Note: if the name below is familiar to you it is because of this article from Monday. This will be a sticky post for a day or two, new stories will appear below this one– Anthony
Guest essay by Jonathan Abbott
Please allow me to recount the details of my personal path to CAGW scepticism. I have never previously found myself at odds with the scientific mainstream and at times it feels quite odd. Perhaps others here have similar experiences? I am curious to know how fellow-readers came to their current views. If some have gone from genuine scepticism to accepting CAGW, I would find that especially fascinating.
My own story begins at school in England in the early 80s. Between playing with Bunsen burners and iron filings, I remember being told that some scientists predicted that we would soon enter a new ice age. This sounded quite exciting but I never really thought it would happen; I was too young then to have seen any significant change in the world around me and it all seemed rather far-fetched. A nuclear war seemed far more likely. Soon enough the whole scare melted away.
I grew up into a graduate engineer with an interest in most branches of science but especially physics. I read the usual books by Sagan, Feynman and later Dawkins (whose The Ancestor’s Tale I simply can’t recommend highly enough). I also dipped into philosophy via Bertrand Russell. I like to think this reading helped build upon the basic capabilities for critical thinking my education had provided.
I suppose it was in the early 90s that I first noticed predictions of global warming and the associated dire warnings of calamities to come. Some of these emanated from the Met Office and so I knew should be treated with a pinch of salt but other sources included NASA, which I then personally still very much respected; despite the space shuttle evidently being the wrong concept poorly executed, their basic scientific expertise seemed unquestionable. In general I was looking forward to the warmer climate predicted for the UK, and assumed that the overall effects for the globe wouldn’t necessarily all be bad.
Now, being English I knew all about the vagaries of the weather, but the warnings about CAGW always seemed to be made in the most certain terms. Was it really possible to predict the climate so assuredly? The global climate must be an extremely complex system, and very chaotic. I had recently heard about financial institutions that were spending vast sums of money and picking the very best maths and programming graduates, but still were unable to predict the movements of financial markets with any confidence. Predicting changes to the climate must be at least as difficult, surely? I bet myself climate scientists weren’t being recruited with the sort of signing-on bonuses dangled by Wall Street. I also thought back to the ice age scare, which was not presented as an absolute certainty. Why the unequivocal certainty now that we would only see warming, and to dangerous levels? It all started to sound implausible.
The whole thing also seemed uncertain on the simple grounds of common sense. Could mankind really force such a fundamental change in our environment, and so quickly? I understood that ice ages could come and go with extreme rapidity, and that following the scare of my childhood, no one seriously claimed to be able to predict them. So in terms of previous natural variability, CAGW was demonstrably minor in scale. It seemed obvious that if natural variability suddenly switched to a period of cooling, there would be no CAGW no matter what the effect of mankind on the atmosphere. Even more fundamentally, how could anyone really be certain that the warming then taking place wasn’t just natural variability anyway? The reports I read assured me it wasn’t, but rarely in enough detail to allow me to decide whether I agreed with the data or not.
The other thing that really got me thinking was seeing the sort of people that would appear on television, proselyting about the coming tragedy that it would imminently become too late to prevent. Whether from charities, pressure groups or the UN, I knew I had heard their strident and political use of language, and their determination to be part of the Great Crusade to Save the World before. These were the CND campaigners, class war agitators and useful fools for communism in a new guise. I suddenly realised that after the end of the Cold War, rather than slinking off in embarrassed fashion to do something useful, they had latched onto a new cause. The suggested remedies I heard them espouse were always socialist in approach, requiring the installation of supra-national bodies, always taking a top-down approach and furiously spending other peoples’ money. They were clearly eager participants in an endless bureaucratic jamboree.
Now don’t get me wrong: a scientific theory is correct or not regardless of who supports it. But recognising the most vocal proponents of CAGW for what they were set alarm bells ringing, and made me want to investigate further. I had always been somewhat sympathetic towards Friends of the Earth but much less so towards Greenpeace, by that time obviously a front for luddite socialism and basically shamanistic in outlook. I had deep personal concerns about the environment, having seen reports of terrible industrial pollution in developing countries and the former Eastern Bloc. I had also sailed across the Atlantic twice in a small yacht, and seen for myself floating plastic debris hundreds of miles from land. (I also saw an ‘eco warrior’ yacht in Antigua, lived on by a crusading hippy and daubed with environmental slogans. It was poorly maintained and leaked far more oil into the water than any other boat present.)
So I was quite passionate about the environment, but my focus was on keeping it clean and safe for all life to live in. I wanted people to stop overfishing and manage fish stocks sensibly, I wanted agricultural land to produce the best long-term yields possible, to provide enough food without encroaching on wilderness and wild spaces. I wanted people everywhere to have clean air to breathe and water to drink. I had hoped that the CAGW crusade would somehow also lead to more urgent progress in fighting pollution, and the other environmental issues I cared about. If anything it did the reverse. Why the absolute fixation on reducing CO2 emissions, why was it taken for granted that this was the only way to proceed? Where was the public debate about the balance between prevention and mitigation? The CAGW protagonists always came up with solutions that were anti-industrial, anti-development and always, always required more public money. Where was the encouragement for inventors and entrepreneurs to discover and develop new technologies? And most of all, why oh why not spend some of the huge sums of money thrown at CO2 instead on getting effective pollution controls enacted in developing countries?
It had become quite clear to me that the BBC and similar media organisations would never even discuss whether the science underpinning CAGW was really robust. It had simply become a truism. An occasional doubting voice would be offered a sliver of airtime in the interests of supposed impartiality, but a proponent of CAGW would always be allowed the (much longer) last word. But, if NASA kept having to adjust their course calculations as the Voyager probes entered the outer reaches of the solar system (an utterly trivial problem compared to the complexities of the global climate), how could the science possibly be settled as claimed? Surely the great joy of science is in admitting ignorance, in taking a finely honed theory and sharpening it still further, or even better in realising a fundamental mistake and stepping aside onto a new path? The claimed certainty itself seemed unscientific.
Then in 2007 I saw a trailer on television for the forthcoming documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. I watched it excitedly, for here finally were people publicly addressing the science and the data, but drawing alternative conclusions to the mainstream. There was none of the usual hand-waving and appeals to trust the experts, who magically seemed to be the only doubt-free scientists in recorded history. The backlash against the program told its own story too, being mainly outraged appeals to authority and conscience.
Having recently become a regular user of the internet, I started digging around looking for more information and so, soon after he started it, I found Warren Meyer’s excellent web site climate-skeptic.com. Oh, the joy! Here were links to data I could see and evaluate myself; here was critical dissection of reports and papers accepted elsewhere without demur. From there, I moved onto WUWT, Bishop Hill, Climate Audit and all the other sites that have become part of my daily round of the internet whenever I have access. However late to the party compared with many regulars at WUWT, I could now see fully both sides of the argument.
When the Climategate emails were released, some further scales fell from my eyes. I had hitherto assumed that most of the most prominent scientists supporting CAGW were well intentioned but wrong, akin to those opposing the theory of continental drift. I have taken part in many lengthy email exchanges concerning technically complex projects, and instantly recognised familiar methods used by those playing the political and bureaucratic game, for whom the data is infinitely malleable in order to reach a pre-determined goal. I had fought against this kind of factual distortion myself.
Now at this point, I am sure some (perhaps many?) readers are thinking, ‘Great, an inside view of how someone becomes a believer in a conspiracy theory, perhaps I’ll base a research paper on this idiot’. My response is that like most people I have at times stumbled upon the real conspiracy theory nuts lurking on the internet. But on WUWT and other CAGW-sceptic sites criticism of the position of the website founder isn’t just tolerated but often encouraged. ‘Prove us wrong! Please! It would be fascinating!’ There are many articles and views published on WUWT that I treat with suspicion, or even downright disagree with, but it is all stimulating and usually well argued. Plus, I am an experienced professional engineer and know what real science looks like, and when people are misusing it as a smokescreen. Neil Armstrong was a great man, and most certainly did land on the moon. Right or wrong, WUWT is a site that considers real scientific issues.
So I now find myself wondering where we go from here. The global climate will continue to change, as it has always done, and although I tend to expect some cooling I am pretty agnostic about it. Nature will assuredly do its own thing. The CAGW scare is in the process of burning out, but I do not expect an outright or imminent collapse. I hope to see the deliberate manipulators of data punished, but doubt very much it will ever come to that. Whatever happens next, it will undoubtedly be interesting, and stimulate much discussion and widely varying viewpoints. This is good news, because it means that we are back to doing science.
Tucci78 says:
July 26, 2013 at 10:21 am
Your send-up of pal review would be brilliant parody were it not sadly true, its starting point torn verbatim from the pages of Climategate.
but if you don’t believe, then how will crooks like Al Gore make their next billion off the suckers????
Re: Tucci78 says: July 26, 2013 at 8:55 am
Would you care to apply some of your illustrative effort to the way in which climate catastrophism is to a nosebleed-high level synonymous with left-wing politics?
—
AGW is straight up Progressive Collectivism/Left-wing politics. The political underpinnings began with the Orchestrated Crisis strategy and were fostered by the known Canadian Socialist and creator of the IPCC, Maurice Strong (now living in China). The Social Justice/Redistribution basis for AGW is found in Strong’s writings as Secretary of a variety of UN conferences, including Stockholm, Villach, and Rio. The larger Progressive guiding principle is documented in the Club of Rome publication, “The First Global Revelation,” which was used as a manual of sorts for the delegates to the first Rio Conference in 1992. In it, the authors discussed the need for a central issue to bring disparate countries together in a united cause of social justice and global governance. They wrote that the issue could be “imagined” and that climate change would fit the idea. Knowing this it becomes easier to understand and recognize the pervasive use of propaganda techniques in the AGW meme — the ad hominem, appeals to authority, glittering generalities, card stacking, etc. It is also easy to recognize the Alinsky methods at work.
@ur momisugly Janice Moore says:
July 25, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Thanks for the kind remarks. I was touched by your comments.
One more thing – – whenever I talk to my friends about how bogus AGW is, they can usually follow what I’m saying if it’s not too technical!
I briefly believed in AGW until I considered the issues of scale and stability, plus the madness of crowds.
1) Scale: the atmosphere is a vast reservoir as seen by that if all combustibles on the Earth’s surface (including known coal deposits) were burned, it would use only 10% of the atmosphere’s oxygen. So how would our activities have such a profound effect as AGW claims?
2) Stability: a quick story as illustration: I did some air pilot training long ago, and the first times I hung on tight to the steering wheel to keep the plane flying level. Finally the teacher said “You look like you’re holding onto the tiger’s tail” and I agreed I was. So he said just let the wheel go which took me a bit of processing but eventually I did let it go and the plane just flew itself! So this reinforced a distinction between two kinds of equilibria: (1) STABLE equilibrium, such as the equilibrium of a marble at the bottom of a bowl, which when perturbed just goes back to the bottom, and (2) UNSTABLE equilibrium, such as the equilibrium of a marble at the top point of an upturned bowl, which when perturbed leaves that point never to return. My pilot time showed me once again that physical law features STABLE equilibria in all its manifestations, else the universe / Earth would have gone to hell in a handbasket long ago.
Really, the whole climate scare (and the thinking of “the Team”) depends on the underlying notion of unstable equilibria, the runaway greenhouse effect notably. Anyone who understands physical law knows that this just isn’t possible, and that the Earth has come 4.6 billion years to the current benign environment because there were (and are) no unstable breakpoints. Thus when the measurements show that increasing CO2 causes H2O to decrease, then one must say OF COURSE this happens, it must happen, because physical law mandates stable equilibria. We’re talking a priori science here, or 4.6 billion years of a posteriori, which is the same thing as far as we are concerned. The notion of “the runaway greenhouse effect” is simply COUNTER TO PHYSICAL LAW.
3) The madness of crowds, represented by the media. When’s the last time the media was correct in its prognostications about any scientific matter? Well, never. Not for AGW, either.
I had previously seen Al Gore’s movie and thought, ‘good heavens, are we heading for destruction?’ Some years later I happened to be on YouTube and came across Lord Monckton debunking some theory or other and noted how well he explained the facts and how convincing he was. I was hooked. I immediately thought that I needed to delve for the truth and the media weren’t supplying it, so from then on I trawled (and still do) all the sceptical blogs for enlightenment. Global warming is an epic scam.
I’ve tried to discuss with friends the fact that the scientific method allows for the possibility of being proven wrong so many times… Where I live arguing for science will get you labeled a conservative who’s pro oil and anti-science with such hostility that you will back down just to enjoy your night. But dang, really, don’t we want to keep science scientific?
I think your entire paper can be summed up with this small passage and I could not agree more whole heartedly.
“But, if NASA kept having to adjust their course calculations as the Voyager probes entered the outer reaches of the solar system (an utterly trivial problem compared to the complexities of the global climate), how could the science possibly be settled as claimed? Surely the great joy of science is in admitting ignorance, in taking a finely honed theory and sharpening it still further, or even better in realising a fundamental mistake and stepping aside onto a new path? The claimed certainty itself seemed unscientific.”
So well said!
As a kid in the 1970’s I was told that we’re heading for a new ice age. Because we’re burning fossil fuel. I thought to myself “Oh dear”.
As a young adult in the 1980’s I was told that all forests will be gone by the year 2000. Because we’re burning fossil fuel. I thought to myself “Oh dear”.
As a scientist in the 1990’s I was told that the climate is warming up at a catastrophic rate. Because we’re burning fossil fuel. I thought to myself “Shut up”.
And for the past 40 years I’ve been repeatedly told that oil will run out 30 years from now. All that time, 30 years from now. To all you peak-oilers: Please shut up. I’ve had it up to the neck with neo-Malthusians.
Ever since Chief Justice John Roberts flipped his vote to support Obamacare, my opinion has been that the Administration somehow got to Roberts. They did, didn’t they? Not one single national columnist or legal scholar predicted that Roberts would support Obamacare. All the discussion was about Kennedy and other justices.
So it came as a total surprise to everyone — and the ‘reasoning’ given by Roberts was a bunch of specious legalese nonsense. Roberts was corrupted, and if they can flip the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, then just about any judge can be turned. And of course, judge-shopping has become an art form.
Which brings me to this. Mikey sure has lots of friends in high places, doesn’t he? No matter how many folks come to realize that CAGW is a complete crock, the average guy on the street is constantly hit over the head with, “Well, he was exonerated, wasn’t he?…”
My tale is not an altruistic one. An investment opportunity was put to me by a broker who admitted knowing little of the background but the “promoters” were a known outfit with a “proven” track record.
We decided to go away, do our own research, meet again in 3 months time and compare our findings.
The subsequent meeting was startling, within 5 minutes there was a consensus, the joint view being – it is a crock of ….
The rest of the meeting was spent deciding whether or not there was a short term opportunity, especially with the imminent vote in the UK on the Climate Change Act.
We both reverted to type and eschewed any potential short term gain. Well, I did, he was/is a broker, they do their own things.
I am amazed at the longevity of the implausible scenario placed before us some 6 or 7 years ago. However, now experience, (hindsight) gives solace to our long term policy.
It did not stack up in 2007 and now the initial fervour has gone it is a far bigger crock than it was then.
Apart from “fun” investment activities, the day pay engineering more than confirms the original assessment – it is a crock…
Bottom line – “My Personal Path…” RESEARCH!
Do your own and then enjoy life because you have! Don’t let those without the wit to do their own research taint your life!
Awesome post and replies. Some of the stories seem so familiar as they are mine too. Am ashamed to admit from that first moment of thinking something was not quite right to acceptance was a three year journey. No excuse, just unwilling to leave that comforting cocoon of letting someone else do the thinking and not wanting to believe we were being lied to on such a monumental scale. Sometimes I wish I could erase my memory and go back to that naïve, simpler and trusting person. All we can do is go forward and never give up. Its up to us to educate our children as our education systems are very much corrupted with CAGW. That would be a good/disturbing story itself. Some of the assignments I have encountered are blatant shameful brainwashing.
dbstealey said:
Also note that if most skeptics are over 35 with above average income, they are likely more
educated than the rest of the folks, and more than likely, possess hard science degrees (liberal arts degrees do not – on average – result in above average income).
Just sayin.
Mark
Ditto on always having been a skeptic. As a geologist, I’ve always been frustrated with biologists’ narrow focus on the last few decades. But I’ve been utterly astonished at how many “physical scientists” have swallowed the anthropogenic warming nonsense hook line and sinker. I thought all science training was like mine – learning to poke holes in theories, find the weaknesses in argument, propose alternate hypotheses, and question, question, question. Guess not!
“Was it really possible to predict the climate so assuredly? The global climate must be an extremely complex system, and very chaotic. I had recently heard about financial institutions that were spending vast sums of money and picking the very best maths and programming graduates, but still were unable to predict the movements of financial markets with any confidence. Predicting changes to the climate must be at least as difficult, surely? I bet myself climate scientists weren’t being recruited with the sort of signing-on bonuses dangled by Wall Street.”
That is -PRECISELY- the same line of reasoning that led me to doubt the certainty of their predictions and which led me to investigate further. Past data from the financial markets can in many cases be known precisely for model tests on past performance while the proxy data for climate definitely cannot be. Thus, how can climate models ever be properly checked for accuracy using such data?
A garbage model adjusted to fit garbage past data = garbage predictions. And when I say “garbage model,” I’m referring to climate models that don’t even include all of the possible natural phenomena -that we know about- which could act to control climate let alone the innumerable phenomena that we probably don’t even know about yet.
From all I have learned since I’ve begun my investigations, I am certain that -their- certainty is completely unjustified and probably related to the fact that their professional reputations and employment opportunities and incomes are dependent open it. The governments drooling over new taxes and the markets drooling over the carbon credits trade, yet another massive avenue for billions of dollars worth of fraud, supply preferential treatment for alarmists via a mass media that loves sensational news while having a journalism major’s understanding of science and no apparent capability for critical thought.
Chad Wozniak:
You are right. The art of deception should never be underestimated.
M Courtney says “So greed is good?”
Of course not. Greed is the rot that destroys every system of government.
Milton Friedman put is very eloquently. Greed is the parasite to the host.
If you are a greedy one (parasite) and want control of as much as possible.
Would you want to live in a system that is designed to control every aspect of everyone’s life or would you want to live in a system that is designed to have very limited controls?
Socialism is a collectivist view or a view that everything belongs to society. Those properties that does belong to the individual is still part of the zero sum game or socialist society. If everything belongs to society what does it matter if I steal? The very root concept of the system denigrates the individual.
In other words Socialism is the perfect system for greed to flourish.
Once parasites get too greedy, the host dies, and Socialism fails. When you hear Socialists talking about how Socialism hasn’t been tried the right way, they mean no one has figured out how to keep the host alive while the parasites feed.
The driving mechanism for the CAGW concept is based around the concept of the zero sum game or a socialist society. Were every new person born is a planet-killer.
CAGW couldn’t exist without a socialistic society to support it’s existence.
CAGW is a symptom of the parasite rotting the system. In other words if it wasn’t CAGW the greedy would find something else to rot the system. The real problem is collectivism.
jai mitchell says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:02 pm
‘that the uncertainty of modeling projections for global temperatures indicated that it was likely that the projections for warming over the next 75 years would be double what we were being told’
Let me see
uncertain model projections indicate
likely uncertain projections double
hang on
based on the liklihood of something that is uncertain indicating
No thanks jai,I think I’ll stick with science.
I knew something was up when the GAGA crowed found it necesary to rewrite history, that a sure sign of fraud.
Michael J. Dunn says:
July 25, 2013 at 1:01 pm
Thanks for reminding me of the Gulf War falsification of Sagan, et al’s (usual suspects) attempt to disarm the West & aid the faltering USSR with its ideologically-motivated Nuclear Winter garbage.
EdB says:
July 26, 2013 at 9:56 am
Good point about Sagan’s dismissal of CO2 in Nuclear Winter scam. Yet Ehrlich & Schneider reemerged to tout CO2’s all powerful force in promoting CACCA.
They peg a .9 Gores on the Hypocrisy Meter, where 1.0 Gore is the red (!) line max.
I also have an engineering degree. I got it in the days when we had to use slide rules. In my mind, I had no reason to question global warming until I read a comment in our news paper that temperatures had not risen in 10 years and we were encouraged to check out facts for ourselves. That caught my eye since I certainly was not aware of that. At about the same time, a friend sent the following 95 minute presentation by Monckton in Minnesota: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stij8sUybx0&feature=player_embedded
The points that were made were very convincing. About a week after I saw the video, climate-gate happened. There was no turning back after that.
Johnathon Abbott,
Do you think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause no warming at all? That is the implication of your article, which is at odds with the understanding of all the skeptic scientists with qualifications, including Anthony Watts.
It has become easier to be a skeptic, I used to be pointed at in 2006 and called crazy, at least now there seems to be some doubt. I have always been suspicious of people who’s decisions are predicated on receiving money. The climate-gate emails turned me from a skeptic to a total DENIER, and proud of it. I still believe that we need at least 3 years of cooling before the scam will end.
I remember my mother telling me in the 60’s that “they” thought the planet was going into another ice age. I haven’t been that scared since. I also remember sleeping on the screened in porch in the 60’s and waking up covered in black soot. We lived in Windsor, across the river from Detroit. An inversion happened overnight which brought all the soot down to cover the ground. I remember that everytime somebody says air quality is getting worse. I also remember the river in Cleveland catching fire. I remember that when people tell me we are destroying the environment. I also remember walking to work one day in the early 70’s and seeing a temperature sign reading 104F, That had to be in the early 70’s since it was before Trudeau changed Canada’s measurements to metric.From those memories, I see that we have cleaned up air pollution and water pollution. Air and water are now cleaner than they ever have been in my lifetime. We just had a 4 day heat wave. It never went over 33 C or 91.4 so temperatures are not warming. Surprisingly to those who now live with their air conditioners all summmer, I worked in a restaurant with no air, drove a car with no air and lived in an apartment with no air. Nobody died of heat then.I still don’t have air and really enjoyed that 4 day heat wave.
barry says:
Johnathon Abbott,
Do you think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause no warming at all? That is the implication of your article…
I must call barry on this misrepresentation. Jonathan Abbott neither wrote nor implied that. If barry believes that Mr Abbott thinks that CO2 will cause no warming at all, then I challenge barry to cut and paste the relevant passage he is referring to, and post it here.
Jonathan Abbott clearly stated:
…in terms of previous natural variability, CAGW was demonstrably minor in scale.
It appears that barry has deliberately misrepresented Abbott’s stated position. “Minor” warming is certainly different than saying [or implying] that CO2 causes “no warming at all”. Isn’t it, barry?
I think you meant to say “Real Climate”.
~sigh~ Just making crap up again as usual: “Thatcher … the main driver for mainstreaming climate change action …”, give us a break. I dare say that no-one over here had a clue that she was a warmie or lukewarmer or whatever until very recently when leftists started parroting this propaganda. The actual “main driver” was the media who had finally tired of their previous global cooling message. The change occurred slowly during the 1980-1990 transitional period between cooler temps in the 1970’s and warmer temps in the 1990’s. This is when the media began repeating the alarmism being trumpeted by Schneider, Hansen, Sagan and others, and from organized groups like Greenpeace and Sierra Club. They penetrated the public consciousness by repeating their mantra incessantly in newspapers, magazines, journals, television news and other broadcasts. That’s how it got mainstreamed, through all the normal methods, not from some politician wielding massive power that not even she knew she had!
Being in the USA, I’m still not up-to-speed on what Thatcher actually believed or did, but I am certainly not going to take your word for it. I would guess it is you who is mistaken or lying here considering how you smeared Thatcher shortly after she passed away before she was even buried. So for now I will assume you are doing precisely the same as always and leave it to your fellow British countrymen to set the record straight. Or perhaps Chris Monckton can really clear it up once and for all.
More importantly, most of us are sharp enough to know that no politician is perfect, it’s impossible. So when we hear about any of them scoring political points with some ridiculous issue like climate change it is no more surprising than Reagan doing the same with amnesty for illegal aliens. What you don’t realize is that going around finding “fault” in a politician who might be only 85% “perfect” does not really help your case because only any idi0t would truly expect them to be perfect in the first place, therefore you’re singing only to a choir of shallow thinkers. Moreover, you actually serve to perfect these leaders because being a politician by definition, they will often double back when called out by their real supporters. For example, Leftists that beat up Romney or Bush or McCain as supporting AGW or illegal aliens can actually serve to draw them back away from it (not enough though IMHO). So by all means, please keep helping us identify the weak links in our so-called “leaders” because you are actually working right alongside us and you don’t even realize it. I thank you for your help 😉