By Tom Harris
Anyone not already familiar with the stance of geologists towards the global warming scare would have been shocked by the conference at the University of Ottawa at the end of May. In contrast to most environmental science meetings, climate skepticism was widespread among the thousand geoscientists from Canada, the United States and other countries who took part in GAC-MAC 2011 (the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Association of Canada, the Mineralogical Association of Canada, the Society of Economic Geologists and the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits).
The lead symposium of the conference, Earth climate: past, present, future, was especially revealing. Chaired by University of Toronto geology professor Andrew Miall, the session description starts: “The scientific debate about climate change is far from over. Some of the projections of climate change and its consequences contained in the 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations’ IPCC) have been called into question. This symposium will address some of these issues and present a geological perspective on the scientific debate.”
The talks were from “climate rationalists,” defined by Australian geology professor Bob Carter of James Cook University as “persons who are critical (on balanced scientific grounds) of the IPCC’s alarmism … reflecting the primacy that such persons give to empirical data and thinking. The climate rationalist approach contrasts markedly with the untestable worlds of computer virtual reality that so many climate alarmists now inhabit.”
Leading off the GAC-MAC climate symposium was fellow Australian, Ian Plimer, professor in the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering at the University of Adelaide. In a keynote presentation entitled Human-induced climate change: Why I am skeptical, Plimer completely dismantled the greenhouse-gas-driven climate-change hypothesis. He showed how climate has varied naturally on all time scales and how recent changes are not unusual. Plimer explained the lack of meaningful correlation between the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and planetary warming and cooling, and how “climate models throw no new light on climate processes.” He concluded, “Pollution kills, CO2 is plant food, H2O vapour is the main greenhouse gas…. Humans can adapt to future changes.”
Following Plimer were 14 other climate presentations by leading geoscientists. Henrik Svensmark of the National Space Institute in Denmark spoke about how cosmic ray variations in the atmosphere are influencing climate by changing the microphysics of clouds. University of Ottawa emeritus professor Ján Veizer presented his research describing the role of the Sun and water vapour on CO2 and climate change. Calgary geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch showed how satellite radiation measurements demonstrate that the “enhanced greenhouse effect” from greenhouse gas emissions has never even existed to any measurable extent. Carleton University researcher Hafida El Bilali showed how her work with paleoclimatologist professor Tim Patterson revealed that variations in the output of the Sun have had major influences on regional climate for the past nine millennia.
And so it continued. Although one speaker presented information that was consistent with IPCC claims, no other presentation in the symposium supported the UN’s human-caused dangerous global warming hypothesis. In the discussion period following the talks, climate rationalists decried the lack of media or public attention to the symposium or their research findings. In the exhibit hall, few participants seemed interested in human-caused global warming. The catastrophic messages that so overwhelm other climate-related conferences were nowhere to be found.
Where were all the other scientist supporters of climate alarmism? Did they not know that climate was a major focus of this, the largest geologic conference in the country?
They knew. According to Miall, even though some were directly invited, they either refused to participate or ignored the invitation. “The people on the IPCC side generally will not debate,” explained Miall. “Anything that’s brought up that they disagree with, they say has been dealt with and is no longer considered important, or is a minor effect. This is often quite wrong.”
In the Q&A following the public lecture at last June’s Canadian Meteorological and Ocean Society (CMOS)/Canadian Geophysical Union Congress in Ottawa, the prospect of a public debate between the two sides was put to keynote speaker Warwick Vincent of Laval University. Vincent was supportive, as was a CMOS past president communicated with later. Yet, when I approached CMOS executives and directors about taking the steps necessary to arrange such a public event, the responses were negative to the point of abuse and nothing transpired.
This was perhaps not surprising. Proposals for a proper climate science debate have been opposed by CMOS leaders for a long time. As early as 1990, the chairman of the CMOS congress scientific committee, Tad Murty (then a senior research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ Institute of Ocean Sciences) tried to arrange a global-warming debate. But it never happened. Murty cites a “lack of enthusiasm” from other committee members as the reason.
When the Kyoto Protocol was created in December 1997, long-time CMOS member Madhav Khandekar (then just retired from his research scientist position at Environment Canada) highlighted several uncertainties in IPCC science and called for an open debate on the issue in the CMOS Bulletin. His article, Global warming & climate change in Canada: A need for an open scientific debate, was completely ignored by CMOS executives and its membership at large.
At this week’s congress in Victoria, CMOS, like many organizations of its ilk, still maintains a rigid stance of climate catastrophilia. The congress includes sessions described with clearly mistaken statements such as “Recent research has highlighted the irreversibility of CO2-induced climate change on centennial timescales …..” Other, less extreme but also unjustified assertions abound: “It has become widely recognized that under a changing climate, the frequency and intensity of meteorological/hydrological extreme events and associated damage costs would more likely increase in the 21st century.”
The narrow-mindedness of CMOS and other climate alarmists matters because they have the ear of the mass media, most of which uncritically reports on CMOS’ statements that the science is settled and debate unnecessary. Recent surveys show that the public is highly influenced by these assertions and so seriously flawed CMOS messages are incorporated into government pronouncements.
Miall maintains that the views of geoscientists are crucial for a proper understanding of climate.
“This should have been accepted practice all along, not because geoscientists are necessarily right, but because this should be the normal process of science,” said Miall. “The idea that any science is ‘finished’ violates all the norms of the science process, which should, by definition, be permanently open to new data and new ideas. The history of science is full of examples of so-called ‘normal science’ that is shown to be wrong on the basis of a single critical piece of data or a new idea. That’s all we were trying to do at the GAC meeting — keep our minds open.”
Uncomfortable though it may be for geoscientists, society needs them to speak out forcefully now. Otherwise, the climate alarm, its science failing but the movement still heavily funded, will stagger on, leading society into wasting billions of dollars more and destroying millions of jobs worldwide.
Financial Post
Tom Harris is the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition.
Short summary: Climate scientists not interested in debating geoscientists as reported in the Financial Post section of the National Post
Story title: Canadian Climate Scientists and Canadian Geophysicists – not birds of a feather
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As expressed today on Andrew Bolt’s blog warmist scientist’s definitely don’t want open debate. In Australia the Government in trying to sell it’s new carbon dioxide tax clearly has adopted this strategy in order to stifle any serious debate concerning the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis. Obviously this is because they don’t want the ordinary punter to work out that he/she is being conned, and that no credible evidence supports the main tenets of the warming scam. As Andrew Bolt puts it:
HK, why only tell half of the Plimer/Monbiot story? Here’s the other half for balance:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/11/why-monbiot-ran
You have to ask yourself, if Monbiot really wanted to debate, why did he insist upon a need for private answers to loaded questions that should have formed part of the warmist side of the open “debate”?
What is obvious to me, an ordinary man in the street, is that scientists do not agree on anthropomorphic climate change. So more study needs to be done. Until then it would be best not to embark on expensive “solutions” that will cost the economy severely with very little return.
In the meantime, let us be civil towards one another and keep an open mind.
Time for the free hit for warmist opinion media to start asking their “climate scientists” to actually debate the science in public. Its easy to make alarmist claims and deny sceptics any access, but this tactic is a real gamble now as the meme unravels in a cooling world. That is what we are all asking for an open and searching debate, the debate that has been denied for too long.
ginckgo says:
June 8, 2011 at 11:54 pm
“The main problem for Ian is to show that the trend in the past 50 years is not from human activity (this falsification has not occurred); let alone show another likely mechanism that would explain the trend.”
Amazing, another scientific method know-nothing. Sir, it is the responsibility of the scientist who has put forth a hypothesis to explain it and defend it. The critic of the hypothesis is required simply to criticize the hypothesis. There is no symmetry here. All the burden of proof is on the scientist offering a hypothesis.
KnR – I have read the full set of correspondence (in the links I gave). I haven’t ever read anyone (including the Spectator) suggest that Monbiot has misrepresented the communication.
Monbiot didn’t want to debate – that is true – but he was persuaded to by the Spectator, and he agreed on the condition that Plimer answered those basic questions. The Spectator agreed. The questions really were of the “you say this on page xx, what is your source?” type. I would have thought Plimer would want to answer them, to show that his book was based on solid work.
Plimer started by saying “After undergraduate lectures have finished today, I will start compiling questions for you and will start addressing your questions.” but later stalled by saying things like “It has taken some time to look at your questions and determine which version was used for compilation of the questions.” (i.e. which edition of the book Monbiot was referring to. Monbiot later wrote that “the edition I have read is published in the UK by Quartet books, ISBN 978 0 7043 7166 8. I gave the page and figure numbers as they appear in the text of the edition I possess, which, to judge by other people’s references, is the same text (with the same numbers) as in all other editions.”) Plimer never answered those basic questions.
In 2009 I was a sceptic (still am), and thought Monbiot was wrong on climate. I assumed Plimer would wipe the floor with him in a debate. But when I read the email exchanges it became clear Plimer was just as bad as all the people Steve McIntyre ran up against with their “dog ate my homework” excuses for why they couldn’t provide data.
But don’t believe me – you can read this all for yourself in the links. It is very self-explanatory.
“The main problem for Ian is to show that the trend in the past 50 years is not from human activity (this falsification has not occurred)”
And the main problem for climatologists is to show that the trend in the past 50 years is not from natural causes (this falsification has not occurred either)
@Ginckgo – You might want to read http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/08/alarmist-climate-science-and-the-principle-of-exclusion/ might enlighten you a bit more about the AGW has nothing to prove.
Or this is also good for both sides of the debate (Is it a debate when the side with all the money and power refuses to talk about it?) http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/6/8/confirmation-bias.html
“Yes, but what do these geologists know? Their opinion doesn’t count because they are not real climate scientists, are they.”
That brings up another myth about climate science; the claim that only climate scientists can understand it. This is the same claim made in the past when very few people were literate other than local preachers, folks claimed that they were the only ones who could understand the bible so you has to accept their opinions. I know of no science except climate science where only those on the inside can understand it. Good science is understandable by all. Sometimes I feel like climate science is voodoo science.
ginckgo says:
June 8, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Sorry, but you have the scientific method completely turned around. It is up the the warmists to show that the current warming is not natural in nature. You have failed to do this.
The claim that “I don’t know what else caused it, so it must be man” was dealt with in yesterday’s post on the exclusion principle.
Ian Plimer is not “slippery”, There are ways to ask questions that will be ignored; there are ways to ask questions that will be answered by a fine mind. Tip. Don’t try throwing loaded dice.
One thing the geological and related earth scientist learns is the magnitude of natural events as opposed to human events. When you approach a topic like climate change, you know that it will take immense effort to change the natural state. So, you ask, where is the evidence for this effort? That is why we persist in asking for evidence of the hand of man, via CO2 or whatever. Quantitatively. When you work out the cost to move the rock from Mt St Helens, that Nature did in a few seconds, you know that Man is puny.
As to the charge that geologists etc are not climate workers, bunkum. There are many areas of overlap and in may of these the geologist has a better understanding than the climate worker. For example, many climate workers have talked about a particular South American soil with a high carbon content, ‘terra preta’. This has led to suggestions of carbon remediation schemes whereby all soils can carry an increased carbon content, which by the way might be better for agricultural yield as a bonus.
See: http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/warehouse/pe_brs90000004182/sfdmSoilCarbon2010_ap14.pdf
Geochemists know that the carbon content of soils worldwide seldom approach the terra preta level, because the normal processes of weathering keep total organic carbon in soils to a couple of percent C at the surface and down to say half a metre. Geologists can also show you abundant soil profiles with deep saprolitic and lateritic zones much less carbon, often down to 40 metres below surface. Carbon is just not terribly stable in Nature when air and water can get at it. If you enrich shallow soil with it, oxygen and plant growth will most likely take it back to where it was before, as controlled by geology and weathering. Sure, plants might grow better through better availablity of nutrients, but plants will steadily consume it while growing better.
And so on. Example after example, nothing to do with funding from Big Oil.
TMJ, thank you! Very kind. I don’t have a blog but I have been thinking about it. The sad truth is I am quite scared by the reaction my views would have if anyone figured out who I was. We are fed to the dogs if we step out of line in the wider scientific community. I am also working on a few papers which I want to publish which relate to the PETM and carbon cycling budgets. Will certainly think about a blog now though.
I did have an amusing spat with a coworker recently when asked to review a paper on a computer model. She didn’t like it when I pointed out that the only reason the model produced warming, (keeping out of the debate that models can never hope to approximate a complex non linear chaotic system anyway….), was that the CO2 feedback was hard wired positive!
So of course I pointed out the potential for CO2 to trap long wave radiation was a log function and diminishes to almost zero above 300ppmv, so this then forces you to invoke a 10x amplification in the forcing to get the modeled temperatures and asked what exactly this (has to be rapid and long lived) positive feedback comprised of. Could not tell me. Just said everyone knows that there is one and that I must be mad to think there wasn’t one.
I pointed out that during various recent phases of climate over the last 250M years, nothing in geological terms, we had up to 3000ppmv and how did she explain the falling temperatures experienced by the planet which happened on more than once with very high levels of CO2. Again, no answer.
QED. It is junk science.
ginckgo said: ” The main problem for Ian [Plimer] is to show that the trend in the past 50 years is not from human activity (this falsification has not occurred); let alone show another likely mechanism that would explain the trend.”
What an incredibly upside-down approach. Pilmer has to show falsification instead of the “climate scientists” showing that falsification of their hypotheses is possible! And therefore, by exclusion, (“climate scientists” can’t think of another cause,) “climate scientists” are right! But exclusion is the weakest of all possible scientific “proofs.”
When will folks understand that “Climate science” doesn’t exist? It’s simply the use, or misuse, of pieces of other basic sciences and math. It is way past time for the alarmists to compare their uses of other basic sciences with some experts. They can start with biologists and review bristlecones. When they get to geology, they will have a large number of surprises.
I believe I am a “climate realist.” It indicates a level of reality not shown by the “Henny Penny” alarmists.
ginckgo says:
June 8, 2011 at 11:54 pm
“Not a single climate scientist disputes the fact that climate has changed in the past naturally, sometimes more dramatically than now (accompanied by mass extinctions). The main problem for Ian is to show that the trend in the past 50 years is not from human activity (this falsification has not occurred); let alone show another likely mechanism that would explain the trend.”
What kind of logic is that?
“It’s ALWAYS been natural so now prove that this time it isn’t man made.” HUH?
I didn’t prove it was natural before and NO ONE has proven this is man made.
The “null hypothesis” still requires proof that current “climate change” is not only AGW but can be controlled.
They keep showing they are wrong on both counts.
My non-scientific background tells me the increased co2 causing the climate change is actually caused by chocolate consumption.
I’ll try to plot them both to disprove my theory. But the timing does seem right and I can think of no other cause.
ATTN: Antonia
From 1945 to 1975 the PDO was in a cool phase, and in this interval La Nina years out numbered El Nino years by about 2 to 1. Moreover the La Nina years were “srong” while the El Nino years were “weak”.
In 2010, the PDO shifted into a cool phase, and after a 10 year lag the NH and SH are starting to cool down. This spring (i.e., Mar, April and May) has been one of the coldest on record in Metro Vancouver.
If this trend continues and it probably will,. the next 20 years will be cool like it was in the 1950 to 1970 period.
It will only take one or two really cold winters in the NH and several wet cold years in Oz to put AGW to rest.
The feud between geologists and physicists is over a century old. The geologists have the most significant victory.
In the late 19th century, the dominant theory among physicists was that the sun was no more than a few million years old. The theory among geologists was that the Earth, at least, was a billion or more years old. The physicists said the geologists had no appreciation of simple basic laws of nature. Of course the sun was heated by gravitational “in fall” of comets and meteors. “What else could it be?” The ongoing, literal, “catastrophe” of collisions between the sun and other debris of the solar system made the sun hot — but the solar system was running out of resources — space mass. The system had long passed “peak mass” freely available to the sun. So the sun was going to go out, relatively soon.
The geologists said the earth /rock record did not show such catastrophe. Gradual, gentle change was the word — and that over billion year periods, not million.
The physicists accused the geologists of being ignorant of basic laws of conservation of energy, and mass. And of denying the truth without suggesting a plausible alternative explanation.
The geologists didn’t care. The rocks were the rocks.
Then came Curie, and Einstein, and mass/energy conversion, and all the physicists tried to pretend they’d never said anything to the contrary ….
It is amusing that the TV media steadfastly refuse to open any kind of debate here in the UK. Threaten to cut funding to hospitals or bring back the death penalty or withdraw from the EU or whatever and the subject will be argued over from all angles. But not AGW.
Personally I’m still puzzled why I’m going to be stopped from buying tungsten filament lamps when I get my leccy from windmills.
UK sceptic – “HK, why only tell half of the Plimer/Monbiot story? Here’s the other half for balance:”
I don’t think the “other half” provides balance if it is demonstrably not based on the actual exchanges at the time. The article you link to is self-defeating because the assertions made in the article are not supported by the emails. E.g. “Initially, Monbiot agreed to the debate, but someone reasoned that it was a high-risk venture”… “Then Monbiot, obviously following advice from his new-best Australian friends, started to play games”… “Monbiot came up with a debate-avoidance strategy”… “He told Plimer (via email) that he would only agree to a debate if Plimer would answer a series of questions”
If you look at the emails, it is very clear that he said he was happy to debate in writing – an exchange of answers to written questions. The Spectator badly wanted Monbiot to do a debate in person. Monbiot badly didn’t want to, saying that if Plimer wouldn’t provide simple factual answers, what was the point? He eventually said he would debate – one three conditions. One of his conditions was:
“Ian Plimer responds to my challenge, and writes precise and specific responses to each of the numbered questions that I will send him and you over the next few days, for publication on the Guardian’s website. The reason for this condition is that I don’t want him to use our debate as an excuse not to answer my points. I accept his challenge if he accepts mine.”
The Spectator agreed (no mention of that in the article you link to) so the debate was on. Ian Plimer said he would get working on them (no mention of that in the article, either). Were Monbiot’s questions loaded? Well perhaps: how could Plimer answer a question like:
“4. In your discussion of global temperature trends, you maintain that “NASA now states that […] the warmest year was 1934.” (p99)
a. Are you aware that this applies only to the United States?
b. Was this a mistake or did you deliberately confuse these two datasets?”
without looking silly? (The context on p99 makes it clear Plimer was talking about global temperatures.) But loaded or not, they were clearly not private questions: they were to be published on the Guardian’s website. If Plimer had been able to answer them (as agreed), he would have made Monbiot look foolish and out of his depth.
I’d like the alarmists to move the global warming to the NYC area weekends and the “just weather” to the midweek so we can enjoy the shore on our days off. Right now their models are causing the reverse. Just asking. It’s near 100 now and projected for 75 on Saturday. Wattsupwiththat?
The reason climate scientists do not debate skeptics is the same as the reason biologists do not debate crreationists. It’s all about the “Gish gallop”:
http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Gish_gallop
“The Gish Gallop is an informal name for a debating technique that involves drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood that has been raised. Usually this results in many involuntary twitches in frustration as the opponent struggles just to decide where to start. It is named after creationism activist and professional debater Duane Gish.”
You may disagree, but that is the way the climate scientists see it.
To the point of the author’s last sentence, the US government has wasted $99 BILLION on “climate change policy” since 1998. This is not per the guess of Rush Limbaugh, or the allegations of David Koch or of Senator Inhofe, it is proudly admitted by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Link below.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/112xx/doc11224/03-26-ClimateChange.pdf
As a 22 year practitioner in the environmental industry, I ask you: what/how much measurable good could have been done for human health and the environment with $99 BILLION over the last 12 or so years? How many federal superfund cleanups could have been completed, where the sites pose an actual risk to human health and the environment? How many RCRA sites? How many DoD chemical munitions? How much PM2.5 and PM10 could we have removed from the air from coal-fired power plants with this money?
Wake up, Western society. This is the green road to serfdom, an economic and central planning nightmare shrouded in the motherhood and apple pie “environmental” savior.
The waste of $99 BILLION should outrage every U.S. citizen, as should the misanthropic, anti-freedom, anti-industrialization, anti-capitalism motives of a healthy portion of AGW exponents.
Geoff Sherrington – “Ian Plimer is not “slippery”, There are ways to ask questions that will be ignored; there are ways to ask questions that will be answered by a fine mind. Tip. Don’t try throwing loaded dice.”
My tip: if you say you’re going to answer written questions as a condition to a debate, answer the questions. Don’t renege on your commitment if you don’t want to be called “slippery”.
John B, as usual, misrepresents the situation when he says:
“The reason climate scientists do not debate skeptics…”
That is not honest. This is the honest way to put it:
“The reason alarmist climate scientists do not debate scientific skeptics…”
As we know, scientific skeptics are the only honest kind of scientists. John B needs to get up to speed on the scientific method, and quit prevaricating. The real reason alarmists hide out from debate is because they consistently lose.
The NPR blog “Cosmos and Culture,” hosted by biologist Ursula Goodenough, recently entertained the question “What Motivates Climate Change Deniers.” Never mind the implied conclusion, it’s a symptom of the failings common to believers.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/05/26/136676621/what-motivates-climate-change-deniers
The 850+ responses, thankfully now closed, give an incredible insight into the reasoning processes of people, especially of non-scientists, regarding CAGW. One glaring error was saying that geologists are not climate scientists and therefore have nothing to contribute to the discussion. Actually, some went so far as to say that geologists have no ability to review the results of “climate scientists.”
If you can stand inanity, take a look at the discussion there. The supporters of CAGW seem to have in common that they cannot reason and/or they do not understand the scientific method. Plus, of course, they take as gospel what the “climate scientists” and their supporters say, including the absurd claims that all skeptics are funded by big oil.
Would not the use of the term “climate scientist” be analogous to the use of the term “rocket scientist”? They are both fields of work, but neither are academic disciplines. I don’t think I could send my son to Stanford for a degree in “Rocket Science” nor will he signup for a course with that name.
He will absorb a familiar set of disciplines that together prepare him to work in that field.
In a like manner, I would think that the field of “climate science” requires a mastery of academic disciplines including geology, statistics (and hopefully logic?).
As in most fields, the practitioner is a generalist who often depends on academic specialists in critical situations.
(I did well in statistics in both my engineering and business degrees, but the path between my office and the office of my colleague with a PhD in statistics was well worn.)