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
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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
I know many of you probably don’t think much of Richard Alley from Penn State, but here’s a very nice presentation he did on the role of CO2 in regulating past temperatures. Even the most hardened skeptic could probably learn something from it, perhaps providing future talking points for your skeptical position:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
I have recently come to the philosophical conclusion that even if the planet was to enter into a deep ice-age 4 weeks from today, before they died of hypothermia, the Global Warming faithful would proclaim it as proof of mankind’s CO2 emissions disrupting the planetary climate.
Izen,
Your “team” has tried repeatedly to get enough signatures on a comparable alarmist petition. You’ve always failed – and not by just a little.
You say:
“What GOOD science has your team come up with in the last five years?”
Back atcha.
Don R says:
February 26, 2011 at 6:23 am
“I am in amiable discourse with a physicist friend regarding AGW and could make use of the authoritative source that states that the earth’s average global temperature is the same as it was thirty years ago, according to satellite data.
Thanks”
Here you go…
Note that the “anomaly” for January 2011 is essentially zero…just like is was 30 years ago. Of course, it will go up and down again like it always has…and always will…
@- John Coleman
“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.”
================
Perhaps some are aware of the reality that France replaced fossil fuels as the primary source of power in a good deal less than thirty to fifty years and in a manner that is economically viable. To the extent that they are the largest power exporter and as fossil fuels rise in price can only gain in economic advantage.
5 of 5.
Rocky Road said:
Or, maybe what they were fearful of is the public being led to mistakenly believe that there was such a simple solution and lulled into complacency when in fact such a simple solution is not available.
In fact, environmental organizations are big on pushing both sources of energy (solar, wind) that are relatively pollution-free and energy efficiency technologies ranging from more efficient light-bulbs to hybrid cars. It is the anti-environmentalists who tend to pooh-pooh these technologies. (And the truth probably lies somewhere in between, as these technologies can certainly be helpful in changing how we produce and use energy but none alone is likely to be a “silver bullet”.)
Why exactly? It is about 20 years later and so far we have still no convincing evidence that such a scientific phenomenon is being observed and no known mechanism to explain how it could be happening. At best, it is way too early to saying that the the scientific community should be ridiculed about this and most of us think it will likely turn out in the end that said community was correct in being extremely skeptical of the claims.
Grammy D says:
Yes, you learned correctly. However, this carbon is just cycling rapidly between different reservoirs…a plant grows, taking up the CO2, we eat it and liberate the CO2 back into the atmosphere. To a limited extent, it is possible to alter the sizes of the reservoirs (hence the concerns over deforestation and the desire for reforestation). However, there is only a limited amount of carbon that can be stored or released this way.
The thing about burning fossil fuels is that one is taking carbon in a form that has long been locked away from the atmosphere and liberating it as CO2 into the atmosphere. Because transfers between the atmosphere, biosphere, and mixed layer of the ocean occur quite rapidly, this carbon is rapidly partitioned between each of these reservoirs but unfortunately the transfer of that carbon to some reservoir where it can be stored for a long time (like the deep oceans or underground) occurs only very slowly. This is why CO2 levels in the atmosphere changed little until the industrial revolution (with some debate over whether there may have been much more modest changes on the order of 10ppm due to deforestation for agricultural cultivation before this) but have risen increasing rapidly since then, while at the same time, the pH of the mixed layer of the oceans has been lowering somewhat (i.e., the oceans have been becoming more acidic, or less basic).
However, no objection, no refutation as to his assertion/asserting that you and your types goals are correctly stated thusly: “eliminate fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine from our civilization.”
Classical ( can I say it?) liberal/progressive tactic: object to something tertiary to the facts in order to obfuscate and draw attention away from said facts.
We saw that all last week in the Wisconsin State assembly (during +60 hours of continuous debate!) and this is what happened (a veritable rail-road into the truth):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po2ErRNCa1g&w=640&h=390%5D
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To John Coleman –
John, I am a Democrat at heart, a social and economic Liberal, and have been my whole life. If the Democratic leadership would stand up to the Republicans more often, I would support them much more than I do. I think the Dems are quite short on a sacked pair in the region of the short hairs. So, though I think like them, they drive me to despair.
Others here can vouch for the fact that I must, however, be not a “good Democrat,” because here I have been for a long time, despairing the most at the level of naivete most Liberals and Democrats display in believing the global warming alarmism. The science is NOT settled – contrary papers are ignored as if they simply don’t exist, yet they exist well into the scores of papers, if not hundreds. The projections of the models are flawed – they can’t even replicate recent surface records, so projecting models’ results out into the future is like a 3-year-old predicting election results three generations ahead of time, without even knowing who the candidates might be.
Liberals on many issues use logic well and are often capable of critical thought (though never at the expense of confrontation) – though without cojones – apparently believing that rational discussion is all that is necessary to win over the world. But on AGW Liberals simply are too trusting of the presentations of those who – as you say, “have an Agenda.” The only Liberals who are confrontational are the “Greens,” and only when suggesting that climate skeptics have some sort of inbred DNA anomalies; they really do think there is something genetically flawed in skeptics. They are that CERTAIN of their side being in the right.
But, a 90% Liberal, I do not agree with them. This is not a social issue; this is science. And whether it is right or not MATTERS. I have yet to see one main stream media article in the U.S. supportive of AGW which takes any but the most extreme of suggested results and puts it to the public. Never is a moderate projection used. Certainly low-end projections are never used.
After nearly 15 years looking into this, I am certain that the hype is just hype. I am certain that 90% of “believers” in AGW do it because they trust the scientists’ and the science writers’ presentations – blindly. I have yet to talk to even one Joe or Mary Main Street who has read up on the science at all. When their parroting of the AGW claims doesn’t sway me, they all – every single one – has fallen back on the Precautionary Principle of “But what if they are right?”
But “What if they are right?” is only a guess (and not even a good one). Science is not about guesses. AGW is the worst science I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen some doozies).
I am a Democrat and a Liberal who hasn’t left my brain behind. I know that skeptics don’t want a ruined planet anymore than Al Gore or Michael Mann. I know that CO2 is not the reason our global average seems to be increasing over the last 35 years. And until there is a thorough audit of the statistical processing of instrument data and proxy data, I am not sure there has even been any warming, since so many stations’ raw data doesn’t show warming. I believe that in the end the warming will be about 15-25% of what has been claimed and that 75-90% of that will be shown to be from land use, not CO2.
I have won over some pretty astute young minds to a more skeptical POV – at least partly because the individuals know I have a fairly astute mind and would not be arguing against AGW if I did not have good reasons. I educate them as much as I can and hope I am not too pedantic about it. So far, believe it or not, progress is being made. At least now some of them don’t assume the AGW party line is correct just because the news media is presenting it that way.
Anthony Watts as much as anyone has helped turn the tide. He presents a great forum here for holding their feet to the fire. Thanks for the article John. I loved your weather programs in Chicago long ago. You brought personality to the subject, back when it was as dry as the Atacama.
“R. Gates says:
February 26, 2011 at 7:55 pm
It wasn’t until the massive volcanic eruptions hit (and/or other influences such as a slow down in the hydrological cycle that reduced rock weathering), pouring massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, that the earth was shaken free from the snowball state.”
It was the other way around! CO2 levels rose long after Milankovitch cycles caused heating. See:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html
Thank you for the work in making this and posting this very good powerpoint John Coleman. I will send the WUWT link to colleagues and others.
Don R says: February 26, 2011 at 11:17 am
‘My Dad used to say
” If the Missus says it’s black, it’s black….’
That is correct Don. Which is why we send the fellas back to the pub to share a beer and get the science right, as it should be.
John Brookes says:
February 26, 2011 at 5:05 am
As one “alarmist”, I will stick my hand up and say, “Yes, if you can wave a magic wand and global warming won’t happen, I’ll be happy”.
Many people pointed out that he is saying “CO2 will be controlled”, not that “global warming won’t be happening”. It is obvious that you have absorbed as an axiom/belief that if there is any warming CO2 is causing it. Sad, and demonstrating that scientific thinking is not in your toolkit.
Funnily the frog story applies to alarmists as well: it is getting colder and colder and they say “it is global warming, bring the thermostat down”. It will serve them right if Gaia whom they are worshipping scratches her head and brings down the next ice age annoyed at their folly :). /end of joke
Mods… Anthony…
Could someone notify John Coleman, bless his soul, that his crew while making his video put Senator James Inhofe’s picture where Steve McIntyre’s picture belongs and McIntyre’s where Dr. Tim Ball’s picture belongs. I don’t think Ball’s picture appears at all though his name is listed. They really need to fix production error. Anyone with knowledge of these people and the wrong intentions will use this to batter John’s message. It’s a great video!
Werner Brozek, We’re discussing snowball Earth events of hundreds of millions of years ago, not the ice age cycles of the last million years
Eyes wide shut.
Schlocks like Joel here gives dissemblers (James ‘serpent head’ Carville and Mario Cuomo, even Mann and Schmidt) a bad name …
I hereby cite a couple refs here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/22/cold-fusion-going-commercial/#comment-581248
I will gladly leave the ‘explanations’ of the intricate phenomena to the physicists and theoreticians while harnessing said effect (I’m an engineer) for the benefit of man … but Joel won’t. He needs, nay, requires he know the intimate mechanism/workings of the phenomenon before making any practical use of it. The need to understand the principle of the lever to use a shovel is not required when digging a hole to plant a shrub …
Does Joel impose that ‘knowledge’ requirement on himself and fully consider the implications of firing up his PC or laptop cold each day, beholding the execution of the POST through to initial Windows or Linux boot, through the access of ever-higher levels of software abstraction in the OS and browser in his reach for the end-goal of an internet posting on WUWT?
No. Probably not by a long shot.
But he will incline to throw Baby and Bath-water out prior to ‘full enlightenment’ on cold fusion (since that suits his argument, for the moment) …
.
fhsiv says:
February 26, 2011 at 5:09 pm
====
And, from under what rock did you crawl?
Thank you R Gates and Joel Shore. Its good to have the likes of you to fire the skeptics up from time to time. You know they get bored patting each other on the back, and saying, “Well said, old chap”. So you do a public service by visiting here and putting the evidence that people who have thought deeply about the topic have come up with.
If there is one thing skeptics need, its a daily dose of outrage, and lets face it, stories about shonky home renovators, bad parents and political correctness gone mad might provoke outrage, but they hardly stimulate the gray matter. So thank you again for stimulating the skeptics into something closely resembling thought.
Now imagine I’m addressing a bunch of coal and oil executives, and I tell them that they don’t need to worry about global warming any more because someone has invented really cheap and safe nuclear. They’d all breath a sigh of relief and celebrate their new found leisure time, wouldn’t they?
>>
John A says:
February 26, 2011 at 6:26 am
This is one of the annoyances of this blog, where posters make unqualified sweeping statements about particular political positions.
<<
And on CA back on August 10, 2007 you said:
“Can Limbaugh’s listeners actually work a computer? That’s news to me.”
No unqualified, sweeping (political) statement made there. /sarc
Jim
Pamela Gray says:
February 26, 2011 at 7:38 am
I too am socially liberal (damn the ban against stem cell research, damn the effort to make abortion illegal and uninsurable, damn the Marriage Act and all that), but fiscally conservative.
————————————————————————————-
I thought I detected a kindred spirit. I too, describe myself as a social liberal and fiscal conservative. Glad to know there are others. Maybe we can convince John Coleman that his best audience is us middle-of-the-roaders.
I find much of the damning of liberals found on this, and every other thread, here at WUWT to be- well, boring. If all you can contribute to the discussion is “it’s a liberal, or socialist, or communist. plot,” well, saying it once is enough. That said, I am not happy about the current Washington Adminstration’s AGW stance.
I am now, and have been for over 40 years, an enviromentalist. But that does not mean that I am against technological progress. In the U.S., we owe our health, and comfort, and prosperity, and much of our general satisfaction with life, to abundant, cheap energy.
Thanks Wayne for the catch on the picture errors. The correction has been made in the original and will go to the online video editor Monday.
Jack earlier noted my error in the written blog of writing wall-la where I meant Voilà. And someone else corrected alternate to alternative in discussing fuels.
Thanks for these corrections.
And everyone should know that I take seriously the exceptions made to my comments. There is no way to learn more about the weaknesses in my thinking and writing than to post on WUWT. For the most part the comments are very educational and in many cases humbling. For one thing, clearly it is a gross exaggeration to lump all members of a political party into a totally like thinking group on any topic. It is probably accurate to say that within both parties there is considerable diversity in position on climate issues. A apologize for the simplistic categorization of “all good Democrats”.
My thanks to all for your time and comments, bad and good.
Best video I’ve seen on the history of global warming alarmism…
Dr Coleman
One of the lessons I have learned about politics in 46 rather tempestuous years on this earth is this:
Political campaigns are about winning, not about the truth.
We were sold the dangers of ‘mad cow disease’ as if it were going to be like the Black Death. It was a tiny blip.
We were sold the lies about transfusions to haemophiliacs not being caused by HIV. It was all about waiting for them to die so as not to pay compensation. It sickened me.
We were told lies about Saddam Hussein to go to war in Iraq. We actively stopped UNSCOM inspectors keeping up the processes which could have demonstrated a lack of nuclear weapons. Hussein was a butcher, but he was sold as harbouring Al Qa’ida. Lies. It is the way of the American world, I’m afraid.
What I think the world is seeing at the moment is the stormy transition between power residing in the hands of those still operating at the level of animalistic win/lose fights; and it residing in the hands of enlightened and humane statesmen/women. The people are actually further ahead than the politicians in my country, but they are behind in terms of forming vehicles to drive the change in organisational terms.
It will be a long fight.
But of all the hunches I have had in my life, it is the one I am most sure will see the Enlightened folks win.
It’s just the timetable I’m less sure of.
But certainly the whole of the 21st century will be engaged with it…..
@_Jim says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:13 pm
“I will gladly leave the ‘explanations’ of the intricate phenomena to the physicists and theoreticians while harnessing said effect (I’m an engineer) for the benefit of man … but Joel won’t. He needs, nay, requires he know the intimate mechanism/workings of the phenomenon before making any practical use of it. The need to understand the principle of the lever to use a shovel is not required when digging a hole to plant a shrub …”
==================
Joel may have a point, your link to the report here on the demonstration of heat production by Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi shows why.
They promise a ‘paper’ on the method to be published on their web-blog on Jan 24th.
It never appeared.
What we have are two people making extraordinary claims that they have dug a hole without using a shovel.
The simple explanation is that an exothermic chemical reaction is involved in the production of heat they demonstrated. The lever to make the hole.
But they claim that new and unknown processes (no details given) made the heat involving an H-Ni fusion to Cu without copious gamma ray production that would be predicted from known physics.
It is clear from the many posts and links you have made on LENR that you have some faith in the reality of the process and even think that it may be a practical source of energy to replace fossil fuels.
Unfortunately there is no evidence that anything other than a shovel has been used to dig a hole. Without comprehensive measurement of energy in and energy out on a functioning system (including all chemical reactions) there is nothing more than something that looks like a money-raising scam.
It will be interesting to see how governments react as the extraction and use of shale gas starts to kick in, worldwide – being very abundant and relatively low carbon, shale gas is perhaps one of the closest things we have to Solitaire’s “carbon fairy”.
R Gates, You seem to be under a misapprehension that the world is controlled in it’s climate by internal forcings. Sadly nothing could be further from the truth, it is the externalities that give us climate change. CO2 and nitrogen was our atmosphere, life, re plant life gave us oxygen and thus we are here.
The original life on our planet has been suffering some what, like you being deprived of oxygen, thus it is encumbent upon us to increase the CO2 levels to a more propitious state for our flora.
You will also discover with the correct research and an open mind that the inner stirrings of our planet, it’s heat and our volcanoes are the result of external forcings.
The sun and our fellow travelling planets have a profound effect on our well being, CO2 also has a deep effect but only when we have a lack of it, any thing less than 200ppm and our world will start to die. Anything over 10,000ppm I would start to think we have to plant more trees, one thing for sure, it will not affect the climate.