Guest post by Warren Meyer
Likely you have heard the sound bite that “97% of climate scientists” accept the global warming “consensus”. Which is what gives global warming advocates the confidence to call climate skeptics “deniers,” hoping to evoke a parallel with “Holocaust Deniers,” a case where most of us would agree that a small group are denying a well-accepted reality. So why do these “deniers” stand athwart of the 97%? Is it just politics? Oil money? Perversity? Ignorance?
We are going to cover a lot of ground, but let me start with a hint.
In the early 1980′s I saw Ayn Rand speak at Northeastern University. In the Q&A period afterwards, a woman asked Ms. Rand, “Why don’t you believe in housewives?” And Ms. Rand responded, “I did not know housewives were a matter of belief.” In this snarky way, Ms. Rand was telling the questioner that she had not been given a valid proposition to which she could agree or disagree. What the questioner likely should have asked was, “Do you believe that being a housewife is a morally valid pursuit for a woman.” That would have been an interesting question (and one that Rand wrote about a number of times).
In a similar way, we need to ask ourselves what actual proposition do the 97% of climate scientists agree with. And, we need to understand what it is, exactly, that the deniers are denying. (I personally have fun echoing Ms. Rand’s answer every time someone calls me a climate denier — is the climate really a matter of belief?)
It turns out that the propositions that are “settled” and the propositions to which some like me are skeptical are NOT the same propositions. Understanding that mismatch will help explain a lot of the climate debate.
Full essay here at Forbes (well worth your time, Anthony)
So I take it that ALL of these “Climate Scientists” are PhD Physicists. There wouldn’t be any statisticians among them, would there, since there isn’t any dispute about the validity of statistical prestidigitation. Maybe there is dispute about the valdity of the data; but that is the beauty of statistics; it is basically a 4-H club subject, and it can be rigorously applied to ANY set of data whatsoever; even data, entirely manufactured out of nothing by some computer program. The rules of statistical mathematics aren’t altered by the validity of the data they are applied to; just as in general the rules of arithmetic or algebra aren’t changed depending on the data they are applied to.
Statistics leads majestically to the observation; Garbage in, garbage out.
So statistics isn’t climate.
I doubt that there are any students of sampled data system theory included among climate scientists, because if there were, they would be screaming bloody murder about the lack of validity to the sampling strategies applied to “climate” or at least “weather” observations and data collection.
There wouldn’t be too many analog circuit designers or process control scientists doing climatism, because they would know how to connect up a feedback loop, and they would connect the feedback back to where it could control the input signal, which in the case of climate would be the sun. Instead , the climatists connect the feedback (CO2 emission) to one of the internal nodes, like the output of some integrator that was integrating the signal from the sun, and producing some slightly varying surface Temperature.
Well it seems that there must be a whole lot of otherwise unemployable Physicists, who wouldn’t have jobs if they couldn’t scare the taxpayers into funding their boondoggles.
So who are these other three percent of climate scientists, who are too dumb to go with the flow and just enjoy the gravy train their 97% brethren are on ?
I’d wager that at least half of all the “Climate Scientists” don’t have ANY sort of degree in Physics, and likely have never taken any sort of class in what could even be framed as Physics.
Now that is NOT a declaration on my part that Physics is necessary, or even important to the study of “climate science” ; just that when physics is applied to the data, that is observed and used by “climate scientists”, the output conclusions are somewhat different from what climatism yields.
David Wells says:
February 9, 2012 at 10:03 am
The argument would not exist if there was a technology that could replace coal oil gas and nuclear…”
Could happen. If the LPPhysics.com project works out (and the crucial make/break “unity” proof could come this year) then all CO2/renewable etc. issues are moot. No waste, easily installed almost anywhere, tiny footprint, costs <10% of BEST North American wholesale, etc. Every generation tech from solar to nuclear to coal, even gas, becomes economic roadkill.
About the 97% figure: a variation I’ve heard (unsupported) is that that’s also the % of published articles in the field supporting AGW. Given the gatekeeping stranglehold warmists have on the journals and research funding, that’s just self-congratulation at excluding efforts to falsify. Sleazoid disgusting.
Why not clear the question first,
wether CO2 is capable of warming the earth at all.
It has nothing to do with “consensus”
but with physics
Paul
because the whole discussion is useless, if not 🙂
Paul
of course it is “political incorrect” to repeat the experiment of WOOD 1909,
but some have done open and secretly,
not only with window glass, with CO2 in laboratory,
all with the same result:
a cooling effect.
The last was as far as I know Nasif S. Nahle, Monterrey, MX, 2011
Physically the main question is the position of the source of radiation (the sun).
indeed, a very difficult question:
is the source of radiation inside or outside the atmosphere?
Paul