The simple man's math

Actually those on the extreme left often ascribe more sinister motivations: that those who don’t believe are “evil”. For example, I read recently that deniers are “out to destroy the planet”. Silly claim to be sure.

Elitism, pure and simple. “We’re smarter than the unwashed masses”.
Perhaps high intelligence and educational achievement don’t always translate into being right.
In any case, I always been amused by people who view themselves as members of an elite class (the intelligentsia) espouse unending support for democracy… except when the masses disagree with them.

And people on the Right don’t say folks on the Left are Stupid?
I think the truth is most people who think AGW is real don’t understand the science and most people who don’t believe AGE is real don’t understand the science. How many people got A’s in science? It is the same with evolution or even ghosts. For most people it boils down to which sources of information do they trust. Liberals are more likely to believe in ghosts (1). Conservatives are more likely to reject evolution (2).
(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/OneThird-Americans-Believe-Dearly-May-Departed.aspx
(2) http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx
In the early 1900’s it was liberals who rejected evolution because they confused it with Social Darwinism. Now conservatives reject climatology because they think – wrongly – that it threatens the free market system. Once you’ve decided what you want believe it is easy enough to find and string together bits of evidence that support that belief. Hopefully as people’s economic fears wane they put a little more thought into their longer term interests.

What’s the evidence, apart from Pielke’s own political prejudices, to support assertions that accusations of ignorance and stupidity come more frequently from “self-described liberal or progressive bloggers?”
We’ve seen many, many such accusations on this blog, for instance.

And i thought leftism is caused by DRD4.

Gneiss,
If you were not being so busy being an “elitist” you could have read the source;
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/p20/2008/Table%2005-1.xls, that Roger provided.
[Trimmed, Robt]

It’s one thing to believe an activist, and quite another to believe an activist and to jump off a cliff because he asks you to do so. Amazing how many are prepared to so just that.

To those such as Obama, Clinton, and Kerry who have now sequentially offered only that people oppose their initiatives because such people are unable to analyze fact and science, there is perhaps only one fitting response: “Polly want a cracker?”

Many of the most aware, intelligent and sucessful people I know personally and many whom I have read about; (Thomas Edison, being one well known example of someone who refused to be institutionalized and thus was written off as an idiot) have not gone to college. Many budding writers who persure an undergraduate degree are warned not to go to Graduate School because it will destroy their talent. Institutions have long been the great brain adjusters to whatever the Status Quo is at the time. Some highly brilliant people also have a well tuned BS early warning system and thus escape it all and go on to move the World ahead a little notch further along than it was before.

If the warmists are so smart, why do they think people have to be told how to think?

My observation has been that people who accuse others of stupidity on this blog are overwhelmingly from the AGW camp . If they get it thrown back in their faces , then so be it . BTW , I’ve also noticed that the most strident proponents of their own intellect are the least likely to back their assertions with facts .

re: Thomas Sowell – I also recommend The Vision of the Annointed. It’s a brilliant book, and there’s a lot of stuff relevent to the present hysteria over global warming. In fact, Sowell’s 4-phase schema regarding liberal initiatives fits the AGW episode very well. The difference between this and the earlier disasterous efforts that he recounts is that in this case the suggested remedies to this (non-existent) problem are so draconian, that the whole process is now stalled in Phase 2. (Nonetheless, it’s perfectly obvious that had the liberal-left been successful in enacting their programs for addressing the ‘menace’ of AGW, Phases 3 and 4 would have followed Sowell’s scheme perfectly.)

Not having a college degree is not a big impediment to voting for elitists.
That’s what unions and ACORN are for.

And the Pharisee said, I thank you Lord that I am not as other men …
As soon as voting came in, this sort of pitch became suicidal. But some of these people are still around – and CAGW seems to particularly attract them. How many times have I seen them loftily telling me that I am a nazi-like denier, an agent of big oil (not a cent from them) or big tobacco (one of my pet hates), or a dummy who can’t see that the science is settled (they predicted the temperature stasis of the last decade of course).

Grow up, you guys! Leftism is about looking after people instead of money, and it has nothing to do with whether or not we accept the warmists and alarmists version of climate. As a one-time student of geology and astrophysics I vigorously deny AGW, and support the idea that more CO2 means better food crops. As a lifelong ‘Labor Party’ voter in Australia I deplore their rather dubious support of carbon taxes as wholly destructive of our economy.

The other problem the hard left / pro-AGW crowd face is the fact that a lot of us on the right have PhDs too. So what? The ClimateGate fraudistas all have doctorates, and they used them as a shield against legitimate enquiry. “How dare you question us? How dare you ask for our data and methods? We’re beyond reproach! We’re SCIENTISTS, dammit!”
What about doubt? What about wonder? What about following the data where it leads, instead of following your theory and cherry-picking the data to fit? What about a little humility, for crying out loud, before the awesome, unpredictable glory of nature?
It’s not about comparing sheepskins. I work in a scientific organization and I’m surrounded by over-educated boffins incapable of actually thinking. Moreover, you don’t need to be a post-doc to understand that science is about validating or falsifying an hypothesis through experiment and observation. All due respect to the pro-AGW crowd, but I’m still waiting for one of them to demonstrate empirically a causal correlation between delta CO2 and delta T. The day somebody does is the day I’ll give the AGW thesis a second look. Furthermore, as Popper argued, an hypothesis must also explain all previous data as well as making accurate predictions about future system behaviour. So in addition to fixing the problem of T refusing to scale linerarly with CO2 concentrations over any time period (except to the extent that, according to ice core data, T seems to respond to changes in CO2 concentration), the anthropogenic climate changers have yet to explain why climate changed before there was any anthropic consumption of fossil fuels, not to mention before there were any anthropoids at all.
What do they do instead? Hold conferences where they all close their eyes, concentrate until they start to sweat, and try desperately to wish the MWP away. Presumably the Roman and Mycenaen warm periods are next. Sorry. If your thesis doesn’t fit the data, a scientist changes his thesis. A fraud changes his data.
Until these niggling little details are sorted out, non-correlation still means non-causation, and the AGW thesis will remain on the scrap-heap of history, along with alchemy, astrology, phrenology, phlogiston, and other theories that can’t explain data or make accurate predictions. From a scientific perspective, that’s really all there is to it.

Gneiss says:
October 31, 2010 at 1:14 pm
“What’s the evidence, apart from Pielke’s own political prejudices, to support assertions that accusations of ignorance and stupidity come more frequently from “self-described liberal or progressive bloggers?”
We’ve seen many, many such accusations on this blog, for instance.”
Please you asked. Why just the other day on WUWT a blogger called GM these choice titbits for readers.
I won’t even comment on the fact what is revealed about the intellect of the author by his inability to understand that the problem with CO2 is that by a long, unfortunately much longer than the ability to grasp such things that the average ignoramuses let loose on the pages of this blog possesses,….
And
We also lock up people for crimes against humanity. Simon and Lomborg are firmly in that category.
And
I am not saying that they should be jailed – they should be laughed at and ignored as the village idiots they are.

DesertYote – I think that college profs and universities in general tend more towards Marxism today than at the time I attended college . My oldest stepson – a recent grad – seems steeped in the stuff . Fortunately , he has a libertarian streak and enjoys the good life too much to become a true believer . Like a lot of his peers , he spouts that garbage because it sounds “cool”. Unfortunately , like a lot of his peers , he can and will do a lot of damage at the ballot box before wisdom catches up with him .
As an aside , when I was in college , I was always astounded by the disdain my more liberal profs held for the middle class . Especially when they were so middle class themselves .

Has the time come to question the value of most education? It seems to me that we are now seeing the Triumph of the Essay-Writers: of those who were set a certain amount of verbiage to crank out by Friday and could best sense what was required in the way of futile puffery. It’s been going on forever, you might say; but it’s only now that the Essay-Writers are becoming a governing class, unhampered by a seniority system and other such traditional limiters.
At Joanne Nova’s site today, she describes the background of the young West Australian Environment minister with the power to annihilate viable, high investment rural businesses with the stroke of a pen. If ever there was an example of essay-complete-by-late-Friday…and she’s not even from the Left!
Since most of what we do is governed by commonsense and experience, there’s a real danger that education will only work to short-circuit the natural judgment of the educated, while enhancing their natural vanity. More and more, the educated see facile equivalence and sequence in matters that are far too fluid and complex. One might say that this literal-minded and compulsively abstract approach is already apparent in the evolution of so much mock-science appealing to the envies, spites and frustrations of the Left: Marxist Dialectic, Derridanism, the Gaia Hypothesis…
Oh, and climate modelling, of course.

Malcolm Miller says:
“Leftism is about looking after people instead of money”
Well, Malcolm, that’s certainly the leftists’ conceit. However, acting out of good intentions feels so good, that leftists tend to believe their own preferred solution to a problem is the only solution, and will demonize anyone anyone who disagrees. Righteous wrath is such a seductive emotion. And they tend to blind themselves to the disastrous consequences of their actions.
Meanwhile, “rightists” give tremendously more actual money and time to helping others.

Well from my viewpoint in Denmark some of the candidates from the Tea party movement are amazingly ignorant and stupid. One of the candidates just claimed that Denmark has “panels” deciding on who is valuable enough to recive treatment in the health care system that is just som amzingly stupid that …. well im at a loss for words. Or how about Palin claiming that she knows a lot about russia because she’s seen russia across the Bering strait……..
REPLY: Your viewpoint on stupidity from Denmark needs a spelling and punctuation checker. – A

http://trollphysics.tumblr.com/post/1223790818
I must suggest that they do one on Global warming.

Just say you want to talk about partial differential equations, numerical methods, or climate code documentation, and they’ll all go running for the tall grass…

Will someone tell me again what the “C” stands for in CAGW?
REPLY: Catastrophic -Anthony

Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” is another good read.

Ideologs don’t see outcomes as relevant to actions. If the action is “correct” then a negative outcome is irrelevant. Consider the “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet” remarks by Fabians about Stalin’s genocide of the kulaks.

Ever tried explaining to a university graduate why their beautiful theory doesn’t work in the real World?
DaveE.

Ed Forbes says:
October 31, 2010 at 12:52 pm
“It feels real strange as one who considers himself as liberal voting a straight Republican ticket for the first time.”

I don’t know how much age has to do with it, but I reached your point about 10 years ago.
Perhaps it has something to do with what Churchill once said ““If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
I am quite convinced that the AGW crusaders are NOT liberal. Their squelching of debate on the issue is pretty clear on that point.

Dr A Burns says:
October 31, 2010 at 1:21 pm
>>The argument is that they are just too stupid to know what’s what
Yes, it’s because 50% of the population are below average intelligence. (Median is about equal to mean for IQ). It explains why more people believe in alien abduction than AGW.

Bearing the above in mind, perhaps we could persuade our illustrious president to put in place an educational program so that, within say 5 years, every student will be above the average in IQ.
…urk!

Malcolm Miller says:
October 31, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Grow up, you guys! Leftism is about looking after people instead of money, …
You didn’t finish this off correctly. the rest of the statement is “… whether they want it or not, need it or not, asked for it or not, asked you to do it…

[Snip. Calling people ‘denialists’ is against site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]

For sensible people, beliefs about climate do not split along left/right political lines. Interest in natural climate & weather phenomena spans political, economic, & social spectra. In the long run, anthropogenic computer-climate fantasies based on absolutely untenable assumptions will fool neither masses of sensible people on the left nor masses of sensible people on the right.
Toxic pollution remains a real problem. Personally I also heavily advocate natural parks & forests. Climate alarmism is neither politically nor environmentally strategic.

Grumpy old Man disagrees with:
October 31, 2010 at 3:28 pm:
“In the future, we will be forced to consider Marxism, but we are not ready now.”
Actually, that was me. Think about it, if energy is “dirt cheap”, then the social system will have to be rethought entirely. There are taxes that EVERYONE takes advantage of at sometime. If we have an abundant source of energy that continues to do more and more work that humans used to do, it is inevitable that we would have to re-think the system.
The current “socialistic plan” is irresponsible and “takes advantage of the poor” just like the system “they” would like to replace. Every socialistic national endeavor has resulted in a tyranny (i.e. elitist control) which has been an issue of debate since the Grecian times.
Take away is, consider if we do achieve fusion; cheap reliable energy, and we have automatons doing all the work with this energy, does capitalism survive?

I forgot to include the link to Pielke Sr.’s survey in my previous post:
http://www.centralcoastclimatescience.org/poll-annan.pdf

Zeke the Sneak says:
October 31, 2010 at 3:33 pm
You are right!, and perhaps you don´t remember when, after the Russians launched their first satellite, the Sputnik, there was the intention (just that I guess) to change education…..and now what is it called education?: Teaching kids how homosexuals engange in their counter nature relations?, not teaching them to think by their own?
I will tell you, one day I went to pick up my wife from the school she works here in SA. I found a group of teens, sitting around a pine tree, trying to memorize formulas of aromatic hydrocarbons: I took some rosin out of the pine tree and told them this was one of them, I told them to smell it and chew it and taste it; I am sure that 30 years after they won´t ever forget it. Another example, Pythagoras square triangle equation it is taught, literally as: C2=a2+b2 and NEVER by drawing a square on each catet and on the hypothenuse.
The trick when the first computers appeared was to tell the students to make a program to solve any given problem: While doing it they learned waht was the problem really about; it gave birth to the idea that computers were helpful in education, which now THEY ARE NOT, etc.etc.
Not to mention the fact that, as a consequence of self conceit, the less understood is a teacher the wiser he/she considers himself (this is tragically valid too for “new age scientists”), the more entangled and obscure his/her explanations are the more wise and intelligent they consider themselves. The worst it could happend to them is someone to appear around, like Pythagoras, who showed that a slave taken from a prison could demonstrate his famous square triangle formula. They, daughter and sons of mommy and daddy, being so accustomed to “mutual caressing activities”and self indulgement, are really driving occidental culture to the deepest of darkness eras ever known. No, don´t say we are surrounded by intelligent gadgets and artifacts, THESE WERE the making and the product of the ingenuity of such dropouts as Bill Gates and others, were not for them we would not have all the confort we have in our lives. Wake up little Susie!

I’m not convinced that the alarmists (or at least the leaders of that movement) even believe in it themselves. Certainly one look at the homes of Al Gore or Oprah shows that they don’t see any need for themselves to conserve; that’s something the masses are supposed to do for them.
And I don’t see much need for wilderness or wild animals in the world anyway. Most of them simply aren’t below us in the food chain. And if the amount of park land ever drops to anywhere near the demand for it, it will pay someone to buy and maintain it and charge admission.
The real problem in today’s world is the willingness of government to help busybodies appoint themselves everybody’s mothers. The point of being an adult is to be able to tell people like that to f*** off and die, and make it stick. That’s a human right.

Cognitive dissonance explains this : just about everyone believes themselves to be good. If they have devoted years pursuing a thesis they have not only invested intellectual energy but also emotional energy and their sense of self so that when confronted by evidence that contradicts their views, it is easier to deny/rationalize/ distort this than admit error, where an outsider would have no difficulty precisely because they are uncommitted. This is not a fault of left or right but simply human nature. Perhaps if science education elevated empiricism and honest data above theory people would be more honest

Kaboom says:
October 31, 2010 at 4:37 pm
@ DN:
When you say:
“So in addition to fixing the problem of T refusing to scale linerarly with CO2 concentrations over any time period (except to the extent that, according to ice core data, T seems to respond to changes in CO2 concentration), …”
didn’t you get the ice core data arse-about? I seem to recall the Vostock ice-cores showing a correlation between CO2 and T whereby the CO2 tracked T approximately 800 years afterwards. If that is the case, delta CO2 possibly responds to changes in T, not vice versa.
Otherwise, well said!

It is distressing to see propagation of the fallacy, that CO2 leading temperature change in the recent cycles of ice ages and warming, shows that CO2 cannot cause warming. Radiation physics and measurements of the atmosphere shows that CO2 will warm the atmosphere, and this has been understood since 1859. The ice ages are understood to be initially driven by changes in the earth’s orbit and axis which increase solar summer heating in the northern hemisphere. The increase in CO2 concentration which is driven by the resulting increases in temperature and the increase in water vapor concentration amplifies the temperature increases during the glacial cycles.
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh2.html
When the temperature, CO2 and CH4 curves are carefully compared, it is found that temperature changes usually precede CO2 and CH4 changes by 500–1000 years on average. This indicates that climate change causes CO2 and CH4 changes. However, these greenhouse gas changes are a positive feedback that contributes to the large magnitude of the climate swings.

Peter Sørensen says:
“Or how about Palin claiming that she knows a lot about russia because she’s seen russia across the Bering strait…….”
I would venture that the vast majority of the Tea Party Members realize the difference between what Sarah Palin really said and what Tina Fey, a comedian pretending to be Sarah Palin said on Saturday Night Live.
Good luck with finding the right words there in Denmark. Those who only dig deep enough to find what they want find often stop far short of finding the truth.

Laura Hills says:
October 31, 2010 at 4:46 pm
“This is not a fault of left or right but simply human nature. Perhaps if science education elevated empiricism and honest data above theory people would be more honest”.
EXACTLY. This is the REAL debate. I am not sure how scientifically the two sides are into the whole debate, but one thing that is true, the distortion and torture of the data in the form of graphs and other visual media has stoked the fires (i.e. Hockey Stick, minimizing the MWP, etc). Humans are very adversarial to others taking advantage of themselves.

eadler
“Your mistake lies in the use of the phrase…“
Wow! You so perfectly exemplify what is meant be the the term ‘elitist’ that you should submit you picture for the Wikipedia definition.
MikeEE

It’s clear that many of the European commenters here are pretty ignorant about American politics. It’s not their fault, however, but rather due to the sorry state of the manipulative European (and US) media.
By the way, we’re having a tea party here in the States on Tuesday…

eadler: “Radiation physics and measurements of the atmosphere shows that CO2 will warm the atmosphere…”
Yes, radiation physics does show that when there is solar influx CO2 heats the atmosphere, and it also show that at night without solar influx CO2 cools the atmosphere, just as water vapour does. You forgot that bit.

R. Gates says:
October 31, 2010 at 5:07 pm
“This issue isn’t whether they “understand the science” but what they do with that understanding and how it is presented to policy makers (especially, of course, the issue of uncertainty in the science),”
============
So, you have given your life over to the “policy makers”.
Wow.

Chris Edwards says: October 31, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I have yet to see any real facts to support AGW, I’ve seen a lot of lies and corrupt data, I’ve seen a whole lot of own goals on their side and a lot of Nazi tactics, the real big thing is the elites cure for all pollution?? send it and all production to India and especially China, what a corrupt crock of shit.
Well done to them, they have ruined the economy of the USA and the EU, corrupted the banking system and enabled horrific pollution in China and India while destroying environmentally reasonable manufacture in the west. You do not have to look far to see the plan short term long term I cannot say, perhaps I would need to be as mad as them to understand their long term ideas!
—————————————————————————————
Chris. I share your anger with the arrogance and hubris of the so called elite. In the early part of this century, I would read about that wizard of economics Alan Greenspan and his apparently infallibility. The famous (but now infamous) Greenspan ‘put’ effectively stuffed the US economy. His acumen was something to revere (Emperor’s clothes?). The destruction of the US and UK economies was presided over by the likes of Greenspan, Larry Summers (US) on Clinton’s so called watch and George Brown (UK) under Blair’s towards the end of the 20th century. I watched the explosion of the (casino) banking system that they allowed and encouraged. This ultimately led to the collapse of the financial systems of the west. It took 10 years to stuff it up properly. It is still in a condition that nobody knows how to fix from what I can ascertain.
More recently (about 2 years ago) I began to question the science behind global warming, ocean rise etc. that previously I assumed was based on solid science. After some time I realised that the same arrogance and hubris abounds in this area as well. There seemed to me to be no real level of science that provided certainty for any of these claims. In fact, quite a deal exists to the contrary. And again it is taken up by our political leaders with alacrity. Again we see the commitment of trillions of dollars towards unproven technology (wind and solar power) and the abandonment of proven energy sources (coal and nuclear) At the same time the transfer of manufacture to the east (China and India) whose industry is based upon these two energy sources.
The point I am trying to get to is that these people blessed with great and superior education and intellect (Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan George Brown and Tony Blair) have not shown any more insight than the common person. It has been well documented and argued at the time that the removal of the last vestiges of the Glass Steagall legislation was likely to lead to the very trouble that we are now seeing. But no, hubris reigned – or was it hubris coupled with greed – there were plenty (the banks) who profited by this. It is well documented and argued now that global warming is not driven by co2 emissions and that what global warming there is does not lead to a catastrophic end of the earth. Hubris and greed – they seem to go together.
Douglas

Laura Hills says:
October 31, 2010 at 4:46 pm
“Cognitive dissonance explains this : just about everyone believes themselves to be good. If they have devoted years pursuing a thesis they have not only invested intellectual energy but also emotional energy and their sense of self so that when confronted by evidence that contradicts their views, it is easier to deny/rationalize/ distort this than admit error, where an outsider would have no difficulty precisely because they are uncommitted. This is not a fault of left or right but simply human nature. Perhaps if science education elevated empiricism and honest data above theory people would be more honest.”
There is no evidence that cognitive dissonance can explain the adoption of AGW theory by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. The theory of AGW is the result of over 150 years of scientific investigation. The theory is a result of years of collection of scientific data, beginning with John Tyndall in 1859, who was motivated by Fourier many years before. In 1959, a scientifically sound one dimensional theory of radiation propagation in the atmosphere nailed the role of CO2 and water vapor based on sound radiation measurements. The theory has evolved since then into a 3 dimensional model, aided by the development of super computers. There is no evidence that this was driven by cognitive dissonance. Arrhenius , who originated the theory of AGW, actually believed that AGW was a good thing, and a warmer climate would be beneficial to mankind. In addition, in the long term, it is understood by modern scientists, that CO2 emission could prevent another ice age from reducing the habitat for mankind to thrive. The rise of the theory had nothing to do with politics.
It is the people who deny that AGW is real who are trapped by cognitive dissonance. Survey data shows that many of them don’t even know that there is a consensus among climate scientists that AGW is real, and they believe the opposite. In addition many are driven by political conservatism to reject the science behind AGW, because it would require government legislation for mankind to stop or slow down AGW.
http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/IB_Hamilton_Climate_Survey.pdf
The scientific opposition to global warming has been financed by think tanks who draw their money from wealthy conservatives including oil and coal industrialists.

“The scientific opposition to global warming has been financed by think tanks who draw their money from wealthy conservatives including oil and coal industrialists.”
Oh brother…get out the tinfoil hats…
By the way, didn’t BP give money to UEA and Jones bragged about it somewhere…hmmm….

Good article on why graduates tend to be left wing here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/why-graduates-lean-to-the-left/story-e6frg6zo-1225945325274
The post on Roger Pielke’s blog reminded me a lot of Thomas Sowell’s “The Vision of The Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”. An excellent read.

whoops. four issues. can’t spell and just discoverd I can’t count either.

Wade
October 31, 2010 at 5:29 pm
I pretty much agree with what you have to say. There are still some fine educational institutions that do not hammer Marxism. I had a good experience at Mesa Community College many years ago, but ASU was close to intolerable. I am fortunate to be able to work with summer interns every year. This gives me an opportunity to gauge the curricula. Most have been taught some very biased history, but a few Universities stand out as exceptions. I have been pretty impressed by the knowledge of some of the kids pursuing Computer Engineering degrees at Georgia State. One thing I have noticed, that is quite interesting, is the number of students who are recognizing the bias of their professors seems to be increasing.

I wish Obama would release his college & university records so we can how smart HE is. For some reason he doesn’t want anyone to know. One wonders why.

This debate should not be about who is smart and who is dumb. It should not be about who is educated and who is not. It should not be about whether using energy is moral or not.
Let’s take emotion and labelling out of the debate and we will all be better for it.
Is the theory factually accurate or not. That is the debate.
I think the theory has never been outlined in enough detail so that we can tell whether it is accurate or not. That indicates the problem is not with the “masses” but with the science itself which refuses to lift the veil of secrecy over how it is supposed to work. We are supposed to just believe it or not.
We are not given the evidence to prove it (which is the normal manner in how humans accept new scientific fact). As a whole, humans are very smart but, in this case, we are expected to believe rather than be shown the facts.
Are the predictions actually happening? What specific predictions you might ask. The cloud ones? The Albedo ones? The tropospheric specific humidity ones? The increased forcing expected to date from increased water vapour ones? etc. etc. These examples are absolutely crucial aspects to the theory and nobody knows what these predictions are. It is clear we have missed them by a certain amount, whatever they might be.

Smokey says:
October 31, 2010 at 6:35 pm
“Albert Einstein relied on Occam’s Razor to construct his Theory of Relativity. It allowed him to reject Michelson and Morley’s notion of an “[a]ether.”
Eh! WHAT???????????.
Michelson and Morely set out to test whether the ether existed by experiment and concluded that it did NOT. It is a classic experiment: but so strong was the notion that the results were disputed for years afterwards. Einstein’s relativity showed in theory of why there was no need for the ether, which M&M had shown experimentally did not exist: or indeed for other mechanistic assumptions still popular back then.
Kindest Regards.

Bill Illis says:
October 31, 2010 at 7:18 pm
“This debate should not be about who is smart and who is dumb. It should not be about who is educated and who is not. It should not be about whether using energy is moral or not.
Let’s take emotion and labelling out of the debate and we will all be better for it.
Is the theory factually accurate or not. That is the debate.
I think the theory has never been outlined in enough detail so that we can tell whether it is accurate or not. That indicates the problem is not with the “masses” but with the science itself which refuses to lift the veil of secrecy over how it is supposed to work. We are supposed to just believe it or not.
We are not given the evidence to prove it (which is the normal manner in how humans accept new scientific fact). As a whole, humans are very smart but, in this case, we are expected to believe rather than be shown the facts.
Are the predictions actually happening? What specific predictions you might ask. The cloud ones? The Albedo ones? The tropospheric specific humidity ones? The increased forcing expected to date from increased water vapour ones? etc. etc. These examples are absolutely crucial aspects to the theory and nobody knows what these predictions are. It is clear we have missed them by a certain amount, whatever they might be.”
I think that you are arguing from ignorance. The theory of how greenhouse gases warm the earth is at least 150 years old. There a loads of publications in the open literature and there is lots of evidence and data. The percentage of climate scientists who accept AGW as an important force has been determined as 97% by two indepenedent surveys.
The climate models are not yet capable of making specific predictions. Due to the empirical nature of some of the parameters, and the chaos in climate models, their predictions, just like weather models are uncertain. The nature of such predictions is such that we cannot expect them to predict the future accurately. To complain about this shows ignorance of the fundamentals of climate science. Climate models have been used for “hindcasts” and the results are reasonably good. It has been shown that the evolution of global temperature since 1900 cannot be explained without the contribution from human emissions of greenhouse gases.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Extreme Left and Right philosophies join in totalitarianism. Having decent slightly right thinking people at the throats of slightly left leaning people is exactly why a totalitarian state is possible. Stop arguing over who’s smart and who’s not because that is exactly what divide and conquer is all about. The “liberals” are being led by false leaders, the “conservatives” are being led by false leaders and the leaders are winking and nodding as the noose tightens around the masses. The liberals leaders know AGW is a crock, but like the pied piper they have a job to do — meet the fascists at the OK coral and enjoy the shared laugh as the gate slams. (This is not the first time in history this has happened — let’s not be so gullible this time.)

When you say that educated people are “elite” and don’t think straight, I believe this may be true of liberal arts colleges, and those who major in political science, etc. But I defend my profession of engineering. If engineers misuse phony data, the plane won’t fly, the bridge falls down, the Hubble telescope is out of focus, etc. Most engineers realize this and try to be objective. (On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was an engineer, so there are exceptions!)

There is hardly anyone regardless of political persuasion who knows the math necessary to assess the validity of some climate science. How many liberals or conservatives are familiar with Navier-Stokes equations? At the same time, most anyone can make some sense of simple graphs and assess the strength of a relationship between two variables plotted on the same graph. For instance, if we plot paleoclimatological estimates of global mean surface temperatures over the entire Holocene against estimated atmospheric CO2 concentrations it is clear to anyone that there is no correlation between the two. If we compare the rate of increase of global mean surface temperature during the 1930s and the recent period of warming between 1975 and 1998 we find no notable difference. If we compare rural temperature recording sites to ones that have been influenced by urbanization or other land use changes we find that largely undisturbed rural sites largely show no or little increase in global mean surface temperature. Some show a cooling trend.
There is a large body of climate science that is entirely accessible to the interested layman regardless of political persuasion. Some if not all of that layman-friendly science can be found at http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.pdf .
In short, the academic credentials of the self-defined left wing intelligentsia are not significantly superior to those of the average plumber. Neither of them know the physics involved in climate modeling. Both can at least read simple charts. The left-wing intelligentsia has no advantage in this regard. The entire political spectrum must belly-up to the same trough of information.
What differentiates the left from the right is unquestioning acceptance of the declarations of authority figures. The conservative disposition expects extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. The left-wing or progressive or statist disposition requires consistency with political aims. There is no shortage of scientist cadre members they can rely on to advance a political agenda. Welcome to post-normal science.

Peter Sørensen says:
October 31, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Well from my viewpoint in Denmark some of the candidates from the Tea party movement are amazingly ignorant and stupid. One of the candidates just claimed that Denmark has “panels” deciding on who is valuable enough to recive treatment in the health care system that is just som amzingly stupid that …. well im at a loss for words. Or how about Palin claiming that she knows a lot about russia because she’s seen russia across the Bering strait……..

How is it so “amazingly ignorant and stupid” to equate the Danish practice of gatekeeping by physicians and the organizations in a single payer government they must be accountable to for their decisions as the general equivalent of having “death panels” decide upon whether or not a particular patient’s life is worth the expense of attempting to prolong with an expensive medical procedure or treatment?
Although Denmark has had some commendable success with its healthcare services; it has also resulted in a extraordinarily expensive tax system while still having too few intensive care beds, shortages of certain types of healthcare and facilities for the elderly, and a loss of some personal freedom to select healthcare providers when the government approved providers are unsatisfactory. Many Europeans make an erroneous knee-jerk assumption that healthcare is a human right and many Americans do not. What these same Europeans enjoying and/or suffering universal healthcare fail to understand is how so many Americans jealously guard their personal freedom and human right to select their own choice of healthcare and healthcare providers, because they refuse to be dependent any more than absolutely necessary upon any single healthcare provider who too often may not provide safe, appropriate, or desired healthcare. We do not want any medical doctor/s, medical board, or any other authority becoming the sole arbiter of our personal fate. You can nitpick an argument about the definition of a “death panel”, but the context in which the terminology was used clearly meant any circumstance in which some authority other than the patient’s free choice from an adequate number of alternatives has the authority to deny healthcare services and treatments to the patient. You can call us “stupid,” but doing so says more about you than us.
Your remark about Governor Sarah Palin betrays an unfortunate ignorance. Perhaps you were unaware or chose to disregard reality, but Sarah Palin’s service as Governor of the State of Alaska does in deed qualify her as having some reasonable degree of very important experience in foreign affairs and international military affairs. In comparison to her political opponents Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama who had no military command experience at the time of the election, Sarah Palin was far more experienced in the role of a military commander and foreign trade diplomacy.
Governor Sarah Palin served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard, Air National Guard, and other state military forces. During and after the Cold War, Alaska served as a frontline for the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of the United States and Canada, and their successor organizations. The Governor of Alaska is an important decisionmaker in certain areas of Alaska’s military affairs. Unlike most other states, Alaska’s extraordinary size, low population, extensive wilderness, location, and proximity to USSR, People’s Republic of China (PRC), Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea), and the Great circle routes to the Euro-Asian theaters of operation have resulted in certain substantial and sometimes unique geo-political and military responsibilities for the Governor of Alaska that the governors of most other states do not have an opportunity to experience. Although the Adjutant General and the gaining commands of the U.S. Department of Defense are responsible for Federal mobilization of the Alaskan Federal Ready Reserve, the Governor remains responsible for and accountable for many important military decisions in Alaska not related to the Federal mobilizations.
Given the unusual size and location of Alaska with respect to international maritime trade, international fisheries, international air transportation, and foreign trade, Governor Sarah Palin experienced foreign affairs responsibilities, especially with Russia and Russian communities nearby Alaska, unknown to her opponents in the election campaign.
Perhaps you would care to reconsider your viewpoint?

R. Gates says:
October 31, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Mike says:
October 31, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I think the truth is most people who think AGW is real don’t understand the science…
______
C’mon Mike, please get real. There are many highly educated scientists who are…
—–
I did not say most scientists, I said most people. The average person does not know what causes the seasons to change. Of course most scientists believe AGW is real, just as most scientists believe evolution is real. Look, most people who believe in electricity do not understand it. If some religion or ideology came out against Maxwell’s equations there would soon be blogs and radio talk show hosts denouncing them and millions of saps following along. Some blogs would spread word that James Maxwell was a Muslim or a Communist. Some politician would find a secret diary he left hidden that revealed the whole conspiracy.

“The climate models are not yet capable of making specific predictions. Due to the empirical nature of some of the parameters, and the chaos in climate models, their predictions, just like weather models are uncertain. The nature of such predictions is such that we cannot expect them to predict the future accurately. To complain about this shows ignorance of the fundamentals of climate science. Climate models have been used for “hindcasts” and the results are reasonably good. It has been shown that the evolution of global temperature since 1900 cannot be explained without the contribution from human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
=================
Actually the hindcasts are ‘g0od’ only after significant ‘training’ of the models. Given that the earth’s climate is a complex, non-linear, chaotic system I would assert that models will NEVER predict future climate with any degree of confidence.

eadler;
re: climate models
(and I quote)
“The nature of such predictions is such that we cannot expect them to predict the future accurately. To complain about this shows ignorance of the fundamentals of climate science.”
Are you honestly attempting to assert that we cannot expect the models to predict the future accurately and we shouldn’t complain about it? Really? I mean freakin’ seriously? Your asking me for my tax dollars to mitigate future problems based on a model you admit can’t predict them and with a straight face tell me to stop complaining about it because if I understood it I wouldn’t complain?
Then consider the gob smacking unreality of your next sentence which confirms your either so completely besotten by groupthink that you’ve completely lost the ability to reason, or that you are so short of brain matter that a single beer may well kill off enough brain cells that you will forget to breath:
“Climate models have been used for “hindcasts” and the results are reasonably good. It has been shown that the evolution of global temperature since 1900 cannot be explained without the contribution from human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Are you reading what you are writing? Are you getting this drivel off warmist web sites and sticking the paragraphs together in what you think is some semblance of a logical train of thought? Or do you simply subscribe to the notion that you can fool some of the people some of the time, so let’s see how many this time. You began by admitting that the models aren’t that good at predicting the future, and then vaunt their accuracy in hindcasting to prove warming from GHG. Let’s explain some science that I don’t appear to understand and have no right to complain about. Not complainin’, just explainin’.
The models don’t know the difference between future and past. They are built with a set of rules regarding how various elements of the climate interact with each other, and calculate from a given set of conditions at a given point in time the resulting end state conditions for a different point in time. The fact that they can hindcast accurately but are unable to forecast is proof positive that the rules are based on factors that are not, in fact, the correct factors. They are clearly factors coincidental in the past with the correct factors, and hence the inability to predict the future with any accuracy. Further, the hindcasts aren’t all that good. They can’t recreate variability even at the decadal scale, and they can’t hindcast the MWP and LIA.
I have two suggestions for you.
1. I have built a computer model that hindcasts my bank account. When I run it forward it insists that you are going to give me all your money next week, and if you don’t a bolt of lightning will descend from the heavens and strike you dead. You’re probably going to complain, but if you understood models you wouldn’t.
2. Have a beer. I want to see what happens.

R. de Haan says:
October 31, 2010 at 4:03 pm
The free market will take care of the world’s energy needs as it did during the past century.

I sympathize with the belief, but please, point out one, just one, free market. I’ve not seen one lately.
[Stamp collecting? Garage sales? Paparazzi? ~dbs ☺]

RE: Mike 1:03 PM “Now conservatives reject climatology because they think – wrongly – that it threatens the free market system. ”
Mike – – No. The thing is — is. Not reject. Not feel. Not claim. Is. The great and powerful is. Measure without a side and objectively.
PS: Interglacial. “During the Eemian Stage sea level was about 8 meters higher than today and the water temperature of the North Sea was c. 2°C higher than at present.”-Wikipedia.

It would be interesting to see a survey done of the broad community of scientists, those working outside climate science itself who supposedly endorse the CAGW hypothesis overwhelmingly, to see what percentage of them have actually laid eyes on any of the work of the IPCC or any of the other canonical works of climate science. My own acquaintanceship of working scientists is admittedly too limited to form a conclusive judgement, but based on purely anecdotal evidence, I would suspect that percentage is much smaller than advertised. I have encountered a number of ardent carbon demonologists, who were working scientists and were more than ready to call me an idiot when I questioned their perspective, who if I could actually get them to respond to a question, revealed that they had spent considerably less time than myself in examining the science they were so certain of. Often they had just absorbed the media stereotype that the argument was between “scientists” on one side and politicians, corporate PR hacks, ignorant lay people on the other and of course their sympathies were with their Fraternal brothers in support of “Science”.
An earlier commenter mentioned the Dunning-Kruger Effect involving low skilled thinkers overestimating their abilities, but I think there is a different psychological effect at work on the other end of the educational spectrum. It’s called “preference falsification” and is based on a book by Timur Kuran from 1987.
http://www.amazon.com/Private-Truths-Public-Lies-Falsification/dp/0674707583
The basic notion is that when asked to make public statements on issues. even barely controversial ones, people tend to offer up what they think others expect them to say, rather than what they really believe, even where there would seem to be little negative consequence from speaking the truth, or gain from the falsehood. Given the thuggish levels of intimidation that have been visited on those who have made fairly timid criticisms of CAGW dogma, I suspect PF could account for a great deal of the climate “consensus”, at least that part of it which is not completely illusory.

I ‘ve known a lot of “highly educated people” with a title who walk in a thunderstorms with a steel shafted umbrella.
Who did our pal Barnie Madoff con, the streetwise who learn to do their due diligence or the highly educated who “just took his word for it”?

Whenever I hear mention of the Tea Party I can’t help but think of the Mad Hatter and his guests.
Seems so appropriate.
[Sorry your side is losing. -mod]

How would our cognitively superior left wing academia respond to that seriously smart but intellectually modest sceptic, Freeman Dyson? In my humble opinion, they might find his ‘heretical thoughts about science and society’ quite intellectually challenging 🙂

too many die hard right wing conservatives, too many die hard left wingers, not enough independent free thinking people in the US today. What a mess for both science and society, a nation doomed to decline unless something changes.

For me, the fundamental difference between the Left and Right is that the Right believes that individual rights come from our Creator, the Left believes that individual rights come from the government. That is why one of hallmarks of a Lefty regime is to deny a Creator. And why whenever the Left decides who deserves special rights or protections, the solution is always more and bigger government to provide those rights. In my opinion, individual rights don’t belong to the government or to the politicians for them to hand out as rewards for approved behavior, like voting as a bloc for a certain political party.

Over time it seems to have little to do with the sunspot count or the 10,7 cm flux, so I do not think it it is solar in origin.

R. Gates says:
October 31, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Mike says:
October 31, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I think the truth is most people who think AGW is real don’t understand the science…
______
C’mon Mike, please get real. There are many highly educated scientists who are…
—–
I did not say most scientists, I said most people. The average person does not know what causes the seasons to change. Of course most scientists believe AGW is real, just as most scientists believe evolution is real. Look, most people who believe in electricity do not understand it. If some religion or ideology came out against Maxwell’s equations there would soon be blogs and radio talk show hosts denouncing them and millions of saps following along.

Ken Lydell says:
October 31, 2010 at 8:04 pm
“How many liberals or conservatives are familiar with Navier-Stokes equations?”
I’m familiar enough with them to know that we don’t use the output of computer models to certify aircraft but rather use wind tunnels and prototypes flown by test pilots. Non-linear partial differential equations are notoriously difficult or impossible to solve in complex real-world situations. Is that familiar enough?

Reagan, who was also called “stupid” by the left, had it right when he said, “It’s not that our liberal friends don’t know anything. It’s just that so much of what they know isn’t so.”
If you are a registered voter in California, I encourage you to vote “yes” on Prop 23. This is by far the most important proposition on the ballot. The left/liberal legislature needs to hear from those of us they view as their intellectual inferiors on this issue.

Paul Coppin says:
October 31, 2010 at 1:08 pm
“The phenom even has a name: The Dunning-Kruger Effect”
From wikipedia:

Dunning and Kruger quote Bertrand Russell (“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.)”
Indeed, Dunning et al. cite a study saying that 94% of college professors rank their work as “above average” (relative to their peers), to underscore that the highly intelligent and informed are hardly exempt.

If you believe Dunning et al. then when a member of the self-annointed intelligentsia says they are certain that AGW is real (“settled science”) and are convinced they know what to do about (“limit CO2 emissions”) it means those people are actually uinimaginative and stupid because those with true understanding will express uncertainty.

S U P E R B post!
Yeah, they do have a problem. Their problem is that the simple man often is able to see pseudoscience when confronted with it. But it pays a lot -$trillions in the case of the co2 pseudoscience- to promote falsehood and pseudoscience, so if the truth shows up they DO have a problem.
Yeah, they need to denigrate people and tell them they are inferior. If you feel inferior you will be less reluctant to allow “superior” academics and politicians to have insame power, control & punishment power over you. They need to damage people self esteem because they tend to be sadistic & arrogant and one who has his self esteem damaged may more willingly accept becoming a serf of politicians & bureucrats with the blessing of mainstream academia
Probably Switzerland and the USA are the No1 and No2 places where the people has the most political decision power. Well, last data that I know Switzerland has the highest wealth per capita in the world. And I most not prove that the USA is the world technological and economic superpower and its people have produced technological prowesses like no other society in mankind history. All the while being ruled by “simple men”
But places ruled by the “superior intelligent elites”, like Stalin Russia, were places of utter mass murder, theft by government and sadistic utter punishment for those that commited no crime, they were places where rulers-like Stalin- could indulge UNPUNISHED in their depraved devastating vice of sadism, power, control, punishment, mass murder & mass theft.
By promoting pseudoscience not only they “justify” more power & control & punishment & tax & spend for them but they pose as the “saviors” of the people while actually causing enormous damage and suffering when their sadistic power & control agenda of giving even more power to the political class is implemented.
When people see them alleging that we must TAX MORE co2 in order to get LESS co2 then people understand that THE MORE you tax a thing, THE LESS you get about it. But when people see those same people alleging for MORE TAX on investment and employment in order to get MORE investment and employment then people realize that their “science” is falsehood and nonsense.
They pretend that they “possess” the hidden truth that THE PEOPLE cannot understand, but the truth is that their truth contradicts the most elementary logic and common sense, and a well functionning mind cannot understand something that lacks logic. Just take a look of the utter nonsense of keynesian economics.
I am not a big fan of republicans but they promote less than democrats an increase in the political class oppressive power. Today the markets say that there is a 92% probability that republicans will control the house, an 85% probability thay republicans will have 48 senators and 40% probabilities that next president will be a republican.
I hope those probablities become facts. Maybe then Bush tax cuts will not be reversed and you will get MORE investment, MORE employment thank to LESS taxes and you will get a well deserved recovery.
Cheers

I worked for a time at a Silicon Valley Tech firm. One day, someone presented an electronic IQ test. It bounced around among friends, with most scoring in the high 130s.
Most individuals had advanced degrees or were working on them. Nearly all of them are conservative. Education isn’t the equivalent of intellect. Nor is it the difference between conservatives and progressives.
If there are differences, it seems to me that conservatives embrace independence, personal responsibility and pragmatic self reliance. Progressives embrace social relationships and consensus. I think perhaps Progessives are quicker to embrace abstract and creative ideas, which can lead to great discoveries. But it can also lead to a nether world of fantasy, as in CAGW.

Mike says:
October 31, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Look, most people who believe in electricity do not understand it.
I dont believe in electricity, I have never seen any!
So how can I understand it?

Mike said: “The average person does not know what causes the seasons to change.”
davidmhoffer said: I took that in Grade 1. Demonsration done with a spot light and a globe. Seemed to me the the bulk of the 6 year olds got it, wasn’t complicated. Are average people incredibly stupid where you come from, or is it just your opinion that they are?
…………..
Good that you remember 1st grade. Most people don’t. I know they don’t because I teach at a university. But good of you to question my assumption. You can look up surveys on this. One said: “Only 38% of students correctly selected December as the
time of year a Southern Hemisphere location receives the longest period of daylight and only 14% of the students answered the three questions (about the cause of seasons) correctly.” http://www.springerlink.com/content/x4r0521815203226/
Ask some people you know who aren’t involved in science issues.
My point is that most people do not know enough about even basic science to make scientifically informed decisions. They instead rely on sources they trust.

I copped a few good biffs today, but let me say that dickhead politicians are poison whether in your country or mine, and no matter what party they belong to. The old saying, “Only the left is right!” is a joke as we all know. But the right isn’t inevitably right. I think that a party which wants to represent people and their well-being is better than one which wants to maximise profits (Enron, etc?). Maybe I’m a sentimental idiot. The rich in Australia give very little to universities, or research, or charities. But they make lots of money, sometimes by cheating the poor. All our politicians, except the Greens, want to put off drastic carbon taxes as long as possible, even while giving lip service to the idea. Hypocrites, the lot.

Mike;
Good that you remember 1st grade. Most people don’t. I know they don’t because I teach at a university. But good of you to question my assumption. You can look up surveys on this. One said: “Only 38% of students correctly selected December as the
time of year a Southern Hemisphere location receives the longest period of daylight and only 14% of the students answered the three questions (about the cause of seasons) correctly.” >>
I can construct a survey to show that only 14% of the students know that the earth circles the sun if you want. Sure, lots of times in a conversation I’ll say something about NH winter occuring when the earth is nearest the sun, and someone will inevitably interject with “that’s impossible” followed by various heads around the room nodding in agreement. All one need do is look at them and say “noooo…. seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis… remember?” 9 times out of 10 there is a brief pause followed by a sheepish look and “…oh right. forgot”.
I’m in sales and I sell some very complicated products, often to people whose expertise lies elsewhere. How people answer questions on a survey or in response to a casual question is not necessarily indicative of their actual knowledge if you ask in such a manner that they are forced to think the response through rather than just react… which is what you get on a survey. In fact, sometimes you get the “right” answer to an off the cuff question, but a little digging exposes a deeper belief that is wrong, so I suppose it cuts both ways to some extent.
When I’m doing sales training I sometimes make the point by asking the class (usually people 10+ years in the business) how many of them have one of those customers so enthralled by VendorX that if VendorX told them that on a bright sunny day the sky is blue and they’re so trusting that they look up at the sky and remark “so that’s what blue looks like”. About half the hands go up, sometimes more. I just stand there for long enough until someone finaly pipes up “but…the sky IS blue on a bright sunny day”.
Point being that if you phrase it correctly you can get some very odd responses from some very intelligent people, but force them to think it through, and you’ll find that their real recollection will come to the surface.

to davidmhoffer:
I think the point is not about whether academics are smarter than auto mechanics or other people. It is about how their pseudoscience is so absurd that the common man do not believes it.
Those leftists are not complaining that simple men do not believe Newton, Einstein or Pasteur, which all are true science geniuses on whose true science the common man usually has full belief. I doubt that the average auto mechanic is smarter than Einstein or Newton. Those leftists complain that the common men do not believe THEIR corrupted by politics pseudoscience that says that we will get to paradise if we give the political class even more power, control, punishement power and $trillions.
In EVERY poll that I have seen in my life the political class falls among the most distrusted people. The common man is smart enough to know the obvious fact that he must distrust politicians.
They pretend that their PSEUDOSCIENCE is as good as Newton, Einsteins or Pasteur science, they pose as the EQUALS of those scientific geniuses, but the common man is smart enough to understand that their science is mainly charlatanery.
Their nonsense pseudoscience lacks logic and they say that what happens is that their science is so “deep” that only a very few “superior” minds can understant “the truth”
In fact this is the same old story that has repeated itself for milleniums. Only this time it will actually be different thanks to superb blogs like WattsUpWithThat (WUWT) that will show to millions the truth. Global warming alarmism will be the biggest fiasco in modern times, IMHO their discredit will be almost total because there will be NO WARMING and they alarmed people so much.
We are writing history here at WUWT. This DO is the new academia that is replacing the old academia that systematically allowed itself to be corrupted by politics.

Two things.
Warmists accuse us of things like not knowing why the days are shorter, or why the trees change color and of not being smarter than a first grader. Heh, when I was six, we were taught that Winter brought cold, Summer brought a warm and March blew in like a lion, left like lamb. My mother taught me to adapt.
And yet, the warmists are intentionally blurring the difference between carbon-dioxide and carbon-monoxide. They have renamed the so called polutant “carbon” and claim the exhaust from my car is “poisoning the planet with carbon emissions” that will change weather. Absurd.
The other thing is that mechanics make things work, theorists dream about it. Sometimes it all comes together, usually it doesn’t.
My current favorite quote, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
— Ronald Reagan

it is the same with any position on any issue.
the vast majority of people’s beliefs are formed and held emotionally
any one who disagrees is stupid or evil 😉