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.
dbstealey says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:53 pm
I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate in a physical chemistry lab that adding CO2 to a volume of air will make that volume of air warmer. Solely by the addition of the CO2 and no other manipulation.
Things are really bad today compared to the past. We are doomed.
dbstealey says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Thanks, it’s good of you to take Jai Mitchell’s inane assertions down.
A very interesting article and succeeding comments by readers, many of whose stories have much in common. I find it quite encouraging, and I’m sure there are many more out there.
rtj1211 says:
July 25, 2013 at 4:03 pm
“Actually, CAGW is still in the throes of the metaphorical menopause/male midlife crisis. I think we all know that both males and females often go off on a last intense search to consummate their rapidly ticking fertility clock. In CAGW terms, this equates to a yet more aggressive, yet more strident set of articles, propaganda pieces and new distortions which have to be dissected and unpicked by the rationalists. I don’t see the fanatics backing off until at least 2015.”
His analogy is both witty and apt, and I think his 2015 prediction may be closer than one I proposed a year ago – I said to some pro-AGW friends it would be 2017. I still have no empirical data for that, so it’s just an opinion. But I have noticed the rhetoric becoming more strident, or sometimes plaintive, and increasingly moralistic.
Now a brief anecdote: I recently attended two book launches at the same bookshop in Canberra (that little town that hosts our Federal Parliament in Australia). The first was the launch of “Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic” by Anna Rose, her account of our ABC’s documentary of a global journey by herself and a former federal Finance Minister and noted sceptic (Nick Minchin). The documentary was titled “I can change your mind about climate change”. At that launch, I asked Anna whether she and Nick had determined in advance what credible information each would need in order to accept the other’s position. She replied that they had not defined any such criteria. I then asked what would be necessary for her to change her own views; she replied that were the mainstream scientific community to change its stance, she would accept that opposite position. In other words, she relies upon authority, rather than examining the arguments on each side. Those attending the book launch ranged in age from the younger university student age, to the retiree.
Last night I attended the launch of “Taxing Air” by Professor Bob Carter et al. This book contains much information that as a layman I find very useful. So does Professor Tony Eggleton’s “A Short Introduction to Climate Change”. However, while the latter provides a lot of useful basic climate-related science, well-written and well-presented, in presenting the orthodox view it fails to examine that view critically. It portrays a ready acceptance of the standard IPCC view. Carter’s book by contrast is carefully analytical, and equally well-written. It can be understood by the layman, and challenged or extended by scientists of many different fields. Both books would be of value to any readers who are seeking to further their knowledge about climate, and especially to those who want to make up their own mind about “climate change” (which has become a euphemism for the sometimes embarrassing acronym CAGW).
A small side note: there seemed to be two or three times as many attending Carter’s launch compared to Rose’s, despite our being in the middle of our winter. Also, most of them seemed to be of retiree age, and certainly vigorous. Do we become more sceptical as we get older, or is it just that we now carry so many scars?
D. B. Stealey (a.k.a. Smokey) — I wanted to say this, but, thought, “Oh, brother, so far down in this thread, he’ll never see it… .” And there you are! (or were)
WAY TO GO refuting Jai M. (think mo-der-ation kicks in if you use his full name)! I didn’t even READ what he wrote, just muttered, “Oh, brother, I’m NOT going to read THIS,” and scrolled by. That you took the time and did such a FINE job are so wonderful! You must be a really cool dad, the dad that poor ol’ Jai probably never had may be the sad truth.
Even if J doesn’t read a word, what you wrote WILL help many silent WUWT readers.
And, BTW, your re-posting of graphs or scientific truth is NEVER boring to me. Yes, I realize you were concerned (on another thread recently) about the scientists being bored, but they are likely just happy that you spared them having to make the effort to make the Truth in Science case yet again. It NEEDS to be made over and over, both for non-scientists like I who want to learn and remember all the tons of great information on this site AND for new readers.
****************
BLADE! WAY-TO-GO with all that super-fantastic citing of evidence. BTW, I may be mis-remembering, but, I believe the Climategate e mails were first seen by a mo-der-ator (whom I shall refrain from naming in case he would prefer to just remain in the background, now — his name is known, here, though), then, upon that mod’s request, Mr. Mosher read them. I don’t know if he read them all. From what he said above, he has read parts I and II and is working on III.
Why does A-th-y not give more access to them? I have no idea why, but, given A-th-y’s impeccable character, I’m going to assume it is for a very good reason. WISH HE WOULD DROP A CLUE AS TO WHY, though!
And WAY TO GO, JIMBO!! (5:30PM)
Some observations and questions.
Engineers can’t afford to take other people’s word for it, cut corners or massage the data. Otherwise buildings, bridges and entire cities would collapse. Where’s the accountability in climate science?
Like medicine, there are hundreds of branches of science each with different training requirements and areas of expertise but global warming proponents speak as if there is only one. Would you trust a dermatologist to remove your brain tumour? So why trust an anthropologist to interpret climate data?
As a qualified researcher myself. with experience in database management, social impact assessment and strategic planning I am appalled by the deliberate manipulation and interpretation of climate data to support the warmist cause.I would love to see a panel of mathematicians and statisticians publicly analyse and critique the methodology used by the various climate bodies and spokesmen.Perhaps a debate between two of the top universities with a major prize?
PS I am female and not a rich right winger or professional suit wearer.
Did someone mention engineers?
My enlightenment came from a different angle. I was responsible for environmental compliance for a chemical plant. An odious task, I hated my job, but I was well paid for my pain. Some time around 2000, EPA began to ask for total CO2 emissions in addition to the myriad other chemicals we put out. I wondered what they were up to. CO2 was not a pollutant, and as an engineer I knew that cutting it much would be devastating economically and would necessitate drastic changes in the way we lived our lives. So, I began looking into it and found they were concerned about warming, but a little more investigation indicated their claims were without basis. A letter to EPA asking for justification for the extra paperwork was answered with a list of consequences of CO2 emissions, all of which were negative of course. We were about to drown as we roasted in a hurricane in the middle of a flood of drought. I realized they had a hidden agenda.
I wish I still had the letter (email actually), but I have retired and no longer have access.
Thanks for this article Jonathon Abbott.
My personal journey to skepticsm of what I call ”Herd-think” started in my first year at school.
My best friend then was the local minister’s son. He and his elder brother were often bullied for no reason other than what their Dad was. The day the whole school, of mixed classes of around 40 pupils bullied my friend and his brother I was given a choice by one pupil- join in or face being whacked.
I went and stood with my friend. We got whacked. Ouch.
Since then the choice of sticking with the herd or doing what is right has been easy.
Growing up, my ‘radar’ alerted me to question the ”Herd-think” – today read 97%- and stand apart: if the herd is right they don’t need me. If the herd is wrong, I don’t need them.
The 97% have been so often wrong on critical issues; Ice Age in the 70’s perpetuated by a media that climbed aboard a few scientific reports. WMD in Second Gulf War.
I walked out of corporate management 34 years ago and started my own small business and this individualism has been my providor.
When a line manager swore offensively at a young girl who reported to me and then physically threatened me for asking him to apologise, I asked our manager to take action against the other line manager.
No action was taken. Next day I was called into the General Manager’s office and he told me it was my fault for allowing myself to be in that situation!
Not my way to walk away from a bully!
With no back up, I was unable to resolve the situation so I handed in my resignation.
After word got around, the girl concerned walked up and thanked me, sorry to see me leaving. My reward, never forotten.
So that’s why I am forever skeptical when the herd thinks a certain way, because so often the core leaders may be wrong, but others unable or too afraid to speak up.
Interest in the climate issues started in 2006 over a conversation in Shimla with an Indian gentleman who was born in a wee village in India but raised in England. He told me of his visit back to his ancestral village and that people there were so poor they used to live on one small meal of rice and dahl a day. But now cannot afford dahl. He went on to talk about how rice prices had climbed.
I went home and began Googling and found, as we well know, the effect the biofuel targets had of diverting food to fuel in our rich nations while world grain prices zoomed and food riots broke out. Very little of those riots, and the root cause, was aired over the media.
I began to question why the media were reporting only the positive spin on renewables.
I investigated biofuels from palm oil, deforestation, habitat loss, species decimation, etc
Much of this goes unreported in main media. Or it will be reported as caused by the demand for palm oil for food, with very little mention of EU biofuel programs.
The negative consequences are not linked to the renewables programs. Environmentalis scream about its use in food, but seem to overlook its use in renewables.
That’s just one example of environmentalists overlooking the downsides of their push to save the planet.
These days I promote the principle that because governments and environmentalists are so focussed upon saving the planet, they are ignoring the more immediate issues around us now that we can address if only policy, funding, and political was so re-directed.
It’s not a popular stance with my environmentalist friends and groups. One should not go against the popular ‘consensus’ of saving the planet by reminding them that species need saving now, and no more wind turbines please!
I am also an ‘engineer’, but in quite a different field: uncertified, BTW.
Custom shoemaking: designing and building footwear that is functional, durable comfortable and good looking requires a mind that can look forward and backwards through the complete process, evaluate various factors of materials and their characteristics and balance off often conflicting factors to arrive at the optimum of all to achieve the end goal. Each being a one-off requires flexibility of thought, ability to accept new factors and discard old beliefs easily.
This is quite a different attitude, or ability of mind, than the mainstream herd-thinker which is often very narrow in field and focussed on a a pre-conceived ideal.
Most skeptics I talk with seem to have a similar ability to step outside mainstream thought and think for themselves.
Shano says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:02 pm
Re. Nobel Prize:
Regrettably, there’s no Nobel for Earth Science or even Life Science, although “Physiology or Medicine” & Chemistry sometimes sneak some biologists in, if not geologists or atmospheric or oceanic scientists.
So if Steve McIntyre & Anthony Watts, et al. are ever to be awarded a Nobel & the respect they deserve (although Nobels have surely been devalued of late), it will have to be for Peace (most devalued of all). How can a Mann-atee man like Prince Albert win a prize for peace when he wants to subject the wretched of the earth to continuing abject poverty, suffering & early death, in the name of global control by fat bureaucrats & corrupt politicians?
Three laureates are allowed per prize, so I nominate Watts & his volunteer team for trying to gather good climate observations & improve the quality of the surface temperature data set, & McIntyre & his colleagues for trying properly to analyze the data (if such it be) & “analysis” thereof. Solid science needs both valid observations & sound analysis thereof.
I’m open to suggestions for the third co-recipient.
PS: It was too late to comment on an earlier post by my esteemed EO compatriot Pamela Gray, who urged that the heirs of great X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin be awarded her deserved share of Watson, Crick & Wilkin’s 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the structure of the DNA molecule. While Dr. Franklin certainly did suffer from sexism during her life & after it, the fact is that she had tragically died aged only 37 in 1958. Nobel rules don’t allow posthumous awards, so Wilkins had to be her in effect stand-in. Had she survived & been denied, then the case for Nobel sexism would have been made.
When I first heard about global warming in the early 1990s, I thought, “Wow. Humans can control the climate.” But after doing some simple calculations, I grew skeptical. I grew more skeptical seeing all the papers that tried to calculate the CO2-free temperature of the earth using the Steffan-Boltzmann equation, using that very rounded off (and very wrong) number as a basis of saying, “this is how much CO2 has warmed the earth.” Then, when I first started seeing papers that started, correctly, with the Beers-Lambert equation, they would stop short of calculating the direct warming effect of CO2 changes, and instead, lump the direct effect with all the assumed feedbacks, to give an empirically derived number. (someone needs to take HITRAN data and develop a model to only give the direct effect of doubling CO2, which will be embarrassingly small) Then I’d observe “adjustment” after “adjustment” and “homogenization technique” after “homogenization technique” that magically corrected any apparent cooling or non-warming trend, shortly after it came into focus. I noticed the temperatures from the late 1800s and early 1900s for my hometown changed often, and were made lower and lower with various progressive algorithms (up to 1 and 2C lower), thereby building in a warming trend and making it so that annual averages for new years were likely to be in the top X warmest years.
Then I look at the money and politics and realize the real alarm is there.
I never had to make a journey – I was already there . Somehow I always knew it was a complete load of bollocks.
Similar for me, although I had no real scientific training in the matter, although I have a scientific education. I am certainly pretty good at logical deduction (I have to be for my job).
I believed it, as most do (or at least did). A good friend called BS on it all, and I argued. He agreed he had no evidence, but just a gut feel. He asked me to get some evidence to convince him, and I did.
That’s when the trouble started…..
All the evidence is slightly flaky. Too much hand-waving. Then I looked at the counter-evidence, and realized the CAGW argument was less than robust than the arguments against.
I looked more. Oh dear! What a mess it really was.
Then ClimateGate 1.0 came about, and I was convinced. There were actually a very small number of people shamelessly manipulating the media, the peer-review process, and most of all, the data, to make us believe it was all real. That, above all, convinced me it was not.
They are still doing it.
BTW, regarding my personal journey, the problem is that I now reject almost all environmental organizations. I am sure I am not alone. The damage this has done to real environmentalism is incalculable and catastrophic.
My story starts growing up in the 1960’s in Green Bay Wisconsin. In the 60’s and 70’s pollution was a huge problem. Because of heavy industry the Fox River and adjoining bay of Green Bay was a sewer.
While a student at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay in 1980’s I was introduced to a wealth redistribution scheme that was called “Pollution Credits”. Pollution credits were a plan to punish wealthy industrialized countries by forcing them to pay poor countries for the right to pollute.
Upon graduation I watched through the 80’s and 90’s as technology advances resulted in drastic improvement in the local environment. In the 90’s people actually returned to fishing in the Fox River. You could easily see the vast improvement in terms of the environment.
In 1999 I heard the term “Carbon Credits” and realized it was simply an effort to recycle the old “Pollution Credits” wealth redistribution scheme. Advances in technology had virtually made pollution credits obsolete and what do you know, all of a sudden we have this shinny new crisis to take its place. That seemed just a little too convenient and a CAGW skeptic was born.
Power Grab says: July 25, 2013 at 3:56 pm
” … who has equipment to test the amount of carbon dioxide their activities generate? ”
I do. (If I can, then anyone can.) Indoors and outdoors. Several items. The first, non-data logging, was originally obtained for monitoring indoor air quality, useful in confined construction workplaces, especially where people are using gas torches for capillary joints in copper pipe. Set to scream at 2000pmm, it was very useful for giving ’em a wake-up call 🙂
I also have USB data logging devices that can be used indoors and (with a form of Stevenson screen) outdoors. I have been able to quantify the diurnal increase in CO2 levels after sunset due to photosynthesis shutting down, and detected what I believe to be occasional out-gassing spikes coming off the South Pacific Ocean on summer afternoons. Also detected up-wind bushfires and controlled burn-offs. The outdoor device will pick up me passing underneath it with a petrol lawnmower, and has picked up a large diesel engine idling 10m away.
These devices are now mandatory in many jurisdictions where there is risk, eg cold rooms, storage silos etc. They are ubiquitous and cheap.
Sources? http://www.co2meter.com or google it.
Maybe $150? Can be cheaper in quantity from suppliers such as CO2meter, manufacturers such as Tongddy, much cheaper if you can handle the circuitry and interface and just buy the modules.
Not yet available at weathershop.com ??
I too was educated in the old english system, before the socialists destroyed it and now I know why! we will have book burning next! It was history that clued me in, the Viking loss of Greenland to ice, and the Romans growing vines and making wine by Hadrians wall. This told me it was a lot warmer back in those two times! Then there was the great Thames ice fairs, I grew up in london near the Thames, in 63 the edges bareley froze (unlike me on my bike!) and I can rationalise that to go from the Viking freeze to the summer of 76 it had to be warming and as this started in pre industrial times my BS detector went fsd! then the court case in the UK about mr sleazey Gores work of fiction, if the judicial lap dogs found fault to the extent that by law if shown in schools a disclaimer had to be shown first saying it is scientifically incorrect then to me the whole thing was a crock! I would like to thank Mr Watts and all the enquiring minds that have investigated and exposed this shamefull scam, we owe you guys a huge debt!
I would be cautious about mentioning class warfare agitators and the Great Global Warming Swindle. In at least one version of the Great Global Warming Swindle, I saw a mention of human contribution of CO2 understated by stating only the carbon tonnage (which is 12 grams per mole), while atmospheric CO2 gain was stated in CO2 tonnage (at 44 grams per mole.) Also, they made absolutely untrue claims about how much CO2 volcanoes produce.
And they make it sound like the intermittently sourced CO2 from the biosphere and hydrosphere make these huge net sources. However, the biosphere (including deforestation, biomass burning, and other land use changes) is less of a *net* source than fossil fuel burning, often a net sink. And the oceans are definitely a major net sink. A “carbon budget” analysis is here (at 12 grams per mole):
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
As for mentioning class warfare agitators: That can push a lot of sore spots. In USA, income disparity and wealth disparity have been increasing. The “job creator class” has gained lots of wealth and has record amounts of it lately, but has been slow to create jobs.
Other than the above, I largely agree with Jonathan Abbott. I am a “lukewarmer”. My main basis: The surface temperature anomaly index that correlates best with the UAH and RSS satellite-based indices of the lower troposphere is HadCRUT3. HadCRUT3 has a noticeable periodic component that explains about 40% of the warming from the early 1970s to its 2004-2005 peak (in its smoothed version). Smoothed HadCRUT3 has cooled since 2005.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
Also, about 15-20% of the portion of the warming caused by manmade increase of greenhouse gases was from ones other than CO2, whose increase was largely stalled in the 1990s. And, HadCRUT3 and all other surface indices seem to me to have incomplete correction for growth of urban heat island effects. Overall, I seem to think that AGW is for real, but the temperature rise this century will be about 40% of that claimed by proponents of the existence of CAGW.
JerOme wrote;
“BTW, regarding my personal journey, the problem is that I now reject almost all environmental organizations. I am sure I am not alone. The damage this has done to real environmentalism is incalculable and catastrophic.”
Me too, I supported WWF, the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy for several decades, In fact, My Beautiful Wife and I Honeymooned on a fantastic WWF sponsored cruise to the Galapagos Islands. Quite the lifetime experience.
Once they joined the the CAGW bandwagon I dropped my support. I have told them in person on several occasions when they called asking for more money that “NO WAY IN H—L” would I give my dollars to a group that peddled this BS. Sad really, I would be glad to support a non-profit group that actually practices good science, but, on the other hand it means more money for me and mine to enjoy.
Cheers, Kevin.
I don’t doubt that others have sickened of my own story, but I first got wind of this preposterous bogosity by way of a letter from Prof. (Emeritus) Petr Beckmann back in 1981, when he sent along information that’d been pushed to him by a few of his other regular correspondents.
It regarded putatively “scientific” publications in the peer-reviewed literature claiming that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) increases as the result of purposeful petrochemicals fuels combustion had had a “greenhouse gas” effect upon global surface temperatures and If This Goes On we were going to face a variety of climate-related catastrophes in the near future.
Dr. Beckmann had long been a vociferous advocate of nuclear fission as the best possible option – wisest, safest, and best – for the provision of the electrical power needed by increasingly metropolitan industrialized civilization. He’d published a superb popular book on the subject, The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (1976), and his other correspondents had presumed that he’d be delighted to learn about another potential source of “ammunition” to use against the coal cycle, which Prof. Beckmann despised as dangerous to human life from beginning to end.
But Dr. Beckmann thought that the papers with which he’d been copied reeked of error at the very least, and deliberate mendacity could not be ruled out. He asked me to run an eye over them, and even though I’m just a physician (and not a “real” scientist) I obliged him.
My response went something like “I think they’re exaggerating the greenhouse gas effects of CO2 by at least three orders of magnitude. Is anybody taking this seriously?”
The rest has been something that would’ve been too wild a fraud for depiction in a movie like The Flim-Flam Man (1967).
And decidedly un-funny.
I was looking around for a Josh cartoon to dedicate to the weepy and hysterical Jai Mitchell.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/josh_biggs_fibber.jpg
As to my own story, I never bought into the CAGW scam. Propaganda like “the debate is over” just made me dig in my heels more.
For all the other Engineers and those admire Engineering, I posted a copy of Henry Lawson’s “Australian Engineers” on my blog, to put a perspective on the “achievements” being celebrated at the centenary of my “alma mater”. My favourite stanza is:
It identifies the essence of good Engineering.
The poem is far from politically correct; but when the poem was composed, most people had better things to do than to find offence.
It was a quote from Bill Nye the Science Guy that piqued my interest. He graduated from Cornell 4 or 5 years after me (him Mechanical Engineering I think, me Electrical, minor Computer Science.)
I hadn’t really given global warming much thought until I heard a quote that I recall as being from Bill Nye that “global warming” doesn’t sound so terrible, but it should really be described as “global cooking”. Well, that got my attention, even if it was someone other than Bill that I heard if from. I mentioned my concern to my family, but my mother said straight out “I don’t believe any of it. Its not hotter now than when I grew up” meaning the 1930’s, and I thought “well that’s odd if true”. I decided to research it, and I promised my Mom I’d let her know what I found. If true, it was certainly a terribly complex and costly problem to overcome.
I started slowly, reading all the mass-media stuff, as “global warming” items now caught my eye as they hadn’t before. The more I read, the more I got concerned. I was stunned by comparisons of present warming to the past and projections of startling temps to come already in the pipeline; the hockey stick.
One weekend I started googling and reading everything I could trying to understand the gory details of this devilish problem – and late at night stumbled upon Steve McIntyre’s earliest blogs. I was stunned. Authoritative papers with no data provided? Methods that would have flunked freshman lab courses? I think I read for about 30 hours straight, couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop all week either. But most of all, Steve’s stuff rang true to my engineering mind. I couldn’t fathom the sloppiness of design, data collection, processing/statistics/math, and conclusions in what turns out to be pivotal/foundational papers of the AGW argument. And why did so much of the argument not cross check well to the real world? Treelines in the arctic, Otzi the iceman, Vikings in Greenland – Earth has been warmer and had much higher levels of CO2 with mostly better conditions for life, and never a tipping point to runaway warming or a Fireball Earth.
AGW got its own Firefox Bookmarks folder. After Steve Mc I found Anthony and Lucia (and Real Climate and others on both sides). I went from seriously doubting a solution existed to maintain our modern western life and we were to be toast or cavemen again (or both), to skeptical of nearly all alarmist disaster scenarios. And the “consensus” and “the science is settled” arguments infuriate me.
That said I’m all for eliminating real pollution where possible, improving energy efficiency and embracing new technologies. But with proper science, engineering, and market economics, not by the playbook of the AGW political agenda.
ANTHONY ( mods, please be sure Anthony sees this). You MUST be sure this post will be a sticky post for days. Please. I have never asked you for a boon as a long time reader and commenter. I am asking NOW. YOU must make this a sticky post, period.
For Mr Abbott: Your children are lucky you are their father. I suspect that simple statement will mean more to you than any flowery praise I can write.
REPLY: I’ll give it some thought, Anthony