About the same time I had opened my browser window a week ago for this post on Bertrand Russell’s Liberal Decalogue from 1951, I had opened a page at The Inconvenient Truth by Guy McCardle on quotes that represent the very best aspects of skepticsim. It has taken me this long to get back to it.
This one in particular, strikes me as highly prescient:
A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone. – Denis Diderot
The short version takeaway is:
Skepticism is the first step toward truth –Denis Diderot
Given what we’ve seen in professional climate circles these past two weeks, I think that makes a great motto. Here’s the rest.
Since these are public domain quotes from multiple people, I’ve reproduced it in entirety here. Please give props to Guy McCardle at The Inconvenient Truth for collecting them.
Critical Thinking
Skepticism is the first step toward truth. –Denis Diderot
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. – John Maynard Keynes
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave. –William Drummond
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. — Albert Einstein
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. –Philip K. Dick
A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone. – Denis Diderot
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. – Martin Luther King Jr
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. –Richard Feynman
A scientist seeks the truth, wherever that may lead. A believer already knows the truth, and cannot be swayed no matter how compelling the evidence. – Author Unknown
But what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away. – McDonald/Loggins
Ridicule may lawfully be employed where reason has no hope of success . –Ed Brayton
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. –Anatole France
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. – Jacob Bronowski
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. – Voltaire
It is impossible to reason someone out of something that he did not reason himself into in the first place. – Jonathon Swift
Doubt grows with knowledge. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. – Galileo Galilei
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. – James Thurber
That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. –P. C. Hodgell
It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers. –James Thurber
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. –Bertrand Russell
The curse of man, and cause of nearly all of his woes, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible. –H. L. Mencken
The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away. Don’t waste any neurons on what doesn’t work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor. – Carl Sagan
For, to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all nations, and has oppressed the intellectual energies of all men, and has betrayed them into endless imbecilities. –Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous. –Confucius
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite. – Bertrand Russell
Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow’s too lazy to form an opinion. –Will Rogers
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. – Bertrand Russell
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true;it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. –H. L. Mencken
Evidence
A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and giving to them only that degree of credibility which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure the world from most of the ills from which it is suffering. –Bertrand Russell
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. – Carl Sagan
In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. –Stephen Jay Gould
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence . –Christopher Hitchens
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. –Aldous Huxley
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? – John Maynard Keynes
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. –John Maynard Keynes
The correct scientific response to something that is not understood must always be to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause. – David Attenborough
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. –W.K. Clifford
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true. –Bertrand Russell
Not until the empirical results are exhausted need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation . –Edwin Hubble
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. – David Hume
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. – David Hume
No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. –David Hume
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. – Charles Babbage
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. –Francis Bacon
The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion. – Stephen Jay Gould
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another. – John Burroughs
When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. –James Whitcomb Riley
The better a man knows the truth, the less he is likely to condemn. – Sebastian Castellio
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. –John von Neumann
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. – Bertrand Russell
On Sciences
Science is organized knowledge. – Herbert Spencer
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true. – Carl Sagan
Truth in science can best be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one. – Konrad Lorenz
[Science is] a series of judgements, revised without ceasing. –Pierre Emile Duclaux
Science is nothing but trained and organised common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. –Thomas Henry Huxley
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant. –Miguel de Unamuno
[Science is] the desire to know causes. –William Hazlitt
[Science is] the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another. –Thomas Hobbes
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. –Konrad Lorenz
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. – Hippocrates
The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. –Thomas Henry Huxley
Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world. – Richard Dawkins
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions. –Claude Levi-Strauss
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t. – Pete Seeger
Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. –Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. –Albert Einstein
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. –Adam Smith
The compass that today guides this timeless endeavor is scientific inquiry. It is science that gazes outward, providing the grand questions that challenge us to journey farther and farther from home. But it is also science that peers inward, exploring previously inaccessible areas of the Earth, and asking the practical questions that help us to make Earth safer, protect our citizens, and expand our economy. –NASA Roadmap “Exploring our Planet for the Benefit of Society”, 2005
Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is superstition. –Robert Park
Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise. –Ivan Pavlov
Thought-provocation
So you’re offended. So fucking what? – Stephen Fry (talking about religious objections to free speech)
Never argue with an idiot. The best outcome you can hope for is that you won an argument with an idiot. –Anonymous
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief . –Gerry Spence
In the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy. – Carl Sagan
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. – Voltaire
Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for – because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything. – Peter Marshall
Whoever is still seeking for miracles so that he may believe is himself a wonder, who does not believe while the world around him does . –Saint Augustine
If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much. –Yogi Berra
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. –Thomas Henry Huxley
Faith is believing what you know ain’t so. – Mark Twain
The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of “Spiritualism” is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a “medium” hired at a guinea a séance. – Aldous Huxley
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. – Oscar Wilde
When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff . –Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. – Eric Hoffer
There’s a sucker born every minute. – Joseph Bessimer (not Phineas T. Barnum)
Heathen, n: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. –Ambrose Bierce
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. –John Kenneth Galbraith
It is harder to conceal ignorance than to acquire knowledge. – Arnold Glasgow
Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. –Winston Churchill
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. –Thomas Carlyle
There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity . –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth. –Edwin Hubbell Chapin
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. –Winston Churchill
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Faith” is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see - But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency. –Emily Dickinson
I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures but with experiments and demonstrations. –Galileo Galilei
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. –Dalai Lama
A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life. – Robin G. Collingwood
Other
Heaven wheels above you displaying to you her eternal glories and still your eyes are on the ground. – Dante Alighieri
We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity. –Marie Curie
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religions. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough. –Aldous Huxley
Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs. –Anonymous
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature. –Jacob Bronowski
Truth exists. Only lies are invented. –Georges Braque
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. Marie Curie
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. No, not Thomas Jefferson – it was John Philpot Curran
The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition . –Quintus Curtius Rufus
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity. – Robertson Davies
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. –John Dewey
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it. –Emily Dickinson
Men talk of heaven, – there is no heaven but here; Men talk of hell, – there is no hell but here; Men of hereafters talk, and future lives, - O love, there is no other life – but here. – Omar Khayyám
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. –Denis Diderot
I would like to be remembered as a person who made trouble where trouble was needed. – Studs Terkel
I have always observed that when people are interrupted in the performance of some egregious stupidity their feelings are hurt. – Anthony Trollope
We are all born ignorant, but we must work hard to remain stupid. – Benjamin Franklin
Four stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense, ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view, iii) this is true, but quite unimportant, iv) I always said so. –J.B.S. Haldane
A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth. – Henrik Ibsen
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. –Thomas Jefferson
The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract. –Oliver Wendell Holmes
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible positions. – Thomas Jefferson
Morality & Ethics
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant. –H. L. Mencken
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life, so aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. –Henry David Thoreau
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. – Dante Alighieri
There are causes worth dying for but none worth killing for. – Albert Camus
The time is always right to do what is right. – Martin Luther King Jr
In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another. – J. William Fullbright
Prejudice is opinion without judgment . –Voltaire
You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. –Abbie Hoffman
Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself. – Robert Ingersoll
There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people. –Thomas Jefferson
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. – Ashley Montague
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. –Thomas Jefferson
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too . –Voltaire
All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. – Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing in a biography of Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities . –Voltaire
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society. –Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prejudices are what fools use for reason . –Voltaire
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. –Karl Popper
Alternative Medicine
Penicillin cures pneumonia even if you’re in a coma, but alternative medicine only seems to work when you are awake. – R. Barker Bausell
I suffered from chronic hypochondria for years. Eventually I went to a naturopath and was cured with a course of broad-spectrum placebos . –M. Cullen
There must be some limit to the thing. It cannot go on to infinity. (Es muss ein Ende geben, es kann nicht bis ins Unendliche weitergehen). – Samuel Hahnemann (to Dr Schreter, Sept 13th 1829, Writing about Homeopathic Dilutions)
The orthodox doctor treats what you have, and the alternative practitioner says you have what she treats. – Rose Shapiro
The real diversity is the diversity of thought.” — David Mamet
“Only dead fish go with the flow” — Sarah Palin
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” — Benjamin Franklin
“There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions…It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.” — Karl Popper
“Our civilization…has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth – the transition from the tribal or ‘closed society’, with its submission to magical forces, to the ‘open society’ which sets free the critical powers of man.” — Karl Popper
“It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.” Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22.
“A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.” Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog saw.
The truth needs no defence in a lie.
Charles.U.Farley.
‘The Planet is fine. It is the people who are f*****d’
George Carlin ..on Saving the Planet
Great collection which will be referenced and dipped into often I’m sure. I can only add the saying. which is very relevant to a lot of accusations from climate alarmism. “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you.”
One thing I learned from studying Karl Popper (although far from the only thing) is that while you can never be certain something is true, you can say with certainty when something is false (with some mostly statistical caveats).
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth but most manage to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and go on their way as if nothing had happened”
I think it was Winston Churchill IIRC.
“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”
The Buddha
“Always wear clean underwear because you might get hit by a city bus and never argue with a crazy person”— Grandma
No Sunspots for you Peter Gleick!
Good work WUWT and Climate Depot.
[Science is] the desire to know causes. –William Hazlitt
Support the cause of Climate Science? The role of science is to determine cause. Science is not a cause.
Never be afraid to ask a question, there are many more stupid answers than stupid questions.
Sorry but Green-Activist Science (Acti-Science) owns the language now
you are not a healthy skeptic you are a “denier”. There is no spectrum of ideas just the false dichotomy of “with us or against us” the word Green, & Skepticism have already been hijacked next is the same vain is the word “science” they are attempting to own the word “Science”..note the term used in the Desmogblog PR “Anti-science”
– Doubtfulnews.com is still fundraising for Gleick’s NCSE with this post “The Anti-science agendas invade the schools; not just Creationism anymore”
QUOTE – One disturbing point in this piece is the use of the word “skeptic” and “skeptical”. Everyone should be skeptical but that doesn’t mean “antagonistic” or “denialist”, it means “looking for evidence”. There’s no reason to be skeptical that global warming is happening.ENDQUOTE
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire
If only John Maynard Keynes would follow his own advice!
There is a Russian joke, usually ascribed to Stalin:
“Facts are stubborn things. So much the worse for the facts.”
To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
Lao Tzu
Anthony, this is a great list. You know how much I support what you have done, your principles, your hard work, your scientific excellence.
However, it irks me, once again, to see the unnecessary addition of negative comments relating to “alternative medicine”. These are the same kind of remarks that we hear from “warmists”, that we rightly eschew, challenge, and produce data to contradict.
At some point I clearly need to get Ben Goldacres’ book, to start to take it apart properly. Here I have only time for a short comment, and no time to work on, say, a proper article at a standard and with an approach that would speak to the WUWT environment. I still want to stay with Climate Science, until I have done all I can with getting a wiki on the road for others to take on and develop so that it can be owned by the whole climate skeptics community. I am doing this because I care about restoring integrity in science, and because getting one’s basic facts always seems to be step one, step two, and likely step three, in overcoming prejudice, ignorance and corruption of the science. Like the basic temperature data for Climate Science.
The remarks on “alternative medicine” show me clearly the need to also address what I know, and bitterly know, is deep albeit unconscious, uninformed, onesided prejudice in other areas. This too is part of the work needed to restore integrity to Science.
I have seen much “alternative” medicine work, and work completely, where everything else has failed, and failed badly, for years. This does not make all “alternative” medicine ok, or even all practitioners within any one “alternative” discipline ok. Nor does it deny the placebo effect. But it does go beyond the scurrilous kind of treatment Nature magazine gave to Professor Benveniste, and the pseudoreligious pseudoscientific dogma and limitations in what James Randi practiced. And that is opening a can of worms here, which I cannot answer at half-cock, because that will simply create more confusion. It needs thoroughness, and ability to forestall the likely objections here.
Please, Anthony, stay with what you truly know about, and try to avoid being judgemental in areas where you only have the “consensus” opinion to draw on.
I think the inclusion of quotes about alternative medicine in the list is appropriate – alternative medicine is similar in many respects to Climate Science’s CAGW. Both are highly dependent on models which are relatively uncritically accepted by their practitioners, despite contrary evidence or lack of certainty. From these inadequate and relatively unproven models, sometimes expensive and largely useless treatments are confidently derived.
In the case of alternative medicine, positive treatment results are cited as proof of the underlying models, despite the strong probability of other factors having a major influence (e.g. the body’s own defences and a placebo effect). In Climate Science, partially correct temperature predictions are cited as proof of models, despite the likelihood of many other factors having a major influence.
Climate Science and alternative medicine could be immeasurably improved if their practitioners were to reduce their unwarranted confidence in particular models and were willing to accept only good quality evidence and either change or discard their models based on that evidence. Since the time of Galileo, this approach has been a requirement of sound science.
From Robert Boyle’s 1661 book “The Sceptical Chymist”:
“A considering man may very well question the truth of those very suppositions which chymists as well as peripatetics, without proving, take for granted; and upon which depends the validity of the inferences they draw from their experiments… which though a chymist perhaps will not, yet I do, look upon as the most important, as well as difficult, part of my task.”
OK, the sentence is rather long and wandering for modern taste, but this quote from a scientist whose work lies at the very foundation of climate science should be better known, both for itself and the “Sceptical” in the title. In more punchy modern style he’s saying “These guys aren’t skeptical enough: they don’t examine their assumptions, which is the hardest thing to do in science, so they get the wrong answers”.
Perhaps today we would cross out the word “chymist” and amend the passage to read “…though a climate scientist perhaps will not…”.
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” Adolf Hitler
“Obviously, history has proven Hitler’s “big lie and continue to lie” strategy to be incorrect. The belief in the truth and the fight for the truth is a powerful motivation. In the field of science, in the end, the truth will prevail. The pursuit of the truth is the essense of science. Public policy that is based on lies leads to anarchy.” William Astley
“Lying is done with words and also with silence.” Adrienne Rich
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2011/Winter-2010/Morner.pdf
Seagate
“The mean of all the 159 NOAA sites gives a rate of 0.5 mm/year to 0.6 mm/year (Burton 2010). A better approach, however, is to exclude those sites that represent uplifted and subsided areas (Figure 4). This leaves 68 sites of reasonable stability (still with the possibility of an exaggeration of the rate of change, as discussed above). These sites give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1.0 (± 1.0) mm/year. This is far below the rates given by satellite altimetry, and the smell of a “sea-levelgate” gets stronger.
When the satellite altimetry group realized that the 1997 rise was an ENSO signal, and they extended the trend up to 2003, they seemed to have faced a problem: There was no sea level rise visible, and therefore a “reinterpretation” needed to be undertaken. (This was orally confirmed at the Global Warming meeting held by the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow in 2005, which I attended). Exactly what was done remains unclear, as the satellite altimetry groups do not specify the additional “corrections” they now infer. In 2003, the satellite altimetry record (Aviso 2003) suddenly took a new tilt—away from the quite horizontal record of 1992-2000, seen in Figures 5 and 6—of 2.3 (±0.1) mm/year (Figure 7).”
“As reported above regarding such adjustments, an IPCC member told me that “We had to do so, otherwise it would not be any trend,” and this seems exactly to be the case. This means that we are facing a very grave, if not to say, unethical, “sea-level-gate.” Therefore, the actual “instrumental record” of satellite altimetry (Figure 10) gives a sea level rise around 0.0 mm/year. This fits the observational facts much better, and we seem to reach a coherent
picture of no, or, at most, a minor (in the order of 0.5 mm/yr), sea level rise over the last 50 years.”
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/PastRecords.pdf
Estimating future sea level changes from past records by Nils-Axel Mörner
“In the last 5000 years, global mean sea level has been dominated by the redistribution of water masses over the globe. In the last 300 years, sea level has been oscillation close to the present with peak rates in the period 1890–1930. Between 1930 and 1950, sea fell. The late 20th century lack any sign of acceleration. Satellite altimetry indicates virtually no changes in the last decade. Therefore, observationally based predictions of future sea level in the year 2100 will give a value of + 10 +/- 10 cm (or +5 +/- 5 cm), by this discarding model outputs by IPCC as well as global loading models. This implies that there is no fear of any massive future flooding as claimed in most global warming scenarios.”
Hurricane Gate
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
“After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns…
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe….
..The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record…Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted)….
I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.”
“Skepticism is the first step toward truth.”
Denialism is continuing to walk away from well established truth and pretending you are stepping towards it.
I’d like to ask Anthony a question.
My presumption is that Anthony doesn’t believe that there is enough evidence to support action on AGW. True?
If this is the case, he must know what evidence he would require for the opposite to be true.
At one point, he said he would accept the results of the BEST study but then backed away from this.
So, the sincere question, in 2 parts, is: What is the evidence that most convinces you of your position and what is the evidence and what would you have to see from the science to accept that AGW is something we should mitigate against?
So far, I have not found a “sceptic” willing to answer it. I wonder why?
30 years of no significant warming as evident in the surface temp record would pretty much be enough to change my mind.
Nice quote from Stephen Fry. Correct me if I’m wrong, though, but isn’t he regularly expressing offence at those who don’t share his beliefs?
… and for devotees of climate models, here’s some Eastern wisdom:
‘Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself’
“information is not knowledge”
Frank Zappa
@ur momisugly Stew Green
Isn’t the term Denier, rather than Skeptic, what we should expect from the warmists. After all, it is the opposite of Believer.