How the profiteers who market Thermageddon offend against the principles of formal logic
Guest post by Monckton of Brenchley
LOGIC is the heartbeat of all true learning – the soul of the Classics, the Sciences and Religion. Once everyone studied the Classics, to know that in logic there is a difference between true and false; the Sciences, to discern where it lies; and Religion, to appreciate why it matters. Today, few study all three empires of the mind. Fewer study the ordered beauty of the logic at their heart.
Is Private Fraser’s proposition that “We’re a’ doomed!” logical? I say No. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe in anything.” The belief that Thermageddon will arise from our altering 1/3000th of the atmosphere in a century is in-your-face illogical, rooted in a dozen fallacies marked out by Aristotle as the commonest in human discourse.
“Consensus” is the New Religion’s central fallacy. Arguing blindly from consensus is the head-count fallacy, the argumentum ad populum. Al-Haytham, founder of the scientific method, wrote: “The seeker after truth does not put his faith in any mere consensus. Instead, he checks.”
Two surveys have purported to show 97% of climate scientists supporting the supposed “consensus”. In both, 97% agreed little more than that the world has warmed since 1950. So what? One involved just 79 scientists, hardly a scientific sample size. Neither was selected to eliminate bias. Neither asked whether manmade global warming was at all likely to prove catastrophic – a question expecting the answer “No.”
Claiming that the “consensus” is one of revered experts is the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appeal to authority. T.H. Huxley said in 1860, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
Believers talk of a “consensus of evidence”. Yet evidence cannot hold opinions. Besides, there has been no global warming for 18 years; sea level has risen for eight years at just 1.3 in/century; notwithstanding Sandy, hurricane activity is at its least in the 33-year satellite record; ocean heat content is rising four and a half times more slowly than predicted; global sea-ice extent has changed little; Himalayan glaciers have not lost ice; and the U.N.’s 2005 prediction of 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010 was absurd. The evidence does not support catastrophism.
Believers say: “Only if we include a strong warming effect from CO2 can we explain the past 60 years’ warming. We know of no other reason.” This is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fundamental fallacy of argument from ignorance. Besides, natural variability is reason enough.
They say: “Global warming is accelerating, so we are to blame.” Even if warming were accelerating, this non sequitur is an instance of the argumentum ad causam falsam, the fallacy of arguing from a false cause. They go on to say: “CO2 concentration has risen; warming has occurred; the former caused the latter.” This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc sub-species of the same fallacy.
They say: “What about the cuddly polar bears?” This is the argumentum ad misericordiam, the fallacy of needless pity. There are five times as many polar bears as there were in the 1940s – hardly, as you may think, the profile of a species at imminent threat of extinction. No need to pity the bears, and they are not cuddly.
They say: “We tell the models there will be strong CO2- driven warming. And, yes, the models predict it.” This is the fallacy of arguing in circles, the argumentum ad petitionem principii, where the premise is the conclusion.
They say: “Global warming caused extra-tropical storm Sandy.” This inappropriate argument from the general to the particular is the argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, the fallacy of accident. Individual extreme events cannot be ascribed to global warming.
They say: “Melting Arctic sea ice is a symptom of global warming.” This unsound argument from the particular to the general is the argumentum a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the fallacy of converse accident. Arctic sea ice is melting, but the Antarctic has cooled for 30 years and the sea ice there is growing, so the decline in Arctic sea ice does not indicate a global problem.
They say: “Monckton says he’s a member of the House of Lords, but the Clerk says he isn’t, so he’s not credible.” This is the argumentum ad hominem, a shoddy sub- species of ignoratio elenchi, the fundamental red-herring fallacy of ignorance of how a true argument is conducted.
They say: “We don’t care what the truth is. We want more power, tax and regulation. Global warming is our pretext. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.” This is the nastiest of all logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.
These numerous in-your-face illogicalities provoke four questions: Has the Earth warmed as predicted? If not, why not? What if I am wrong? And what if I am right?
Q1. Has the Earth warmed as predicted? In 1990 the IPCC predicted that the world would now be warming at 0.3 Cº/decade, and that by now more than 0.6 Cº warming would have occurred. The outturn was less than half that: just 0.14 Cº/decade and 0.3 Cº in all.
In 2008 leading modellers wrote:
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more, suggesting that an absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the observed warming rate.”
Yet the linear trend on the Hadley/CRU monthly global temperature anomalies for the 18 years 1995-2012 shows no statistically-significant warming, even though the partial pressure of CO2 rose by about a tenth in that time.
The modellers’ own explicit criterion proves their scary predictions exaggerated. Their vaunted “consensus” was wrong. Global warming that was predicted for tomorrow but has not occurred for 18 years until today cannot have caused Sandy or Bopha yesterday, now, can it?
Q2: Why was the “consensus” wrong? Why do the models exaggerate? The climate-sensitivity equation says warming is the product of a forcing and a sensitivity parameter. Three problems: the modellers’ definition of forcing is illogical; their assumptions about the sensitivity parameter are not falsifiable; and their claims that their long-term predictions of doom are reliable are not only empirically disproven but theoretically insupportable.
Modellers define forcing as the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the tropopause, with surface temperature fixed. Yet forcings change surface temperature. So the definition offends against the fundamental postulate of logic that a proposition and its converse cannot coexist. No surprise, then, that since 1995 the IPCC has had to cut its estimate of the CO2 forcing by 15%. The “consensus” disagrees with itself. Note in passing that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic: each further molecule causes less warming than those before it. Diminishing returns apply.
Direct warming is little more than 1 Cº per CO2 doubling, well within natural variability. It is not a crisis. So the modellers introduce amplifying or “positive” temperature feedbacks, which, they hope, triple the direct warming from CO2. Yet this dubious hypothesis is not Popper- falsifiable, so it is not logic and not science. Not one of the imagined feedbacks is either empirically measurable or theoretically determinable by any reliable method. As an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, I have justifiably excoriated its net-positive feedbacks as guesswork – uneducated guesswork at that.
For there is a very powerful theoretical reason why the modellers’ guess that feedbacks triple direct warming is erroneous. The closed-loop feedback gain implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity interval 3.3[2.0, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling falls on the interval 0.62[0.42, 0.74]. However, process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is far too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification function.
At high gain, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling. Yet for 64 million years the Earth’s surface temperature has fluctuated by only 3%, or 8 Cº, either side of the long- run mean. These fluctuations can give us an ice-planet at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, but they are altogether inconsistent with a loop gain anywhere near as close to the singularity as modellers’ estimates imply.
Surface temperature changes little, for homoeostatic conditions prevail. The atmosphere’s lower bound, the ocean, is a vast heat-sink 1100 times denser than the air: one reason why 3000 bathythermographs deployed in 2006 have detected no significant ocean warming. The atmosphere’s upper bound is outer space, to which any excess heat radiates harmlessly away. Homoeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get. Thus the climatic loop gain cannot much exceed zero, so the warming at CO2 doubling will be a harmless 1 Cº.
Yet the overriding difficulty in trying to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object. We can never measure the values of its millions of defining parameters at any chosen moment to a sufficient precision to permit reliable projection of the bifurcations, or Sandy-like departures from an apparently steady state, that are inherent in the evolution of all objects that behave chaotically. Therefore, reliable, very-long-term modelling of future climate states is unattainable a priori.
The IPCC tries to overcome this actually insuperable Lorenz constraint on modelling by estimating climate sensitivity via a probability-density function. Yet PDFs require more, not less, information than simple estimates flanked by error-whiskers, and are still less likely to be reliable. The modellers are guessing. Their guesses have been proven wrong. Yet they continue to demand our acquiescence in an imagined (and imaginary) consensus.
Q3: What if I am wrong? If so, we must travel from physics to economics. Pretend, ad argumentum, that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming by 2100 is true, and that Stern was right to say that the cost of failing to prevent warming of that order this century will be about 1.5% of GDP. Then, at the minimum 5% market inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of trying to abate this decade’s predicted warming of 0.15 Cº by typical CO2-mitigation schemes as cost-ineffective as Australia’s carbon tax would be 48 times greater than the cost of later adaptation. At a zero discount rate, the cost of acting now exceeds that of adapting in the future 36 times over.
How so? Australia emits just 1.2% of Man’s CO2, of which Ms. Gillard aims to cut 5% this decade, abating 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from a predicted 410 μatm to 409.988 μatm. In turn predicted temperature will fall by 0.00006 Cº. But the cost will be $130 billion ($2 quadrillion/Cº). Abating the
0.15 Cº warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP. Mitigation measures inexpensive enough to be affordable will thus be ineffective: measures expensive enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Since the premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. That is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.
Q4: What if I am right? When I am proven right, the Climate Change Department will be swept away; Britain’s annual deficit will fall by a fifth; the bat-blatting, bird- blending windmills that scar our green and pleasant land will go; the world will refocus on real environmental problems like deforestation on land, overfishing at sea and pollution of the air; the U.N.’s ambition to turn itself into a grim, global dictatorship with overriding powers of taxation and economic and environmental intervention will be thwarted; and the aim of science to supplant true religion as the world’s new, dismal, cheerless credo will be deservedly, decisively, definitively defeated.
Any who say “I believe” are not scientists, for true scientists say “I wonder”. We require – nay, we demand – more awe and greater curiosity from our scientists, and less political “correctness” and co-ordinated credulity.
To the global classe politique, the placemen, bureaucrats, academics, scientists, journalists and enviros who have profiteered at our expense by peddling Thermageddon, I say this. The science is in; the truth is out; Al Gore is through; the game is up; and the scare is over.
To those scientists who aim to end the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, I say this. Logic stands implacable in your path. We will never let you have your new Dark Age.
To men of goodwill, lovers of logic, I say this. It is our faculty of reason, the greatest of the soul’s three powers, that marks us out from the beasts and brings us closest in likeness to our Creator, the Lord of Life and Light. We will never let the light of Reason be snuffed out.
Do not go gentle to that last goodnight – Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
Pat Ravasio says: January 6, 2013 at 10:45 am
Q: “After all your rambling, you still do not answer the most basic of questions: Why is it not a good thing to develop alternative energies?”
A: No one is against developing alternative energies. Only problem is that government should not interfere. Let the free market do its work.
Q: “What is the harm in cleaning up the environment? Surely you do not deny that there are serious ill health effects of fossil fuel mining and use? That we are still burning up the house to keep the family warm? That fossil fuel supplies are finite?”
A: A wealthy country will clean up the environment and will keep in it clean. CO2 however is not a pollutant and should not be treated as such. And have you any idea how for example rare earth metals to be used in the production of your beloved windmills are mined? Find the pictures on Google.
The fact that fossil fuels are finite is not a reason to treat them as an enemy of people. People are inventive. We will find another way to produce energy. As prices for fossil fuels go up as you would expect at some time given the fact that they are not infinite, other sources will get economically viable, without government intervention.
Q: “That there are readily available alternatives which are economically scalable if only they were adequately supported?”
A; If that would be the case, the free market would already be delivering, but it’s not. Have you seen the prices of shale gas in the US? Nothing can compete in price at this moment. So your argument is a result of wishfull thinking.
Q: “Development of clean, renewable energy will stimulate the economy and improve the quality of life for all living things on the planet. So please explain why you oppose an orderly, economical transition to readily available alternative energies?”
A: Clean renewable energy is not affordable in large quantities at this moment. As soon as the free market sees opportunities, it will indeed stimulate the economy. without government funding, paid by taxes. An orderly transition? Oh my goodness, your fear of the free market is so obvious. Why don’t you try living in Cuba of North Korea for a couple of years. See how you like an economy run in an orderly way. The free market is a proces of trial and error. Good things stay, bad ideas will lose. We don’t need no government to pick the winners and losers.
Q: “You say the “alarmists” are motivated by profits. Yet it is you who are affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a noted man cave for fire-breathing fossil fuel behemoths. Anthony and friends, you can parse the particulars until kingdom come, but fossil fuels are still the Earth’s Goliath. Humanity is still David. The only question is what are we going to put in our slingshot, and why are we so slow in getting about the business so clearly at hand? Need leadership is needed now. Join the good guys.”
A: Fossil fuels are the source of our wealth and prosperity. The energy we get from it per person is like having 600 people working for you every day. The simple fact that you have the time to worry about global warming and time to even try to convince people that fossil fuels are bad and should be abandoned is only possible because of fossil fuels. You say you need a leader.Go find one and leave to a socialist/communist country of your choice. Let us know how you like the unfreedom and regulation of every breath you take and every move you make.
Christopher Monckton,
Again I agree with your detailed logical analysis (here and in your several previous very similar articles) of the fallacies committed by catastrophic proponents of AGW by CO2 from fossil fuels (CAGWists).
Have you considered synthesizing (integrating) those into a more fundamental critique? For example, consider the possibility of CAGWists having a more central philosophic root which is unscientific in the Aristotelian sense and which gives rise to and contains the reason they consistently commit all the fallacies you mentioned.
LETS HAVE A LITTLE FUN:
I consider their essential unscientific root is that they behave as having a Platonic-like acceptance of a dual-reality and dual-knowledge approach to their climate ‘science’ which therefore is diametrical to an Aristotelian single-reality and single-knowledge approach to science. The CAGWists thus could claim ‘a priori’ to have a higher ‘ideal’ level of scientific knowledge which is correct in a higher ‘ideal’ logic. They can thus merely disregard contrary climate observations in the skeptic’s lower ‘shadowy’ Earthly world and skeptic’s criticism based on lower ‘shadowy’ Earthly logic; they can be discount across the board as less real and less logical than in their higher level ‘a priori’ ‘ideal’ reality and ‘a priori’ ‘ideal’ logic.
Of course Aristotelian logic and science opposes all that Platonic-like dual reality/dual logic stuff; the Aristotelian approach being just secular logic and secular observations . . . Aristotelian approach says: no higer ‘a priori’ validity, no higher ‘ideal’ realm, or higher ‘ideal’ logic.
By that analysis the CAGWists are not practicing science in the Aristotelian sense; that would be what causes all their repeated and widespread Aristotelian logical errors and refusal to accept opposing skeptical dialog on Earthly reality / Earthly observations and Earthly arguments.
DIFFERENT COMMENT NOTE: Happily, your reference to T.H. Huxley did not go un-noticed as a possible sub-context of your religious statements. But I will comment on that possible sub-context to religious views in a different post. Interesting you would pick him.
John
Green democrats deny science, attempt to suppress the facts. Fracking is safe says leaked report:
“Thanks to a leak from an anonymous insider, we learned Thursday that a report commissioned by the State of New York has given fracking a clean bill of health. The insider ‘did not think it should be kept secret’ and released the document, which is now nearly one year old, to the New York Times.”
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/05/fracking-safe-in-ny-state-says-leaked-report/
“The analysis and other health assessments have been closely guarded by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his administration as the governor weighs whether to approve fracking. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has long delayed making a decision, unnerved in part by strident opposition on his party’s left.”
The Green War On Science continues!
Steven Mosher says:
January 6, 2013 at 12:28 pm
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1995/to:2013/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1995/to:2013/trend
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
and so?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1995/to:2013/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1995/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2013/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2013/trend
J Abbott. you said and assumes no impacts in a 1C warmer world
To date the impacts have all been beneficial, the Sahara has became greener with increased rainfall, tornado’s have reduced and food supply has grown. Indeed history tells us that it was warmer still in the Roman era with vines being grown in the North of England and so further warming, should we be so lucky, will be more beneficial still.
You also moan about “zero net feedback”. How much feedback would you suggest ? The same amount as the failed models Hansen and the IPCC continue to use ? Indeed they are so completely failed, that temperatures are below even the lowest limits of all the models error bars.
Given that temperatures haven’t increased in 16 years yet co2 has increased by some 30% zero net feedback seems more than reasonable.
I take it you completely rule out the possibility that temperatures might fall ?
And fall steadily for 10 or more years ?
An important essay. Technology does not give knowledge. You can measure till the cows come home but with a decayed epistemology it will get you nowhere.
The history of the word “trivial” tells us a lot about why epistemology has become dysfunctional and modern science needs re-educating in logic. Trivial has come to mean what is unimportant or irrelevant. Historically in English education the “trivia” (singular trivium) were the three lower Artes Liberales, which were grammar, logic and rhetoric. It was a fundamental part of education. However school curricula of course changed with time and some individuals – remembering their school days – used the word “trivia” to refer to what they learned at school but considered irrelevant or useless to them now. Thus “trivial” came to have its present meaning.
It is a serious problem that logic has become trivial. This is why we have CAGW and the linear no-threshold hypothesis of radiation carcinogenesis and other “scientific” instances of epistemological collapse.
And it you dont know what “epistemology” means – this illustrates the problem. (It is the science of logic and how we learn things – think Karl Popper and inductive / deductive inferences).
Steven Mosher says:
January 6, 2013 at 12:28 pm
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1995/to:2013/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1995/to:2013/trend
—————————————————————————————————————-
Set the starting point at 2002 to 2013 the trend is statistically flat.
Of course the question is firstly- is this data dependable and really “raw” or “ homogenised”.
But more importantly yes there is a rise on a longer record , but does this prove AGW?.
Central England temperature from 1659 to recently also shows a overall steady linear rising trend. But this rise started and the end of the Little Ice Age before industrialisation.
So where is the empirical evidence that the rise is due to AGW Steve??
Steven Mosher says:
January 6, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Isnt this cherry-picking?
Mike Bryant –
logically, australia is NOT decreasing (but is actually hugely increasing) its CO2 emissions precisely because it is sending far more CO2 emissions to china with our coal exports than what we claim we will reduce (but probably won’t) at home.
meanwhile, china builds coal-fired power stations by the week, while australia demonises coal & wants to shut down its own & give away more taxpayer money for expensive solar, wind & other unworkable, unnecessary CAGW “solutions”! this is but one of the many CAGW paradoxes.
it’s sort of like the australian Govt’s “moral” stance on tobacco (HIGHER TAXES?, PLAIN PACKAGING?) – praised by the MSM in developed countries. whilst australia’s poor & marginalised – not a large number in a country with a total population of less than 23 million – pay disproportionately for all the Government increases in tobacco taxes at home, the fact is our highly-populated asian neighbours are taking up smoking at a rapid rate and no doubt adding some $$$ to tobacoo company revenues in the developed world!
Wikipedia: Prevalence of tobacco consumption
In Western countries, smoking is more prevalent among populations with mental health problems, with alcohol and drug problems, among criminals, and among the homeless…
Of the 1.22 billion smokers, 1 billion of them live in developing or transitional economies. Rates of smoking have leveled off or declined in the developed world. In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year as of 2002…
It is predicted that 1.5 to 1.9 billion people will be smokers in 2025…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consumption
Wikipedia: Smoking in the People’s Republic of China
Smoking in the People’s Republic of China is prevalent, as China is the world’s largest consumer and producer of tobacco: there are 350 million Chinese smokers, and China produces 42% of the world’s cigarettes…
Smoking is a social custom in the PRC, and giving cigarettes at any social interaction is a sign of respect and friendliness…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
never mind the logic, the aussie CAGW (& tobacco-fighting) pretenders at least get to have smug looks on their faces.
Pat Ravasio says:
January 6, 2013 at 10:45 am
After all your rambling, you still do not answer the most basic of questions: Why is it not a good thing to develop alternative energies? What is the harm in cleaning up the environment? Surely you do not deny that there are serious ill health effects of fossil fuel mining and use? That we are still burning up the house to keep the family warm? That fossil fuel supplies are finite? That there are readily available alternatives which are economically scalable if only they were adequately supported? Development of clean, renewable energy will stimulate the economy and improve the quality of life for all living things on the planet. So please explain why you oppose an orderly, economical transition to readily available alternative energies? You say the “alarmists” are motivated by profits. Yet it is you who are affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a noted man cave for fire-breathing fossil fuel behemoths. Anthony and friends, you can parse the particulars until kingdom come, but fossil fuels are still the Earth’s Goliath. Humanity is still David. The only question is what are we going to put in our slingshot, and why are we so slow in getting about the business so clearly at hand? Need leadership is needed now. Join the good guys. http://www.buckyworld.me
“Why is it not a good thing to develop alternative energies? That there are readily available alternatives which are economically scalable if only they were adequately supported?”
Of course it’s a good thing! I power all but the major appliances in my rented home with a scalable and totally portable mix of wind and solar. It is totally uneconomical, but highly practical on extended desert explorations powering everything electrical with ease.
The problem is, with the states of these technologies to date, they simply are not scaleable. Low-density intermittent power cannot even power an automotive glass factory sufficiently to keep the glass molten. It freezes on a cold windless night, and there goes your production line(s).
Taken to its logical conclusion every penny not spent on fusion research may turn out to be a penny wasted. Especially should we be on the tipping point of the next glacial instead of hothouse earth.
“What is the harm in cleaning up the environment?”
Uh, excuse me. That is what I have doing the vast majority of my professional geologist’ life. Not your garden variety 1/3,000th of the atmosphere wonky data scams, I’m talking about the big 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-p-dioxin/tetra-ethyl-death jobs. What do you do for a living?
“That we are still burning up the house to keep the family warm?”
You either need to go polish some ammo or turn your heat down.
“That fossil fuel supplies are finite?”
Undoubtedly. What is your point? Should we forego them even if, as you may believe, it is the ultimate thermostat of gaia climate? Or just put it off a little while, like say the end of the present interglacial? Would it be more fiscally sustainable, in your mind, to turn us all into energy paupers while we run our little climate experiment, right at the possible/likely end of the Holocene? And it would be but a little climate experiment in the grand scheme of things. What climate can Homo sapiens sapiens withstand/adapt to? Well that would be at least two ~90,000 year glacials, to at least the +2.5m MSL warmer world of most of the last interglacial? Yes, we were indeed there.
“Development of clean, renewable energy will stimulate the economy and improve the quality of life for all living things on the planet.”
Well maybe not exactly for “all living things on the planet.” There is the little matter that plants, by far, make up the vast majority of life on earth. The number 150ppm for atmospheric CO2 concentration is often bandied-about as the point where photosynthesis suffers great difficulties, and we got awfully close not all that long ago. So for a human, the total biomass for which is a very small percentage of all biomass, to presume to know what is best for “all living things on the planet” would be a bit anthrocentric, wouldn’t you agree?
I think you are going to need to back up the rest of your belief structure with data regarding how development of such low-density, intermittent, environment-“taking” farms of mirrors, panels and bird-blenders can actually be achieved without the baseline backup of traditional power-stations. At present, the concept is untenable. And the cost in every way extreme as compared with eventual fusion success. And with respect to bird-blending in particular, are you aware of any credible studies which compare the number of avians, you know, bats, eagles and the like, per megawatt it takes? We might then have some support, at least in terms of obituary/actuarial data, sort of a “poll” you might say, as to what the winged wing of “all living things on the planet” has to say about all this. If you take my meaning.
“So please explain why you oppose an orderly, economical transition to readily available alternative energies?”
Well, there is no economical way to do a transition to readily available alternative energies. Not unless you have a much different definition of the term “economical.” By transition I must infer that you mean retirement of most, if not eventually all, fossil-fuel powered generating technologies. What is not “readily available” in any but one way, at present, is anything remotely resembling the “third-rail” of alternative energy: storage. And I mean a lot of it. Sure, at low-efficiency, you can pump water with excess power back up into reservoirs. Not so much in the western US, or other desert regions of the world, we don’t have a whole lot of water to play with, especially these days while we must protect aquatic species under the Endangered Species Act. Or should that be withdrawn to facilitate this one and only means of large, geographically challenging “battery” system? Readily available alternative energy generation systems are wildly uneconomic, not to mention wholly impractical if you intend anything like your present-day lifestyle. What you are really talking about here is future alternative energy technologies. I have already invested over $20k in alternative energy technology, with no hope of ever recovering that investment over its service lifetime, and you would have me invest more. I ask no more than Anthony does, show me what you have done and are doing.
In closing I can only hope you can appreciate that many of us here hold some differences of opinion with you. But there is another difference atop that. Many of us have made a point of studying everything we can get our hands on covering what is presently known about climate and energy. So we can easily provide a great depth of background to support our positions.
For instance, as an occasional author here, you will find that instead of “staking out the high ground” with unsupported declarations I sketch out a principle of science, the development of an argument, and follow it with citations from the literature. These are all simple things, which in each case I leave the conclusion up to the reader.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/30/the-antithesis/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/05/on-%E2%80%9Ctrap-speed-acc-and-the-snr/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/16/the-end-holocene-or-how-to-make-out-like-a-madoff-climate-change-insurer/
If you wish to gain traction amongst your peers, you must learn to present your arguments not as some obvious correctness, but lead others to your inevitable conclusions. That is what logic is all about. What I have posted above is a thoughtful response. I would appreciate your considered response, if you deign to formulate one.
It’s not an error if you aren’t dealing with a system that is chaotic and/or that strives to maintain homeostasis (like Gaia). Science’s error was in its hubris in trying to think its analytic tools (basic physics) were up to such a task.
Atheism takes equal amounts of faith as Theism. They are both based on a “belief” that a diety exists or not. “I do [or not] believe in [this or that deity]. [optionally: because…]”
A true scientist would say “I don’t know,” and thus declare their self agnostic. I suppose it’s possible to declare “I don’t have empirical evidence [and thus is not science], but the evidence I’ve accumulated over my lifetime makes me ‘feel’ that there is [or not] a deity.” That ain’t science.
It was a pity reading Monckton’s play with religion, and equally appalling reading rgb’s declaration of atheism. I’ve left this thread with the following conclusion: The warmists, Monckton and rgb are all LOGICALLY EQUIVALENT, in that none are using real science (skepticism, agnosticism), and instead creating their own “versions” of reality to “sell” (er, gather consensus).
rgbatduke wrote:
quote
there is the vast array of things I have not studied in any depth and have little knowledge even of the methods involved in the discipline, where I am as ignorant as your average person picked at random off of the street.
unquote
So are we all. However, some of us are looking at the stars…. err…. are actually keeping our eyes open and looking for new things. Without a continual challenge, fringe science like AGW theory will be allowed to get away with less than rigorous practice, such as the proof of the tropospheric hotspot by wind measurements. (They claim that the agreement between the wind calculation and climate model results disproves sond measurements!) Or the use of speleotherms as proxies which vary in their response to climate signals over a few centimetres and invite cherry picking. The challenge will only happen if we don’t deny, out of hand, things we haven’t noticed, if we keep the fresh eye of youth. For example… on another thread you wrote:
quote
” I also have to say that this same drop of gasoline doesn’t seem to cover a hectare of rain-slick pavement, nor does the occasional drop of oil or gasoline that drips from my boat’s motor into the ocean seem to cover, or smooth, anything like a hectare of ocean. If it did, the entire Beaufort inlet (or any inlet to a harbor) would be one big slick, and they’re not. Even a clean and well maintained motor blows some unburned gasoline out in its exhaust, and in any given harbor with thousands of boats, there are at least tens of boats with egregious leaks of gasoline and/or oil. ”
unquote
If you look at
http://marinas.com/view/inlet/1668_Beaufort_Harbor_Inlet_NC_United_States
and click on the second picture you will see a beautiful image of Beaufort Inlet with smooths as far as the camera can see. Can you see as far as the camera? Or is your eye too old to make it out? Keep looking. Think smooth. Not slick, not rainbow spill, smooth.
Now look at http://i39.tinypic.com/2igd1mr.jpg
Enough oil and surfactant comes down the world’s rivers and by other means to coat the entire ocean surface with a smoothing layer every two weeks.
Goodwill and good intent are not enough to make a scientist. He must also have an inquiring mind — even in the face of consensus — and the courage to say ‘this is not good enough’.
JF
Pat Ravasio
There is nothing wrong with alternative energy as long as it is developed privately and without subsidies As to the hazard of petroleum products the good far outweigh the bad, if you do not believe that why don’t you try living without the products of the modern energy. I think you wold not survive a year, and if you did I am certain you would have a greater appreciation of at petroleum has given us. I have spend most of my adult life working and crossing the great American prairie and have a great appreciation what it must have been like for the Native Americans trying to live there. Everything you owned had to be carried on your back. Food could only be gathered by hand and the sea of grass was endless, since the only way to cross it was on foot. Try driving from Minot North Dakota to Williston North Dakota, first it is a river valley after twenty miles that end and you are on a flat plain, after another twenty miles a series of long rolling hills start with each high point is about twenty miles apart and as you drive it remember before petroleum it took a day to travel each twenty miles and the distance from Minot to Williston is about one hundred and twenty miles. So to make that distance today take less than two hours and back then it would have taken ten days.
When alternate energy can generate the amount of power required to support seven billion people and a cost equivalent to or less than petroleum can we will have so called green energy until then not. Lastly the environment cost are far less than you have been taught or told. Again I only have to go back to the Native American and see how he lives.
The Native American would make their camps on a hill with the water down below. They knew from experience they could not stay in one place too long since if they did they would start to get sick. Without power to move their waste from their camps the pollution of course would run down the hill and eventually into the water. One of the major reason people live long today is our sewer and garbage can be collected and removed deposed of safely and environmentally soundly by the use of petroleum and the power it gives us.
Now if you are one of those sick people whom believe there are too many people in the world and the world would be better off without so many people please prove that you are not a hypocrite and self remove yourself from the world so the rest of us can get on with our lives without some hypocrite telling us how to live and that we are making the wrong choices even though they are the correct one at this point and time, after all life is not a story book and we all some how can ignore reality and wish and think it would be a better work only if. Happily ever after is only for story books and life is a series of choices some may look wrong but if you pull off the blinders you will see overall people are not stupid, life has trade offs and where is no such thing as a perfect world and in the present world the sky is not falling down on us because we are using petroleum. The fact is it a far better world because we are using petroleum.
PS: Other cautionary considerations science ignored were the numerous unanticipated side-effects within the climate system, the scantiness of known facts about climate, the unreliability of many of the supposedly known facts, the bias of many of the curators of those facts, and the vested professional interest in alarmism (i.e., CAWG elevates climatology out of the academic backwater).
rgbatduke says:
January 6, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Amen brother.
No, it doesn’t.
Oh my! I was half asleep as I read the comments, when I saw mention of a favorite bible (note the lower case and its meaning). I tried to find its significance in the screed but unsuccessfully. So I will cite the passage that I believe apropos beyond mere exegetics.
Edwin Thompson Jaynes. Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. (Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-59271-2), 5.3 Converging and diverging views pp126-132. In a word the vehemence positive or negative of the narrator polarizes the skeptical audience proportional to its naive prejudices.
If no other passage in PT, this is the jewel. Its mention of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky led me to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose non-technical (arbitrage, quantitative analysis) writings distill Jaynes’ seminal masterwork!
Bruckner8 says:
January 6, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Atheism takes equal amounts of faith as Theism. They are both based on a “belief” that a diety exists or not. “I do [or not] believe in [this or that deity]. [optionally: because…]”
Don’t want to encourage off topic arguments but your wrong.
Thanks J Martin
So are rising sea levels part of your “all been beneficial” world ? In Roman times there were no megacities at or near to sea level home to many millions of people and highly reliant on complex energy, communication and transport systems. We can probably cope with some of the warmer world consequences, and yes some may be positive, but sea level rise is clearly a harmful impact in many parts of the world and will be hugely costly to deal with.
You claim, as do so many others in the sceptic community that
“temperatures haven’t increased in 16 years”
Yes they have. Both on the 5 year running mean and the annual plot it has been warmer (slightly, but warmer) that 1998 and before.
You add
“I take it you completely rule out the possibility that temperatures might fall ?
And fall steadily for 10 or more years ?”
No, never had. Its unlikely, but possible.
Now it is common for trolls to distract from the subject of an article by Lord Monckton by promoting the religion of atheism. Several have already tried it on this thread.
A) Atheism is not a religion. It is the lack of a religion. You might as well accuse me (or other atheists) of promoting the disease of being well.
B) The “subject” of the article was begun with an invocation of not only religion, but specifically the Christian religion. I remind you: “When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe in anything.” Surely no more absurd statement was ever made as an introduction to an essay on logic. Surely there is no more certain way to offend any individual who reads the essay who has, as I have, ceased to believe in Christianity. Finally, surely this statement is false, both literally and metaphorically. I assure you that I am not in a state where I uncritically accept any proposition, which is the literal meaning of believe in anything.
If you visit here:
http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/frequently-asked-questions/cease-to-worship/
you will see that the quotation itself is completely bogus. Chesterton in fact never said this in any of his writings. In The Oracle of the Dog Father Brown says “It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.” As I discovered when I tried to verify my recollection of something like that in the Father Brown stories. If I am mistaken, please provide me with a direct reference, as the site above is devoted to the man and seems unlikely to be incorrect.
The article itself ended with a second religious homily, specifically implying that we have a soul and that using reason well brings us “closer” to an invisible sky-god that at one time acted as an uncaused first cause. By writing this, the author surely placed himself about as far from that hypothetical being as it is possible to be placed (if we assume that promoting unreason moves one farther from said being).
Anytime people don’t want religion to be a distraction in a discussion, they are free to omit using religion as a tool of argumentation. Since doing so is singularly inappropriate in an article discussing logic and reason and science and how foolish people are who “believe” in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming on the basis of weak but positive evidence, I think that it is absolutely appropriate to criticize this as a serious weakness in the overall presentation. There is no reliable evidence supporting belief in any particular religion, nor is it clear that the concept of God is logically or mathematically consistent at all. Catastrophic warmists are models of rational thought in comparison. At least they could conceivably be right, within the bounds of some evidence.
C) In the past, you and I have had fairly extended discussions that I felt were very reasonable. In them, you failed to invoke your God as your witness, or to make any sort of claim that by using reason to arrive at your favorite conclusion we would both be drawn closer to God. I, for my part, failed to distract from the primary discussion by insisting that it is inappropriate for you to invoke God in said discussion, largely because you had the good sense, whatever your religious beliefs are, not to inject them into a discussion where they are irrelevant. In so doing, we both adhered to a common guideline on semi-public discussion sites: “Don’t Proselytize, lest you be Proselytized Against”. Once the can of worms is opened, however, it is not “trollish” to object.
Mr. Monckton would be very well served by learning this rule. He would also be well served by moving his appreciation of logic and mathematics forward by at least a century if not several thousand years — there have been a few advances due to people such as Lobachevsky, Riemann, Gauss, Hilbert, Russell and Whitehead, Godel, Frege, Cantor — just as there have been a few advances in philosophy such as the one that was aptly summarized in the Einstein quote above. But that is another matter.
As for him being a Peer of the Realm — it is indeed entirely irrelevant. If true, that and fifty cents will get him 2/3 of a K-cup serving of coffee, as the saying goes. If it were indeed false, it would entirely reasonably reduce his credibility on all matters, as it is a simple matter of common sense that if a man will lie to deceive his own vanity, how much easier it is to lie to others. This is a small part of the difference between the classical fallacies and Bayesian reasoning, a.k.a. common sense. A liar can sometimes tell the truth, and a generally truthful man rarely lies. We judge where somebody lies on a scale in between on the evidence, on the basis of times we catch them out or verify them, and eventually consider someone to be generally pretty credible — or not. I have no reason to doubt that he is a viscount or whatever. He has no reason to doubt that I have a Ph.D. in physics. If either of us were proven a liar, it would certainly impact our credibility in general, as well as in specific domains of discourse.
rgb
….18 years of no warming….
If there have been 15 year flat stretches of no warming due to natural variability over the past century, and if most of the warming of the past century has taken place since the 1950s, then the flat stretches due to natural variability should be getting shorter. Some 0.4C of temp rise should have robbed natural variability of half or more of its flat stretches if CAGW is just masked by it. We should be approaching point where natural variation just reduces the slope of the rise somewhat.
No! this 18 year flat period is an unqualified falsification of the central role of CO2 in earth temperature behavior. It is already game over for the CAGW/CO2 hypothesis. If it goes on longer than this, it even begins to rob CO2 of any significant forcing capability. It gives preference to the hypothesis that the earth does have a thermostat (a la Willis), that negative feed backs come into play when sea temps approach 30C, etc.
Another sign of the death of CAGW/CO2 hypothesis is the apparent rapid drop in output of papers by the formerly confident hockey team. I never hear tell of Gavin Smith, Bradley, etc. Mann of course is much in the picture but more for his legal activity and Trenberth makes an appearance to bemoan the decline in support for the listing ship… Also, the beginning of throwing colleagues and formerly bosom buddies under the bus (Briffa, asserting himself and getting out from under Mann’s thumb)… Gore is a good measure of the end of things, cashing in and closing shop before he has lost everything he gained from warming gravy train. Also, the plethora of papers counteracting CAGW (now that the gatekeepers have been neutralized) and the retreat of the IPCC…. I knew the game was over when they started taking warming out and plugging in climate change (hot or cold, wet or dry), and finally the grasping-at-straws-extreme weather where everything that happened was because of CAGW (the warming not being mentioned).
Man oh man, there is going to have to be a major overhaul of universities and other institutions with restoration of scientific curricula and requalification of PhD’s, some mea culpas from old scientific journals and birth of some new ones. There is going to have to be some asterisked Nobel Prize recipients of the last 30 years, a major upgrade or replacement of this committee…. It aint going to be pretty.
Thanks to Lord Monckton for yet another systematic and logical demolition of the CAGW fantasy. It really removes the C & A from the GW in detail. How many more demolitions are required before the dawn alights in the minds of Warmistas. If only the Warmistas were inclined to think and observe, they could be enlightened straight away.
It seems like Lord Monkton reads all these entries, and understands them too. It is a great benefit to be served some classical logic in this manner, and to be able to understand that which would normally be beyond most of us. Much appreciated! Thanks,
I just watched Attenborough (2011 Frozen Planet). Beautiful scenery and explanations.
The disconnect between pro and anti CAGW is itself alarming. The evidence presented is quite compelling, as expected from the true believers (BBC). Tthis “evidence” demands an answer but from whom?
Unfortunately, most people have no access to answers and are subject to this constant propaganda without relief. It is no surprise that the majority of people were persuaded by this to support the CAGW idea. Although the faith has waned for some years, there is still no real alternative to the BBC propaganda, and this has probably happened through doom fatigue and financial crisis rather than much hard evidence.
One really big thing that is missing from the sceptic work is the accessibility of “the man in the street” to some answers. Now, Lord Monkton is very active, and effective too in the league where he plays, and others (too many to mention), but no one seems to be providing access to answers posed by the propagandists. Instead, we absorb and are satisfied by the “propaganda” we ourselves generate. When the world sees glaciers melting in real photos and videos, and sees the evidence of penguin migration to colder waters,etc, etc, it is effective, and it puts the words “the world hasn’t warmed for 16 years” into the box labelled “inconsistent” – someone must have made a mistake, or someone is playing with statistics. It just doesn’t compare to real video.
My point is that people need real answers, and sometimes it seems as though more blog energy goes into parading scientific prowess and skills of argumentation than informing the people who are constantly subjected to this doom and gloom ever present menace.
I don’t expect much of a response, but at least the moderator will read it.
Thank God for people such as yourself. Lord Monckton, you are truly brilliant. Thank you for all you do.