Why do scientists and news stories blame everything on global warming? Fortune and glory.
Guest post By Paul Driessen, Willie Soon, and David R. Legates
We’re often asked, What really causes all these alarms about global warming disasters?
As scientists and policy analysts who’ve studied our ever-changing climate for a combined 65 years and attribute the changes primarily to natural forces, we’ve wondered that ourselves and also asked: Why is warming always framed as bad news? Why does so much “research” claim a warmer planet “may” lead to more diarrhea, acne and childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster – and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?
We’re not making this up. In fact, this is just the tip of the proverbial melting iceberg of climate scare stories chronicled at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm.
Clearly, too much money is being spent on one-sided global warming advocacy cloaked as “research,” not enough on natural causes and adaptation. Despite the best of intentions, too much money can corrupt, or at least skew the science.
As they say, follow the money. Remember Indiana Jones’ immortal words: “Fortune and glory.”
Too many people in government, wealthy foundations and activist groups have decided they know what’s best for us, what kind of energy and economic future we should have, and who should be in charge. They intend to implement those policies – and global warming scare stories are key to achieving that objective. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into the effort.
A good example of how research money politicizes science is this May 4 headline: “Carbon dioxide effects on plants increase global warming.” The story enthusiastically reported the results of a science journal paper by Long Cao and Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution. Carbon dioxide is not just making the atmosphere trap more heat, they say. It also enables plants to absorb CO2 more efficiently, so they don’t have to open stomata (pores) in their leaves as much, and they evaporate less water.
That should be good news, as it enables plants to survive better under dry conditions, even in desert areas where they couldn’t before. Any botanist or visitor to CO2science.org knows this. Indeed, hundreds of experiments show how growth, water efficiency and drought resistance of crop and wild plants are enhanced by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. So more CO2 and better plant growth should be celebrated – not serve as another “climate crisis” to further the political goal of ending hydrocarbon use and controlling our factories, jobs, cars, lives and living standards.
But the Carnegie folks turned this good news into bad, ominously saying the reduced evapotranspiration means plants don’t cool down as much, and that supposedly raises global temperatures slightly.
Equally interesting, the researchers based their findings not on actual experiments, but on yet another computer model that allegedly predicts future temperatures. When they tweaked various assumptions about the physiological effects of CO2, global air temperature over land increased 0.7 degrees F (0.4 deg C) above what supposedly would occur just from doubled CO2 levels directly increasing the greenhouse effect. But just six months earlier, the same authors tweaked the same model differently – and got only 0.2F (0.1 deg C) of additional warming. The authors now say this earlier result is “unrealistic.”
However, what guarantee do we have that the new assumptions are “realistic”? Maybe they are but, face it, there’s far less “fortune and glory,” far less headline grabbing, in a mere 0.2 degrees. It’s also far less “realistic” to expect another research grant, if the first one could only come up with 0.2 degrees of crisis. That’s not even 9:00 versus 9:30 on an average summer morning.
Besides fortune and glory, and more research grants and publications in prestigious journals, there’s also the matter of reputation. Dr. Caldeira, besides being a reputable scientist, is also an advisor to billionaire Bill Gates on renewable energy, and in charge of the $4.5 million in geo-engineering research funding that the Gates Foundation has provided over the past 3 years.
How many climate scientists can rub elbows with Bill Gates? Glory indeed. So 0.7 degrees it is.
Of course, this does not mean more robust plant growth can never be harmful. But does it really take five researchers and six funding sources (including the National Environmental Trust, NSF, NASA and NOAA) to model ragweed under doubled CO2 computer scenarios and conclude, “there may be increases in exposure to allergenic pollen under the present scenarios of global warming”?
All this makes us wonder: Why is it a bad thing that more CO2 helps plants tolerate droughts better and revegetate deserts? Should we cut down more forests, to generate even more cooling than the planet has experienced since 2005? Why do “error corrections” always seem to result in more warming than originally predicted, instead of less? And why do taxpayers have to shell out Big Bucks on this stuff?
The United States alone has been spending some $7 billion a year on “climate change research.” That’s a lot of money. But a majority of Americans now say climate change is due to natural forces, not to human CO2 emissions. To alarmists that means more “research” and “education” on the “climate crisis” is clearly needed – but not more on better oversight of questionable research or studying natural causes.
During a March 2009 closed-door meeting, Department of Energy senior advisor Matthew Rogers outlined his “dilemma” over how to comply with his new mandate to quickly spend $36.7 billion in grants and loan guarantees from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka, the Stimulus Act) on renewable energy and climate change. Today, with only $300 million of our taxpayer money and children’s inheritance left to spend, poor Matt says his “popularity continues to decline.”
Nearly $2.4 million dollars of that Stimulus loot may be funding the latest research by Penn State University Professor Michael Mann, father of Mann-made global warming, the debunked hockey stick temperature graph and many infamous Climategate e-mails. In one new project where Mike is the principal instigator, over a half-million dollars in grant money generated only “0.53” jobs in Pennsylvania. We must have missed the headline “Stimulus Creates Millionaire.”
We’re not suggesting fraud or corruption by Caldeira or anyone else. But we do find it curious that the vast bulk of the money goes to research that consistently discovers more “global warming crises.” We find several other phenomena equally curious.
* In an era when ExxonMobil posts all its grants on its website, and we have the “most transparent government in history,” government agencies, liberal foundations and activist groups jealously guard information on who’s getting how much money from whom, to finance all this crisis-oriented research.
* Universities are fighting attorney-general investigations, and insisting that any investigations into alleged misconduct must be conducted in-house and behind closed doors. Yet they are happy to give Greenpeace fishing-expedition access to emails and work product by climate crisis skeptics.
* Despite insisting that their research and findings are completely honest and above-board, climate alarmists still refuse to share their data, computer codes and methodologies, or discuss and debate their tax-funded work with scientists who might “try and find something wrong with it.”
If we didn’t know better, we’d think the operative rules were: Never seek logical or alternative answers, if you can blame a phenomenon or problem (like decreasing frog populations) on global warming. Do whatever it takes and fund whatever research is needed, to advance the goals of ending hydrocarbon use, increasing government control and “transforming” society. And always include the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in any grant application.
It may not be corruption. But it sure skews the research, conclusions and policy recommendations.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org). Willie Soon is an independent scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. David Legates is a climatologist at the University of Delaware.
Thanks anna v – I enjoyed that analysis, though I guess Greeks have more than earthquakes to be alarmed about atm…where’s Σωκράτης when you need him?
Sorry for the mis-spellings – thick fingers!
Your example of higher CO2 on plants typifies the difference between the sound science and the climate alarmists.
On the one hand we have a certain, measurable benefit that can be tested and reproduced by any researcher in a laboratory: higher CO2 causes plants to close their stomata, leading to less water loss, thus less requirement for water. That’s an absolutely certain benefit where agriculture, especially where marginal and water-stressed areas are concerned.
The other side of the coin is that reduced evapotranspiration results in slightly increased temperatures, supposedly leading to a slight global warming. Here, the effect is much more tentative and remote. For a start, it is a very tiny effect on a global scale, and not to be compared with the benefits of reduced water usage and the ability to grow crops in dry areas.
Moreover, I wonder whether the alarmist researchers did their homework on the full effects of increased CO2. Increased CO2 not only reduces transpiration, it also increases the rate of photosynthesis, and photosynthesis is an endothermic process, thus cooling the plant. Thus, any reduction in transpiration must be netted off against increased photosynthesis, and when this is done, is the result positive or negative?
In reality, these alarmist ideas are pure folly – highlighting a minor, tentative and uncertain downside when there is a major and certain upside. In many fields, such a one-sided presentation would be regarded as dishonest. For example, if one creates alarm by only mentioning some possible minor side effects of a drug or intervention without mentioning the life-saving and definite advantages.
Simply by crunching the numbers it is obvious that increased CO2 is going to have a dramatic benefit to crops for humankind, but a negligible effect on global temperatures due to transpiration. A doubling of CO2 would increase agricultural production by at least 30%, not only by increased photosynthesis but also by bringing some dry but rain-fed lands into productive use, and enabling a limited supply of water to be used for irrigating more land. That’s a very real benefit. On the other hand, vegetation utilizes only around 1% of incoming solar radiation. Plants only cover part of the earth – not oceans, not icecaps, not deserts etc; C4 plants are up to 7% efficient, and C3 (which are the most abundant) up to 3.5% efficient; so, all told, less than 1% of solar insolation utilized. Changes to photosynthetic rates and transpiration rates are playing around with fractions of this 1%. Who knows whether the effect will be positive or negative from a heating point of view? Whatever the answer to that, the magnitude of the effect is utterly negligible in the scale of things, whereas an increase in crop production by over 30% is definitely NOT negligible, and an unquestionably positive benefit.
Richard North suggests that the greenies replacement for Climate scares will be Biodiversity here
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/05/fading-away.html
And you can see the logic, it is a global issue that affects pretty much everything that mankind does, requires a worldwide framework to save the planet and it gives these “feel gooders” plenty of scope to call for regulation and taxation to salve their consciences and force the non believers to do their bidding.
Oh and last but not least there will be plenty of conferences in Bali, Maldieves, Rio…….all of course in the name of saving the planet.
Has anyone told Al Gore?
The populace gobbled hungrily the lot. — anna v (May 24, 2010 at 12:44 am)
Which is probably the full answer, Anna V. “When we had the series of earthquakes in Athens in 1981…”
Now, having done our running away, we will pause and look back and allow ourselves time to think and consider. We will then be more difficult to bolt, and as the dark side grows more shrill it will begin to meet resistance, and finally contempt.
Anna V’s comment above (May 24, 12:44) is a fine piece of analysis.
Those of us who see Global Warming as a fairy tale are sometimes amused by the warmists’ hysteria, their endless stream of dud predictions, their ever-growing list of bad things caused by global warming. And we are sometimes exasperated when we observe the success that the end-is-nigh brigade have enjoyed – UN bodies, government departments, windmills and commodity exchanges to name a few.
If we are so right (which we surely are) how come the preposterous scare story has not yet collapsed? And how much longer will its zombie corpse stagger on? And how come we cannot despatch it with one athletic lunge of the rapier? (Oops, mixed movie metaphor there – Dawn of the Dead meets the Three Musketeers!)
I think that Anna’s analysis can point the way. If we understand the psychology behind the AGW myth can we confront it more effectively and then defeat it. She makes the good point that a few cold winters will help reduce AGW advocates to a laughing stock, but these slippery customers can play the “temporary reprieve” card for decades to come.
For what it’s worth, I see two possible strategies – one scientific and the other political.
Scientific victory can come from focussing the debate on the two key AGW arguments: positive feedback and greenhouse forcing. Demonstrate (as excellent WUWT articles argue so often) that climate has natural negative feedback mechanisms – rather than positive with its consequent (yeek!) tipping point – and we kick away a leg of their stool. Demolish the IPCC claim (Chapter 2, p.136) that CO2 is far-and-away the biggest temperature driver (dwarfing water vapour, dwarfing volcanic, dwarfing solar) and the theory collapses.
There remains the possibility that feedback IS positive, and carbon IS the only game in town, in which case the IPCC, and the Royal Society, Australia’s AAS and the US’s NAS have been advising governments wisely. In this case, we doubting Thomases must shut up and get building that ark, muttering “Sun and cloud have no effect on climate… who’dathunkit?!”.
Political victory is, I think, much harder. Nobody on the sceptic side can match Al Gore’s presentation skills, but boy do we need a hero; with the US’s EPA declaring CO2 a pollutant, the reputation of this useful trace gas will be mud for a long time; with a UK government department bearing the title “Energy and Climate Change”, their raison d’etre is embedded in the language. (If they create a Ministry of Exorcism and Witch Drowning I bet they’d manage to recruit and to spend the budget with great skill.)
Is the AGW theory a vast conspiracy? I think not. It’s more likely a form of mass delusion afflicting especially the intelligentsia. Does it “at least raise green awareness”? Perversely, yes, but I think it diverts precious resource from vitally important areas such as habitat conservation, and is more likely to lead to green-fatigue among the general public.
Better get those thermal undies out… they will blame frostbite next!
Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. Has a very different point of view.
“You thought last winter was bad? Wait until this winter,”
“Expect global cooling for the next 2-3 decades that will be far more damaging than global warming would have been,” says Easterbrook. “Twice as many people are killed by extreme cold than by extreme heat.”
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/05/mighty-freeze-coming-our-way.html
Dr Soon, Legates, Driessen
Keep up the good work. People are aware of what is going on, and what is being done – in the name of climate science.
This is actually my own #2 or #1 objection to the AGW movement. They are apparently unaware that you can’t change people. Certainly, you can’t change people’s core values, aspirations, and needs. If they just consulted developmental psychology properly, they’d see it can’t be done. Nobody knows how to do it. At most you can coerce people, force them, impose stuff. That is all.
Even if AGW was 100% true and catastrophic, relying on progressive behaviour and social change is the slowest most ineffective and least likely to succeed method when time is short. Positive social change takes 50 to 100 to 200 years, depending on how deep you need it to go.
The only solutions are technical. If the technology doesn’t succeed, then we are screwed and civilisation will be thrown back to more primitive culture. That’s the irony — they focus on social progress but without technical foundations it would just create social collapse to a more barbaric era.
@ur momisugly Enneagram says:
May 23, 2010 at 5:27 pm
“after more than 200 years it became a belief, a religion”
And on top of that, they proffess to be athiests. While Vicars are very open to the idea of natural variation, and would see Planetary Ordered Solar Theory, as the best example of the perfection of god`s creation. Its just some wierd theater, where they have swapped hats.
“Mass Delusion” is right. What’s driving the alarmisn is a form of neurosis, which a writer at the Wall Street Journal summed up nicely at:
Global Warming as Mass Neurosis, By Bret Stephens, July 1, 2008; Page A15
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
As for activists & intellectuals knowing what’s best for the rest of us, consider Eric Hoffer’s observation:
“One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.”
Rich Matarese says: (May 24, 2010 at 1:47 am) The authors above mentioned a recent study published by Carnegie Institution …
Wonderful read, Rich! Thank you.
Obama’s energy contest so far has been a bogus bust.
But I did enter into another contest ConocoPhillips Energyprize and recieved an e-mail from them to submit a good presentation for the judges as the contest fits exactly into efficiency of energy which this contest was made for the research I have done of 18 times more efficient turbine.
Last years winner was an oil for windturbines that is more efficient.
This contest still allows me to keep my ownership of the technology and ConocoPhillips has the right to make the first offer on any technologies.
I do not fit into the government grant area of belonging to any approved organization or institution. So that avenue is out.
In the long term, this will be how I will fund that web school on mechanical science.
If you want to have a laugh at the ridiculousness of this whole thing, read this…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7755563/Mammoths-contributed-to-global-warming-with-methane-emissions.html
How they managed to measure the farting behaviour of the mammoths is something best left unanswered.
This shows just how utterly one-sided climate change research has become. Whereas a genuine and impartial climate scientist would look for both pros and cons, to these guys, the word “pro” doesn’t even exist. You can almost imagine them in their crisis headquarters:
“Damn, these higher CO2 levels are gonna lead to higher levels of plant productivity. If we don’t stomp on this right away, the public is gonna get the idea that more CO2 might even be – gasp – good for the planet. We’ve got to find something negative about CO2 on plants – no matter how minor, irrelevant or risible is sounds. Yeah, here’s one – too many plants means more hayfever. That could be a major economic cost – billions of hayfever sufferers fleeing across borders to escape pollen tsunamis.”
Anna v’s analysis of how alarmism works is interesting but doesn’t appear to apply in this case. Although in theory a larger brain should create alarm from abstract dangers, in reality this alarm of which Anna speaks – rising heartbeat, adrenalin rush etc – does not exist in the world of AGW hysteria. Apart from a handfull of psychiatric cases, nobody is fearfull about this. Even those who believe all the hype are acting out of guilt, not fear.
This is strange, because abstract sources of alarm can induce fear. We saw that during the financial meltdown in 2007, and we will see it again as the sovereign debt destruction spiral begins to unfold. I can only attribute the lack of AGW induced fear to the possibility that nobody believes it, or if they do, they believe a modified version in which the outcomes will be mild, and given enough time humanity will adapt.
I guess people aren’t so dumb after all.
John Maddox, past publisher of “Nature” magazine, noted this with disdain.
He wrote a book about this problem called “The Doomsday Syndrome”.
I urge anyone who wants to understand how scientists and media and political forces have combined many times to over state threats, misstate risks, spread pointless fear and waste great sums of money to read the book.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday_pr.html
The book is available on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Syndrome-John-Royden-Maddox/dp/0070394288
The elites who fought, during the “enlightenment” era, emperors, kings, queens and tyrany, and took them down then, want to become the new emperors, kings and queens of a “Brave New World”, they too are now the Archbishops and Bishops of the Gaia Religion. Non-believers will be persecuted, condemned and sent to the stake because they think themselves as the ones who know what is best for humanity, who are convinced that through their “social justice” will make us all happy because “they know what’s best for us, what kind of energy and economic future we should have, and who should be in charge”
They, being the “chosen ones”, as back in history, Kings, Queens, emperors, archbishops and all the “nobility”, feel they are the only possessors of the truth; THEIR truth: an unphantomable universe filled with scary monsters, like Global Warming, Black Holes, White Dwarfs and so on , that they preach on us, like the unbearable David Susuki.
We, the doubters, doubt of their truths, so dear for them. We skeptics do not follow their dogmas because we are FREE. Our new “bastille” is near, just keep your necks clean folks!
—
Frederick Davies speculates: “How they managed to measure the farting behaviour of the mammoths is something best left unanswered.”
Best or not, I can assuredly answer that.
They didn’t measure the critters’ greenhouse gas emissions.
They modeled ’em.
—
“Vincent says:
May 24, 2010 at 5:29 am
Anna v’s analysis of how alarmism works is interesting but doesn’t appear to apply in this case. Although in theory a larger brain should create alarm from abstract dangers, in reality this alarm of which Anna speaks – rising heartbeat, adrenalin rush etc – does not exist in the world of AGW hysteria.[…]”
In a way it does. Arguments with real life Believers (not only AGW, but also Anti-Globalisation, Greenpeace-style enviromentalism, the “we must change our ways or we will all perish” style types) quickly lead to increased adrenalin in them when they run out of arguments. Just tell one of them in the face that global warming has at least paused during the last decade and they’ll quickly resort to “Yes, but we need to decarbonize the economy anyway because we’ll be running out of oil.” Now tell them that a) a lie for a good purpose is still a lie and b) point to the abundance of shale oil/gas and coal. You’ll get their adrenalin up in no time.
It also enables plants to absorb CO2 more efficiently, so they don’t have to open stomata (pores) in their leaves as much, and they evaporate less water.
But, but, but, I thought the IPCC said increased water in the atsmosphere was a positive feedback? /sarc
Stephen Schneider aka “Doctor Doom” himself said ”we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
Selling doom isn’t easy, you know. So cut them some slack. They’re doing the best they can. Sheesh.
Why is AGW called a mass mania, an anti-humanism and a new age doomsday religion preaching apocalyptic Thermageddon?
Because us realists have been watching this dumbing-down of society and the government-funded education system for years, and global warming alarmism is just one of many indications of the spiral into oblivion of Western civilization, i.e., behaviors leading to the ruction of morals, ethics — the principles of the scientific method — that undermines our personal faith and shared cultural confidence in our abilities to overcome ignorance and superstition with reason and knowledge, and rubs all of our collective noses in societies’ lack of will to discriminate between good and bad or reward excellence and personal achievement over self-destruction and self-defeating nihilism.
If you don’t know and understand that fear of global warming is simply a symptom of a sick, corrupt and mentally dysfunctional zeitgeist — a case of global societal ADHD that has spread across and infected all of the Leftist and liberal fascists in the Northern hemisphere — then, answer these questions:
“Why do scientists and news stories blame everything on global warming?
“… Why is warming always framed as bad news?
“Why does so much ‘research’ claim a warmer planet ‘may’ lead to more diarrhea, acne and childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster – and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?”
“… Why is it a bad thing that more CO2 helps plants tolerate droughts better and re-vegetate deserts?
“… Why do ‘error corrections’ always seem to result in more warming than originally predicted, instead of less?
“And why do taxpayers have to shell out Big Bucks on this stuff?
“… If we didn’t know better, we’d think the operative rules were: Never seek logical or alternative answers, if you can blame a phenomenon or problem (like decreasing frog populations) on global warming. Do whatever it takes and fund whatever research is needed, to advance the goals of ending hydrocarbon use, increasing government control and ‘transforming’ society. And always include the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ in any grant application.
“It may not be corruption. But it sure skews the research, conclusions and policy recommendations.”
[Paul Driessen, Willie Soon, and David R. Legates, Cause for alarm, May 23, 2010]
There is a way to stop this nonsense. Stop paying your taxes! Stop listening to these swindlers. These idiots should be laughed at. It’s all just a money grab. If this bull was real and these idiots were really concerned, they would be using their own money. They are addicted to money…. your money. They want all of us to support their addiction so they can keep up their life styles. It will continue until we rid ourselves of these parasites once and for all.
It’s the Lemming instinct. It occurs in many walks of life; politics, corporate politics, any group or committe, and now science. People want to be on the “right” side of an issue. The two main reasons I have observed are 1. self benefit ie $$$ and 2. to be associated with whomever they believe to be the movers and shakers. Like the lemmings, they many times swim to their own destruction. John Wayne is credited as having said that “life is tough and it’s tougher if you’re stupid”. Remember, that by definition, the average IQ is 100 which leaves a huge portion of the population below that level. Room temperature IQ’s can now obtain any degree they desire if they have the time and money: PHD, MD, no area of education is exempt from this rule. A hundred or so years ago if you were stupid you might not make it to pass along your weak genes. Not so more recently.