It seems more and more, people are questioning the supposed consensus on climate change. Now we see some journalists asking questions too.
It is said that science is self correcting, politics, not so much, but it has been known to happen. Now when we have writers at major newspapers asking questions about why the climate hasn’t warmed in the past few years, one can hope that politics will start asking questions before we sell our productivity down the carbon rabbit hole.
Robert Bradley writes in to alert us of this quote of the week:
“For a long time now, science reporters have been confidently told the science is settled…. But I am confused [by recent developments]. Four years ago this all seemed like a fait accompli. Humans were unquestionably warming the climate and changing the planet forever through their emissions of carbon dioxide.”
– Eric Berger, Science Writer, Houston Chronicle, September 6, 2009 [SciGuy Blog]
More on Bradley’s blog here:
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re Kim 15:55:42- Oh, you’re THAT kim! I enjoyed your posts over there last year. At the time I was posting as paminator, but I was not nearly as frequent a voice as you and some others, like wmar, Gene G and Shaska. Hopefully you’ll stop by there once in a while to correct the usual gang of catastrophists.
Like you, I have a lot of respect for Andy. He seems naive about how R&D works, how research funding, particularly at universities, works, and how this affects his ‘go-to’ guys like Hansen, Mann and Schmidt.
Feta compli == “all the Greek cheese has been eaten”
On a more thoughtful note (!) a crowd’s emotion is not reversed by facts and logic. What WILL swing emotion is either exhaustion or substitute emotion, eg anger that some bunch of extremists has hijacked our economy. Westerners were heading for exhaustion and capitulation to the AGW agenda but, ironically, the financial bubble burst before the deed was done, and generalized worries about the planet were replaced by personal worries about jobs and food.
I don’t sense much emotion behind the AGW scare right now; the most strident voices that are heard are those whose livelihoods depend on perpetuating it. So we are nearing a different kind of exhaustion, and I agree with others here that the tide shows signs of turning.
It will take a long time, and ‘cold’ facts are necessary. But facts alone are not sufficient. A couple more high profile exposes of scientific malfeasance (Hockey Stick scale preferred) and a couple of cold years, and people will be wondering what ever possessed them.
It was the reporters who failed to question in the first place.
recent item in my Waterloo, Iowa news paper.. Farmers Almanac predicts very cold winter because of dearth of sunspots ( It’s the SUN, stupid!!!) NOAA predicts warmer than normal winter because of El Nino. (or is it El Ninny) What’s wrong with these people ? don’t they know that it’s all about CO2 levels ??
It’s begun! If Eric Berger has 2nd thoughts, it won’t be long before Andy Revkin at the NY Times has 2nd thoughts, too.
rbateman (12:54:21) :
“Solar Minimum”
“For now, it is truly the science story of the 21st Century”.
Philip_B (19:23:45) :
“And I have yet to see a single reference to it in any general news source.”
The thing is that journalists and politicians are pretty slow on the uptake and most of them have just got their heads into AGW. Once the journalists cotton on, and start writing their scare stories, they’ll be jumping on it and once the politicians figure out a way to blame the solar minimum on the rich dveloped countries and big oil they will as well.
The trouble they will have is getting away with the sudden dramatic switch from CO2 = AGW to whatever bandwagon they try to get on next.
…or the leading authoritative voices on the IPPC have second thoughts too…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html
I don’t have that much faith in the MSM. Assuming that AGW is defrocked, that big old sun will simply replace it in the news. A dimming sun (whether it actually is or not) makes a great story. Most young to middle aged news reporters have been weaned on AWG, and they understand that alarmist rhetoric that gets them the byline. Why would they change? Sex and death sell, and what is sexier or deadlier than a sun over which we have no control?
“before we sell our productivity down the carbon rabbit hole”
A sobering thought.
Minor point … shouldn’t that be “faith accompli”?
Mr Bradley’s carefully understated article exposes something many of us have been bleating about for some time – the folly of certainty.
Claiming that a nasty thing is certain to happen is an extreme position. It should always be supported by very strong evidence, indeed one could say that any extreme position requires extremely strong evidence.
I am not qualified to say whether the catastrophic man-made global warming theory is correct. But I am qualified to say that the evidence presented to support it contains patent flaws, I can say that because I don’t need to understand everything about it in order to understand parts of it nor to understand that parts of it are built on sand.
There is a decade of propaganda and a great deal of institutionalised bias to overcome. Mr Bradley’s approach is, in my view, exactly the right way to go about it.
Questions are often far more powerful than answers.
When a scientific proposition is put forward to the scientifically ignorant like me the audience does not have the knowledge to examine it in detail so it will either be accepted or rejected on purely irrational grounds. It is irrational to accept something simply because a so-called “expert” puts it forward and it is irrational to reject his expertise without evidence. The rational response is: “prove it using language I can understand”. That response is, perhaps, given less frequently than it should be although opinion polls about belief in man-made global warming suggest it would be given by an awful lot of people if push comes to shove.
The best way to further the debate is to ask exactly the sort of questions Mr Bradley asks, which are similar to those asked by Senator Fielding in Australia. Questions require answers and they force those who seek to impose their will on the little people to “prove it in language I can understand”. The more times they fail to do so – and their record is 100% so far – the more impact the questions have.
I really don’t think “they” are going to give in so easily. Just because climate is not behaving as forcast means the adgenda will be stepped up. Laws will be passed and taxes will be raised in the dash for the biggest power grab in the history of humanity.
The focus on climate is simply a distraction.
Jimmy Haigh (21:21:05) :
And all for the encouraging words.
The biggest mistake AGW makes is to try and predict the unknown with too little reference points.
I would like to tell you all that I can predict how long and how deep the Deep Solar Minimum will last. I know better than that. I know there exists too little reference points. Too little, too late came Galileo. Too much critiical information lies in dusty records or was lost over time due to eggs in one basket.
Too little, too late comes the instrumental record to attempt to predict the Climate, though we make great headway in the various aspects of it.
One day we will be able to do that, predict the climate, but that day is not today.
AGW tries to use Deep Solar Minimum to save thier error, but they are using a phenomenon with the same problem.
There are no crystal balls in science.
Right now, we need to know all we can about what the Sun is doing and why, but as long as AGW keeps rolling out bandwagons, there will be no progress, no understanding and no preparations in time. Not for any climactic event.
That is not only thing being roadblocked, however.
The alarming predictions have become so disruptive and so distracting that normal surveillance of the Solar System has become lax. Two planets popped up with severe scars, presumably struck, but we don’t know because nobody was paying attention.
AGW started this rancor, and it’s their responsibility to tell the media and the politicians to put the bullhorn away. That’s their job, they are responsible for the broken windows in the lab.
Deep Solar Minimum is a glass of cold water in the face and a reality check.
Our job is to find a way to get the story into every household and keep them informed as to how it progresses.
No more bullhorns and bandwagons of the 3rd kind.
No more sweeping the Sun under the rug.
oakgeo (21:51:18) :
Get out in front of the bandwagon. Find a way to inform the public in such a way as to allow them to come to thier own conclusions.
I think the correct expression for this sort of behaviour is ‘rats leaving a sinking ship’.
Expect many more rodents to be joining the exit as our continuing spotless sun proves the AGW theory wrong.
chris y 19:28:33
Yes, that were I; I’ve been everywhere, man. I remember you fondly. You were always as perspicacious as your comments on this thread. Perhaps Andy’s tonal evolution is a response to the needs of his audience. Remember, there are many among his whose passions are for the earth, just as are ours. They are in need of healing from the sickness that was the paradigm that CO2=AGW.
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This is a good point to note a non-climate related reference that probably explains much of what is happening & why:
“The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t–and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger,” by Daniel Gardner.
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Shouldnt-Ourselves-Greater/dp/0525950621/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208360613&sr=8-2
I’m about 3-fourths the way thru, and the whole AGW versus not-AGW debate fits the pattern he describes.
Ken 6:03:23
Another great one is the classic ‘Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’.
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My quote of the week goes to a poster on Climate Audit. The discussion was about how all the forecasts for arctic sea ice appear to have fallen short.
Rob Spooner.
Now if the climate scientists were not following a herd instinct, one would have expected there to be a range of results centering around the obvious one. Instead, there was a range of results centering around the preferred headline.
The herd has congregated around its hopes.
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I don’t sense much emotion behind the AGW scare right now;
I blog the topic enough to get a feel for sentiment. There has been no serious emotion since 2008. What I saw was a peak in the summer of 2007. Since then the warmists have basically stopped showing up to comment.