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.
jai mitchell tries to make the argument that current temperatures are unusual or unprecedented. As shown in this link, that notion is nonsense.
jai mitchell also appeals to a false authority by pointing to the six self-selected Potemkin Village committees that gave a pass to Mann’s shenanigans. But the fact is that skeptical cross examination was never permitted in any of them. In fact, Mann was permitted to meet with the committees beforehand, and ‘help’ formulate which questions would be asked! Could they be any less credible? Note also that Mann is the rainmaker, personally responsible for bringing many $millions into Penn State. That is their incentive for the whitewashes.
Next, mitchell disputes that scientists were fired. But that is a matter of record. jai mitchell also claims that the Soon & Baliunas paper was so wrong that multiple people resigned over its publication. I note that their paper is still published, and I say that jai mitchell is peddling one-sided nonsense. People do not forfeit their carreers over a single paper with which they disagree. How naive can mitchell be? There is plenty more to the story than mitchell claims. But when you’re a propagandist, truth takes a back seat to ‘say anything’.
Next, the “white male over 35” nonsense has been thoroughly debunked above, by multiple commentators.
Likewise, the ‘Arctic sea ice’ canard has been repeatedly falsified. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. The Arctic has been ice-free in the past, and will be again. jai mitchell would understand this if he hadn’t just stumbled across the global warming scare only 2 years ago, as he has admitted. A keyword search for ‘sea ice’ will provide many years of education for newbies like mitchell.
Next, jai mitchell tries to imply that a 1ºC temperature change is significant. It isn’t. We have already seen a 0.8ºC rise, and it has caused no global damage or harm whatever. But some folks get wild-eyed over anything… Chicken Little comes to mind.
Finally, jai mitchell tries his hand at comedy: “you also say, ‘warming has progressed at the same rate since the LIA’ and I say, enough with the lies man, you are totally off your wall.
keepy lying to yourself and your audience, it won’t be too much longer now.”
It is jai mitchell’s audience, too. They can decide for themselves if natural global warming is accelerating or not. I have posted numerous charts showing that is not the case. mitchell has emitted his opinion. Readers can now decide for themselves if they think global warming is accelerating — or if global warming has stopped for the past decade and a half.
Really, it’s unfair taking advantage of a noob who isn’t up to speed yet.
Jai Mitchell
You have linked to a spaghetti graph of reconstructions.
I used them here in my article
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
You do realise they use 40 and 50 year smoothing and therefore completely miss out on the annual and decadal variability which is far far greater than the smoothed figures?
There has been enormous variability as evidenced by the instrumental record. It is ONLY when Mann spliced on the instrumental record on to the paleo proxies from 1900 that the chart then shows the variability that gets you so excited. Please look at the various graphics in the article.
Unfortunately dr Mann has not released his hockey stick code and it proved difficult to reconstruct it. But we did it. That will be the subject of a future article
Tonyb
Jai Mitchell, disintegrated once again. If he didn’t exist, we would have to invent him.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlVoD17y5y4&w=420&h=315]
Apparently jai mitchell has no employment prospects. Posting on blogs appears to be his life’s work. In his newest load of noinsense jai mitchell says a few things that are easily debunked. So, may I? Thank you:
The reasoning I have seen here for supporting the fringe science of no global warming or no anthropogenic global warming…
Misrepresenting skeptical scientists’ positions is the only way the alarmist cult is able to argue. Skeptics know that global warming has been happening since the LIA. “No global warming” is jai mitchell’s attempt to misrepresent our position. Regarding AGW: it probably exists, which is consistent and verifiable with my position for many years.
But the question is whether AGW matters. Since it is too minuscule to measure, it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes. A small part of the 0.7ºC rise is probably due to CO2 emissions. How much? No one can definitively say. But natural warming has been happening at the same rate for hundreds of years, and the warming has not accelerated [quite the opposite lately], so CO2 cannot be contributing much. Can it?
Next, jai mitchell alleges that “Mickey Mouse” and “Donald Duck” are listed as OISM co-signers. Is that the best he can do? First, mitchell is fabricating his facts. All OISM co-signers are listed online. Second, Let’s give him those names. That still leaves well over 31,000 OISM co-signers. Third, the alarmist crowd has repeatedly tried to get anywhere near 30,000 signatures on their petitions. They have failed miserably, unable to collect more than a small fraction of anti-OISM signatures. Thus, the true consensus is that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial. Facts don’t lie, and it is only jai mitchell’s psychological projection that causes him to label skeptics as “liars”.
Next, I have posted conclusive proof that Greenland ice core temperatures are confirmed in both hemispheres, therefore jai mitchell’s claim that Greenland is not a good proxy is easily debunked.
Next, mitchell says, “all I see here are lies based on lies based on even more lies.” And then mitchell proceeds to lie: “…fanciful claims like, ‘CO2 doesn’t cause warming’ or ‘The saturation curve of CO2 in the atmosphere shows that further increases cause no warming’ or ‘increased moisture vapor in the atmosphere causes no warming'”, and so on.
Speaking for myself, I have repeatedly stated that CO2 causes some warming, which is too small to measure. At current concentrations, adding more CO2 does not cause measurable warming. And of course, skeptics know that relative and specific humidity has been declining for decades.
See? jai mitchell misrepresents everything, and then labels his own strawman fallacies as “lies”. He is amusing, no?
Finally, jai mitchell is Mann’s little sycophant, labeling any disagreement with Mann’s debunked Hokey Stick chart as “scandalous”. As if. What is really scandalous is the plain fact that the UN/IPCC is no longer able to use Mann’s original, discredited chart in their publications. And it was such a scary chart, wasn’t it?
Well, too bad. Mann’s Hokey Stick chart is dead and buried. ☺
[Oh, and I really liked mitchell’s wild-eyed Chicken Little charts. Amusing, aren’t they? Especially the “projection” part. And the “reconstruction”, as if that is empirical data. heh]
(Snip. You constantly call other people liars for disagreeing with you. Up with that we will no longer put. ~mod)
Thank you, people who have noted my father’s absence.
When he returns from holiday I will talk to him (on phone – we don’t live within 200 miles of each other).
But I can’t promise he will want to be involved anymore.
It does cost; being reviled online, facing personal mockery from opponents, facing scorn from those on your own side who disagree with some other part of your belief system (he is a Christian socialist – as am I)… the raised blood pressure from being in conflict. Yes, textual ripostes on a blog are a form of conflict.
He has been on the front line in this debate since the mid-1980s. He suffered the loss of John Daly as a colleague whom he stood beside, from the far side of the world. He had to learn how to use the internet to continue doing what he had always been doing.
That wasn’t fun.
He has done his bit.
But I will ask him to come back.
My becoming sceptic of CAGW was a little more funny. I use to live some 60 km north of Triest, where the olive trees don`t survive some harsher winters, although 20 km to the south they thrive. reading and hearing about the GW, I hoped, I would not have to protect my olive trees during the winter. And yes, I couldn`t understand, why some countries don`t ratify the Kyoto treaty.
I was waiting and waiting but the situation for my olive trees went from bed to worse. So, I decided to check the stuff a little bit. By profession, I`m an engineer and I ordered first some german books about climate change. Than followed Singer, Swenmark, Spencer, Hansen, Vaclav Klaus… and websites CA, WUWT, Bishop Hill etc.
I am now a convinced sceptic, and yes, I still have to protect my olive trees during the winter!
(Snip. When you stop calling other commenters liars for having a different opinion, you will stop getting snipped. ~mod)
Jai Mitchell
Why will the jet stream get harder and harder to find?
When you reply perhaps you would comment on my link above whereby I confirmed the spaghetti graphs do not show annual or decadal figure but merely a modelled artificial 40 year smoothing. It is important you realise it bears no relationship to the real world climate we all live in
Tonyb
“… my father doesn’t want to come back.” [M. Courtney]
I’m sorry. Please pass this along, if you would be so kind:
Dear Mr. Courtney,
Many of us at WUWT miss you. You are respected and valued, here. I’m certain that a man like A-th-y, with such a great heart, long ago forgave you. Would you at least consider posting just one last time? You left without even saying “Good bye.”
I hope that your holiday leaves you rested, well, and rejuvenated enough to sit down before that ol’ computer and pound out another enthusiastic post. Your son is a fine man with many insightful things to say, there is, however, no substitute for your verve in s-lay-ing trolls. I’ll be forever grateful for the gallantry displayed in this one:
Hopefully,
Janice Moore
******************************************************
D. B. Stealey! You get the Hank Aaron Award for Heavy Hitting — Bam! Blast! Over-the-fence-ladies-and-gentlemen-MY-OH-MY!!! (late Dave Kneehouse re: Seattle Mariners)
Way to go CONTINUING to engage with the “Software App” (forget who coined that, here) above.
*******************
@ur momisugly K. D. Knoebel and Gold Minor, you, too, are missed. At least tell us you’re okay!!!
Tony B,
Didn’t you hear? The Second Law was repealed, so the jet stream will go away.
[/sarc, of course. One of the reasons for the jet stream is to equalize temperature.]
Thanks, Jonathan. Excellent article.
For me it was: Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” -> Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” -> Roy Spencer’s “Climate Confusion” -> Donna Laframboise’s “Delinquent Teenager”.
Background: Electronics Engineering ans Solid State Physics.
Time frame: 2006 -> 2013 and counting.
jai mitchell says:
July 27, 2013 at 12:35 pm
“………then you would HAVE to concede that this anti-global warming cult is a teetering house of cards, akin to the anti-smoking regulation campaign of the 1990s and more closely associated with the religious assertions of creation-sciences than of actual science.”
==============
You sure pulled out all the stops at the end of that screed, feel better now ?
Ms Janice Moore,
I have forwarded your comment to my father on email. Don’t know if he will pick it up until he comes back.
Thank you also for your polite comments about me. One day I may be able to be as chivalrous as my father but for now I will just adopt the role of the peasantry. I will try to cultivate our field by offering novel ways of looking at issues whilst leaving the important battles to the nobility who have the time and ability to fight honourably and victoriously.
Amongst the nobility I do, of course, include you.
jai mitchell,
Might I say I’m a little late in commenting on this comment you made quite a bit earlier in this thread:
‘After that point we will reach an average temperature level that hasn’t been seen on planet earth for the last 1.5 million years and (likely) will reach a point not seen on this planet for nearly 50 million years. –all within the next 100-200 years.’
You have no idea how silly that foregoing statement sounds do you? Now, I know I’m quite tardy in commenting on that but better late than never. Now, may I suggest to you that both you and I will be long dead 100-200 years from now. So try not to trouble us with statements about a future that cannot possibly be ascertained and in which you and I will not be around to verify the truth, or more likely, the falsehoods of those same predictions. Furthermore, may I also suggest that since you and I can’t have a clue as to how people will live, or not live, 100-200 years in the future (in same way that people in 1800 might’ve had a wee bit of difficulty in imagining the world in 2000) that it might just be hell-nigh impossible to, not just determine what that temperature might be, but also to relate it to a temperature 50 million years in the past that we sort of have to guess at since Tyrannosaurus Rex wasn’t kind enough to record it and write it down for us.
Ok, that’s the end of my conversation.
Dbstealey
Does jai mitchell ever reply to factual information? He doesn’t seem to like history.
I am bemused by his referencing the spaghetti graphs apparently in the belief they represent real temperatures. He needs to acknowledge they are nothing more than a modelled representation of the climate using 40 year smoothing and thereby missing out on the annual and decadal climate we actually live on.
Having spent a great deal of time tracing the jet stream back 1000 years through research at such places as the met office I am equally bemused as to why he thinks it is behaving in a different manner to the past.
Tonyb
jai mitchell et al:
Climate change is real. See these images of the basin and range province of North America.
http://fopnews.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/p1060133small.jpg
http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/hydr/lkbflood/imgs/pliocn.jpg
http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/histgeol/gilbert/bon1.jpg
R.E. Lake Bonneville, excerpt: “Finally, with a hotter, drier climate that slowly emerged about 8,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville gradually disappeared.” Mind you this was a 20,000 sq. mile lake.
No doubt due to prehistoric industrial activities of ancient man?
M Courtney
I seem to have missed out on the events that apparently led to your father bowing out of wuwt.
I have corresponded with him many times and wrote an article for him on wave energy. He is a stoic and knowledgable commentator on climate matters and I am quite bemused as to how he could have departed under what seems to have been something of a cloud.
Please give him my personal regards and add my to it my hope he will reappear, if less frequently than in the past.
Tonyb
Tonyb says at July 27, 2013 at 2:57 pm…
I don’t think my father left under a cloud but if Anthony wants to correct me then I am using the name Anthony Watts here to get the moderators to notice and edit this conversation as required.
Also, I forwarded your comment to my father, on email, as well. But he’s on holiday.
Good night,
Matt
Gareth
Independent middle of the road? It is a left-wing rag.
Thatcher benefited real people in the UK, the ordinary people rather than the bien pensants. That is why the political establishment of people who went to the right schools and knew the right people (not unlike Blair and Cameron) in the form of the “wets” finally destroyed her. That is why the left hated her, because she actually cared about the people they pretend to care about in order to win elections. She was not just playing political games, treating Westminster as student politics in a larger forum as they were. She actually wanted to help people.
Do you know why the polling predicted Major would lose in 1992? According to the head of Gallop it was because they could not use the 1991 census data, and were relying on 1981 information. He said that in that decade there was more social mobility in the form of people rising from the poor and working classes than in any other decade on record, hence their surveys were skewed. Thatcher did that.
So Jai, you know of no actual empirical evidence for strong positive feedback. You have no answer to the fact that climate “scientists” have been caught in multiple episodes of dishonesty, many of them systematic and co-ordinated, to become conspiracies by the legal definition.
Quoting the whitewashes of the CRU email leak is laughable. Not one was independent. None took evidence from sceptics. None asked the questions that sceptics wanted answered. The dishonest actors were believed without question. It was pathetically obvious as a whitewash. You suggest that they indicated that the science was not affected but you are either completely ignorant of the facts or you know quite well that none of the inquiries actually addressed the science, and so are dishonest in implying otherwise.
Read the actual emails, not the reports. You will see that they do show dishonesty from basic nastiness to conspiracy to break the law. You will see that the attacks on journal editors go far beyond normal scientific discourse, if you have any idea how a peer-reviewed journal functions. Disagreement with a paper should not mean that you ask for the editor to be sacked.
M Courtney says:
July 27, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Tonyb says at July 27, 2013 at 2:57 pm…
I don’t think my father left under a cloud but if Anthony wants to correct me then I am using the name Anthony Watts here to get the moderators to notice and edit this conversation as required.
==========
Edit how ?, just spell it out.
What do you want to hear, I’m confused, and defensive towards Anthony and mods.
What is “required” exactly ?
Poor little Jai, its going to be so funny watching is desperation over the next few years as the global temperature starts to drop. Now that Hansen has left, I doubt his replacement will be able to manipulate the HadCrud and GISS values enough to forestall the cooling.
You are hilarious Jai, great for a laugh. Maybe you should become a cartoonist as well.
ps….. Must buy a popcorn machine. 🙂
Mods:
Please don’t snip Jai’s comments, no matter how obnoxious they are.
He’s really starting to lose his temper and it amuses the hell out of me. He can call me a liar if he wants to, I’ll just keep laughing.
So c’mon Jai, bring it on!
Yours, in a very rainy London, supposedly suffering from a ‘heatwave’,
Andy
(Reply: Perhaps you are right. I’ll let jai mitchell’s future comments stand [other mods might feel differently]. The last comment was snipped because practically every paragraph was filled with especially vile and baseless accusations that everyone disagreeing with him were “liars”, and worse. Thanks for the feedback. No more snipping unless this poster severely violates the site Policy. He did, but maybe the best course of action would have been to show how he really thinks. ~mod)
The difference between Jai Mitchell and the rest of us here is: We all encourage our children, and everyone else for that matter, to research all available data and find the answers for themselves. Jai doesn’t.
M Courtney:
It isn’t just the heavy hitters here who miss your dad. Due to work, I am only able to visit WUWT on weekends. I’m the average Joe. Tell your dad I miss his comments here too.