Global warming skeptic tells group that cure is worse than problem.
By Lee Roop, special to The Huntsville Times
HUNTSVILLE, AL – Science doesn’t support current global warming alarms and, even if it did, current proposals to fix things won’t work and might make life worse.
That’s the well-known view of Dr. John Christy, a University of Alabama in Huntsville climate scientist, and Christy spelled out the “whys” and “why nots” of his perspective Tuesday to the Huntsville Rotary Club.
“Consensus is not science,” Christy began, quoting the late author Michael Crichton.
Christy, the state climatologist, is well-known in the global warming debate. He has testified before Congress many times and was an unpaid expert witness for the automobile industry in a federal lawsuit against fleet mileage requirements.
Here’s Christy’s basic argument:
* The data being used to predict catastrophic warming is suspect.
* Models generated from that data “overstate the warming” actually taking place. The earth is warming, but not that much, and it has warmed and cooled for eons.
* The Earth’s atmosphere is nowhere near as sensitive to carbon dioxide as some environmentalists believe.
* Any “solution” to perceived global warming must balance the growing worldwide demand for energy against cutting carbon dioxide output.
Fleet mileage requirements now proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency “would reduce global temperatures by about 1/100th of a degree,” Christy said.
You would need to replace 1,000 coal-fired power plants with 1,000 nuclear plants to change global climate even .15 of a degree, he said.
“This is the scale (of global climate) we are talking about,” Christy said.
* One cost of mandating harsh energy controls is the migration of industry to areas where requirements are less, Christy said.
In his talk, Christy also took aim at several other widely discussed pronouncements.
* Temperatures in the Arctic have increased over the last 100 years, he agreed, but that’s only because 100 years ago “was the coldest it’s been in a long time.”
* Arctic ice has melted, but ice has grown in Anartica. Between the two, there’s about as much ice as always.
* There are more polar bears now, not fewer. Canada issues 800 bear-hunting permits each year, he pointed out.
* Temperatures may be warmer in Greenland, but scientific experiments with ice fields show “that 4,000 years ago, it was warmer in Greenland than it is today.
“Greenland did not melt,” Christy said.
Why is the apocalyptic view of climate change so widespread?
“Funding comes if you have an alarming story,” Christy said.
He also cited “group think” and said scientists revel in the attention their views about climate brings.
“It’s almost a drug,” Christy said.
h/t to Climate Depot
Lets work back from your average person in the street. What do they believe?
They believe that the world is, or will be, getting warmer over the next few decades, and that the sea will rise, and that there will be more hurricanes, and the Polar Bears will die, and the seas will all turn to acid, so there will be no fish, and because of methane emissions, there will be no cows, or sheep, or pigs, or goats, so we will all need to be vegetarians, but there will be a shortage of arable crops because most of the land will have been taken by the oil companies to grow bio-fuel, and … and …
Why do they believe this? Because the news media tell them these stories.
And why does the news media do that? Because disasters are always good for selling newspapers or improving your ratings, and that sells advertising.
Also, it is easier for a journalist to pick up the phone and call a tame scientist for a quote, than it is to actually get their head around discovering a story and then verifying the facts.
From the scientist’s point of view, they were initially flattered to be phoned all of the time, and to give interviews, and appear on television, and be quoted in the articles, and to become famous.
Ah, but fame is a wonderfully treacherous thing. It is not funding that is the drug here, it is fame. And even if they are proved wrong, and their famousness turns to infamousness, the notoriety will still provide the fix that they need.
In fact, the more outlandish the claims they make, the more exciting the news becomes, and the more the public become concerned, and then more news media is consumed.
It is a magic suit of clothes that the world is wearing. I am thankful for people like Dr Christy for taking the role of the little boy who spoke up, and who continued to speak up, until the Emperor was “exposed” as being the fool he was.
There is one most deeply puzzling aspects of the AGW movement. It continually argues that we should do various things because of Global Warming. But when you look at the things that are urged, they have almost no effect on it. The magic number here is 1.8 million. Read this:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/04/30/what-you-cant-do-about-global-warming/
If the US were to stop emitting CO2 totally, it would have only a small effect on temperatures, and if the UK were to stop totally, it would have none. That is, assuming the IPCC is right about climate sensitivity.
So why then are we reading this week in the UK press that everyone in the UK should spend around $20k each to make their homes more fuel efficient, in order to combat Global Warming, when it can have no effect whatever on it? In the case of the US mileage restrictions, there are sound reasons for it as a policy, they have to do with energy independence. But obviously, the policy is simply irrelevant to Global Warming.
It seems that what’s really going on is that people are invoking Global Warming as an emotional gesture on the side of policies which they advocate for quite other reasons, sometimes correctly, but often not. The sad part is that some important and perfectly rational policies will wrongly get rejected as the GW justification is exploded.
Rereke Whakaaro (00:01:44) : “Lets work back from your average person in the street. …
Very nicely put, Rereke!
I’m not sure how facile the drug metaphor is. How panicky does a young tenure-track associate professor get when he thinks he isn’t distinguishing himself enough fast enough? With co-eds in the mix, it could be pretty panicky.
One sometimes thinks that academic papers aren’t judged by their quality as much as how damned dry they are.
Dr. Christy has begun to open a new debate. Up till now, it has been almost impossible to convince the warmists that that these alarmist scientists could be biased let alone dishonest. Such arguments always get shot down as being of the “conspiracy theory crackpot” type. But there is a much more simple – and powerful – dynamic at work. Celebrity status.
Imagine the adrenaline as you pick up the phone and your secretary announces “ABC, CNN, CBC tv reporters to see you Doctor Hansen.” You adjust your tie just in time as you are dazzled by flash guns, cameras rushing from all directions, mikes shoved at you, shouts of “What does this tell us about the climate Doctor Hansen?” “How hot do you predict it will get by 2036?” Next day your face is plastered all over the worlds newspapers: “Top climate scientist predicts . . . “; “We must act at once says top US climate scientist”.
And hanging on the coat tails of the most celebrated, ride the little scientists – the Mann’s, Schmidts and all the others – who can bask in the reflected glory. But why only reflected glory? Why not leverage ourselves up with Hansen? Let us too make dire predictions. If we redouble our efforts we can make that troublesome medieval warm period go away; make the ice dissappear; find more feedbacks; more droughts, floods, plagues, hurricanes, extinctions . . .
And we do it. We too have our names in lights; we too become “leading climate scientists”. Journalists seek our opinions. And we notice that the more alarming we make things sound, the more of them come back. We even start to notice that we are making things up, just for effect – we are playing to our audience. At first we feel a little embarrassed. Maybe someone will trash our nonsense. But something amazing happens. When reasoned argument comes at us, they are attacked and excoriated by journalists and our peers.
We are invited to conferences, have the ears of leading politicians, feted by the media, celebrated by celebrities. We have become gods.
“Group Think” is absolutely 100% correct.
Slightly OT but, after the amazing BBC web site piece by Paul Hudson “Whatever happened to Global Warming”, this morning’s edition of BBC’s daily news programme TODAY featured an interview with Prof. Ian Plimer.
It is at:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8356000/8356114.stm
and the interview can be listened to if you scroll down to time 08:52.
Plimer gives an excellent account for himself.
His book “Heaven And Earth: Global Warming – The Missing Science” hasn’t been much commented on by WUWT. Strongly recommended.
But what’s up with the BBC?
Did they check this out with Roger Harrabin “the BBC’s Environment Analyst, and one of the world’s senior journalists on the environment and energy”??
(Senior eco-fascist twit, more likely).
Perhaps they thought they could make Plimer look ridiculous and it just didn’t work out. But the BBC is usually very reluctant to admit that there ARE any climate sceptics, even a ‘tiny minority’!
Thought some on here might like this: The same UK government organisation that brought you the little girl being read a story that the world is going to end is currently running a TV ad on UK television that states, “Car travel is the single biggest contributor to our personal CO2 emissions” http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home.html
Personal car travel (26.1%)
Space heating (24.8%)
Personal flights (14.0%)
Water heating (12.0%)
So I carried out their CO2 calculator (a lengthy process!). However, when I inputted a typical family of 4, living in a detached house, cooking by gas, but NO AIR TRAVEL I got a different set of figures.
Car travel 3.99 tonnes
Space heating 4.67 tonnes
Appliances 2.24 tonnes
If you add a 4-bed house then the space heating rises even further against the car travel. Indeed, it’s only possible to make the statement “Car travel is the single biggest contributor to our personal CO2 emissions” if you ignore the fact that other members of the family will be travelling in the car! Otherwise you would naturally divide the ‘car travel’ by 4 – the same as you would for the space heating. In every case where I inputted a typical scenario (such as someone living alone etc.) I still got the CO2 footprint bigger on space heating than on car travel.
I still cannot understand. Why lie?
Very simply, it’s the bandwagon effect, and yes, the benefits for AGW “scientists” for being on board could be called addictive, especially being in the limelight, as well as the appeal of “saving the planet”. Then, there are the very likely negative consequences of not being on board, including no funding, ridicule and shunning by your peers and others, job loss, and possibly worse. The minute they climbed aboard, however, they ceased to be scientists, and have violated the faith and trust that society has placed in them. This violation of trust will have severe consequences down the road, for science, and for mankind. A day of reckoning is coming, however. They will be and should be held accountable.
“WRONG – they are a bunch of fraudulent con artists. They are crooks. In many other disciplines one would be sued for criminal negligence for the typical kind of inaccuracies and outright false statements found in many AGW papers. Liars and cheats and eco-fascists that masterminded this kind of fraud are not merely people who lost their way.”
The fact that this goes unmoderated might lead certain people to think that you share these views, Anthony. If only because this is one of many similar comments.
Slightly OT:
Today the BBC Today program ran an interview with Prof. Ian Plimer, a well-known sceptical scientist:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
Go down to the 08:52 item.
Is it possible that the BBC is starting to give a more balanced coverage of climate change? In recent weeks there has been some other good BBC coverage e.g. Clive James and Andrew Neil.
Chris
To paraphrase a couple of leaders from the past . Elizabeth the first wisely said “We now have wolves not shepherds governing us, and all that will be left will be ashes and carcasses to rule over”.
Yet Winston Churchill’s words are also relevant when he said “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”
http://www.twawki.wordpress.com
Vincent (02:18:53) : all too true. Read Erich Hoffer for a good description.
News organizations are geared to disaster reporting (image them reporting “good news today, nothing bad happened!), so they’re going to be attentive to the Catastrophic AGW crowd rather than rational scientists like Dr. Christy.
Humanity also seems to have a built in desire to believe in the Apocalypse. End of Days, Club of Rome, Population Bomb, Nuclear Winter, 2012 all seem to resonate with a large part of the population.
Unfortunately journalists rarely allow facts to get in the way of a good story. What is delightful about Dr Christy’s table of general facts is that they are simple to understand and convey to the lay person.
What I think is good that given all the propaganda from the Doogooder Doomsayers, the money spent by governments and lobbyists, Jo public and a large swathe of scientists and academics think and know they are being sold a pup. The web has allowed this.
As I have said before there is only one thing worse than a hypocrite and that’s a sanctimonious hypocrite.
Fortunately for them, tar and feathering is no longer in vogue.
OT but I think he suffers from rosacea. I had/have it and it is not cureable.
“twawki (04:30:17) :
To paraphrase a couple of leaders from the past . Elizabeth the first wisely said “We now have wolves not shepherds governing us, and all that will be left will be ashes and carcasses to rule over”.
Yet Winston Churchill’s words are also relevant when he said “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”
http://www.twawki.wordpress.com”
Old Winston was a suppoter of the ‘Feble Minded Peoples” act of 1912, fortunately voted down. Silver spoon idiot!
If my memory serves me correctly, fleet mileage requirements for Detroit were proposed originally as a way to reduce our economy’s sensitivity to price flucuations in oil, especially those brought on by manipulations of the market by foreign states. That seems like a good idea to me today as much as it was then.
Just because the AGW folks latch onto it, doesn’t make it a bad idea.
Humour of the day
I get all my climate science by watching the Day After Tomorrow. . In that film, all was good during global warming. It turned catastrophic when it turned cold
Is getting on the climate change bandwagon like a drug? I’m not sure about that metaphor, but perhaps it is exciting to publish research with dramatic conclusions, particularly if you get a lot of media attention from it. I suppose anything can be addictive in that same sense.
Certainly, it’s more enjoyable to be funded than to be unemployed.
lichanos (06:35:46) :
If my memory serves me correctly, fleet mileage requirements for Detroit were proposed originally as a way to reduce our economy’s sensitivity to price flucuations in oil, especially those brought on by manipulations of the market by foreign states. That seems like a good idea to me today as much as it was then.
Just because the AGW folks latch onto it, doesn’t make it a bad idea.
Just because something was proposed with good intentions doesn’t make it a good thing, either. We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads.
Have we reduced our economy’s sensitivity to price fluctuations in the oil market? Have we reduced our dependency on foreign oil? Have oil imports gone up or down since this was implemented?
If any of these were the real goals, wouldn’t it be better to increase domestic oil production?
I wish someone would tell the BBC and the rest of the British media about this. I’m sick to death about their constant warming propaganda at the diktat of the Left Liberal establishment, constantly pumped out to justify more and more green taxation, and the manufacture of expensive gadgets that are not cost efficient and do more environmental harm than good in their maintenance and manufacture. Eco fascism is big business in the UK and these people are ruthless in their lies and bully boy tactics. Why destroy the economies of the developed world and stifle the emerging economies of the third world with all these ludicrous costly co2 reduction measures because of these nutters. Technology will achieve all this on it’s own without the pain. People let’s fight back.
lichanos (06:35:46) :
“Just because the AGW folks latch onto it, doesn’t make it a bad idea.”
Well, it kind of does make it a bad idea, within the context of the socio-political dictum that the AGW crowd are foisting upon us. Intolerance must often be met with equal or greater intolerance.
If a government official tells me that I must reduce fleet mileage to save us from AGW, I will fight it. If the same official says that we must reduce fleet mileage to reduce our dependence on foreign oil or dampen oil price fluctuations, then I will consider it.
The BBC are, at last, presenting a sceptic side to the idea of global warming. However, they chose Gavin Schmidt to answer the sceptic points from Prof Singer. Shame. You can guess what we get. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm
Schmidt even says, “…the linear trends since 1998 are still positive.”
Not true Gavin…
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
Neven-
If you are expecting a website that censors comments that do not fully support a particular mindset, this website isn’t it.
I can link others that do so if that is what you prefer to see.