Note – this will be pinned as a top post for a few days. Other posts will appear below this one.
UPDATE: Josh weighs in with a Friday Funny.
UPDATE2: McKibben has a Forrest Gump moment with his latest propaganda video
I’m doing something I’ve never done before, I’m asking every reader of WUWT to write a letter to the editor this weekend. I don’t take this step lightly, but given what I’ve observed the last few days, I think it is time to stir the power of our collective WUWT community for the common good.
Readers may recall the debunkings I regularly put forth any time paid activists like Bill McKibben, Joe Romm, David Suzuki, or Brad Johnson (and others) try to make claims that human induced climate change is making our daily weather “more extreme”. You know and I know that this is “garbage science” (even worse than “junk science”) because it is an attempt to twist science to strike fear over climate into the hearts of the average citizen. It is an act of desperation, rooted in the fact that the modeled warming scenarios described by the scientist activist high priest of the global warming movement Dr. James Hansen, just have not come to pass. Climate feedbacks don’t seem to be strong, climate sensitivity doesn’t seem to be high, there’s been no statistically significant warming in the last decade, and thus the only thing left is to blame bouts of normally occurring severe weather on climate change. The level of thinking sophistication here isn’t much different from blaming witches for bad weather in medieval times, but the sophistication of telegraphing this message to the weak-minded is far more sophisticated than in those days.
And, yesterday, we saw a message similar to calls made during those dark times “she’s a witch, BURN her!” in Steve Zwick’s rant on Forbes.com where he says:
We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. … They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
The level of delusional fail here is off the scale. If this were an isolated incident, we could simply laugh it off as the hateful rantings of a person afflicted with climate derangement syndrome. But there’s more.
Yesterday, it entered my children’s school (see below), and this week, we saw a survey on “extreme weather” conducted by Yale, use a phrase in the press release that is straight out of a propagandist organization, Bill McKibben’s 350.org. The heat is on to make climate all about the weather for propaganda purposes, and there’s no data to support it. It is a lie of global proportions. We need to step up. Here’s what I found in my children’s school yesterday:
At my children’s school yesterday, they had a book fair. In that book fair was this display from the publisher of a new book INsiders – Extreme Weather.
Of course you know what book I picked up to look at first, and it took me all of about 15 seconds to find this (I highlighted the relevant part digitally):
“Some scientists”? I think the author really meant “some activists”.
To be fair, there are some very good sections of the book well rooted in science, for example this one on lightning:
I know the author, H. Michael Mogil, who is well rooted in science, and who is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist. I can’t imagine him fully signing off on the climate=severe weather idea as McKibben et al put it. But, I think there was pressure from publishers to include the section on climate linkage, and I think he hedged his statement as best he could. My point is that is it beginning to pervade children’s books.
Also this week we had this poll released from Yale University, which got a ton of press thanks to it being carried in the Associated Press. It even made my own local newspaper.
The poll itself is a logical fallacy, with sloppy questions like this one:
I give it a thorough debunking here with a strong emphasis on the reporting bias introduced by our technologically saturated society. Anyone with a cellphone can report severe weather now and within minutes it can be known worldwide.
Here’s a quote from the lead author that was carried in news stories, bold mine:
“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”
At the time, I didn’t note the significance of the “connect the dots” meme, but one of our sharp WUWT readers pointed out that this is the new catchphrase of Bill McKibben’s 350.org movement.
In tips and notes this morning, Nick Ryan confirmed this for me with this letter from McKibben he posted.
Subject: Good news.
From: organizers@350.org
To: nick_ryan@xxxx.xxx
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:57:30 +0000
Dear friends,
Good news this time.
At some point every one of us at 350 has thought to ourselves a little despairingly: is the world ever going to catch on to climate change? Today is one of those days when it feels like it just might happen.
A story on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times described a new poll — Americans in record numbers are understanding that the planet is warming because they’re seeing the “freaky” weather that comes with climate change.
And the story ends by describing the next step in this process: May 5, the giant Connect the Dots day that people are joining all around the globe: http://www.ClimateDots.org
When the zeitgeist conspires to help our efforts, we need to make the most of it. Two weeks is plenty of time to organize a beautiful photo for May 5, one that will help spread this idea. Are you in a place where flood and rain have caused havoc? Ten people with umbrellas can make a memorable “climate dot” for all the world to see. You’ll think of something appropriate for your place — and you can find lots of examples and ideas here.
This movement is growing quickly, and with not a moment to spare — new data from scientists like Jim Hansen at NASA shows that our carbon emissions have already made extreme weather many times more likely. We can’t take back the carbon we’ve already poured into the atmosphere, but if we work together hard and fast then we can keep it from getting steadily worse.
Earth Day is coming up this weekend, and there will be thousands of events across the US. Each one of them is a great place to spread the word about the big day of action on 5/5. When you’re on the front page of the Times it’s a sign that the message is starting to get through — but only one American in 300 reads that newspaper. Now it’s up to all of us to make sure that everyone around the world gets the message, and Connect the Dots day on 5/5 is our best chance to do that. Please join us.
Onwards,
Bill McKibben for 350.org
P.S. It is key to remember that these photos from May 5 are not just for their effect on that day. We need a bank of images showing the human face of global warming — pictures we’ll use for the hard and direct political work of the next few years. If people don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t try to solve it. So let’s show them on 5/5. Here’s a heartbreaking example, from some local activists in Texas:
Climate Activists in Texas
Clearly, due to the timing and the reference he made to “People are starting to connect the dots.”, the poll conducted by Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University is just a tool that is connected to this 350.org “climatedots.org” campaign, it isn’t science, it is blatant advocacy disguised as science of the brand Dr. James Hansen practices.
So looking at what is going in total this week, I think it is time for us to exercise our own rights to free speech, and thus I’m asking WUWT readers to write letters to the editor to your local newspapers and magazines to counter what will surely be a blitz of advocacy in the coming days.
This tactic is used by these NGO’s so there is nothing wrong with it. It is free speech in the finest American tradition. There is one hitch though, and that’s the newspaper editors back-channel.
You see, one of the perks of being a journalist in the TV and radio news business is that I’m privy to how things work. In print media, editors have established a back-channel to alert each other of potential letter writing campaigns, such as those form letters like we see from “Forecast the Facts”.
The key is to make this your own letter, in your own words. While I can suggest topics, the letters need to be written in your own words for them to be accepted.
You can start here with this essay, and draw from it.
Warren Meyer made some excellent points yesterday in his Zwick rebuttal at Forbes:
A Vivid Reminder of How The Climate Debate is Broken
I really liked this part, which speaks to reporting bias (like we have with severe weather):
In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term “Summer of the Shark.” According to Wikipedia, shark attacks were the number three story, in terms of network news time dedicated, of the summer.
Bombarded by such coverage, most Americans responded to polls by saying they were concerned about the uptick in shark attacks. In fact, there were actually about 10% fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. Our perceptions were severely biased by the coverage.
How to write a letter:
1. Go to your local newspaper website, locate the guidelines for letters to the editor. Typical letter policies limit letters to 200-250 words.
2. Do your research, craft your letter carefully. Cite facts, cite statistics such as I offer on WUWT. Use your own words, don’t quote me, though quoting people like Professor Grady Dixon “…it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes” is fine.
3. [added] Readers are submitting content ideas in comments, have a look at those. Fr example Steve E. writes: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr’s posting on the IPCC SREX Report, “A Handy Bullshit Button on Disasters and Climate Change” here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/03/handy-bullshit-button-on-disasters-and.html is also a good source for letter content.
4. Send it, being mindful of length and guidelines.
Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony
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Gail Combs
April 22, 2012 at 6:29 pm
You claim water vapor and temperature have been declining for the past 10 years, and this shows that CO2 is not the temperature control knob claimed by climate scientists.
Your post if full of mistakes and misconceptions.
The noise in all the temperature graphs which start at 2003 is to great to ascribe a trend with any real confidence. The noise due to ENSO is likely to mask any trend as small as .15C/decade. Despite this fact, the “skeptics” constantly bring up these cherry picked short term graphs in an attempt to show that the global warming trend has ceased. When the influence of cyclical factors such as volcanoes, solar cycles and ENSO are removed from the temperature graph, a global warming trend reemerges. It is well known that the tropospheric satellite temperatures are more sensitive to ENSO than the surface temperature.
The title of the paper you referenced is :
“Stratospheric water vapor trends over Boulder, Colorado: Analysis of the 30 year Boulder record”
The water vapor data you are referring to is stratospheric water vapor, which has a different source from tropospheric water vapor.
It is difficult to measure a long term trend in global tropospheric water vapor content. Both balloon and satellite measurements are fraught with uncertainty. However there is a lot of data that confirms positive feedback due to water vapor as a function of temperature.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/guest-post-by-andrew-dessler-on-the-water-vapor-feedback/
Allan MacRae says:
April 23, 2012 at 2:04 am
…..The CAGW scam is not, as many of us originally believed, the innocent errors of a close-knit team of highly dyslexic scientists.
The evidence from the ClimateGate emails and many other sources, and the intransigence of these global warming fraudsters when faced with the overwhelming failures of their scientific predictions, suggests much darker motives.
___________________________________
I have no doubt that science is not the motive of Phil Jones, Mann, Hansen and Eric Adler. One wonders where they think the (tax) money and lavish live style will be coming from when the entire world is impoverished by the United Nations and Agenda 21. The actual rulers will not want to share what goods are left or the political power There is certainly a history of turning on the Intelligentsia once the revolution is complete. People like Jones, Mann and Hansen have already shown they are traitors willing to undermine the present government, no ruler is going to want them at their back.
Gail Combs says:
April 23, 2012 at 12:57 am
“Eric Adler says: @ur momisugly April 22, 2012 at 6:41 pm
…..The source of negative feedback is simple. As the earth warms, the increase in temperature causes in increase in radiation to outer space. When the outgoing radiation equals the incoming solar radiation absorbed by the earth atmosphere system, the temperature increase stops. This seems like such an obvious point, I didn’t think it needed to be mentioned, but I see I was wrong about that.
________________________________
HUH? The incoming radiation and the outgoing radiation are going to be balanced. That goes without saying because of Kirchoff’s Law. Absorptivity and emissivity at all wavelengths must be equal at equilibrium and by conservation of energy it’s not possible at equilibrium to emit more than is absorbed. Before Kirchhoff’s law was even formulated, it was experimentally determined that a good absorber is a good emitter, and a poor absorber is a poor emitter. A temporary inbalance, yeah, long term NO!”
Make up your mind. You previously claimed that the climate models predicted runaway warming due to positive feedback. After I pointed out that as the earth atmosphere system gets rid of its heat by radiation and the rate of radiation increases with temperature, there cannot be a runaway phenomenon. So now you admit that a runaway phenomenon is not intrinsic. But in the next paragraph, you say:
“By the way it is YOUR theory not mine that has an increase in CO2 increasing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and therefore causing “Runaway Global Warming” see Figure SPM.5 From IPCC 4th Assessment Report or CMIP5 Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Simulations Multi-Model Mean At Different Scenarios I do not see “the temperature increase stops” in those models.”
You are showing your ignorance of this subject. The graphs to which you link do not show a long enough time period to see the stabilization of temperature. Check out the graph on page 2 of this paper in the PNAS by Susan Solomon.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html
John West says:
April 22, 2012 at 7:42 pm
“Eric Adler says:
“The source of negative feedback is simple. As the earth warms, the increase in temperature causes in increase in radiation to outer space. When the outgoing radiation equals the incoming solar radiation absorbed by the earth atmosphere system, the temperature increase stops. This seems like such an obvious point, I didn’t think it needed to be mentioned, but I see I was wrong about that.”
LOL, great point, that’s what skeptics have been saying for years:
http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/clip_image001_thumb1.jpg
Now, if you could just get that simple mechanism into the computer models.”
Just what mechanism is that collection of graphs supposed to illustrate? What is it that the skeptics have been saying for years? The “skeptic” claim I was addressing is that
is that positive feedback inherently involves a runaway of temperature and CO2. I would be happy if all “skeptics” including yourself, and Gail Combs would stop making that claim.
Check the graph on page 2 of this paper, to see what happens to global temperatures after CO2 emissions stop according to climate models.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html
Eric Adler says: April 23, 2012 at 6:20 am
ENSO cyles average 5 years, yet temperatures have been level for three times as long as that. So the claim by “scientists” that this is masking the smaller CO2 effect is simply ludicrous.
When the influence of cyclical factors such as volcanoes, solar cycles and ENSO are removed from the temperature graph, a global warming trend reemerges.
A vaccuous claim, no one has yet managed to isolate the natural forcings. If they had, the debate would have long been over. Yet more propaganda from poltically paid “scientists”.
David Ball says:
April 22, 2012 at 8:40 pm
“Eric Adler says:
April 22, 2012 at 5:45 pm
“You ignored the link that I provided and the argument I made. How can ridicule my point about skeptics ignoring evidence? You should be embarrassed. I have learned not to expect an apology.”
Look back up the thread. You did not respond until the very end. Are thinking of a post you made to someone else? Did you even look at that paper or read Dr. Ball’s article? More importantly, do you understand what either article is saying? I am not the one who should be embarrassed. Another historical revisionist.”
I am not going to get into the personalities and conspiracy theories that are discussed in Tim Ball’s articlce to which you linked. The main scientific point that Tim Ball made was:
“Borenstein’s article appears to confirm the lack of understanding of climate mechanisms of the severe weather predictions. Warm weather over the eastern part of North America resulted from increased amplitude of the Rossby Waves. Deeper north/south Waves resulted in blocking so the warm conditions persisted through the second half of the winter over eastern North America. A diagram illustrates the position of Rossby Wave for winter 2011/2012.”
I pointed out that recent research, which Tim Ball is either unaware of, or is ignoring, shows that the blocking phenomenon is a result of the warming of the Arctic which weakens the jet stream and causes systems to stall, resulting in extreme weather. So the weather we have been having is actually connected to global warming. The post in which I first pointed this out is :
“Eric Adler says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:28 am
Unfortunately, Anthony Watts is not up on the latest understanding of the relationship between global warming and the trend of weird weather. Here is the emerging understanding of what is going on:
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/04/videos-probe-climate-changeextreme-weather-puzzles/
”
This is before your post appeared.
“Punksta says:
April 23, 2012 at 7:19 am
“ENSO cyles average 5 years, yet temperatures have been level for three times as long as that. So the claim by “scientists” that this is masking the smaller CO2 effect is simply ludicrous.”
Enso cycles are not regular. Temperature variations in a single year due to ENSO can be as high as 0.5C. This can easily mask a trend of 0.15C per decade.
When the influence of cyclical factors such as volcanoes, solar cycles and ENSO are removed from the temperature graph, a global warming trend reemerges.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/
“A vaccuous claim, noone has yet managed to isolate the natural forcings. If they had, the debate would have long been over. Yet more propaganda from poltically paid “scientists”.”
The correlation between ENSO and global temperature is clear. The index is a measure of ENSO. Your statement is just hot air.
[Moderator’s Note: Eric, your posts contain far too many derogatory, insulting remarks directed at other commenters. Just state your case. -REP]
Gail Combs says:
April 23, 2012 at 6:29 am
“I have no doubt that science is not the motive of Phil Jones, Mann, Hansen and Eric Adler. One wonders where they think the (tax) money and lavish live style will be coming from when the entire world is impoverished by the United Nations and Agenda 21. The actual rulers will not want to share what goods are left or the political power There is certainly a history of turning on the Intelligentsia once the revolution is complete. People like Jones, Mann and Hansen have already shown they are traitors willing to undermine the present government, no ruler is going to want them at their back.”
You have just made clear why your understanding of the science is all screwed up. Your motivation for posting has nothing to do with science. You have a belief in a conspiracy theory.
Scientists want to take away our freedom! To advance the course of freedom, it is fair to use any pseudo scientific argument, not matter how wrong and foolish. The political stakes are so high.
So tell us, how far back does it go? The thery of global warming due to CO2 has a long history. Tyndall, did his work on trace gases in 1859, Arrhenius published his Climate Sensitivity Paper in 1896. Plass published his one dimensional computer simulations of heat transfer in the 50’s. Manabe published his climate model in the early ’70’s. Keeling established the Mauna Loa lab in 1958. Are any or all these scientists part of a conspiracy and political hacks?
Eric
That ENSO cycles are not regular makes no difference to the noise argument. They AVERAGE is five years, and the temp plateau is three times as long as that.
But if that’s too short a period for you, is there any length of time of non-increase that would cause you to reconsider your CAGW faith, or would you cling to it no matter what ?
As to your claim of hot air : if natural variation was reliably accounted for, there would be no argument at all. But it very obviously isn’t accounted for yet, hence the failure of models to predict eg the current plateau, and the ongoing debate and research on CAGW.
Punksta,
“..if natural variation was reliably accounted for, there would be no argument at all. But it very obviously isn’t accounted for yet, hence the failure of models to predict eg the current plateau, and the ongoing debate and research on CAGW.”
We have indices for ENSO, solar cycle. and the volcanic aerosals versus time. Regression has been used to determine their influence on global temperatures. The mechanisms by which these phenomena influence temperature are understood. This is a legitimate scientific procedure. The article was published in a respectable peer reviewed journal. For these reasons, your claim that natural variation was not accounted for is hot air.
“Conspiracy” is a tired old strawman. The real issue is much more straightgforward.
– CAGW thinking is funded by government, which outspends by many orders magnitude, everyone else in climate science put together
– Government stands to massively benefit from an acceptance of CAGW, since it justifies more taxes, more bureraucracies, a generally more totalitarian society
It’s more about vested interest – an exact parallel being when science funded by tobacco companies pronounced smoking to be perfectly healthy. In both cases, funding decisions are made on the basis of what will most serve the funder’s interest, ad they pick the projects and peolple that will best advance their cause. This is what is behind the rampant dishonesty and breakdown of the science process revealed in the Climategates.
You continue to duck the point : if natural variation had been accounted for, models would have been able to predict the current plateau. They could not.
Your claim of hot air is thus itself just hot air.
Punksta has it exactly right. That’s why Eric Adler’s head is about to explode.☺
I really wonder if Adler actually believes only he is right, and everyone else is wrong?
Punksta says:
April 23, 2012 at 9:30 am
“Conspiracy” is a tired old strawman. The real issue is much more straightgforward.
– CAGW thinking is funded by government, which outspends by many orders magnitude, everyone else in climate science put together
– Government stands to massively benefit from an acceptance of CAGW, since it justifies more taxes, more bureraucracies, a generally more totalitarian society
It’s more about vested interest – an exact parallel being when science funded by tobacco companies pronounced smoking to be perfectly healthy. In both cases, funding decisions are made on the basis of what will most serve the funder’s interest, ad they pick the projects and peolple that will best advance their cause. This is what is behind the rampant dishonesty and breakdown of the science process revealed in the Climategates.”
Most scientists who do the research are employed at universities where they have tenure. In addition, grants are given based on research proposals, not on the basis of specific results. In addition a lot of the research on climate scientists in the US took place under Republican administrations which have pushed the idea of SMALLER government. There is little evidence to back your conspiracy theory that scientists are taking a position to please “government”.
A conspiracy theory is used by AGW “skeptics” when scientific arguments are failing.
There have been a lot of politically oriented posts on this thread, which I haven’t joined. It is the science that interests me the most.
I haven’t felt the need to talk about oil money, right wing think tanks funded to oppose regulation of every sort, including tobacco smoke, acid rain, and other environmental concerns. In fact it has been well documented that the opposition to the idea of AGW does come from scientists and pseudo scientists who are funded by these organizations. In fact, most people engaged in this discussion are not paid to take a specific postion on AGW, and that includes scientists.
Punksta,
“You continue to duck the point : if natural variation had been accounted for, models would have been able to predict the current plateau. They could not.
Your claim of hot air is thus itself just hot air.”
More hot air. An empirical fit which accounts for natural variation in data, is different from a climate models. It appears that you don’t understand the difference.
Smokey says:
April 23, 2012 at 9:39 am
“Punksta has it exactly right. That’s why Eric Adler’s head is about to explode.☺
I really wonder if Adler actually believes only he is right, and everyone else is wrong?”
ONLY he? I am quoting research by climate scientists. It is you so called “skeptic” bloggers who get your information on this web site who need to rethink your position.
REPLY: Careful Eric, take aspirin before you read this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/23/breaking-james-lovelock-back-down-on-climate-alarm/
Most scientists who do the research are employed at universities where they have tenure.
And universities are state-funded, which means they need to advance the interests of the state, and please the bureaucrats that dispense the money. It is no accident that the average ideological orientation of state-funded university personnel is decidedly more totalitarian/left than the population in general. Hence the popularity of CAGW.
In addition, grants are given based on research proposals, not on the basis of specific results.
Laughable nonsense. If you want government grant money, your best bet is to toe the pro-government line, ie feed the current paradigm.
In addition a lot of the research on climate scientists in the US took place under Republican administrations which have pushed the idea of SMALLER government.
Marginally smaller, at best. As noted, university academics and are notably more fascist (most vote Democrat) than the population in general – ie they want a less free society, one with more taxes and government control of society.
There is little evidence to back your conspiracy theory that scientists are taking a position to please “government”.
There is little evidence for your notion that that many skeptics anyone hold a conspiracy theory. As you keep ignoring, this conspiracy notion is purely a strawman dreamed up by intellectually bankrupt, ideologically precommitted alarmists. Most skeptics recognise it’s about vested interest and a confluence of interests – the state gets to fatten itself, and grant-farming scientists, who are anyway mostly of a more totalitarian orientation, grease their careers on our tax money.
So actually, the only person with a conspiracy here is you. You seem to think there is some secret pact whereby govenment-funded “scientists” can somehow get away with acting without regards to their paymaster’s interests. A sort of ‘angelic’ conspiracy. Whereas in reality we know from Climateagte etc that the “scientists” like Mann, Jones, etc, lie and cheat virtually without limit to push their advocacy.
There have been a lot of politically oriented posts on this thread, which I haven’t joined. It is the science that interests me the most.
Yes, you want to bury your head in the sand as regards the political control over science, pretend it’s objective. Pretend that hiding data, hiding declines, manipulating peer-review, etc etc, doesn’t matter. Pretend that the process of science has not been broken by political control.
As regards money, the (tax) spent advancing alarmism (basically on all the universities etc) outranks that spent on scepticism by a factor of thousands.
[snip. You cannot label others deniers here. Read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
An empirical fit which accounts for natural variation in data, is different from a climate models. It appears that you don’t understand the difference.
It appears you don’t understand that if natural variation had been accounted for, as you claim, there would be no mystery as regards the CO2 effect, and for the same reason the models would cease being so completely useless, mere propaganda constructs.
My Earth Day letter to the editor….
I fell through the rabbit hole, into the world of climate change, several years ago after reading an English newspaper account about scientists at the University of East Anglia refusing to allow another to share their data and attempt to recreate their computer models predicting that the world was going to a climate hell in a hand basket.
I didn’t understand anything about the science itself, but I was indignant that supposed scientists would be secretive, refuse to share, to allow others to hone and improve upon their work.
What’s evangelical about global warming, Rev. Waldrop asked in Saturday’s paper. Everything. Global warming (or the new meme “climate change” because, you see, the world stopped warming a decade ago) is a scientific fraud. There is no there there. Billions of dollars are being spent by governments all over the globe to conduct fraudulent research – research only to further confirm the crisis or to study mitigation. There are hardly two research pennies being spent to challenge the thesis: man is rapidly destroying the planet; CO2 emissions are the problem; we can fix it.
Not one of those assumptions is predicated upon any repeatable, quality, observational science. It is all a function of tweaked computer models predicting disaster into the future, but, worse: the models are unable to replicate the weather and the climate we’ve already lived.
Of course we should be good stewards of the earth. But that has little to do with creating a new commodity market (beyond stocks and bonds and pork bellies and wheat futures) for the likes of Goldman Sachs, trading carbon chits around the world: you “pollute” (are all the living things emitting carbon dioxide really evil “polluters?”) less and sell your carbon token to someone in China who, then, gets to “pollute” more. And, big banking gets the commission. Is this your vision of the earth’s future?
I have no doubt that many, inside the maelstrom of the research, have come to believe themselves, but, sadly, it makes it no less fraud. No one – yep, no one – within the official climate science community will debate or publicly challenge anyone skeptical of their work. They wail and moan, sign groupthink letters confirming that “the science is settled,” but they will not engage.
Come on in, people; the water’s fine! You don’t need a degree in physics to understand what’s happening in “official climate science.” The Climategate correspondence is a hoot of idiotic arrogance. The wonderful Harry_ReadMe file written by the frustrated computer programmer – working for years to make sense out of computer code that crashed without error messages, working to make consistent data from an array of different sources (only to be told none of it mattered because “they” knew what the answer was, what “they” wanted) is the showcase of sloppy science. You can read about NOAA surface temperature stations located, all over the country, beside commercial air conditioners or in the path of jet engine exhaust. Would NOAA, a biggie, grown up and important government agency, do that? Yesh.
The global warming science and advocacy community is perpetuating an international fraud many times larger and more complex than the Lysenkso fraud which held the Soviet Union in thrall from the 1930’s into the 1950’s.
Just last month, Dr. Peter Gleick, head of the Pacific Institute and chair of the AGU’s scientific ethics committee, declined to participate in a Heartland Institute conference on climate science, but, the same day, Gleick posed as a Heartland board member who had “misplaced” board documents and tricked a Heartland employee into sending the proprietary material to him. When what he got wasn’t sufficiently damning in his estimation, he wrote, or had written (sleuths contend the writing style is Gleick’s), an overview memo, contending among other things, that the Heartland Institute was trying to intimidate high school science teachers into not teaching science! About Gleick’s memo, the Atlantic Monthly opined: “It reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.”
Gleick has resigned from the AGU science ethics committee and has stepped down, temporarily, as prez of the Pacific Institute, but he’s lecturing at Oxford University this week. (Is this too funny? I am not making this up.)
The good news is that the curtain has been whisked back and the fraud exposed. More important, the blogosphere is awash is in smart, thoughtful folk who care both about the climate and honest science.
Please see for yourself: my favorite sites are WattsUpWithThat.com and JudithCurry.com.
WattsUp was created by a brilliant former meteorologist and tv weather man (who is also deaf), Anthony Watts. Judith Curry’s site is pretty new. She is head of Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and is almost the only mainstream scientist to debate and engage outside the hallowed walls of academe. For over a year after she began her on-line interactive discussion, folk in “The Community” issued a career fatwa, but, somehow, she survived. (I think she’s tenured. And gutsy.)
Bill McKibbon, author of Rev. Waldrop’s book review, “hangs out” at Joe Romm’s site, the Climate part of ThinkProgress.org, a funded blog, with paid staffers. The Climate part of ThinkProgress has a very focused, mostly virtual-high-fives, comments section. They have a low tolerance for questions or dissent. Because I asked questions that were too challenging, I’ve been banned completely: straight into the spam. (None of the blogs pushing catastrophic climate change with which I’m familiar tolerate questions, genuine interaction. The discussions at WattsUp and JudithCurry, however, are wide-ranging and thought-provoking. You can learn, play “fly on the wall” there.)
I can’t finish this letter without a mention of Steve McIntyre, a retired Canadian mining engineer. Over a decade ago, McIntyre saw a graph of global warming catastrophe that looked suspicious to him. Being curious, he wrote for information, for data. Denied. He wrote formal FOIA requests for the data. Also, denied. McIntyre, a soft-spoken, gentle, respectful — but persistent – (and quite brilliant) man, kept writing. For years. McIntyre’s gentle persistence precipitated Climategate and the fraud of contemporary climate science. McIntyre crashed the walls of science fraud. McIntyre’s story is too long for this letter, but his name will be written in bright lights one hundred years from now, and beyond, in the annals of the greats in science. (McIntyre’s website is ClimateAudit.org, but, mostly, it’s much too technical for me.)
(Anthony Watts and Judith Curry and Steve McIntyre maintain their sites as a labour of love. ThinkProgress has big bucks funding.)
Come on in, folk! Earth Day’s coming up. Take care of the earth. Take care, and be respectful, of all its creatures (including man). But, don’t be stupid.
….Lady in Red