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.
A crooks
Thank you.
Akasofu is correct!
No warming for a couple of decades.
@jai mitchell
The fundamental difference between your post and everyone else on here (which BTW I read them all and liked every post) yours is based on other peoples experiment.
Everyone else here done their own personal research and drew their own conclusions.
Which is independent thought. This doesn’t mean you are wrong it is just an observation.
My own opinion when it comes to the truth in science. There is only absolute truth in science which is we can never be absolutely sure we are correct, we can only be absolutely sure we are wrong.
My question for you jai mitchell is how are you so absolutely you are right?
Im an anarchist in Sweden sinse 35 years…I saw the leftwingers flee to the green movement…stop focusing on environmental issues,becoming green entreprenurs and “journalists”..they hung on to the CAGW like bees to honey…all their totalitarian visions could be fulfilled on a global scale…I studie
d humanecolgy in the uni back then..and saw the misallocation of money and scholarships go to the priests of doom…and serious work like the overfishing and malnutrition issues be forgotten…I knew the crowd and was sceptical before i even looked at their “research” then i was sure…
Many talented people engage across the internet and say deeply sensible things. However, others seem more to play a game of sock-it-to-ya, as though deep thought takes too long; or it is not smarty-pants enough.
I recently posted on WUWT with regard to Australia’s average temperature and while writing that essay, I wondered why people have not grouped together shared their knowledge and skills and written and had published, scientific papers in support of their (collective) science-based views. A contact forum would be useful.
I was apprehensive writing my piece, because I was working at the edge of my statistical skill-zone. I was sure it would come unstuck; but it didn’t.
Data is hard to toss; and it is with data (not opinion) that the climate-ship needs to be righted.
There is data everywhere, but what is missing is the networking that would turn a lot of that into unarguable stories that would pass peer review (both internet peer-review as well as the more formidable journal review).
There is a generation of retired scientists and well-educated people in the world; all connected to the internet – where are their voices?
Cheers,
Bill Johnston
At 2:15 AM on 26 July, Bill Johnston had written:
It’s never been the “data” as such (in the words of S.J. Perelman, “There is nothing like a good painstaking survey full of decimal points and guarded generalizations to put a glaze like a Sung vase on your eyeball”), but rather the reliability of the data claimed to support the abstract concept that an investigation is purported to test.
In all sound scientific inquiry, the limits of accuracy (and therefore reliability) of measurement methods are accorded the most accurate evaluations possible, and these “wiggle room” error potentials are kept in mind throughout analysis. They show up in the conclusions, and definitely color all discussion thereof.
Except – and this came inexorably to my own attention sometime in the early 1990s – in the crap getting through peer review among these “climate catastrophe” clowns. What the hell?
My own experience in “the more formidable journal review” process (both as a writer in the submissions process and when the editors diddled me into vetting other guys’ manuscripts) had formally impressed upon me Heinlein’s observation from Time Enough For Love (1973):
And when you got right down to it, the “decimal places” about which these “climatology” clowns had been blathering simply stank on ice.
Would I have submitted such to a medical journal in the expectation of getting it published? Would I have accepted such assertions in a paper under review?
Nope.
So why should I concede reliability or validity to the garbage these jumped-up conjurers were handwaving?
“The claimed certainty itself seemed unscientific.”
Agree with the whole essay, and this in particular. Having hung around a few cults here and there, when people stop thinking for themselves, you can kiss modernity and civilisation and human rights goodbye. You can also kiss the environment goodbye.
I asked a guy, what if the IPCC one day changes its mind? He replied, “then I’ll know they too have been infiltrated by big oil.”
We’re supposed to trust science because it is self-correcting. If people no longer admit change and correction, if all they say is it that it is “settled, end of story”, then there is no way to correct it anymore, and little reason to trust it.
“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”
This was a reasonably interesting essay until it was fatally undermined by the usual McCarthyist screams of ‘commies and reds under the bed” which tends to hint strongly at a political rather than scientific agenda. Mr.Abbott may recall that rather paradoxically the main driver for mainstreaming climate change action in the late 80’s was that leading lefty and Stalinist agitator Margaret Thatcher. How long will it be before commentators can look objectively at the science instead of seeing everything in terms of left or right wing plots?
I’m another Briton with a somewhat similar story except that I never really believed the CAGW theory. Why? Well by the time it became strident I had moved on from mathematics to become a university computer scientist – and therefore have never ever believed that models give you any answer (except the one you want) if you don’t completely understand the problem. Some time in the early 1990s there was a talk from the Met Office at my University in which the speaker said that their climate model had suddenly gone from predicting a 4C temperature rise to about 1C when they added some code to deal with reflections from clouds, thereby making it the least alarmist of the main internationally known models instead of the most alarmist. Just another example of the weakness of the models
My specific route to this blog and the other excellent sceptic blogs came from reading Christopher Booker’s articles in the Sunday Telegraph. Here was someone actually saying what I thought! He included a pointer to WUWT and, as others have said, I could now actually see real figures for myself instead of just hearing/reading all the dire predictions based on those iffy models..
Great read Jonathan Abbott, being originally from the UK too, my experience is very similar albeit a bit of an earlier start for me. I recall the coming ice age scare in the 70’s, which David Attenborough believed in, the BBC science programs discussing the impacts of an ice age, spending extra time in school and public libraries studying physics and planetary science, the many fights with my parents when I wanted to stay up late to watch Patrick Moore’s “The Sky at Night” (The 70’s were tough when there was power worker strikes of course), being called up to the front of class by the teacher to explain to him and the class what I was doodling (Solar flare) during story time. I have, proudly, been a sceptic ever since.
After 208 responses it becomes challenging to offer one more.
WUWT should be thankful to Steve Mosher and Jai Mitchell: they are the only two respondents dissenting with the original post. And excellent counter-fire is immediately made against their interventions.
So the debate is almost not on-going because of lack of participants. And it is the same in pro-CAGW blogs. Singing with the choir is comforting but not too interesting.
If no debate is possible then it has to be a fight, a political one.
On the warmist side it is excellently organized. They sit in scientific committees, in governmental institutions, their NGOs are very well funded and their lobby is highly effective at national and international level. Their fantastic agit-prop success is that almost all political parties in the developed countries are now aligned to carbon reduction policies, energy transition, and the like. To be a contrarian in these matters has become a sure way not to be re-elected. Who would not like to be seen as savior of the Planet?
How does it look like on the other side? Anthony Watts and other bloggers do a tremendous job; some prominent personalities make excellent interventions in parliamentary hearings in the US, in UK, and elsewhere; but the battlefield is [still] occupied by pro-CAGW.
The industrial energy sector has somehow abandoned it because in realistic terms it is possible to adapt company strategies to a game in which energy will become scarcer and therefore more costly; what may be lost in quantity will be gained in profitability. And other sponsors are no that plenty to organize such battle.
Where does it lead us but to hope that the on-going non-warming 15 years period will last some more time to get better and less scary models and scenario? Or to wait that the BRICS countries will take over a leadership that a weakening Occident is voluntarily giving up? They already began at the Copenhagen Conference and avoided foolish agreements.
“Il ne sert à rien d’être optimiste ou pessimiste par rapport à des choses qui sont hors de son propre contrôle, il faut simplement les subir telles qu’elles adviennent.”
I discounted CAGW from the beginning in the early 90’s. I had already gone through the 70’s “Ice Age” scare and nothing happened so I ignored the ‘warming’ scare. When colleagues told me about supposed sea level rise (yes we had that in the early 90’s) I just retorted that I could go to Lapstone beach. Lapstone is about 60 meters above sea level in the Blue mountains west of Sydney. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that 300 (or 400 or 500 or 600) ppm of CO2 can do zip.
After 209 responses it becomes challenging to offer one more.
WUWT should be thankful to Steve Mosher and Jai Mitchell: they are the only two respondents dissenting with the original post. And excellent counter-fire is immediately made against their interventions.
So the debate is almost not on-going because of lack of participants. And it is the same in pro-CAGW blogs. Singing with the choir is comforting but not too interesting.
If no debate is possible then it has to be a fight, a political one.
On the warmist side it is excellently organized. They sit in scientific committees, in governmental institutions, their NGOs are very well funded and their lobby is highly effective at national and international level. Their fantastic agit-prop success is that almost all political parties in the developed countries are now aligned to carbon reduction policies, energy transition, and the like. To be a contrarian in these matters has become a sure way not to be re-elected. Who would not like to be seen as savior of the Planet?
How does it look like on the other side? Anthony Watts and other bloggers do a tremendous job; some prominent personalities make excellent interventions in parliamentary hearings in the US, in UK, and elsewhere; but the battlefield is [still] occupied by pro-CAGW.
The industrial energy sector has somehow abandoned it because in realistic terms it is possible to adapt company strategies to a game in which energy will become scarcer and therefore more costly; what may be lost in quantity will be gained in profitability. And other sponsors are no that plenty to organize such battle.
Where does it lead us but to hope that the on-going non-warming 15 years period will last some more time to get better and less scary models and scenario? Or to wait that the BRICS countries will take over a leadership that a weakening Occident is voluntarily giving up? They already began at the Copenhagen Conference and avoided foolish agreements.
“Il ne sert à rien d’être optimiste ou pessimiste par rapport à des choses qui sont hors de son propre contrôle, il faut simplement les subir telles qu’elles adviennent.”
At 2:53 AM on 26 July, Michel had written:
I suppose that a pathologist should be “thankful” for a good, big ovarian carcinoma brought down fresh and dripping from the operating room when he’s got a couple of medical students he’s instructing.
That’s about the degree of “thankful” with which any honest man should receive warmist excrescences like Steve Mosher and Jai Mitchell.
Consider that there’s a reason why they’re the only two putzes even half-heartedly pushing CAGW propaganda in this thread, and that’s because the Watermelons have learned that this virtual venue is heavily frequented by people who can (and joyously do!) refute their every burble of bullpuckey.
The politically-motivate pseuoscience of the “We’re All Gonna Die!” climate hysterics can’t survive the antiseptic effects of open debate, and therefore they’ve learned (especially in the wake of Climategate) to avoid online fora which their fellow travelers do not control, and in which they can’t count upon the skeptics getting censored into obliteration.
“So the debate is almost not on-going” in this thread because debate is possible in this thread, and therefore the Watermelon (“Green on the outside, but red to the core!”) True Believers in the gore-ible global warming hype know that they can’t get away with their crap here.
Sure, they’re stupid and evil. But by this time, these particular stupid and evil people have at least sufficient animal cunning to appreciate the fact that – as with the vampires of legend – sunlight isn’t their friend.
Good one John, I was a committed warmist until one night at a house party I got into an argument with a skeptic who kept saying “where’s your evidence, just because you assert something doesn’t mean its true”. “Bring me the evidence” he repeated. So in a bit of a strop I went home determined to find the evidence and present it to him and make him look foolish. 3 Months later I met him again and rather sheepishly had to admit that i now agreed with him! 🙂 The defining moment was running across WUWT and Steve McIntyre’s blog. It made me very angry because I looked like a real gullible fool for swallowing what amounted to thin air for so long. So all thanks to Anthony and Steve for getting me on the right path!
Early in live I learned about en read about a lot of stuff. The Romans the medieval warm period and how good it was. I learned of the climate optimum and also about weather and the way it go’s. Reading science books and articles in papers. I am from 1975 so the new ice age went past me like a fast train.
But Piers Corbyn came in the picture and that for me was the first eye opener because I saw the patterns he told there where.
But then the big debate came on tv. Yes we have greenies in Parliament and those goat socks would us tho pay 100 million per year tho prevent the world from warming.
They claimd that 4% CO2 could be held for a rapid warming of the earth and we soon would en be able to stop this from happening. Runaway heating cause by 4% of all CO2.
They also told me and all other Dutch watching that the warming of all CO2 was 0,39C so how much is 4% off that? Not that much.
So I went on searching and finding and finding even more. Also I found there was a lot of fraud. Wikipedia en google did fraud like it is normal. So I went from being a skeptic whit honest doubt to a clear skeptic to learn that there is no 97% consensus but only 97% of all humans are idiots who believe in danger’s lies because off the fact that they are to stupid to reckon what wrong and good. Most of it is to be found in the lower greats of school.
Many things convinced me that climate science was on dodgy ground, but these are the main ones…
CAGW theory failed to consider negative climate response properly.
Using linear statistics on a complex climate system driven by spatio-temporal chaos is idiotic.
None of the computer models (GCMs) produce scenarios which match reality – few even produce reasonable hind-casts.
The rest of the planets in the solar system have heated over the past few decades faster than Earth has. Could the recent solar grand maximum have something to do with this?
Climategate 1 and 2 clearly illustrated the poor quality of climate data, methodology and Earth energy budget. It also showed how political climatology has become.
I have a similar journey likeJonathan Abbott
I probably typify the reaction of a person with a graduate level physics background and a general interest in science developments.
I had only a superficial interest in Climate Science pre-climategate.
My friends, all from a varied scientific background would occasionally discuss ‘global warming’ .
My attitude then would then have been, let the Climate Scientists get on with it.
The media says 97% of all scientists agree with the IPCC and the science is settled.
I trusted that all scientists worked within the guidelines of the scientific method as outlined by Karl Popper.
Climategate showed that my previous views were gullible.
The subsequent enquiries into Climategate were blatant establishment cover ups.
For instance Lord Oxburgh with extensive financial interests in renewable energy was in charge of one.
Like putting the chairman of Imperial Tobacco in charge of a committee to look into the harmful effects of smoking!
What was more disturbing was the attitude of most Climate Scientists to the shocking revelations.
Complacency and defending wrongdoing instead of ruthlessly rooting out those who had departed from the scientific method.
So I decided as a citizen with a science background to take more of an interest
A scare story of climate would get more funding and it’s all in a good cause seemed to be the attitude.
Bertolt Brecht in his play ‘Galileo’ proposed that scientists should have a form of ‘Hippocratic Oath’ which would prohibit such behavior.
Politically I am of the left and I notice the irony of poor people paying for increased fuel and transport costs to combat so called ‘global warming’
Many thousands of old people in Britain die from hypothermia as a direct result of what may turn out to be climate alarmism.
Many thanks and mirrors my route into being a skeptic.
Your parallel with continental drift/plate tectonics is true. As a young teenager I read Arthur Holmes’ book Principals of Physical Geology which had a chapter on continental drift (1958ish). Looking at a map of the earth it is obvious, though the mechanism is not that came later, but there were still scientists at the time threatening believers with near death.
Nothing changes.
Great essay Mr Abbott. Much of your experience mirrors my own. I suspect there are many millions out there who would feel the same. It’s the breach of faith and abuse of privilege that really riles the most isn’t it?.
Gareth Phillips says: July 26, 2013 at 2:34 am
Gareth, don’t blame it all on Maggie Thatcher.
Here is a history of the rise of eco-extremism, written in 1994 by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth. The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tradgedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are critisized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is adsurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are sucessful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
My story is very similar to many of you. As an engineer I am naturally scientifically conservative as my backside in on the line if I make some proclamation, but I considered myself kinda green (Still am) and generally sided with the view that it couldn’t hurt to plant some trees to sop up some excess CO2. (This was the days of offset programs) Then came the attempts to set up an ETS. Well this was serious, this was going to hurt so I thought to my self, I’m an Engineer I know math I can do some checks of my own. I did some research and unearthed some articles by Professor Carter and others showing 1. The State of saturation of CO2 and got some info on the warming since the Little Ice Age. Armed with a little data I set up two little math experiments.
Given the saturation level of C02 what would be the maximum warming possible for a 100% CO2 Atmosphere (this is a “Boundary Test”) – result 5.2 Degrees C – Australian government Forecast for this situation 70 deg C = Implausible EPIC FAIL.
If the warming for 100PPM Rise from the little ice age to 380PPM was 0.7 degrees what would the likely rise for the next 100PPM be if all warming from the little ice age was due to CO2. (That’s easy, log law means it must be < 0.7 deg) Australia government says 6 deg for a doubling, Now 280PPM to 380PPM was about a third of a doubling, but of course because its a log most of that occurs up front, I didn't calculate it but I originally just used a linear approximation. I could say accurately that the government was suggesting that more than a third of the 6 degrees, That is more than 2 Deg would occur for the next 100PPM per million. This was clearly ABSURD, the log law meant that the next 100PPM MUST BE STRICTLY LESS THAN THE PREVIOUS 100PPM.
A Sceptic was born!.
Neither of these tests has even been successfully refuted by ANYONE it remains for me a truism. Climate sensitivity for 280PPM to 380PPM was ln (1+100/280) x C = 0.7) C=2.27 So what is ln(2) x 2.27 =1.58. (IF I recaclulate for today (400PPM) C is actually lower at 1.96 so the demonstrated climate sensitivity from the Little ice age to 2013 is ln (2) * 1.96 = 1.36 degrees per doubling
So Observation tells us CO2 Sensitivity from the little ice age to now must be < 1.36 to 1.58 and there is a ceiling on warming of something less than 5.3 Degrees
I don't believe for a single minute this is catastrophic.
I continue to believe that until someone proves to me mathematically otherwise
Gareth Phillips makes an interesting and fair point. In the context of the essay I didn’t make my position fully clear. What concerned me was the politicisation of the science. If the proponents of CAGW had been fascists and other right wing groups I would have been just as suspicious, and my language towards them would have been far more caustic than I used above. The corruption of science under fascism in the 30s and 40s was far more sinister than anything happening today.
The important point is that once my suspicions were aroused, it was still the science that decided me one way or the other, not the mouthpieces involved.
I’d like to put a good word in for John Brignell and his Number Watch site (www.numberwatch.co.uk) which he has been running for some 13 years now. It sure got me started on the road to AGW skepticism. The late great Michael Chrichton, too.
I too am one of those who when at school was told that the Earth was cooling and that we might be heading for an ice age. I was therefore surprised that a few years later, global warming was being promoted and that it was all manmade and would be catastrophic. I was sceptical of this for 4 main reasons.
First, there is no way that we would be here on planet Earth some 4.5 billion years after its creation given the hell fire and brimstone that it has gone through unless the planet was very resilient and feedbacks were negative. The processes at work would always strive to find some habitable equilibrium and that is why the planet fluctuates between glacial and inter-glacial periods but is neither entirely covered in ice or ice free (at least not once the continents began to split).
Second, we underestimate how big the Earth is and how small we actually are. One only has to compare ourseelfs with volcanoes to see what a pin prick we are. Short of a full blown nuclear holocaust life on Earth as we know it cannot be materially influenced by our activities.
Third, man only contributes a miniscule quantity of global CO2 emissions. heck even termites produce about 10 times as much GHGs as do man.
Fourth, if DWLWIR was capable of performing sensible work, there would be much scientific research in developing an energy system exploiting this source of energy. We would not be concentrating on solar but would instead be concentrating on extracting the energy in DWLWIR which is a 24/7 source of energy come wind, rain or shine. I could not find that there was any on going research into expoloiting this energy source and that suggested to me that no real physist considered that it was a source of energy capable of performing sensible work.
Fifth, history and nature confirms that warm is good and cold is bad. Biodieversity is maximised in warm wet areas and is at its least in cold arid areas. The history of civilisation can be traced around the globe largely in relation to temperature. Warmer climates have always been more advanced (earlier bronze age, iron age etc), and civilisation such as the Egyptians, Minoans, Greek, romans etc follow a similar warm pattern. Here in the UK we were erecting Stonehenge at atime when the egyptians were building the Pyramids and wonderful temples. Even today we would struggle to build a large structure to the precision of the Great Pyramid. As I saw it there was nothing to fear about a warmer world. heck it would be a god send for food production and general well being (for the main part in developed nations people have a longer life expectancy and are older beforfe they succumb to serious illness the warmer the country).
Of course there were many other reasons, but cAGW sounded so obviously over hyped, and even AGW sounded rather unlikely. The more research I carry out and the more knoweldge I have of the subject the weaker and more tenuous it becomes.
Please explain this and this. Also note that, so far, this summer the Arctic “Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel, plotted with daily climate values calculated from the period 1958-2002” is the coldest since 1958 according to DMI.
It seems to me that over the last few years there has been a concerted attempt to get rid of the Holocene Climate Optimum and the Roman Warm Period. This can only be done through brazen dishonesty. They have tried it with the Medieval Warm Period. When these dishonest folks are done they will try it with the Eemian.
jai, you might be seeing natural climate cycles and not man-made co2 warming of air temperature in the Arctic – which is not evident. I have already shown you that your runaway amplification in the Arctic is crap.
Born in 1947 I remember the “Coming Ice-Age” and the “Nuclear Winter” hype in the 1960s and 1970s and I was scared! Then they changed their minds to anthropogenic global warming and I naively believed what I read in the papers. I was scared all over again! Then in March 2007 I saw The Great Global Warming Swindle and seeing those sane and sensible men expounding the other point of view piqued my curiosity in a big way and I started to read the science they were talking about on-line. I think Zbigniew Jaworowski was one of the first I remember looking at. Then John Daly. Then Climate Audit and Niels Axel Morner, then eventually I found WUWT. I was appalled at the level of abuse hurled at Martin Durkin and his interviewees and of the general hyper-hostility towards to sceptics which is absolutely weird and “unprecedented” when you come to think about it!
I have never stopped since 2007 reading about the climate, usually for several hours every day. Some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t! It is the most fascinating puzzle that anyone could hope to unravel and I am glad that I am beginning to see the false hype wither away under the glare of observational evidence. I have a degree in sociology from LSE 1972 and by far the most important knowledge I acquired during my studies there was of statistics and sampling – invaluable when critiquing the crazy, ever changing samples and revisions of surface station temperature we are expected to swallow. At LSE I also learned something of the highly politicised nature of what some claim to be social “science” and how the temptations to “fix” the data are just too tempting for some!
I know the difference between grass and concrete when the sun is beating down on it. I have stood next to an air conditioning outlet. I know it gets cooler FAST when a cloud passes in front of the sun. I have plenty common sense and think I am a good judge of the quality of arguments and of character. All this has made me quite a vocal denier. I have no problem being called a denier. Every sane person is obligated to deny arrant nonsense.
As a good liberal, who believes government does have a role in people’s lives and increase the quality of life for everyone I was brought to global warming as part of that agenda. I read the news stories and believed, and argued that skeptics were neanderthals. Then I read the IPCC 4. As a Ph.D. I found the text to be unscientific, I found the references to be biased, I looked at the peer reviewed articles and found the same. I then did some of my own research and found that in order for the models to work the effect of the sun had to be minimized. I found sea levels were not rising (or actually are at the imperceptible rate of 3.2 mm/yr), I found Antarctic sea ice at record highs, I found the number one global warming pusher in charge of our national temperature record. How could I as a scientist support this? I now follow sea ice and the sun daily, and find that we are more likely to be in a dropping temp scenario than a rising one. It truly upsets when any reputable news organization starts a story with an assumption that global warming is real and then states some outcome, instead of studying if it is real first.
I am a well informed skeptic, I will never buy the global warming meme until the data supports it and the models actually predict something correctly. You shouldn’t either.
At 4:57 AM on 26 July, Brad had written:
But wait, there’s more!
If these “Liberal” liars were diddling you with “global warming as part of [their] agenda,” what gives you to think about your religious belief “As a good liberal” with regard to government thuggery having a proper “role in people’s lives” and your acceptance of the leftie-luzer blather about how their power-grasping normative numb-nuttery is supposed to “increase the quality of life for everyone”?
Falsus in unum, doc, falsus in omnibus.