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.
I wonder if Cook et al. might be interested in mining this thread as a species of survey conducted to assess the sociological characteristics of those who have come to deny the validity of the great gaudy crapola of “man-made global warming”?
There certainly appears to be more substantive information here than in the laundered lies of their most recent excuse for “research.”
Just Steve: I’m very off topic here, but it’s on health matters, always important to me. I was interested in your comments on ‘second hand’ smoke. From personal experience, I can tell you that it most certainly can have an effect. My late teenage years and my twenties saw me spending a lot of time listening to live music in pubs. The air was always thick with smoke, and it affected my lungs for a day or two afterwards. My breathing felt ‘tight’, as if on the tail end of an attack of bronchitis. A friend was a semi-professional musician, and I wondered how he could stand such respiratory punishment night after night. The banning of smoking in public places was a major step forward as far as I was concerned. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of medical papers on all this if you have a look.
At 10:19 PM on 28 July, Carbon500 had written:
What you’d experienced had been the effect of cigarette smoke as a primary irritant, almost certainly inducing bronchospasm, whereas the campaigns against secondhand smoke have clamored without support about the putative carcinogenicity of such exposure.
As you’d noted, your personal (and idiosyncratic) pulmonary sensitivity to tobacco smoke was not manifest in your musician friend’s experiences with even greater exposure to the same types of environmental conditions.
You’re just unusually vulnerable, and were I your personal physician I’d have to take the history you’ve recounted as an indication that I’d best consider you an incipient asthmatic, and make available to you such expedient treatment modalities (probably at least a short-acting inhalant “rescue” bronchodilator) as might alleviate your future episodes of distress and help to preclude more severe respiratory difficulties.
It ain’t secondhand smoke per se with which you should be concerned, but rather your own respiratory tract.
You’ve got that backwards. The Null Hypothesis is that the changes ARE natural. The Warmistas must first disprove that before any alternatives (e.g., Human emissions of CO2 drive it) can even be considered.
My eyes were opened during my PhD. For the first time in my scientific career I was contributing to new discoveries in my field. I realised that understanding is hard won and settled science is never settled. The consenus method to stop debate rang alarm bells for me. I then began reading the original papers that this settled science was based on and realised they suffered from the same problem every scientific paper does – over interpretation. My sceptical position was the only position to take.
Philip J Clarke says: July 28, 2013 at 12:59 pm
” ‘Doubting Rich’ wanted empirical evidence of positive feedback. In fact the increase in water vapor has been observed and is in line with model projections. See, for example, Dessler et al 2008.
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/229/Dessler_et_al_2008b.pdf
who concluded .. The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhousegas emissions over the next century are virtually guaranFteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius. The only way that will not happen is if a strong, negative, and currently unknown feedback is discovered somewhere
in our climate system.”
…
I have only one thing to say … NASA satellite data shows a decline in water vapor … http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/06/nasa-satellite-data-shows-a-decline-in-water-vapor/
I was educated in Adelaide in the 1950s and 60s, so I actually learned a few things. In the 70s, living in Britain, I became very interested in environmentalism, and studied it quite a bit. I had the same sort of concerns as Jonathan Abbot. I paid particular attention to the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth scenarios. However, in the years that followed, I saw that (a) concern and care for the environment moved into the mainstream, and thus was well supported, (b) the scarier global scenarios had not happened, and (c) the alternative technologies just weren’t providing the goods. (How much electricity comes from Salter’s duck?) So when the Global Warming scare started getting publicity, I was somewhat inclined to accept the idea (I understood the proposed physics) but not totally convinced. Wouldn’t the CO2 be absorbed by plants? Was this another of the many promised catastrophes (such as the Ice Age threat of the 70s) that had failed to happen? How did this fit in with the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? But I didn’t give it a lot of thought.
The biggest obstacles were the supporters of the idea. It was endorsed and promoted by Margaret Thatcher, as part of her destruction of British industry. Slightly less poisonous was the push by a right-wing American politician, Al Gore. (American politicians are all either ordinary right-wingers, like Gore and Obama, or bat-shit crazy right wingers.) Since I was living in the US during the election in which he was cheated out of the Presidency, I was not impressed. I became even more suspicious when I saw the similarity between AGW belief and religious belief.
In spite of this festering pollution, I tried to avoid falling for poisoning-the-well, guilt by association, and genetic fallacies, and told myself “Stick to the science.” That is, until the emission trading schemes started up. It was obvious that a bunch of nasty financial parasites (the type that Thatcher supported) were going to make huge amounts of money shuffling “credits” around, all at the expense of those who did useful, productive, work. We were all going to be screwed. At that point I started taking it seriously.
And it did not take long to dig up flaws in the science. The biggest was the missing hot-spot (thanks, David Evans) which, for someone with a Popperian background like me, was a major failing. And the more I have read, the less convincing the AGW story seems. Now the whole thing seems to falling apart, and the profiteers are grabbing their dosh, and, like their rodent superiors, fleeing the sinking ship. The True Believers are desperately trying to prop it up, but even some of them are making slow, careful, retreats.
A terrible cost, and a tragedy for science.
I too am very grateful to Mr. Watts for the tireless job he has done with this impressive website and his other work. It is unbelievable how a dozen or so websites run on shoe string budgest are able to effectively counter literally billions of dollars of government and special interest money being spent to influence public opinion.
And the tactics being used by the warmists are quite literally intended to mislead the public with malevelant methods much of the time. And it works with a fairly high percentage of the population. When I attended universities I was told by my professors on more than one occasion that the most imprtant goal of my education was to learn how to learn on my own and be an independent thinker. Most of my instructors probably had a political agenda and maybe their intention was other than what was stated, but they did help teach me to be skeptical of all things so I will give them credit for that.
I hope that students are being given similar opportunities today, but I fear they are not. My wife’s hobby is setting up living history displays and giving lectures largely at local schools, universities, historical societies and museums. After talking to students, teachers, historians, and the general public… I feel that the emphasis on independent thought and study is not what it used to be. That scares me.
Philip J Clarke says:
July 28, 2013 at 12:59 pm
“See, for example, Dessler et al 2008.”
Actually, it was abysmally poor analyses like Dessler’s which turned me against the farce. The fellow clearly has little to no experience with phase plane analysis. The slope of a best linear fit of the scatter plot can be positive or negative regardless of the sign of the feedback, depending on the phase. But, the direction of encirclements gives an indication as to whether the phase is leading or lagging. In this case, it lags, which is usually indicative of negative feedback.
I asked Dessler himself about this when he made an appearance here on WUWT when we were discussing his work (you can find it in WUWT archives). He assured me they had every reason to assume the phase lag was negligible, to which I of course replied, “you don’t have to assume it, you’ve got the data“. I was sitting there looking at the swirls telling me there was significant phase lag, and he just sat back blithely assuring me they could assume there wasn’t. It was surreal.
D Johnson @ur momisugly July 25, 2013 at 8:43 pm
Junkscience.com by Steve Milloy should be read regularly by all Watts readers. While Anthony focuses upon the Warmista scam, Malloy covers many other similar “scientific” scams.
Donate to both!
Streetcred
I said “strong positive feedback” not “one strong positive element of feedback”. My apologies, I should have been more direct and said “net feedback”, but I really think that this is implicit when talking to anyone who knows anything about climate and is being honest in their reply. Individual feedbacks are irrelevant if we cannot use them to judge net feedback.
So do you have any empirical evidence that net feedback is positive, let alone strong and positive? It would be unusual in any stable, natural system, and indeed an interesting case of the weak anthropic principle.
Interesting you should use a study covering 2003 to 2008 though. I can accept as they state that temperature varied by 0.6 degrees worldwide in this time. However they were short-term fluctuations, there was no net warming at all over this period, and the response cannot be applied to the equilibrium climate sensitivity without further evidence. Given that radiosonds sent up during a far longer time when the surface was, on average, warming show no warming at all above the 300 hPa (9000m) level in the tropics, and that NASA data over the same time also show a fall in water vapour up to that level, I am doubtful about the relevance of this 5-year study to longer-term climate trends.
Ooops, sorry streetcred. That should have been addressed to Philip Clarke!
Philip J Clarke
Further to my last post to you, erroneously addressed to Streetcred, I also have to take issue with either the competence or the honesty of researchers who state
“The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhousegas emissions over the next century are virtually guaranFteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius.”
This is of course ridiculous even if their research is perfect and correct, as they have not addressed any other element of feedback. They would have to reject every possible source negative feedback, known or unknown, or give empirical evidence of net feedback to make this statement honestly and reasonably. They do neither. So are you quoting research by incompetent or dishonest parties?
Johnathon,
You misapprehend.
The questions were not aimed at your intellectual capability. I am only interested in your opinion.
Mainstream climate science gives a range of estimates for equilibrium climate sensitivity. I wanted to know if you believed the range is too high, or too uncertain.
If too uncertain, then the range is what it is, and my argument would be to take the full range as a risk assessment and plan accordingly.
I have not come across a convincing argument that climate sensitvity is low. The typical ‘argument’ is to selectively quote from the literature – any low estimates – and posit that as the *truth*. I find this approach as unconvincing as someone cherry-picking studies to say that the top end of the range is the *truth*.
Your argument that ‘climate has changed a lot before’ leaves a lot to be desired. CO2 contribution to previous ice age shifts is estimated to be anything from 30 to 50%. So according to the literature – the weight of estimates, not a cherry-picked quote – CO2 has played a significant part in global temperature changes within the Quaternary period (a period where the Earth was much the same throughout – landmasses are roughly in the same position, ocean currents are not much changed).
You seem to be certain that the current rate of CO2 cannot have much impact (in truth, your position is a bit vague on that). Rather than deferring to the literature, you have offered that ice age shifts, which take thousands of years, have had greater global temp swings than that seen over the last 250 years. The last shift of 5C took place over 5000 years, roughly 0.1C a century. We’ve had 7 times that rate in the last century. CO2 climbed by 100ppm over ~4200 years (accounting for the 800 year lag). That’s 2.4ppm per century. In the last 250 years, the rate has been 40ppm per century, 16 times faster. You are comparing a 5000-year change to that which has taken place of a couple of centuries, as if the two time frames are equal. Can you see how this might tickle my skepticism?
I am not feeling alarmed – I actually don’t worry about the future. Not because I think it will be rosy, but because I’m inured to the possibility of disaster. My approach is based on reason and ethics. Here is what I think, and why I asked you the questions I did.
I don’t believe the range of sensitivity is a result of group think or conspiracy. It is an honest assessment. researchers from all over the world – not involved with CRU and climategate – have come up with a range of estimates, and if you take out Phil Jones et al, the mid-range is still 1.5 – 4.5 per doubling of CO2. That’s my base understanding.
I can’t accept the high range only, because that is not warranted by the literature – it is an alarmist position.
I can’t accept the low range only, because that is not warranted by the literature – it is a pollyanna-ish position.
I can’t accept the argument ‘climate has changed more before’, because that ignores the rate, and it apears things are changing much more rapidly than the quaternary ice ages. There are caveats, of course, and that is why I see the rate difference as ‘apparent’. I maintain my skepticism about our knowledge – I neither believe nor disbelieve – belief doesn’t come into it.
Thus, not knowing whether the effects of emmitting billions of tons annually of CO2 to the atmosphere will be benign or disastrous, I choose to plan (vote) as if either scale is possible. Ethics demands balancing present needs with future risks. I’ll vote for the party that takes the full risk seriously, balancing policy against the exegencies of the day.
My questions to you were about whether you were certain the risk was low or if you thought the range was uncertain. As far as I can tell, ‘skeptics’ must be convinced that climate sensitivity is low. I have come across no good argument to accept this premise (aside from the cherry-picked offers I mentioned above).
Regarding your final comments.
Sure, the planet was 1000C when it was being formed. But we are interested in the rate of change, a factor completely absent from your comments. Of course, civilization in its current, land-locked form was not a factor in the great geological changes of the planet. that should be taken into account, too.
Just about every pro-AGW comment on the runaway effect posits that it won’t happen on Earth. The only notable counter-proposition I can think of was Hansen’s, and that rested on the notion of all fossil carbon being released to the atmosphere. This seems like a red-herring to me. The IPCC certainly doesn’t project runaway warming.
You used the acronym CAGW throughout your piece. Is it possible your skepticism is about the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect? That would be a straw man argument.
Exactly. We are conducting the experiment with no possibility of a control. This is a one-time experiment, and we are performing it on our only habitat. I think we should wind it back until such time as we become more certain that the outcomes will be insignificant. Can you guarantee me the future?
Any piercingly insightful science that doesn’t rely on short-term, statistically non-significant data. If surface temperatures remained flat from 1998 to 2028, and natural or anthropogenic (aerosols) factors/interannual variability for the period did not combine to lower temps for the second half of the period (eg massive volcanic eruptions ongoing for the latter 15 years), then I would think that projections/climate sensitivity would almost certainly be too high.
Other ways would be for a better and different understanding of physics to overturn the theory – something the Skydragon Slayers utterly fail to do, for example.
I’ve read voraciously on the subject and subtopics of climate change, spending much time on ‘skeptic’ and mainstream blogs, on hundreds of scientific studies, and many more just the abstracts. I believe I’ve kept an open mind, and read both sides of the stories. I’ve been critical and complimentary at WUWT, SkS, realclimate and climate forums on both sides (and been attacked from both sides on occassion). I have no emotional or ideological investment in the debate or the outcome. i am only interested in reason and the scientific method, and when it comes to making choices, with ethics. My position is that I don’t know better than the experts (and many bloggers – but not so with much of the GP commentary at these places), that the notion of a conspiracy rests on selected quotes and second-guessing motivation with no data. I don’t think we can forecast the future, but i also think we can’t guarantee that the worse case scenarios don’t materialize. My position is much more skeptical than almost everyone I read. It is not because i know so much, but because I think we don’t know what our uncontrolled experiment will bring us, that I favour reducing emissions in a responsible fashion. I think that is happening now – we are not courting economic disaster – and I think that governments will probably respond too slowly to make much difference to emissions or economies. I don’t use my cynicism as a smokescreen for a do-nothing argument. Reducing emissions is an ethical solution (among others). We should do the right thing regardless. Cynicism (or despair) is not an argument.
I don’t belong to a tribe in the climate wars. I was always a skeptic, never emotionally or ideologically engaged with this topic. It was never an either/or thing. Not for me. It’s always been a risk-management issue. Hence my questions about your opinion. If you are convinced there is no risk, can you offer a better argument for your opinion? If not, and with the possibility that timeliness in action may be an important factor, how would you have the risk addressed?
How about a study of Day/following Night temp Rise and Fall, based on actual temperature records.
RoHa
Thatcher, far from destroying British industry, saved it. I am sure that she, like most scientists of the time (she has a degree in Chemistry, and used it in her early career) believed that AGW was not only real but potentially catastrophic. That was reasonable, as the evidence we now have that the models are wrong (lack of warming in the upper troposphere in the tropics, negative relationship between temperature and outgoing radiation, the “pause”, lack of ocean warming shown by Argo floats, stronger evidence for MWP beyond Europe and Greenland etc.) was not then available. The issue did need study, I don’t know of any sceptic who disagrees, and Thatcher cannot be condemned for supporting that further study. The study has shown, however, that AGW while probably real will be benign or even benevolent.
Very similar to mine. I remember sitting at my place listening to the radio and hearing about how the US wasn’t going to sign Kyoto, or something. I was dumbfounded at how short sighted and stupid the US government was for not doing something so obviously beneficial to Mankind. A few years later, I discovered AGW scepticism as you did, and that was that.
By the way, I was pre-conditioned to believe AGW by reading people like Konrad Lorenz when I was at University (just for fun, not as part of my course, which was computer science).
Barry, 3:37
Your comment to Jonathan about the rate of temperature change today versus the past caught my eye. I recently read “The Inconvenient Skeptic” by John Kehr (which I found excellent). One of his main themes is to look at the past to put today into context.
According to him ice core data show that there was a period from 45,000 to 25,000 years ago when the temperature swung wildly, by as much as 4 degC in 100 years. Here is the relevant excerpt:
“There is one period during the last glacial period that was even more difficult than the rest of it. It was the period between 25,000 and 45,000 years ago. This was a period of unusual insolation from the sun. The 65N insolation anomaly can behave like this every 400,000 years or so. The last time it happened there was a long interglacial, but this time the energy was lower and the result was disastrous. Instead of stable climate it brought about one of the least stable climates that we have yet to discover. The ice cores from Antarctica do not show as much variability as the ones from Greenland do, but even they show more change than usual. What the ice cores from Greenland show is short periods of rapid warming followed soon thereafter by rapid cooling. According to the ice cores the temperature changed by as much as 4 °C in periods as short as 100 years. The worst aspect of these changes was how short a period of time they lasted. The NH would warm, and then cool just as quickly. These spikes in temperature happened about 10 times over that 20,000 year period.”
That rate of temperature change – up and down – makes the present experience look pretty mild.
It is interesting to consider the implications if CAGW is ever proved to be wrong. Some implications are clear – the huge amount of wasted money and the related opportunity costs, reduced global growth, increased poverty and low growth in developing countries, etc. One implication is rarely mentioned but could be the most important. Pretty well the whole scientific establishment backs CAGW and states that the science is done, every serious scientist agrees and that anyone that disagrees is therefore deluded or evil. If this is proved to be wrong (and admitedly this would be difficult to achieve in any way), then it means that the entire scientific establishment is wrong in both the science and in attempting to prevent discussion of the alternatives. What will happen then? Will there be a popular backlash against science? When Galileo was forced to recant his Copernican views in 1633, ‘his trial also signified something else. The weight of papal authority which had brought Galileo to his knees also succeeded in halting the growth of the new science in Italy. It is no accident then, that following Galileo’s death in 1642 that the greatest advances in science would come from outside Italy in countries like England, Holland and Germany.’ http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture11c.html Will science itself move to more enlightened regions of the world, if such exist?
At 6:34 AM on 29 July, Pat Smith had written:
Who gives a damn if there’s “a popular backlash against science” (whatever in hell you conceive “science” to be)?
I suppose it was inevitable that even on this Web site there should be someone who conceives of “science” as some quasimystical monolithic thing-a-ma-jig which can be thrown down in a crash of masonry and timbers by yanking out one or another single element. This betrays a complete misapprehension of what “science” actually is.
Not to mention a confusion of “science” as such with politicized (and therefore corrupted) government-funded “science” bent and twisted and otherwise perverted to serve the purposes of the perfumed and expensively costumed prostitutes who make their careers by grafting their way into public office.
The value of “science” rests in the practitioners’ adherence to scientific method, which is fundamentally a systematic approach to the investigation of phenomena in the physical universe, said approach incorporating error-checking mechanisms to ensure the validity and therefore the trustworthiness of information thereby gained.
What the great anthropogenic global warming fraud (“catastrophic” or not) has proven is that so-called big “science” has been broadly and deeply corrupted by government thuggery, such that not even in the professional societies dedicated to other disciplines can there be any genuine intellectual integrity – not once the high muckety-mucks in those associations have become dependent upon politicians ripping off the taxpayers to fund big “science.”
If there’s to be “a popular backlash” as the result of exposing the CAGW fraud in all its hideous processes and pillaging effects, it will be against big “science” slurping away at the public trough, preying upon the private citizenry in order to product propaganda for the cork-screwing, back-stabbing, dirty dealing politicians who count themselves booted and spurred to ride the productive sector of society like so many long-suffering, beaten animals.
Real “science” – systematic inquiry conducted according to strict adherence to the professional ethical code embodied in scientific method – will continue to produce insights into the universe around us, and in order that the general population of the republic should perceive them as both trustworthy and valuable contributors to the common weal, its professionals will do this work openly and honestly.
Which the Cargo Cult Science charlatans of “Mike’s Hockey Team” have refused to do for the past several decades, and in collusion with whom the big “science” establishment porkers have cohered in cover-up.
Observe that there really is “professional courtesy” among con artists, hustlers, government-grant-seekers, and other flim-flam men.
Stands to reason, doesn’t it?
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Whenever I read about AGW I am reminded of a quote from Sherlock Holmes – “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist the data to suit the theories instead of the theories to suit facts”
Is that not what the warmists have done?
At 6:55 AM on 29 July, Robby B had written:
Not anything as sophisticated as what had appeared in A. Conan Doyle’s detective stories.
Instead, it’s gone pretty much according to the lazy and deceitful high school sophomore’s dictum, which is paraphrased thus:
barry replied to Johnathon at 3:37 am
Nice to see you here Barry, I’m glad to find out that you haven’t fallen off the edge of the planet.
Not my post to answer and my apologies to Johnathon, but, well you know (-:
Mainstream climate science gives a range of estimates for equilibrium climate sensitivity. I wanted to know if you believed the range is too high, or too uncertain.
It’s exaggerated
I have not come across a convincing argument that climate sensitivity is low.
The models use the mainstream values for CO2 sensitivity and the empirical record is at the bottom or below those results. What more do you need? I’ve pointed this out to you many times, and you usually invoke Transient Climate Response (TCR), so answer me this, do the models not include TCR?
I have no emotional or ideological investment in the debate or the outcome. i am only interested in reason and the scientific method … I don’t belong to a tribe in the climate wars.
Come on Barry, as I’ve told you before, you put on airs that you’re above the fray, but in reality you’re in there eye gouging with everyone else.
You spent the rest of your post mostly describing the precautionary principle but didn’t use the term. As you know, I have it on good authority that the boogie man is living in your house and the boogie man is really bad news. What you need to do is burn your house down to get rid of him. I can imagine that upon receiving that news you haven’t run out to get a can of gas and some matches, Why not?
Gareth Phillips says:
July 27, 2013 at 3:35 am
@ur momisugly Blade
……………………….
Gareth responds,……………………………………..
The rhetoric is not only unneeded but downright pathetic. The scientific community is much more apolitical and – unfortunately – amoral than the political and media spheres”
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Note: The “apolitical side” does not include most of the noisy scientists.
First of all, you have your divisions wrong.
It’s not Communism or Fascism, left or right or liberal or conservative…It’s liberty or tyranny.
I would never vote to give government another revenue stream. They piss away too much money already. People are starving because the UN wants people to starve, period!
(least we forget, “food for oil”)
Taxing the people, filtering the money through a corrupt government and giving it to an even more corrupt UN to hand out as they see fit is not an answer I accept. I don’t trust them. Where is the UN on Islam and the Middle East and the murder of Africans?
You seem to believe deeply in the problem of CAGW.
Do you also believe the answers being sought by our leaders?
Do you want to set up carbon trading scheme?
Do you want to put Wall Street and the likes of Al Gore, the UN and the IPCC in charge of everything on earth….literally every breath you take?
That’s the only proposal on the table and it does nothing to curb “warming”.
How do you defend that position because they don’t even try?
Ending cheap energy will kill more people and that’s what is what is being proposed.
Finally, all you have to do is to look at your team member’s positions.
UN, Al Gore, John Holdren, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Barbara Boxer (ma’am), Barrack Obama, Lisa Jackson (Richard Windsor), Van Jones, Michael Moore to name a few of the team members. Plus the alphabet soup of NGOs all wanting control and our money.
Liars, charlatans and thieves.
These people have a solution looking for a problem to attach it to.
Is the globe warming? I don’t know.
Is man the cause? I don’t know.
Warm is good cold is bad and I don’t like their answer to their problem.
cn
“NASA, which I then personally still very much respected; despite the space shuttle evidently being the wrong concept poorly executed, ”
… and that’s where I stopped reading. Do you even know how many succesful missions the Shuttle program achieved? a…nd since you seem to know better than NASA, where is your Shuttle?
I am not a “skeptic” of CAGW or CO2 caused Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change.
I am a confirmed, passionate, highly vocal “denier” of said and have been ever since I started reading about it in online newspapers and other publications like 15+- years ago.
Having earned my Degree in the biological and physical sciences, in the early 1960’s, it was quite obvious to me that all the “claims” being touted by the climate scientists and other proponents of CAGW were not based in/on actual, factual science or mathematics.
On the contrary, said junk science “claims” are based in/on “weazelworded” rhetoric, associations, correlations, estimations, falsifications, guesstimations, half-truths, insinuations, obfuscations, opinionations, projectionations and/or tripe n’ piffle, …… none of which are scientifically factual entities …………… no matter how much one wants to believe that they are. Some of the aforementioned are “tools” that are employed or used by researchers to aid their quest in/of scientific investigations and discoveries, but other than that they have no intrinsic value.
Over the past few years I have generated a “list” of fifteen plus (15+) “disproofs” of CAGW, all of which are based in/on factual science or math and/or logical reasoning and intelligent deductions. And when the individual “parts” are disproven, … then the “whole” is disproven.
CAGW is probably the greatest “flim-flam scam” ever perpetrated upon the public. And I have to give Al Gore credit for that. And I do so because it is my opinion that James Hansen et el of NASA had been inferring all sorts of CAGW claims in order to keep NASA’s Congressional Funding “pipeline” open. But the public was not aware of said CAGW claims ….. until Al Gore found himself without a job ….. and decided to produce his “Inconvenient Truth” documentary based on all those “fuzzy” claims that NASA had been inferring … and which Gore was aware of via his tenure of Congressman, Senator and VP. Now that put James Hansen et el in a bind, … between a rock and a hard place, because NASA couldn’t discredit anything that Al Gore was claiming without discrediting NASA itself. Thus NASA was forced to jump on the “Inconvenient Truth” bandwagon …. and the rest is recent history.
@dbstaley
“The Arctic is going through its natural cycle, ”
ORLY? told by whom? .. evidence to back up your opinion.
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vigilantfish,
Have enjoyed for several years your comments from your perspectives in the history of science.
Based on the lessons learned from the history of science, what is your view of the evolution from now of the problematic science in the ideologically informed CAGW research. Are there any go-no-go checkpoints we should anticipate as it works to save its ideologies from rational critical analysis?
My view of CAGW ideology’s future is the main intellectual architects of the CAGW campaign will morph into lukewarmerism and then they, as lukewarmers, will disintegrate into many separate intellectual microcosms without a central ideological theme to bind them together. Then I would anticipate that the science of climate will be rather balanced and independent scientific views will dominate.
With respect to your resentment about needing to be anonymous on WUWT, I hope you will be fortunate to achieve better circumstances where you won’t feel the need to be anonymous. Good luck to you.
With respect to the discussion of the recent absence Richard Courtney, I was unaware of any circumstances and his absence. I hope he is doing well. In my personal experience, I have found that taking an extended hiatus occasionally from the rigors of skeptic venues does improve the mind’s clarity upon return.
John
I became a sceptic at the very instant that Channel 4’s Jon Snow told me that “the debate is over” in about February 2006 (or maybe 2007).
Because if the debate is over, it’s no longer science. In true science the debate is never over.
And as a piece of collateral damage, I also lost my respect for Jon Snow that day.