Guest post by John Coleman
There is a story I heard that I keep thinking about. It really underlines the problem I have in trying to counter the bad science behind the global warming scare predictions. So here is the story:
A group of over 200 environmentalists were in an auditorium listening to a symposium about climate change, i.e. global warming or climate disruption. One of the speakers asked, “If I could instantly produce a genie with a magic wand to stand here before you today. And if, that genie could wave his magic wand and voila….carbon dioxide would no longer be a greenhouse gas that produced uncontrollable global warming….How many in this room would be happy, satisfied and pleased?” Two people out of two hundred hesitatingly raised their hands. Of the others, some smirked, some laughed and some yelled out, “No, no. Hell no.”
I cannot testify that this event actually occurred. But, I heard it as though it was a truthful report. In any case it haunts me because it demonstrates what I perceive to be something akin to the actual state of affairs in our efforts to quiet the Algorian scare predictions about the consequences of global warming. There are large segments of the population that believe the global warming pronouncements. They have heard them over and over again from people they trust and respect, in school, on television, in the news and in their communities.
They have become “believers”, not unlike those who believe in a set of religious beliefs. All good Democrats believe in global warming, after all, it is the science of one of their key heroes, former Vice President and Senator Al Gore. And all good environmentalists are aboard the global warming band wagon. And, for all of them, the Agenda is what is important. Their Agenda is to eliminate fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine from our civilization. The carbon dioxide, CO2, thing is simply the means to the end. And if the means is not true; who cares. It is only the Agenda that is important. To all of these people, my effort to debunk the CO2 greenhouse gas science is irrelevant.
When I present my scientific arguments in a speech, their common reaction, “so what” and they ask me, even if you are right, isn’t the change to clean energy still the best move for our society? When I make my argument in response, that I also favor alternate energy, but that it will be thirty to fifty years before it can replace fossil fuels as the primary source of power for our civilization and that alternate energy in its current state of development is not economically viable, they doubt my facts. They have heard the hype and bought the dream without stopping to absorb the reality.
Next, when they realize they have not persuaded me to join their point of view, they challenge me with “And, what if it turns out that you are wrong and Al Gore is right? Your argument could cost us everything as climate change makes the Earth unlivable. So let’s just eliminate the greenhouse gases as insurance.” I argue back that the insurance will financially destroy us, wreck our way of life and that because I am right about the science, the move to alternate energy will not make an iota difference in our climate.
At this point, they dismiss me a stupid, old heretic.
My only option is to keep trying. That is why I make the new videos like the one posted on February 22nd. But, I am frustrated and not optimistic about penetrating our scientific institutions and organizations that are in the control of their well paid scientists and persuading them to reconsider the role of carbon dioxide and accept climate reality. What are the odds they will “see the light” and abandon their richly rewarding global warming positions? Nil, I fear.
It appears, as of now, victory, if it were to come, would be on a political level, not a scientific one. Just as “the climate according to Al Gore” has become the Democrat Party mantra, “global warming is not real” has become the rally call of the Republican Party. As a Journalist (I am a member of the television news team at KUSI-TV) I try hard to avoid taking political positions. For instance, I pass on invitations to speak at political events even when handsome stipends are offered.
So I keep focused on the bad science behind global warming. If my team (There are over 31,000 scientists on my team) can make headway in correcting the science, then I will be happy to let the politics, environmentalism and alternate energy movement fight the policy battles without me.
John Coleman
=================================================================
Watch John’s video that accompanies this essay here at his web site
From comments, here is the link to the story about the group of 200 environmentalists that showed such a poor show of hands:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt
In regards to john brooke’s simplistic explanations: they appear simplistic to Us, but to the likes of him, they are nuanced and complicated, almost beyond his ability to put into words.
There is a giant humongous problem with this approach.
You can’t improve the world beyond modernity by jettisoning reason.
Let’s say you want to create a new fairer world where social values are taken to a whole new level. To do that you have to take reason WITH you . A better world is built on top of reason, not in spite of it.
So, big problem: you decide to use “modernist” science merely as a means to create a new narrative that shows the connectedness — spirituality — of all living beings. OK. No problem with the goal. Ask Buddha. Ask Jesus. Ask Lao Tsu. Ask your wife. Honey, how can we make a better world? Guess what, it will be built on reason.
The moment you start f**** with reason, by inventing myths, the moment you do that, f**** with sane methods of inquiry, with objective and subjective and inter-subjective modes of research, the moment you start claiming that a big lie can be a good lie, you are destroying people’s ability to reason.
If you can actually manage to do that — convince people to stop using reason — you are throwing them back to being 5 years old. Once you do that with enough people, you’ll throw us back to tribal times. Seriously. It is back to tribes and violence and slavery. It is all circular thinking down there, and it took us a bloody long time to escape that.
When people try to become spiritually transformed, beware it is a treacherous road. Many people try to go forward and end up two steps back, all the while believing that they’re doing great! It is a huge delusion and easy to fall into.
Repeat after me, the future is built on reason. You can use your intuition if you like, you can have divine revelations if you like, you can feel all of humanity pulsing through your veins in a loving embrace, but never ever give up reason, and don’t lie to people.
I am a Democrat.
And I am an environmentalist.
And I have been for 30 years.
Have CO2 levels increased in the past 100 years? Absolutely.
Have humans caused serious damage to ecosystems worldwide? Yes.
Are human population levels part of the problem – in places like Haiti and Chad? Yep.
But I take exception to the extreme scientific and policy extrapolations from the Mauna Loa data.
And I take even greater exception to the violation of the tradition of liberal examination within scientific debate which has been muzzled in the Global Warming debate. I am a left critic of global warming.
So there ARE Democrats and environmentalists who disagree. FYI.
The real question is “Is technology good?” If you live in a warm climate, like in the Amazon and/or Mid-Africa, you don’t need it!! If you are willing to heard goats, and live in tents in Saudi Arabia/Iraq/Iran, you can survive. Of course, you can’t thrive.
Even the Roman Empire used technology to build building, aqueducts, and improve farm land. With that technology, they could thrive.
For the people who live in the North or the South, the problem was different. We have cold and snow. It was very difficult to stay alive. The American Indian migrated south every year to stay warm and have food. So to stay alive, we developed technology and weapons to keep the lazy from stealing our warmth and food.
If you remove all technology the carrying capacity of Earth is about 1,000,000 people. They would plow with wooden plows pulled by horses/oxen. Any shaped thing would be either pottery or carved wood. No metals. Metals are the result of technology mining. The only salt would come from earthen dyked saltwater evaporation ponds, etc.
Let’s see the Democratic, Liberal, Environment, “Pro-Global Warming”, Californians grow their mary jane without technology.
If you say I am extreme, who will decide what technology to use and which to discard?
Mr. Coleman was one of the very first people to convince me to become skeptical about AGW. Thanks, Mr. Coleman!
I respect your background and perspective Mr. Coleman but a few points I’d like to make:
1) Everyone who believes it is more likely than not that some anthropogenic GH warming is occurring is not a fan of Al Gore, nor a Democrat, nor a rabid environmentalist. There are many people like myself, who are politically Independent, have also (like yourself) studied the issue intensely for many decades, and have reached a conclusion opposite to yours.
2) CO2 is actually up about 40% since the industrial revolution began in the 1700’s and has reached a level not seen in many hundreds of thousands of years. This increase is due to human activities, and so, whatever effects come as a result of that increase (i.e. climate change) are therefore human-caused.
3) The basic dynamics of the carbon-rock cycle, with the feedback processes are fairly well understood and involve basic chemistry and physics. What this has shown is that the earth has natural balance mechanisms that keep CO2 within a range, but these processes are geological in nature and work over very long time scales. The influx of CO2 over the past few hundred years is akin to a large (human caused) volcanic eruption of CO2. When CO2 increases, the hydrological cycle follows, and this acceleration of the hydrological cycle will work to reduce the CO2 back to within a range through rock weathering, over thousands of years. The difference here is of course that the human volcano continues to erupt. This is not unlike the large volcanic eruptions of 700 million years ago that brought the earth out of the “snowball earth” period by spewing forth large amounts of CO2. The difference now of course is that this CO2 is human caused, and we are not in a snowball earth period, so it will be interesting to see what changes ensue. Global Climate Models have shown the acceleration of the hydrological cycle to occur with increasing CO2 and this is, in fact, exactly what it occurring right now, globally.
4) Arctic sea ice (extent & volume) has been in decline for several decades, and this is exactly what Global climate models have shown to occur with increasing levels of CO2. Polar amplification of global warming is, to me, the center of interest in the global warming debate, as it has both been predicted to occur first, and is happening. Yes, this could be natural variation, and I accept that as a possibility, though I think it far more likely to be the result of the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s. I know that a good many people follow the notion that simple changes in the PDO, AMO, or other such natural cycles, are the cause of the current decline year-to-year Arctic sea ice, and they are expecting this to reverse at any time. (i.e. Joe Bastardi for example). I think this is unlikely, and that in fact, due to anthropogenic GH warming, we are likely to see an ice free summer Arctic in the next few decades. There’s just too much warming go on in the Arctic, and this warming has nothing to do with the natural variations of the PDO, AMO, or solar cycles. We’ve seen a warming of the deep ocean currents flowing into the Arctic basin, and with the influx of heat, the ice must decline.
I sincerely do respect your opinion and your background, and even some of your sentiments about not wanting to see our fossil fuel life-style come to an end, but I won’t let my sentiments stand in the way of what the science tells us. I find it remarkable that two sincere and reasonably well-educated people can come to such opposite conclusions, and hence, why we see such a general impasse on this issue.
@John Brookes
We’ve been hearing that “half hour” junk for 30 years now. It’s not happening and, based on 30 years of hysteria not coming true, isn’t going to happen. At what point do you turn on your prophets?
richard verney says: February 26, 2011 at 5:25 am
[I have heard that summary of the talk before. It suggests that the real agenda of these people is control over others, not the simple bannishment of CO2 as a dangerous greenhouse gas. ——I am of the firm view that this scam is so deeply rooted and in bedded in society that the only thing that will break its grip is a prolonged period of cooler weather. If we have 10 to 15 years of cooling as each year passes, it will become ever so more difficult to explain why if CO2 emissions are going up, the temperatures are falling]
——————————————————————————–
Spot on richard verney. It has AWAYS been a matter of control over others. That is what religion and politics have always been about. In the late 20th century western society has more or less shrugged off the strictures of Christianity and has enjoyed a brief spell of democracy and guiltless ‘freedom’. The green movement has fashioned great areas for replacing that guilt. It seems that we even NEED to feel guilty about things. Well the politicians of every colour certainly know how to use guilt to herd the sheep. Right now they have found ways in Europe of dispensing with the democratic process, pronouncing edicts on how (once sovereign nations) must comply with their edicts which include feeling guilty about using energy. Co2 has been very useful to them in this power grab.
But the worm can turn. Witness the awakening in the Middle East where ordinary people realise their collective power to overthrow those who oppress them. Who would have dared to think this a year ago?
When Europe and the USA start to freeze and get hungry —————— watch.
Douglas
“Paul says:
February 26, 2011 at 6:17 am
I would be interested in any thoughts people have on how to educate the public.”
Here in Edmonton, Alberta where several mornings lately have been -25 C and with the windchill values of -35 C, I like to tell people global warming has been canceled due to cold weather. Few people argue. (According to today’s paper, our airport recorded -33.4 C as a low yesterday. But it was not a record. The record low was -36.1 C in 1881.) I also tell people that according to the satellite record, which can be trusted more than other sources, the 1998 record still has not been beaten.
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:03 am
Your #2 precludes that the Earth’s Geologic processes cannot absorb excess C02 in the short term.
Earth is more than a dead rock, devoid of a living biosphere which eats C02 as part of a healthy diet.
It also precludes that man is responsible for an unbearable excess of C02, which is not proven.
Warming also releases more C02, which has not led to geometric increases in this gas, but instead has risen linearly.
No feedback due to active short-term usage by biosphere/geosphere
Every day, we learn more about the preclusions necessary to support AGW.
I call that progress.
Every word a gem, John. The goalposts are that only “pixie dust” energy qualifies. The grotesque rape of landscape that wind and solar cause, both on-site and because of the vast support infrastructure of service roads and transmission corridors, is actually starting to bite Greenies in their aspirations. We see green-on-green lawsuits and such springing up to protect “fragile” lands and ecosystems. (Parenthetical note: have you ever heard a green-cologist describe a landscape or ecosystem as “not fragile?)
John Brookes says:
“All you and your band of 31,000 scientists can do, apparently, is to be part of the problem.”
It really irks Mr Brookes that over 31,000 degreed professionals, all of them in the hard sciences [plus over 9,000 PhD’s] have co-signed the following statement:
In the many years since that statement was written, its validity has been tested and found to be completely accurate. There is no verifiable evidence of global harm due to the rise in CO2. On the other hand, the rise in CO2 has resulted in a verified rise in agricultural productivity.
The conclusion is obvious: CO2 is both harmless and beneficial. Those demonizing “carbon” have decisively lost the scientific debate. Now it’s all political jockeying for position in order to keep their gravy train on track – and for their true believer followers to avoid damaging their fragile egos by having to admit that their CO2=CAGW conjecture has been falsified.
John Coleman’s essay is an exercise in the obvious. Yes, people without the adequate scientific training, expertise, and time to evaluate the science will tend to make judgments more on the basis of their ideological and political beliefs. However, the fact is that this will occur on both sides. Thus, people who are free market fundamentalists and see socialism behind every corner will tend to dismiss the science of AGW for the same sort of ideological reasons that a liberal / environmentalist might reflexively support it.
Hence, the question that must be asked to arrive at the best understanding is where the scientists working in the field and the scientific mainstream stand. And, the answer in report after report issued by scientific organization is that they quite clearly that they find AGW to be a serious issue.
For a powerful collection of observations and statistics and “projections” to counter the overpop meme, check out http://overpopulationisamyth.com/overpopulation-the-making-of-a-myth#FAQ1
Note that the most reliable pop-projection model sez peak at <8bn by 2030, then slow decline.
While childless greenies from developed countries self flagellate themselves, the world moves on. The Wall Street Journal reports today on the new ‘cities of the skies’ like Dubai that are centered around airports that have become world transit hubs. The ‘metropolis’ of Dubai has become the commercial hub of the new Silk Road connecting the rapidly developing nations of the Middle East and Asia.
I am trying to bring awareness of climate change on a local basis. I am concerned about the rapid drop in winter temperatures in the US over the last 12 years. When I tell Greenies that US winter temps have dropped three degrees over the last twelve years as compared to the twentieth century increase of one degree they at first do not believe it and when confronted with the truth write it off as cherry picking and a short term trend. However this trend is happening now and has major implications on US energy use for heating and agriculture. While global temps have been merely flat, likely being held up by the thermal inertia of the oceans I fear that in the near future we may see winter temperatures in the US not seen since the instrument record in 1880 began.
Smokey says:
No…What irks him is that a statement by a small minority of scientists and engineers, almost all of them with no significant background in the field, is taken to be serious evidence of anything. Let’s take one example: Of the 31,000, about 10,000 are classified as “engineering and general science” (http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php). However, there are over 1.5 million engineers in the U.S. and that is just counting the ones actively employed as such (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm). So, what exactly is the fact that less than 1% have signed on to some petition supposed to prove exactly?
REPLY: Ah yes, the never ending idiotic argument of “but so and so isn’t a climate scientist”. I’m reminded of the fact that Dr. James Hansen is an astronomer, and one of the reasons he got into AGW was that GISS was running out of things to do when NASA’s Apollo was canceled. GISS was under threat of being defunded. So, the Goddard Institute of Space Studies was re-purposed as a climate science group. I hear there’s big money in that.
Bottom line, James Hansen has no degree in “climate science” and almost everyone in the field today got their training in other sciences first. Mostly, climate science as we know it today was grown from beginnings in other sciences. Ditto for Mike Mann.
So what you’ll do now is argue that Dr. Hansen has lots of papers and that is what makes him a “climate scientist”. Well maybe, except so far his track record with climate science based predictions really is laughable. Of course, what could we expect from a scientist who gets himself arrested, twice.
If I were his boss I’d have kicked his butt out the door long ago. But that’s just me. True believers like yourself won’t ever be convinced, so there’s really no point in arguing about it. You have your entrenched views, I have my views, except, I used to be a cheerleader for Jim Hansen and AGW in the early 90’s. So I changed trenches when I learned more about it.
– Anthony
Anent which, Poverty halved in half the time targeted. Mostly due to those CO2-spewin’ behemoths, India and China.
Some comments here lead me to suggest that qualifiers are important when talking about something (such as CO2) being “good” or “bad”. For example:
CO2 is good (in the atmosphere or human blood stream) within a range.
Oxygen is good (in the atmosphere or human blood stream) within a range.
CO2 may be a “trace gas” but it is a very critical trace gas, and the earth would rapidly fall back into a snowball earth without this so-called “minor” trace gas. The simple quantity of something in and of itself does not indicate its relative importance in any respect. Many trace elements, compounds, etc. act a key catalysts controlling events far beyond what their quantity alone would suggest. CO2 is one such catalyst in the atmosphere, and as soon as I see comments suggesting it is “simply” a trace greenhouse gas, I realize that person is ignorant of the complete facts. Water Vapor, though a more potent GH gas, cannot, in and of itself sustain the earth from falling into a snowball state as it did 700 million years ago. The reason is the simple physics of condensing versus non-condensing GH gases, and as the earth cooled, all the water vapor would quickly condense out, and without any of the non-condensing CO2, the planet would be a snowball world until our sun went supernova.
to R. Gates
If you don’t mind, I would like to use your post as an example of how ‘beliefs’ work.
It is pretty obvious that you ‘believe’ in some AGW. After all, humans are ‘doing something’, and that ‘doing something’ must be having an effect on the environment.
Then you look around and find and point out any data that supports your initial belief: that AGW is happening.
But, that ‘belief’, or ‘assumption’ you made, has blinded you to other data that doesn’t support it. You simply don’t ‘see’ it. To you it doesn’t exist.
The reason I am picking on you is your statement here:
“Polar amplification of global warming is, to me, the center of interest in the global warming debate, as it has both been predicted to occur first, and is happening.”
Now, personally, I agree with you, the poles are the place to look.
However, in your rush to support your AGW belief, you chose only to look at the Arctic. One polar region. We have two polar regions.
That is partial ‘blindness’ of focusing on the Arctic is caused by your actual belief in AGW.
The Antarctic is far more important.
The data there is far more pristine, especially inland in the actual pole areas (Amundsen-Scott, Vostok, etc).
And the data from Antarctica shows increasing CO2 on the same level as Mauna Loa.
However, the surface temperature record from Antarctica shows flat to actually decreasing temperatures from 1957 to present. Personally, the data shows me that temperatures are declining there, rather than flat, because of a continuing trend of new lows (temperature lows) being made. Those ‘lows’ represent data points with the least amount of atmospheric ‘noise’ to ‘signal’ effects.
If I look at the temperature records for the actual poles, for the Arctic, the temperature data is very contrived. There simply is no reliable temperature record for the Arctic. You look at the ice records, but they are very spotty, and subject to ‘noise’ other than the pure CO2 atmospheric effect.
For the Antarctic pole, there is an excellent temperature record from 1957 to present.
So, I ‘believe’ in the Antarctic pole data far more than the Arctic.
And to me, despite CO2 increasing in the atmosphere above Amundsen-Scott and Vostok, THE ACTUAL TEMPERATURES ARE GOING DOWN.
AGW predicts that they should be going up in Antarctica. But they are not.
But I can see that data because I don’t assume any AGW. I am neutral on it.
I try to look at everything with a clear mind and no pre-conceived beliefs.
I don’t mean this post as a criticism about you. Everyone has ‘beliefs’ that color their reality.
But you must learn to step back from any ‘beliefs’ you have and look at everything with the wide-eyed wonder that you had as a child when looking out at a new world.
Do that first.
And then decide.
That is the only way to learn what is really out there.
The poster-child quote in that regard is, of course, Ehrlich’s: “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Joel Shore says: February 26, 2011 at 10:40 am
[—–Thus, people who are free market fundamentalists and see socialism behind every corner will tend to dismiss the science of AGW for the same sort of ideological reasons that a liberal / environmentalist might reflexively support it.——-]
Joel Shore. What is the science of AGW ?
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:51 am
“CO2 may be a “trace gas” but it is a very critical trace gas, and the earth would rapidly fall back into a snowball earth without this so-called “minor” trace gas. ”
You are forgetting that most of the Greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric water. (In all three phases – so even on a snowball Earth, sublimation would lead to atmospheric water content and cause a Greenhouse effect) CO2 is a bit player.
richcar 1225 says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:44 am
The informal temperature record prior to the 1880’s (lost/misplaced/stashed away) shows what is now labeled Climate Disruption. Warming out of the Little Ice Age after the Dalton was spiky and extremely haphazard. Cooling into the next Little Ice Age will be a similar rocky road to traverse, as was the descent into the Sporer and Wolf Minimums.
rbateman says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:33 am
R. Gates says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:03 am
Your #2 precludes that the Earth’s Geologic processes cannot absorb excess C02 in the short term.
_____
We know of no chemical or physical mechanisms for such a geological process. Rock-weathering takes tens of thousands of years. It is earth’s natural feedback process to keep CO2 within a range, and such natural feedback processes are easily overwhelmed by sudden and dramatic changes…i.e. the acceleration of the hydrological cycle can only do so much to reduce CO2 back to a range, but even though this takes tens of thousands of years, which is long in the human time scale, it is virtually instantly from a geological perspective, which is how feedback processes should operate.
See the difference? The “good” Democrats are the ones who agree with The Narrative™, and Adore Gore. Challenge: find a public statement by a senior Democrat denying the apocalyptic visions of the Goracle.
Take your time, I’ll wait.