themselves beset by a significant moral dilemma…
No moral dilemma, Gia is in pain. Less people is good. Therefore ISIS is good. No moral dilemma here at all.
Unfortunately, when ISIS take over they are planning on having about 14 children per wife.
And as many wives as they can afford.
At the new bargain knock down rate that wives will fetch when most of the men have been decapitated.
That’s their dream.
And Angela Merkel is the woman who can make it a reality…
Take back the light!
==============
..The question should have been ” Do you believe ” Man Made Global Warming ” will have catastrophic consequences ? “
Historic Catastrophic climate change the last 500 million years is the reason we humans are here today.
I agree. I worry about Global Warming all the time but my worry is that the politicians will try to take action to mitigate the catastrophic AGW farce and destroy the world economy. In Canada the pro AGW faction seem to have won.
Dave Wallace: “In Canada the pro AGW faction seem to have won.” No. The handouts generation elected some governments (provincially, municipally and federally that have been supported by BIG GREEN and with our system, they only need 1/3 of the votes to do that. But in the not too distant future, the failures of their policies will add up, there will be new elections and a new course will be charted. The government is not in control. Lessons learned from the many guerrilla wars around the world in the last few centuries. As long as a silent majority agree, and a few skeptics act, things will change. It is inevitable. But likely costly. Still change will come.
I am an eternal optimist.
Many Ontario residents are already in energy poverty and more will be there if Ontario continues on its present course.
Who knows when those affected by Ontario energy policies will wake up?
This is driven by opportunities to make money and not science.
Some in Canada think the country can be made into another “Saudi Arabia” by furnishing the U.S. with energy.
A prescient warning and excellent advice. I have had the opportunity to follow the “global warming” issue from its first public mention until now (I will be 56 years old this year). Observing how the entire scheme has unfolded and has been presented to the public has led me to the conclusion that it has never been about climate, weather, concern for humanity, or saving the planet for the next generation. The entire scheme has always been about political power.
Reading histories of great civilizations reveals a discernible pattern of ascendance to individual liberty and then a descent to tyranny. It appears that the “global warming” crisis has been just another tool to help speed us along the path to tyranny. Perhaps if the debate was argued in these terms more folks would be jolted from their apathy and become willing to actually do something to preserve what liberty we have left tor the next generation.
History has also proven that liberty is not preserved by winning an argument. The price is high, but the liberty we enjoy today was paid forward by those who willingly paid that price. Mr. Kummer is correct in exhorting us to defend the truth in the debate, but we should also be prepared to defend the liberty which grants us the opportunity to speak the truth. William Cullen Bryant’s poem, “The Battlefield,” reminds us: “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again; the eternal years of God are hers. But error, wounded, writhes in pain, and dies among his worshipers.”
Esto paratus!
A very good article.
J. Keith, you captured my thoughts too.
Concomitant with the globul warming political scheme, are constant attempts by the forces of evil (the UN, liberals in general, and various other enemies of the good ‘ol USA) to remove citizen rights to own firearms. Confiscation of our firearms fully opens the door to tyranny.
If men claim their rights and defend them, they automatically win the only debate that matters.
because submission is the only thing being negotiated.
it’s dressed in calico patches of terror and its middle name is policy, but its true name is tyranny.
you can not reason with it.
when you stop feeding this beast, it dies and you win.
fighting and winning are completely different things
latest example can be found in venezuela.
nobody fought. it died when it starved.
Agree “Domination of Nature” is just one of many Tools to unenlighten the Western World.
Public support for AGW may wax and wane, but that support remains shallow. Ask the public if they would be willing to pay $6/gal for gasoline or give up their cars and suburban houses altogether, and you will see a resounding rejection.
No one has to give up their cars or suburban houses. The combination of electric cars and solar panels can keep us moving without using fossil fuels.
http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/08/suburban-sprawl-climate-solution
“…solar panels can keep us moving without using fossil fuels”
Hardly Luke. It’s true that you can offset your own electrical usage by using PV AND the grid. It’s a pretty tall order to provide for those same electrical needs without the reliance on the grid. Until you can eliminate the grid from the above case, fossil fuels will need to exist. That is, unless we embrace nuclear. If you have a solution, I’m all ears.
Actually, the implementation of solar panels to power electric cars will get people walking a lot faster that the dumb carbon taxes ever will.
Solar & wind power will never replace fossil fuels at current levels of energy use. Laws of physics.
Even replacing half our energy with wind/solar would cause untold habitat and ecological destruction, and would make electrical power far more unreliable.
Most idiotic claim ever, sure, everyone can afford 100k for a Tesla car their taxes already paid for.
You clown
Solar.. b a h a h a h a h a
What powers electric cars? (Hint – it is not a battery, that is only a storage device.)
What are electric cars made of? (When’s the last time you saw a steel mill powered by solar panels? Or a plastics plant run by wind turbines?)
Re suburbs; have you heard of the UN’s Agenda 21?
Mark
You clown…. The Tesla 3 being released this month. They are predicting under 40k.
I’ve never spent more than the equivalent of $800 on any vehicle.
And I’ve had years of cheap trouble free motoring.
We (me and my partner) have kept two vehicles on the road and have never broken down during a journey in over 16 years of driving.
Plus my car does over 50 mpg.
And most repairs that I have had to carry out have been minor fixes done by myself.
Let me know when Tesla can meet my expectations/requirements for cost and reliability.
Ha ha…
It’s 8:30AM here (Oz) at the moment and my 5KW solar system is pumping out 145W, not even enough to run the toaster so that I can get started i the morning.
Dispatchable power is necessary, otherwise I will have to wait for the clouds to part before I can run anything.
moving very….very slowly….and just to the next charging station….which is powered by what? 2013 Luke…and it was just an “idea”…wasn’t actually tried or realized according to the article.
Simon,
Tesla 3 will be revealed/ announced and pre-orders will begin at the end of March. It doesn’t even go into production until late in 2017! It is not being “released” this month. And while estimates have it at around $35,000…how many are ordered will pretty much determine the price of the actual manufactured cars.
Still WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY out of the average person’s price range for a car you have to charge every 200 miles.
Hey Luke – you forgot to include electric airplanes that can keep us moving without using fossil fuels!
India (Dehli) is planning to build 800,000 tuk-tuks that are solar powered, along with mains charged batteries. In the unit I saw, it was fitted with 4 fairly large batteries the type of which I could not determine. It also had just one PV panel on the roof, not sure of it’s rating. That’s 3.2 million batteries that will be charged, largely, by coal fired mains power. The following questions were not answered. How many charging stations would be required throughout the city? How long would the queues be to charge? What is supplying the charging station?
Sorry, not build but retrofit.
@Noaaprogramer…At least those solar powered planes in their circumnavigation of the globe have the good sense to break down in Hawaii for an extended period. Who cares if it takes more than a year to cover 26,000 miles!
Luke says:
“No one has to give up their cars or suburban houses. The combination of electric cars and solar panels can keep us moving without using fossil fuels”, with a reference:
http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/08/suburban-sprawl-climate-solution
The reference had no calculations to support this.
Tom in Denver wrote:
Good point, Tom in Denver. It’s all about how the questions are presented.
On a scale of “Not worried at all” to “Terrified of CAGW and thinking of killing myself and my children,” most people would answer somewhere in the middle or towards the alarmed side just due to the constant bombardment of apocalyptic doom from various media.
But ask if they think CAGW is so important on a scale of 1-10 that they will give up travel, adequate heat, cable, their 2nd refrigerator, and their smart phone and I believe you’ll get laughter or 1s or 2s.
Now, Ted Kaczynski practiced an admirably minimalist lifestyle but he did have a nasty habit of trying to blow people up. I suppose true believers would just consider that as offsetting penalties, though.
Maybe this is the answer to WIN the debate. The GOP need to propose draconian austerity measures, food and energy rationing, restricted travel, housing restrictions, etc to the level AGW people advocate as being required. Then place this to a public vote, the Dem’s would have no option but to support it, the public would have no option but to reject it.
Reminds me of the book “Ender’s Game” where the main character beats the unbeatable aliens by taking untold unorthodox risks as he believes it is only a video game simulation. If Ender new he was dealing in real lives he would have not taken the same risks and lost the war. The minute the public see’s what is at stake, the risks, they would not pursue the same course of action.
You wont mind paying $6 a gallon with the proposed 55mpg requirement. At my present vehicle 19 mpg that’s roughly an equivalent 2.07 per gallon; a decent price for gasoline. The size and power of the 55mpg vehicle, not so decent.
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/28/160196047/u-s-cars-must-get-55-mpg-by-2025-under-new-rules
that’s the most bizarre magick i’ve seen recently.
i have lots of 2$ and will sell them all to you at a bargain rate of $5.50 – that’s 10% off.
If you don’t mind buying them, I won’t mind selling.
i have lots of 2$ and will sell them all to you at a bargain rate of $5.50 – that’s 10% off.
That was a bit evilish, gnomish :o))
I dont have a problem with global warming. It’s happening, but it’s slow, subtle, and hard to predict. My main concern is over the suggested actions, most of which I think are impractical. I do see a benefit if there’s action to enhance energy security, so as to reduce dependence on nations which finance terrorism, such as Saudi Arabia.
The republican party is just a clone of the democratic party with different platitudes. Thinking of them as allies anywhere where you oppose the democrats is a mistake. Trump and Cruz are only on the skeptics’ side because they are anti-establishment candidates riding an anti-establishment wave. The republican establishment might jump on the skeptic bandwagon if they see you winning but don’t make the mistake of expecting them to help you win.
The climate movement is self limiting. People only put up with parasites and hardship for so long, after a while the whole show collapses, one way or another.
Yup. Ultimately, when there are no bodies, no real damage, and nothing we spend changes anything, the public will turn against alarmism just as quickly… which is not unlike what we see now.
That assumes the warming will stop. If the evidence is in front of them, they will have little option.
If “disaster” will be a FUTURE consequence from CURRENT minimal warming (groan!), then this game will continue indefinitely EVEN IF COOLING COMMENCES, because IF people trust scientists about the future, they will trust them when they inevitably say that “the cooling is just a blip and the disaster WILL continue, later, in the future, which we scientists TOTALLY know. Totally. 97% confidence…..Yup.”
A parallel to climate models which may or may not work in successfully giving usable predictions or projections are traffic forecasting models. In Australia we have had four or five disasters (for the shareholders and banks) with regard to grossly excessive traffic forecasts on which road tunnels have been given the go ahead.
GHD has produced a very interesting report on some of the forecasts, some badly wrong and some pretty good. It looks at the theoretical basis for the forecasting, and as such should be interesting to sceptics as an informative instrument for considering the validation of climate models. Mod – if there is a better blog into which it should be placed – please shift it to there!
https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/infrastructure_reforms/files/Attach_C-GHD_Report.pdf
Facts rarely matter in public “debates”. The only things holding back massive “climate” legislation are supposedly more pressing issues – immigration and Middle East turmoil. Neither of these pose a significant threat either. The US government is committed to “rule by crisis”. Each crisis is created by a small number of people who intend to benefit from “emergency action”.
A real issue like the 19 trillion dollar national debt that will cripple our children and grandchildren gets ignored because every crisis requires more money to be spent.
The only thing that will prevent carbon taxes and shutting down fracking will be to distract the politicians with a new shiny object. The attention span of politicians is two years for congressmen and six years for senators.
Bob, you and others keep telling me that me and my children own this 19 trillion dollar debt that politicians lent out because they could not even balance a budget. Screw that.
Make the politicians own the debt to their fifth generation and let them pay off their debt.
If a family is rich like Hillary clintons from a life in politics take everything from them to pay this debt.
If you give the schmucks who brought us this debt to deal with it we would never see a national debt again as personal responsibility will fall on those who do stupid things like spending money we do not have.
The headline has changed from
“Why skeptics will lose the US climate policy debate”
to
“Why skeptics could lose the US climate policy debate”.
The reasoning seems very thin, based on a little blip in one opinion poll. There are plenty of opinion polls showing concern about climate change in decline.
On the policy side, what’s been the news in the last few days?
The Ivanpah solar facility is in trouble for producing too little, too expensive power and using fossil fuels.
Tesla has apparently given up on its 10kwh battery.
Also recently there’s been concern about rising levels of air pollution from diesel fumes, a direct consequence of climate policy as tax breaks were introduced to favour diesel cars with lower CO2.
And increasing concern about the daft policy of cutting down trees in the US to make woodchips to burn in the UK because it counts as “renewable”.
So on the policy side, the skeptics are increasingly being shown to be correct.
IMHO any talk of winning or losing is unwise. Nobody’s going to win or lose any time soon.
Paul,
“The reasoning seems very thin, based on a little blip in one opinion poll. ”
That’s a double Reading Fail! First, it’s a slow multi-year trend — not a blip.
Second, the polls are not the key point.
Weak sauce. What is the public willing to pay to prevent global warming?
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/are_voters_willing_to_pay_to_combat_global_warming
Not much.
And to claim that the skeptics only have gimmicks is to ignore multiple serious hearings in the Senate where both the science and the improper discount values used were highlighted and challenged, not to mention very revealing questioning of the ignorance of the head of the EPA herself. It isn’t a lack of genuine, critical questioning that is the problem; it’s the lawlessness of the un-elected bureaucratic state. But concern trolling noted. Thanks.
As soon as I saw the article title I knew who wrote it. It’s not a contest to true sceptics. It’s not about winning or policies. It’s about science, facts, what is or is not happening. Politics and knee jerk, agenda driven policies are the problem with almost everything today.
“As soon as I saw the article title I knew who wrote it.”
Precisely!
Aphan,
“It’s not a contest to true sceptics.”
Are you ruling as King or ex cathedra?
“It’s not about winning or policies.”
For many people the public policy response is important. If too little, the effects of climate change might be painful. If too large (up to unnecessary), we’ve wasted resources and suffered opportunity cost.
FM: “For many people the public policy response is important. If too little, the effects of climate change might be painful. If too large (up to unnecessary), we’ve wasted resources and suffered opportunity cost.”
Everything is a false dichotomy to you isn’t it? I’m either ruling “as King or ex cathedra.” It’s either “too little public response”, or “to large”. It’s either your way (demand a retest of the models) or “Or they can continue on their present course, and probably lose.” You keep presenting things as if humanity must pick A, or something from category A or else they will automatically get B or something in category B…win or lose. Succeed or fail. Victory! Or defeat. Your world must be painfully dull because you don’t see all of the other options between A and Z.
For many people the public policy response is unimportant, and for most, they are completely oblivious. Natural disasters happen. Always have. Always will. They are only relevant to humans, because humans build crap in areas where natural disasters happen. And keep rebuilding after they happen repeatedly. It’s painful because life is painful. You cannot legislate pain away. Or loss. Or death.
The US government wastes resources every stinking day. They spend money on the most inane, idiotic, useless, and corrupt things possible. Climate change is just the entree du jour. And you can write 4 million articles telling people what they “should” or “should not” be doing if it makes you feel better…like you are doing something. But you can’t change people who don’t read them, who don’t agree with you, who don’t care, who simply resent being told what to do, who think for themselves, who have better ideas, who see more options, who have more pressing things to worry about today, and tomorrow, and maybe for the rest of their lives.
You need to open up your mind to the possibility that there is not another person on this planet that thinks exactly like you do. Sees the world exactly like you do. Or that will embrace the exact ideas and ideals that you do with the same degree of dedication or interest. Of course, you can keep talking and lecturing and writing as if there is some massive group of individuals out here that YOUR personal opinions will appeal to, and they will rise up and follow your suggestions to success and I will predict that you will most likely be very disappointed in the end. My success rate is quite high, and I am confident that I will add you to that list.
10kwh battery? The current one is 90kwh,
no correlation between emissions and warming
end of story
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
Don’t waste your time on this link.
It must be good if you are afraid of it.
Being easily frightened (or perhaps enjoying trying to frighten others) seems to be a common trait amongst the True Believers. Claiming to be on the side of “Saving the World” just covers up the fear and the projection.
I wish you would go back to school, Luke, and learn why climate changes. (Of course, that would have to be a school that hadn’t been taken over by ‘Progressives’!)
Which link would that be Luke, you haven’t posted one.
But rest assured, if you had, I (and I suspect, many others) certainly wouldn’t waste time on it.
“Don’t waste your time on this link.”
Monte Carlo simulations are a CONSENSUS method of modelling.
Get over it, dopey !!
Next la Nina winter will be brutal. Anyone with faith that Global Warming is going to make NYC warm will vanish like fog at sunrise.
The title of the article should be “How Skeptics Can WIN the Climate Policy Debate”!
Polls show consistently that large portions of the US population will regurgitate media propaganda on Global Warming. HOWEVER, when pollsters ask about support for carbon taxes to “combat and reverse” global warming, the tables are reversed and a decisive majority (like 65%) OPPOSE these measures.
Depending on who the candidates are, Carbon Taxes can become a decisive issue in the 2016 election. That’s the decisive vulnerability of the warmunistas. Also the looming specter of blackouts and brownouts in the EU Green Economy will also be rather decisive in my opinion.
Polls often say that people are happy to pay more tax for things like healthcare. Until the election.
Or not …
Canada is being dragged toward carbon taxes and there is not much opposition. link
The trick is to confuse the public about what’s really happening.
“Canada is being dragged toward carbon taxes and there is not much opposition.”
Yes, but that’s because people can’t feel it yet.
Every day on Facebook I see people I KNOW voted for the Liberals (both federally and provincially here in Ontario where energy costs are skyrocketing due to “green” policies) complaining about how much things are costing NOW. Yes, it will get worse.
The only question is, like the frog sitting in the water being heated, will they jump before they are boiled?
Prime Minister Zoolander will eventually run out of photo ops to distract people, and actually have to do some, you know, governing and all that hard stuff.
My thoughts exactly.
LOL
People will love him as long as he keeps spending like a drunken sailor.
And today they bringing out a budget that is already a disaster, 20 billion for “green” infrastructure ( that would be 200 billion in a US budget) and that is just the beginning.
Much depends on the 2016 Presidential elections. If Trump is a candidate the Carbon Tax WILL be a very big issue. Just ask people to multiple their fuel and electricity bills by a factor of 3.
That won’t be ignored unless it’s drowned out by side-bar distractions. But no candidate will win on a platform of jacking up prices for a phony war of Co2.
By contrast, healthcare insurance is a legitimate concern. Obama presented a plan which was better that the status quo and won on that platform. He’ll continue to win since no coherent opposition has been articulated.
Also they are the hardest hit by the forest of 200m tall windmills that have sprouted up practically in their backyards. I wonder what premier Winnie would say if a windfarm appeared 550m from her house?
Ontario residents are not even being allowed to know who and what’s going to be affected by the new cap-and-trade. All done behind closed doors.
How can people object to something they don’t even know about until it’s too late?
“Polls show consistently that large portions of the US population will regurgitate media propaganda on Global Warming.”
Because they don’t want some rabid, mentally-unhinged enviro-crazies trying to destroy their lives or attack them.
I think the skeptic side would have more ground if they did not overstate their case, such as with claims of warming stopping even before the height of the 1997-1998 El Nino.
” The skeptics have almost every imaginable positional weakness, yet most believe they are winning.” You can see that here. I think it is because they do not actually go outside the echo chamber to see what is happening elesewhere.
There seems to be a dearth of actual predictions that are against the “IPCC approved” ones.
One was here from your pages:
“.2.“Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still rallying“, Anthony Watts, posted at his blog Watt’s Up with That?, 15 October 2008 — This years data may mark an inflection point in arctic cooling.”
In fact it was followed by an even lower minimum in 2012. No real sign of a change in direction, so that is a failed prediction.
There are several predictions based on solar cycles that say we are going to start cooling any time now. If that cooling fails to materialise, then there don’t seem to be many left on the table.
GWPF recently published a paper by prof. Mills with predictions – these have already been disproved.
There is no point saying that this was due to El Nino. El Nino’s were part of the data that Prof. Mills used to create his predictions.
The fact is, “the pause” was a powerful message, and I believe it was effective in disarming the public. Now that has gone, only actual cooling is likely to win the public over to your side.
Once the battle over actual AGW has been lost, there will of course remain the battle over whether or not anything should be done about it.
It’s easy to pick a snap shot in time that happens to be during the decay of a major El Nino and say “the pause is over” but that’s short sighted and ignorant. That’s been claimed before in 2007 and 2010, but after each event the pause continued and lengthened.
I am referring to the pause as defined by Monckton and referred to here at WUWT frequently in posts such as “The pause lengthens again” to 18 years and 8 months. The pause is over. If it comes back in the future then it will be re-born. It was really a stastistical fiddle to avoid the accusation of cherry picking a start date around the 97/98 El Nino. It was argued that it was not cherry picking because it went back however far it went from today, and today is not a random cherry picked date. It took another big El Nino to end the pause, and that is just a reflection that these events cause big blips in the temperature record. It makes no less sense to say that the current El Nino ended the pause than it does to say the 97/98 El Nino was the reason for the pause.
The pause bythis definition has ended. Any other definition of the pause is just a cherry picked segment.
seaice1-
“I am referring to the pause as defined by Monckton and referred to here at WUWT frequently in posts such as “The pause lengthens again” to 18 years and 8 months. The pause is over. If it comes back in the future then it will be re-born. ”
The climate is not static. It changes, moves, gets warmer, colder, really colder, really warmer etc. A “pause” in warming happens just like a pause in cooling. The only constant in climate is change.
Let’s put your logic to work here. The Earth’s overall trend has been cooling for roughly 50 million years. We have a LONG, really freaking long, way to go before we can talk about global warming today being anything longer than a commercial break in Earth’s regularly scheduled telethon. How about we all just agree that for the past 11,000 years or so, Earth’s climate has been amazingly, stable? I mean, looking at the chart I’ve included, the “human influence” on it’s climate isn’t even one whole line if you push the Holocene Epoch back into proportion with the chart! Planet Earth has been experiencing (more or less) an 11,000 year PAUSE or plateau if you like. When that is over, and it’s chaotic, abrupt, natural state of rapid changes comes back in the future, then we can all say (with you) that it’s been “re-born”. Right? 🙂
Like I said, the exact same claim was made during 2007 and 2010, how’d those proclamations of the pause being over work out? Your logic fails when you insist on looking at a single month (single datum for this purpose) and call the pause over. Look at the 13-month running average, the pause is statistically intact and will be continue for some time considering that a La Nina is very likely developing.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/03/uah-v6-global-temperature-update-for-feb-2016-0-83-deg-c-new-record/
seaice1,
Why don’t you write? Why don’t you call?
What if the paws has actually ended? Not in the dumbass statistical sense. In the real sense of what has happened in the past.
Wanna pick cherries? Start picking at the PETM. Better yet start picking at the Triassic Thermal Maximum (hereafter TTM). Roughly equal but ~150 million years earlier
What are a few ridiculous ups and downs between friends?
Either choice, nothing but down, dude.
Aphan, you are just trying to change the subject. The pause is well defined – how else could it be said to be for example 18 years and 8 months? It refers to a very specific set of data. Monckton said onone occasion “The hiatus period of 18 years 2 months, or 218 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.” I am following Lord Monckton’s definition The pause as defined in this way can flit into and out of existence. That is why I do not think it is a meaningful measure of anything.
If you mean a meaningful definition – that the longer term (multi decadal) trend has ceased to rise, then that has not happened. There is not evidence for such a pause. There is just fluctuation about a rising trend.
If you mean a pause in the multi million yr trend, then perhaps you are right, but that has very little to do with current climate issues. The sea levels were hundreds of feet higher or lower at times in distant history. That does not mean a sudden change of 20 feet would not have significant effects today. And no, I am not saying the sea level will rise 20ft tomorrow. I am using this to demonstrate the vacuity of your argument. I did not see Monckton or anybody else claim that the pause has now lasted 4 million years and 8 months. Reference to these ancient temperatures is not relevant to discussion of the pause.
“Like I said, the exact same claim was made during 2007 and 2010, how’d those proclamations of the pause being over work out?” Well, they worked out eventually by the pause being over. I am not sure to which claims you refer could you provide a reference perhaps?
The definition of the pause was very useful, becasue it effectively eliminated consideration of data before the last big El Nino without appearing to be cherry picking. The flip side of that is when that pause disappears, it has gone.
Seaice1,
Since you did not actually quote Monckton, it is impossible to know where your approximation of what he said ends, and your own words begin. So- were YOU saying that “the pause” would be “reborn” if it comes back, or were you insinuating that Monckton thinks, claims, believes that? And then define “reborn” for me from your point of view.
The pause as I define it, is simply a point in time where there is little change (not zero change) in global surface temps. Temps fluctuate vastly every day, and every week, and every month. But when comparing year after year of averaged GST, there was a sub zero trend for 18 years and 2 months. It is specific and meaningful in it’s specificity. There have been numerous such pauses of varying lengths in the past 135 years.
So if you want to talk multi-decadal trends, let’s do that. How many decades per trend? 2? 4? 8? 7? If you aren’t specific, your term is meaningless and not useful.
Aphan. The quote from Monckton is the part within the quotation marks. I did not think this was a contentious quote, as he has made very many similar ones. I got it from The lord Monckton Foundation website here
http://www.lordmoncktonfoundation.com/
The quote in context to remove to remove all doubt about who said it:
“Onward marches the Great Pause
Global temperature update: the Pause is now 18 years 2 months
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Since October 1996 there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature plot pushes up the period without any global warming from 18 years 1 month to 18 years 2 months (indeed, very nearly 18 years 3 months). Will this devastating chart be displayed anywhere at the Lima conference? Don’t bet on it. [Figure 1]. The hiatus period of 18 years 2 months, or 218 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.”
So yes, the parts I did not include in the quotation marks are my own. That is how it works. They are a logical conclusion from the definition of the pause as used by Lord Monckton.
“But when comparing year after year of averaged GST, there was a sub zero trend for 18 years and 2 months.”
Yes, but why should we look at that particular segment of graph? If you extend either backwards or forwards there is a positive trend. The fact that it is flat for this period is interesting – it indicates something about the distribution of heat within the Earth system. What it does not necessarily mean is that warming stopped for that period. We can only tell that by looking at longer trends.
The pause still exists in several data sets: The UAH Satellite temperature data set and the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (weather balloons).
The pause has been adjusted out of existence in the various surface station data sets.
Pete, which UAH dataset do you mean? There have been more than 10 such datasets since 1992, with different adjustments each time. Don’t get me wrong, if the CAGW crowd want to hoodwink the public with adjustments it’s only fair that seekers after Truth like John and Roy should fight back against the GREEN BLOB in this way.
By the way, I think I must have been hoodwinked by Tamin0, who showed raidosonde data (RATPAC) showing an increase similar to the TOTALLY DISCREDITED surface data measurements by people like the BEST turncoats. Do you have a reference for the TRUE radiosonde data? I’d be grateful for it.
Pete,
When we put human “history” into the proper perspective (like the chart above), it hasn’t even registered as the blink of an eye to this planet. Talking about the climate and how it’s changed since 1950, or even 1880, is like talking about how many individual hair strands each angel dancing on the head of a pin has. 🙂
“You can see that here. I think it is because they do not actually go outside the echo chamber to see what is happening elesewhere.”
There is certainly a great deal of truth to that statement IMO. I don’t see a lot of intelligently argued skeptic viewpoints at places like Quora, for example (Although Richard Muller is quite active there). And there is quite a lot of sniping about “D*****S” with no rebuttal.
Discussing the subject here accomplishes nothing, but I don’t see those who have the requisite knowledge to discuss it engaging outside of here and on a few newspaper forums.
Once we get the next La Nina, I expect a multiyear flat linear trend will be restored in the satellite-measured lower troposphere according to RSS v.3.4 and UAH v.6.
But then the skeptics may again claim the pause started in 1997, while there are multiple reasons for saying the pause started in early 2001 to late 2003 according to analysis of RSS v.3.4 and UAH v.6.
Larry, is it really about climate or control in the end?
Does anyone remember the POTUS sponsoring a climate denier March madness contest last year? The president of the USA denigrating his own citizens? Why?
Sorry, but the debate is over and we lost.
Despite the crushing blows to the alarmist science that we are all familiar with, the world stumbles forward signing treaties and investing in green projects. Most of the countries in the world have signed onto Paris, there’s already deals in place between the US and China, EPA is going to put coal mining out of business barring a miracle ruling from the US courts, the science journals are against us, the science societies are against us. Public opinion may be tepid, but Obama and his allies march forward as if they were winning the debate. Since nobody is stopping them, one can only conclude that they have indeed one.
What will turn the tables is time, and the selfishness of nations. Most of the agreements don’t really call for anything other than business as usual until 2030. Most countries will drag their feet, kicking the can down the road one year at a time, continually delaying serious implementation of their own mitigation schemes. In the meantime China and India and other countries will be building coal capacity as fast as they can so that they can claim it as the peak they will then decline from starting in 2030.
But by 2030 we’ll have 15 more years of data, not to mention another 30 to 40 ppm of CO2 in the air. The logarithmic nature of CO2 will become increasingly evident, and the likes of India, China, Russia and many others will find one excuse or another to renege on their agreements.
A lot of money will get wasted between then and now and stupidity, but the whole charade will fall apart under its own weight. We may have lost the debate for the current generation or so, but time will turn the tide. Sad that it will take so long, but it will.
“Sorry, but the debate is over and we lost.”
Hmmm..maybe elsewhere but certainly not in the US as here it tends to be a political party issue. When a Republican president becomes elected, all trashed, then with a Democrat, reinstated. And since recent history has shown that presidents in office tend to oscillate every 8 years (with some exceptions) this will probably continue for some time. The problem being when they sneak payments out the door like Obama did for AGW.
Time, yes. Especially since the pause/cooling disconnect with models is likely to extend into the 2030s. National selfishness, yes. Already evident in COP21. But IMO there is a third major factor, abject failure of the proposed solutions. UK goes dark. Ivanpah goes bankrupt. CPP declared unconstititional. Big visible failures can (and will) provide countermomentum to massive, institutionalized CAGW funding. The ultimate counter is the growing disconnect to reality.
Just to add to your excellent post: Big money is not on our (skeptics) side as evidenced by the huge amounts of dollars spent on the mass media to brainwash the U.S. population and “pay off” the politicians.
Heh, good stuff, dgh, and I agree. But it means we’ve won the debate; all we need to do now is declare victory.
Double heh heh, we can’t declare victory until the future.
But rest assured, the debate is won. ‘Tis fated.
===================
“Sorry, but the debate is over and we lost.”
Well, perhaps not yet. CAGW is just a tool to help bring in Agenda 21/2030. So far, many of you guys are fighting the hammer while paying little attention to the blacksmith. Those who shy away from notions of con$-piracy have lost the battle in advance, because defeating the CAGW monster will only see the rise of another deception of even greater strength. The sheeple must be kept in a state of alarm until such time as:
“…that, if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect.” Matt 24:24.
Slacko commented : “….Those who shy away from notions of con$-piracy have lost the battle in advance, because defeating the CAGW monster will only see the rise of another deception of even greater strength….”
+1 The perpetrators of the scam know well that hiding behind claims of conspiracy theory is a tried and true method of quieting the dissenters. Just one of their many propaganda ruses.
Does the (sometimes unfairly) ridiculed left hesitate to talk about the big bucks made by Big Pharma esp. the vaccine scam?
No they don’t.
Does the mainstream left hesitate to talk about the big bucks made by Big Oil?
No they don’t.
So it’s definitely OK to talk about money and corruption money!
I wonder how much these graphs of US opinion on climate change correlate with recent US weather.
Do you also wonder how graphs of every other country’s opinion on climate change correlates with recent weather in those countries?
A slow, but progressive drip erodes each generation, in each civilization, until a de facto outcome is reached. Only an organized conspiracy funded through redistributive change and debt, and spread through indoctrination, is capable of sustaining this plodding effort. And so a new orthodoxy evolves from conception to birth to maturity, and becomes progressive with suppressed and reduced competing interests.
And from the other side, we have this at Climate Etc. …
Naomi Klein explains how environmentalists may be more damaging to their cause than climate change deniers.
https://judithcurry.com/2013/09/07/big-green-in-denial/
2½ yr old article. Klein is a luser.
Part of the problem is the tendency for some American skeptics to indulge in “left bashing”.
I sometimes wonder if that is their main reason to post on skeptic sites.
This of course plays right into the warmist agenda.
So a left winger after reading some comments might think that he or she cannot be a climate skeptic
The climate issue is a question of science fact and not a right versus left bun fight.
From a European perspective both the Democrats and Republicans are right wing parties.
If we highlight the loss of industrial jobs and the poorest being the main victims of rising fuel prices then a left- right alliance to force a reexamination of the scientific evidence behind climate alarm should be possible.
Bryan said:”Part of the problem is the tendency for some American skeptics to indulge in “left bashing”.
I sometimes wonder if that is their main reason to post on skeptic sites.
This of course plays right into the warmist agenda.
So a left winger after reading some comments might think that he or she cannot be a climate skeptic”
ANYTHING can play into an agenda if the agenda is warped enough. Letting the expectations or agendas of others control or modify what you think or say is just as stupid, bad, dangerous as letting them silence you altogether! If a “left winger”, or a “right winger” or a “centrist” is too stupid to know the difference between someone’s personal opinion, which they are entitled to have and speak whenever they want to, and scientific facts and data, then they aren’t going to be a very good climate skeptic anyway!
Those on the pro AGW side of the debate tend to be “left wingers”. Here’s an article discussing an article in which a “left wing alarmist” even admits that “during the recent two decades, the climate worries have become increasingly confined to an intellectually sterile environment of brainwashed and stubborn people whose ideology strongly influences their very perception, something that Dembicki calls the “left-wing ghetto”. http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/salon-agw-cause-confined-to-left-wing.html
Most people are happy to bash “stupid” no matter what it’s political ideology might just happen to be.
Brian:”If we highlight the loss of industrial jobs and the poorest being the main victims of rising fuel prices then a left- right alliance to force a reexamination of the scientific evidence behind climate alarm should be possible.”
That’s a nice opinion, but everything you just said is nothing more than your opinion. It’s not scientific evidence we can examine. People’s reasons for posting anywhere online, including skeptic sites, is not scientific evidence that we can examine or come to an agreement on. And you’ve provided no evidence to back up your altruistic view that a “left-right alliance” of any kind is possible.
Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever and Dr Judith Curry should just back the alarmist viewpoint because they are too left wing for you!
You want to continue to post anti-left wing rants on a climate science blog.
Explain how this helps the point of the present post.
Bryan,
Do not attempt to speak for me. Ever.
I want people to be able to speak their minds freely, even if I don’t agree with everything…or anything they say. I’m an adult capable of thinking and reasoning for myself and I expect others to have the same abilities.
YOU, however seem to imply that “a left winger” might think they cannot be a climate skeptic because they read someone’s opinion on a blog! A left winger could read that as saying that left wingers are so fragile and naive that we must monitor our words so we don’t scare them off! I find that idea far more offensive than almost any “left wing bashing” I’ve seen.
As far as helping the point of the present post…with FM, I’m never quite sure what his point actually is! And even if I do, no one here is obligated to agree with, support, or “help” that point. We discuss things here by presenting our own opinions and views as they relate to the topic. This is not an echo chamber. We are not clones.
No doubt that the recent warming spike has put the wind in the AGW sails for the moment. But the trouble with spikes is they don’t tend to last. Because the recent warmth in the US maybe about to come to a end. ln the NE Pacific low pressure has been the common weather pattern during the winter. But over the next week that’s about to change as high pressure begins to build there instead. Now if this pressure pattern set up lasts into the spring/summer then the recent warming in North America will be coming to a rapid end. Also its looking less rosy for the AGW crowd in europe as well. There are signs that high pressure may well form over Greenland/northern europe during the spring. With it comes the risk of late frosts plus cool wet cloudy weather in southern europe.
So if this spike in temps ends as quickly as it started then we need to ask the AGW movement “does this now mean there is a risk of runaway climate cooling” ?. lf they say no! then ask “why then should it have been seen as a sign of runaway warming”. Also am not sure that Arctic warming should be taken as been “good for the cause” by the AGW crowd . Because one of the best ways of removing heat from the climate system is sending it into the Arctic.
“But the trouble with spikes is they don’t tend to last.” True. Like pauses.
Would that be the pause that the advocates of CAGW claimed didn’t exist, seaice1?
seaice1
l have noticed that the Hudson Bay has not been joining in with this record warming.
So lets just wait and see if the pause in rising temps is well and truly over.
I can’t speak for others. The statistical fact that you could extrapolate backwards from a particular date in certain data sets and get a zero trend was, I believe, acknowledged by everyone. I did not think it had much significance, and I did not believe it represented a stopping of global warming. It was a relatively short term phenomenon, and I expected the temperatures to return to the long term trend, as they appear to have done. Whether or not it did exist, it does not exist now.
There never was AGW on top of LIA recovery, so it never “paused”.
“Return to the long term trend”. Actually, they never really left – we’ve been cooling the past 10,000 years;
http://www.iceagenow.com/GISP2%20Ice%20Core.jpg
What’s that, you say? You don’t like cooling trends, only warming ones?
Yeah, we’ve noticed.
Anthony for one, has always been clear to point out that the debate has never been about whether or not the earth has been recently warming but whether human influence is a significant contributor to a pretty clear warming trend that has been going on since the early 1700s. In the initial discussions we were led to believe that human influence became apparent sometime around the 1950s with a dramatic increase in the warming rate for a brief period around the 1980s. As the evidence grew stronger that there is a clear warming trend starting well before the 50s, the AGW side, whether it was supported by science or not, began to and continues to routinely refer to the human influence extending back to well before the models suggest that there could have been human influence. So while the pause was a convenient rhetorical tool for the skeptical side allowing them to point out that current warming was clearly not greater than background because there was no warming at all, the fact remains that for human influence to be measurable, it has to be discernible above other factors which are causing warming. With or without a pause, the warming rate in the last 20 years is completely unremarkable in terms of natural warming trends and completely unconcerning if it is the worst that AGW has to offer.. But the way you once again poked a stick in the eye of the skeptics and got them off-topic was nicely done.
“I can’t speak for others. The statistical fact that you could extrapolate backwards from a particular date in certain data sets and get a zero trend was, I believe, acknowledged by everyone. I did not think it had much significance, and I did not believe it represented a stopping of global warming.”
I don’t know anyone who stated a belief that it represented a stopping of global warming. Do you? Since you obviously cannot speak for others, if you do know of someone, please provide a link to their words.
You also can’t insinuate or assume for others either, like Lord Monckton, or readers here. I assume temperatures will continue in the long term trend as well! We agree! And if they do, even with all that increased CO2 in the air, a lot of people are going to have to go back to the old science drawing board.
Aphan “I don’t know anyone who stated a belief that it represented a stopping of global warming. Do you?”
Yes. dbstealey for one. He has said many times that global warming has stopped.
seaice,
The IPCC and many others have posted their explanations of why global warming stopped for so many years. Even you acknowledged it above when you posted “True. Like pauses.”
Currently there are about sixty explanations of why global warming stopped. Go argue with them, or argue with yourself.
The only thing that’s changed is the new talking point: “Global warming never stopped.”
If it weren’t for prevarication, the alarmist crowd would be silent.
Seaice1,
Are you really so bored or small minded that you’ll argue illogical semantics? dbstealey may say that global warming has “stopped”, because it’s a synonym for the word “paused”! So are the words ceased, halted, discontinued etc. Does that mean he can never use words like start, resumed, continues etc again?
If I told you that I was driving and I stopped at a red light, would you seriously attempt to argue that by using the word “stopped” I implied that my car would never “start” to move again after that? No. Because that would be idiotic. Right?
It’s already ended on the other side of the Atlantic. So far March has been colder than January or February.