![climate-reality-leadership-corps-190x240[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/climate-reality-leadership-corps-190x2401.jpg?quality=83)
A person who is actually a climate skeptic (and WUWT regular) applied for and was granted a training slot in Chicago this week. http://climaterealityproject.org/leadership-corps/ and has graduated as one of the 1500 people that attended the event.
For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal the person’s name, but I can reveal the communication I received last night.
The ‘mole’ writes:
I’m now a card-carrying, official Gore-bot.
(I took copious notes)
a) This was a super-liberal “kum-bay-ya” crowd as I predicted. I kept many of my opinions to myself. The event truly did have a “religious cult programming” feel to it, similar to an Amway meeting I attended years ago – carefully timed applause, audience call & response etc. Very bizarre.
b) Al Gore himself went through the entire slide show that we are supposed to use as his “Climate Leaders.” Quite honestly, there is nothing new here, EXCEPT that there is no trace of the “hockey stick” graph that was so central to “An Inconvenient Truth”!! Amazing, considering how central that was to their arguments!
c) Instead, Al lumps data together year-by-year or decade-by-decade to show an ever increasing rise in temps. He poo-pooed measurement inaccuracies, specifically mentioning UHI effects and saying that the scientists determined these were insignificant.
d) A couple graphs stood out – one showed the documented rise in temperature PRECEDES the rise in CO2 which he brushed aside as “typical variation.” The only hockey stick was one that projected atmospheric CO2 over time, jumping up drastically in coming years. I didn’t have time to write units down, but it was a big jump. It could be a realistic rise with China & India bringing new coal plants online, I’d have to check any citations.
e) Al’s presentation was heavy on his new concept of “dirty weather,” see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/24-hours-of-reality-dirty-weather_n_2130344.html
To summarize, I didn’t see anything new or ground-breaking in this mess. Most slides were BS, typical “this is due to climate, not weather” type stuff we kick around on WUWT all the time. Hurricane Sandy, torrential rains in Pakistan etc.
Personal observations:
a) We skeptics ain’t liked much with them folks. The “d” word (denier) was used liberally, and I queried several participants, some of who were very cool folks, about it. Al Gore and his speakers used “Denier,” “Denial Industry” and other terms I found objectionable. Lousy salesmen, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
b) Nothing new was presented, technically speaking. This thing was “An Inconvenient Truth” redux, with much of the controversial stuff (hockey stick & drowning polar bears) deleted. Al got our message, he doesn’t seem to want to engage folks like us.
c) Al gave some insights into his own choices for low-carbon technologies, with a focus upon photovoltaics & wind power. He doesn’t like BWR nukes and objects because of financial reasons, which I agree with (particularly post-Fukishima). He mentioned that Oak Ridge National Labs in TN is testing a variety of nuclear reactor designs which sound promising (thorium maybe?) but didn’t elaborate.
d) Stuff I’m interested in, like ocean acidification, were only briefly touched upon. Al didn’t discuss the diplomacy challenges of engaging China and India, although he did mention their growing carbon output.
Quick summary:
Al is a polished speaker, and looked trim & in shape. Very impressive command of his speaking material. Decent speakers lined up, including some sustainability folks from private industry. I’m told the health/climate breakout session was terrible & am glad I took a pass on it.
==============================================================
UPDATE: Since many of the Gore followers are arriving here, I welcome you to answer this question that nobody would ask Mr. Gore this week:
If the position and science is so strong, why did Mr. Gore have to fake the results of his experiment in the Climate 101 video (which you may have seen and is still on the climate reality web page).
You can see the experiment recreated here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
For the few of you brave enough, thanks for taking the time to answer that question – Anthony
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Antonio Gracia says: @ur momisugly August 4, 2013 at 12:40 pm
…..I just don’t understand why so many of you hate Al Gore or his clean energy agenda….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because he is one of the group selling the US citizen in to serfdom and getting rich in the process.
I for one am not interested in living in a miro-min apartment in an Agenda 21 Transit Village with my freedom of movement, my freedom to own property and my free choice in employment has been removed. THAT is Al gore’s and friends ultimate goal. A return to medieval feudalism with Corporations instead of lords.
See Bill Clinton’s sell out and link
The USA has an 22% unemployment rate and growing since Obama took office and this high unemployment was KNOWINGLY and purposefully hidden by the Clinton Administration by changing how the statistics were manipulated. This was done so the American people would not reject the World Trade Organization further down the road when they realized their jobs had been sold out from under them by the US government. The WTO is an organization who’s leader, a friend of Clinton’s, OPENLY is talking of getting rid of National Sovereignty (The US Constitution) link
Al Gore is a mover and shaker in the Interdependence Movement that targeted the livelihoods of American farmers. While presenting a national award to a Colorado FFA member, Gore asked the student what his/her life plans were. Upon hearing that the FFA member wanted to continue on in production agriculture, Gore reportedly replied that the young person should develop other plans because our production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the Third World. (My Ag extension agent was at that ceremony and hear Gore. He was livid)
The IMF has this to say:
The attached chart 1 and chart 2 shows the ‘Advanced Economies’ started tanking at about the time that China joined the WTO at Clinton’s urging. Actually there is a downward trend since the mid-eighties leveraged buyout feeding frenzy under Reagan.
I suggest you read America’s Ruling Class and Jo Nova’s Regulating Class and a well documented description of how the elite work link.
Al is mis-informed, as usual. Fukishima were old, probably first generation plants, that were very poorly situated. Poorly situated doesn’t really describe the problem. The Japanese knew, absolutely knew, of historical tsunami that had inundated the site, but chose to ignore them by drawing a study period that excluded them. Need I say “willful disregard”?
Third generation reactors are immensely more safe. People toss around numbers like a thousand times more safe, which is very difficult to quantify, but suppose they are only ten times more safe. That would put the recurrence time for an accident like Fukishima out at several centuries.
Someone in a posting above said that only the most anal of societies ignore the advancements in design to eschew all reactors, and put Germany and the U.S. on the list; the U.S. hasn’t earned a spot on that list yet, but ironically, Japan has.
After re-reading the quote that illicited my response, I realize it was not Al Gore speaking of Fukishima, but rather the “mole”.
Hi Anthony,
I was an attendee of the conference. Honestly, I have a Masters degree in Biology and worked in a lab studying climate change in college. I am a teacher now and a parent. I vaccinate my kids and can see situations where GMOs might be considered. The gentleman sitting next to me at the conference was a Chemical Engineer who is retired now, but worked for Monsanto. Since I teach science, I encourage skepticism and questioning. From my personal experience, the problem I see is that the science being discussed requires a complex knowledge of ecology as there are so many interactions to consider. The majority of the public does not have this background. The reason I attended this training was in the hopes that I would better be able to simplify this science in a way that people can understand. I do not pretend to have all the answers, but I have been studying the science for about 10 years now. As a parent, the evidence is enough to send me to that conference while taking a week away from looking after my small children. I think there are multiple solutions to this problem, but I am tired of pseudo-scientists telling people who have studied Organic Chem, Chem, Physics, Atmospheric Chemistry, Plant Physiology, Ecology, and Calculus that they are wrong.
Regarding the experiment that you are asking about, could you please post the links to the original experiment?
@Suzanne
Thanks for the note. You asked:
Well that’s just it, Gore never posted the actual experiment methodology or results. All we have is the Climate 101 Video which you can watch here:
I provide all methods, measurements and results in my experiment, including proof that Mr. Gore faked the results in post production.
See my experiment here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
The thermometers were never in the glass jars, but edited to make it appear so, and the scales was edited to show a rise where there was none. This is probably because when the production team tried the experiment, it didn’t work as expected, and as I show, it never possibly could.
So my question to you is: Do you think it is OK for Mr. Gore to fabricate and outright lie about science experiments to make a political point, and to leave such videos in place months after it has been pointed out to him? Both he and Mr. Nye are aware, but have done nothing to take the video down, or to even provided a caveat.
The problem I have with Mr. Gore’s trainees, is that they refuse to even look to see if what Mr. Gore is telling them is factual. Scratch the surface of Mr. Gore, and you’ll find a pandora’s box of lies, as we have shown time and again.
If you are truly a scientist, and embrace skepticism you’ll look. if you are a blind follower, you’ll just argue about why I’m wrong and Mr. Gore is some sort of planetary saviour.
-Anthony
Friends:
I write to thank all the AGW-faithful who have posted to this link and, thus, assisted debate. In particular I appreciate the many (each mistaken) posts from “renewableguy” which have prompted the informative posts from several people notably D B Stealey and especially Gail Combes.
Anybody wanting a wide range of factual, referenced information on the realities of AGW can use the links from the posts of D B Stealey and Gail Combs in their posts provided in rebuttal of “renewableguy” in this thread.
However, there is one assertion by “renewableguy” which has not been answered and all the other assertions of “renewableguy” each relies on it. Hence, I also write to provide that answer because it demonstrates the falsity of all the other assertions of “renewableguy”.
In several posts “renewableguy” claims that climate models provide evidence for the existence of AGW. He clearly states what he considers this evidence to be when, for example, he/she/they writes at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1379552
Several people have pointed out that – in reality – there is NO “significantly altered climate path”. Indeed, DB Stealey provide links to several graphs which show there has been no discernible alteration to global temperature rise from the Little Ice Age in his post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1380297
where he writes
However, if there were a “significantly altered climate path” then that would not say anything about the cause of the observed effect.
“renewableguy” asserts
In times past people claimed with equal validity
Ignorance is a reason to determine the true cause of an observed trend.
The use of ignorance as evidence for whatever superstitious belief is fashionable should be condemned. And the two superstitious beliefs I have cited each calls for actions to kill people. They are both despicable.
There is no evidence for discernible AGW; none, zilch, nada. And that is why AGW-believers cite ignorance as being evidence. The effect of the use of ignorance as evidence for AGW threatens constraint to the use of fossil fuels when such constraint would kill billions of people.
Richard
Ah yes. It was a happy coincidence back in the ’70s, when people like Margaret Mead and Maurice Strong were looking for a devil to spur an errant humanity to world governance, that we entered upon a period of warming that coincided nicely with increased CO2 emissions. “Ah-ha! Unprecedented global warming! It must be man-made CO2!” Here was a villain that would take a worldwide movement to defeat. Thus was born the IPCC, to give institutional imprimatur and scientific gloss to the imagined dangers of the devil CO2, and we were off to the international “climate change” races.
As Richard Courtney says, it’s no different in principle from rallying the populace by pointing to invented witches and yelling, “Burn them!”
/Mr Lynn
I attended the Climate Reality Leadership Training in Chicago, my home city.
Let me disabuse you of a few exaggerated mistakes. There was no “kool-aid,” no idol worship, self-delusion or mass-hypnosis. The number of people attending was not exaggerated. I know crowds – I worked in the meetings and conventions industry – there were easily +1500 people there. The facebook page for the Chicago Training had more than 1000 members world-wide before the training started on July 30. I doubt that Al is going to give you his slides, but they are not “secret” or distorted. My guess is that no WUWT reader would find them surprising. If you want to see them, go to any free, public Climate Reality presentation near you.
There is overwhelming historic scientific evidence (not computer climate-modeling projections) that our climate is warming due to pollution from human activities. 97 percent of top climate scientists and every major National Academy of Science in the world have reached that conclusion. When we burn dirty fossil fuels like oil and coal, and when we cut down forests that store carbon, we pollute our atmosphere and warm our planet. This is no longer marginal or controversial: It’s a reality understood by the majority of climate scientists for decades.
And we’re starting to feel the effects now. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have occurred since the year 2000. Extreme weather events like heat waves, heavy rains and drought are becoming more common and more severe. Coastal communities all over the world are preparing for the impacts of sea level rise.
Sorry WUWT readers, but the debate over the basic science of climate change is over. You can focus on conspiracy theories, baseless accusations (Mr. Gore is getting rich lying about climate change), marginal trivia (example: Mssrs. Gore and Nye faked their science-class illustration of how CO2 stores solar energy, invalidating decades of international atmospheric climate science research by thousands of scientists world-wide), or you can accept . . . Climate Reality.
For example, the 2009 State of the Climate report of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released in mid-2010, brings together many different series of data “from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean.” The conclusion? All of these independent lines of evidence tell us unequivocally that the Earth is warming.
The very accessible 10-page summary (http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/2009/bams-sotc-2009-brochure-lo-rez.pdf) examines the trends for 10 key climate indicators using a total of 47 different sets of data. All of the indicators expected to increase in a warming world are in fact increasing, and all that are expected to decrease are decreasing.
The 10 indicators are:
1. Land surface air temperature as measured by weather stations. You know all those skeptic arguments about how the temperature record is biased by the urban heat island effect, badly-sited weather stations, dropped stations, and so on? This is the only indicator which suffers from all those problems. If you think this whole discussion is invalid because Indicator 1. is only about land surface air temperature – suspend your judgement until after you’ve reviewed the other nine indicators.
2. Sea surface temperature. As with land temperatures, the longest record goes back to 1850 and the last decade is warmest.
3. Air temperature over the oceans.
4. Lower troposphere temperature as measured by satellites for around 50 years. By any of these measures, the 2000’s was the warmest decade and each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the previous one.
5. Ocean heat content, for which records go back over half a century. More than 90% of the extra heat from global warming is going into the oceans — contributing to a rise in …
6. Sea level. Tide gauge records go back to 1870, and sea level has risen at an accelerating rate.
7. Specific humidity, which has risen in tandem with temperatures.
8. Glaciers. 2009 was the 19th consecutive year in which there was a net loss of ice from glaciers worldwide.
9. Northern Hemisphere snow cover, which has also decreased in recent decades.
10. Perhaps the most dramatic change of all has been in Arctic sea ice. Satellite measurements are available back to 1979 and reliable shipping records back to 1953. September sea ice extent has shrunk by 35% since 1979.
Science isn’t like a house of cards, in that removing one line of evidence (e.g., land surface air temperature) wouldn’t cause the whole edifice of anthropogenic global warming to collapse. Rather, “land surface warming” is one of more than ten bricks supporting “global warming”; and with global warming established, there is a whole other set of bricks supporting “anthropogenic global warming.” To undermine these conclusions, you’d need to remove most or all of the bricks supporting them — but as the evidence continues to pile up, that is becoming less and less likely.
To paraphrase the late Senator Patrick Monyhan – like everyone, here at WUWT you are certainly entitled to your own opinions . . . but not to your own facts.
James B
Chicago
With people like James B, I no longer wonder why Al Gore has gotten so rich. As P.T. Barnum said, there is one born every minute. And as Ben Franklin said, a fool and his money is soon parted.
James B:
Your long post at August 8, 2013 at 2:01 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1384781
contains far, far too many falsehoods for refutation of them all.
However, one is exceptionally egregious because it alone demonstrates how you have presented untrue propaganda. You assert
1.
No, there is clear evidence that the Earth has been warming from the Little Ice Age for centuries.
2.
There is no evidence of any kind – none, zilch, nada – that human activities are affecting or have affected that natural warming in any discernible way.
If you have any such evidence then publish it. You will certainly be awarded a Nobel Prize for having found some such evidence because three decades of research costing over $5 billion per year has not found any.
And much evidence which refutes discernible man-made global warming has been found.
You say you spent a day in Al Gore’s indoctrination camp. Take 12 minutes to watch this: it may initiate your needed deprogramming.
Richard
James,
Thanks for your comment. If I may briefly respond, it appears that you have offered an argument from authority as if it were actual evidence, and that you have named ten indicators of warming as if that constituted an argument of substance.
The argument from authority is a well known logical fallacy and is not actual evidence.
There are indeed many indicators that warming has occurred. This fact is not generally disputed here. However, observing that some warming has occurred does not demonstrate that CO2 is the primary cause of the warming.
Obviously, we are all aware of the arguments, and I in no way mean to suggest that anyone trying to make a serious case couldn’t find evidence to suggest that CO2 is responsible for the warming. Unfortunately, you have made no such argument and referenced no such evidence. Under normal circumstance I’d invite you to make your case more thoroughly, but I’ve got dinner plans tonight. If you’d like, I’d be pleased to discuss this with you at length tomorrow.
Mark – Thanks for your reply. I understand the distinction you’re making. I’ll be glad to supply evidence of AWG – it is plentiful. For example, the link I provided was for a past NOAA report, it is here with more: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/
Can anyone posting here supply scientific evidence to support a substantive and credible scientific consensus for any other cause of warming?
James B
Chicago
jamesboley11,
First things first:
Your link contains observations of natural climate variability. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented in that data, therefore I refer you to the climate Null Hypothesis.
Next, the conjecture that human CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming is the hypothesis that must be defended. Scientific skeptics do not have the onus of, in effect, proving a negative [cf: the climate ‘Null Hypothesis’]. Everything currently observed has happened many times before, and to a much greater degree.
But to put your mind at rest, there is considerable scientific evidence showing that the ≈40% rise in CO2 is not the cause of any measurable global warming:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/USHCNvsCO2.jpg
http://jennifermarohasy.com//wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Fieldings-chart.gif
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bastardi-HadCrut15-years.gif
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
Empirical evidence proves conclusively that CO2 does not cause any measurable global warming. Since that is the central tenet of the “carbon” scare, then to see that falsified conjecture deconstructed should be enough for any thinking human being to question all the rest of the “carbon” nonsense, no?
@James Baldwin
You might be interested to know I found that from around the start of the new millennium, earth has started to cool globally. My own data set on maxima shows this very clearly. However, even without my own results (in case you do not trust them or me): the four major data sets measuring the average global air- and sea temperatures, also show that we have started cooling down for the past 11 years (this is the equivalent average time of one full solar cycle). Clearly you can see that the trend is negative from 2002:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
From the above simple compilation of linear trends in these 4 major global data sets, you can see that before 2000 we were still warming and that after 2000 we started cooling….Obviously , a natural consequence of global cooling is that at the higher latitudes it will become both cooler and drier.
As the people in Alaska have noted,
http://www.adn.com/2012/07/13/2541345/its-the-coldest-july-on-record.html
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130520/97-year-old-nenana-ice-classic-sets-record-latest-breakup-river-1
the cold weather in 2012 was so bad there that they did not get much of any harvests. 2013 we had a record for the delay of the breaking of the ice of the Nenana river. And it seems NOBODY is telling the farmers there that it is not going to get any better.I think most of you guys have no idea what is coming in the next 2 to 3 decades.
So, we find that indeed the climate is changing, but it is not our fault….
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
jamesboley11:
I notice that at August 8, 2013 at 4:29 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1384908
you have replied to a later post but not to my post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1384808
which was addressed to you.
I write to help you formulate a simple reply to me which would prove me wrong and, thus, enhance your credibility among impartial onlookers.
In reply to your having written
I wrote
To prove me wrong – and to substantiate your assertion – you only need to provide one single, solitary piece of evidence which shows that human activities are affecting or have affected the natural warming from the Little Ice Age in any discernible way.
If you cannot find such a scrap of evidence then perhaps you will recognise your need to expand your knowledge by watching the short video I commended to you
To save you needing to find it, I again provide the link to the video
Richard
James,
Respectfully James, you have linked a 258 page document as evidence of AGW and apparently wish for me to search through it and identify arguments with which to refute my position. This is often called ‘assigning homework’ in the blogosphere and is generally frowned on. For my part, I have no interest in doing this work for you on this fine Friday afternoon, although again, I will be glad to discuss any specific points you are interested in talking about.
Further, I do not believe the 2012 State of the Climate Report is the source you are looking for. I took the trouble to read the first 20 odd pages of the report. As might be expected from the title, it focuses on observations for the year 2012. Since the fact that some warming has occurred is not disputed, I speculate that this source you’re looking at isn’t going to give you the evidence you want here; evidence that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 are responsible for warming.
I’m willing to save you some trouble and cut to the chase. For my part, I understand and accept the radiative physics that suggests that a doubling of CO2 will raise temperatures by about 1.2C. It is my position that feedbacks have been insufficiently examined (particularly cloud feedbacks), and that we have no basis for confidence regarding any significant amount of warming. I can support an argument which suggests that our understanding of the climate is still in it’s infancy, and that we are still encountering surprises that have the potential to fundamentally alter our expectations regarding climate change. This should do for starters, although there is much more to my position than this. If you are interested in engaging on one of these points, feel free to so indicate and I will support my position with detailed argument and evidence.
Stealey answered this as well as I could in my view. It is not my burden to provide an alternative explanation of warming. I would only add that consensus is a non-starter here. It may have meaning in the field of motivating support for public policy, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the science.
Looking forward to your considered reply.
@richardcourtney –
Are you a climate scientist? Please provide your credentials.
Surveys of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the opinions of climatologists have consistently shown a 97–98% consensus that humans are causing global warming. Starting with Dr. Naomi Oreskes’ (Science, 2004) essay “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Oreskes), the fairness and credibility of the scientific community’s support for AGW findings and respect for dissenting science has been upheld. Oreskes’ work has been recently reproduced, expanded and again validated by Dr. James Powell, published online at the ‘Science Progress’ website (http://scienceprogress.org/2012/11/27479/), and by John Cook, founder of the ‘Skeptical Science’ website (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-advanced.htm).
Dr. Powell surveyed 13,950 articles published over a 21-year period, finding that only, “24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17 percent or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.”
Mr. Cook’s team studied 12,000 article abstracts and also emailed 8,500 authors of other studies asking them to rate their own papers using his criteria. They received responses from 1,200 scientists self-rating a total of over 2,100 papers. Final result: just over 4,000 of the papers reviewed by his team expressed a position on the cause of global warming, 97.1% of which endorsed human-caused global warming. In the self-ratings, nearly 1,400 papers were rated as taking a position, 97.2% of which endorsed human-caused global warming.
Dr. Powell wrote, “Scientists do not disagree about human-caused global warming. It is the ruling paradigm of climate science, in the same way that plate tectonics is the ruling paradigm of geology. We know that continents move. We know that the earth is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause. These are known facts about which virtually all publishing scientists agree.”
Three summaries of the scientific evidence showing that recent human activities are the only credible cause of global warming, are provided in the posts listed below. All present the same
argument with similar evidence. All cite scientific studies providing the empirical data supporting them. You may not agree, but I believe it is fair to say that the evidence and the studies provided, are entirely credible and substantial.
1. The best is first: “The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism” –
A simple, comprehensive presentation of the entire case, by John Cook, climate communications fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Guide_to_Skepticism.pdf
This study has also been transformed into a website – The Consensus Project.
Same info, graphic presentation: http://theconsensusproject.com/
2. From the “OSS – Open Source Systems, Science, Solutions” website: (http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/human-caused)
A great one-page presentation, summarizing scientific proof of AGW. With citations.
3. TMI – from the U.S. EPA website, with citations:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/overview.html
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/future.html
4. The final word goes to Dr. Naomi Oreskes – the final page of her essay,
“The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?”
“Contrarians have tried to suggest that the climate effects we are experiencing are simply natural variability. Climate does vary, so this is a possible explanation. No one denies that. But
is it the best explanation for what is happening now? Most climate scientists would say that it’s not the best explanation. In fact, it’s not even a good explanation—because it is inconsistent with much of what we know.
Should we believe that the global increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has had a negligible effect even though basic physics indicates otherwise? Should we believe that the correlation between increased CO2 and increased temperature is just a weird coincidence? If there were no theoretical reason to relate them and if Arrhenius, Callendar, Suess, and Revelle had not
predicted that all this would all happen, then one might well conclude that rising CO2 and rising temperature were merely coincidental. But we have every reason to believe that there is
a causal connection and no good reason to believe that it is a coincidence. Indeed, the only reason we might think otherwise is to avoid committing to action: if this is just a natural cycle in
which humans have played no role, then maybe global warming will go away on its own in due course.
And that sums up the problem. To deny that global warming is real is precisely to deny that humans have become geological agents, changing the most basic physical processes of the earth. For centuries, scientists thought that earth processes were so large and powerful that nothing we could do would change them. This was a basic tenet of geological science: that human chronologies were insignificant compared with the vastness of geological time; that human activities were insignificant compared with the force of geological processes. And once they were. But no more. There are now so many of us cutting down so many trees and burning so many billions of tons of fossil fuels that we have indeed become geological agents. We have changed the chemistry of our atmosphere, causing sea level to rise, ice to melt, and climate to change. There is no reason to think otherwise.”
(http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/resources/globalwarming/oreskes-chapter-4.pdf
From: ‘Climate Change,’ by DiMento & Doughman. Chapter 4, pp.92-93. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-04241-X)
There is no reason to think otherwise, Richard. Good luck.
At 1:31 PM on 9 August, addressing richardcourtney, James B starts off:
Apart from the fact that this (as almost everything else James B spews) is logical fallacy – in this instance both argumentum ad hominem and argument from authority – there’s the homely aphorism about how one doesn’t have to be a poultry farmer to know when an egg is rotten.
Mr. Courtney has been quite correct all along. James B hasn’t proven a goddam thing by way of reasoned, supported argument yet, persisting instead in the Alinsky-playbook strawman yammer (“To deny that global warming is real is precisely to deny that humans have become geological agents, changing the most basic physical processes of the earth”) while evading the alarmist’s responsibility to prove that “global warming” is to any significant extent – in other words, to any extent greater than the error bars inescapably incidental to methods of observation and analysis – induced by the anthropogenic fraction of increase in a trace component of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Indeed, James B (like unto the rest of the catastrophist malicious clowns blathering their thuggish policy predations against the lives, liberties, and property of innocent fellow human beings) hasn’t yet shown cause for anyone to conclude that “global warming” – if ever we’re to experience it in our lifetimes, if ever it’s to achieve global average surface temperatures anything like what had prevailed in the historically verified Medieval Warm and Roman Warm climate optima – would or could ever have an adverse effect upon our civilization.
In those two historically well-established climate optima we have examples of what “global warming” (definitely not anthropogenic by way of any human “geological agents” roles) has actually done.
So why the hell do these malodorous Watermelon idiots like James B keep “blanking out” consideration of the alleged horrors of “global warming” when they’ve got prime examples of mankind’s survival therein?
The comparison of the “training” to an Amway recruitment event rings true to me…I was once invited to an Amway event by a high school buddy, and the tools they employed are very subtle and compelling. The Gorebots responding on this thread don’t even realize how much they were likely manipulated during this training.
http://www.baskeptics.org/basis/2007/january-march/050-amways-recruitment-tactics-similar-those-cults
….oh, by the way, “James B” isn’t an individual, but a team collaborating to write a unified response on WUWT. Same for several other of the “trainees.”
At 9:32 PM on 10 August, CRS, DrPH had observed:
Interesting. Being myself something of a naif in these online exchanges of honest opinion in contention against the canned crap of paid shills masquerading a real human beings, I’d like to understand something about how one can determine that the production of spew such as that of James B and the other Watermelon puckers we’ve seen in this thread is concerted under false identities used in common.
I’ve written on behalf of co-authors in academic publications and educational activities over the years, but such collaborative efforts (even when I’ve “ghosted” without credit as a fix-up guy for colleagues who can’t assemble a lucid paragraph to save their lives) necessitate such self-abnegation in terms of style as to seem bereft of affect.
If these “Liberal” fascist mamzers are getting paid for perpetrating these futile Nixonian rat-rapings, who’s paying them, and – with Obamacare thundering down on the national economy – is any one of them on the clock more than 29 hours a week?
James B:
I am replying to your long-winded and content-free blather at August 9, 2013 at 1:31 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1385859
Firstly, you ask for my “credentials”. As others have pointed out, they are not relevant to whether or not I am right or wrong. Any authority can be wrong; e.g. the letter from 100 scientists to Einstein, the plate tectonics story, the Helicobacter pylori story, etc..
All I have said is that there is no evidence of any kind for discernible AGW.
I told you how to prove me wrong in my post at August 9, 2013 at 2:29 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1385267
where I wrote
Onlookers will have noticed that
1.
you have failed in attempt to prove me wrong because you have provided no evidence of any kind
2.
you have resorted to the logical fallacy of ‘argument from authority’
3.
you have made no comment on the video so you have shown no willingness to engage with information which refutes your mistaken and superstitious belief in AGW.
You are posting anonymously, and it has been suggested that you are a Team of propagandists and not a person
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1386760 .
Please state your identity to confirm that you are not the suggested Team. This is necessary because if you are such a Team that you have an undeclared conflict of interest.
Richard
Dear Richard.
They ain’t got nothin’!! Anyone who has six neurons to rub together can determine rather quickly that James B, renooble dude, et al., simply make appeals to authority (press releases, really) to convince ignorant folks of their position. That doesn’t work very well on us who can think for ourselves. James B asked if someone (you?) was a climatologist. Algore, who achieved immortality by inventing the Internet while having his second chakra optimized, isn’t a ‘climatologist, either.
PS: This is really fun!
The “Climate Un-Reality Project” is basically an attempt at grass-roots organizing, with heavy use of social media. Check out the “Reality Drop” tool, no. 1
http://climaterealityproject.org/put-the-heatondenial/
Babsy:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at August 11, 2013 at 9:33 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1386991
Yes, I know all that you say, but I am writing mostly for the benefit of onlookers and not only James B.
Also, there are few qualified climatologists. Tim Ball is probably the most academically qualified in the specific field of climatology and he is a AGW sceptic.
Richard
@richardscourtney, @CRS, DrPH, @Tucci78, et al.
Ha! James B here – only one man, not a committee, not paid.
I notice that the comments here at WUWT have been filled with misinformation and – no surprise – hostile slurs against all that deign to disagree with you. Textbook Ad Hominem attacks – why aren’t they policed? The lack of integrity and egregious double-standards here at WUWT are disgusting.
I’m an architect and green building and corporate sustainability professional in Chicago, and a new volunteer (unpaid) for Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality organization – as I mentioned in earlier posts. I hold a Master of Architecture Degree from the University of Illinois Chicago, a Master of Arts in Communications from Northwestern University, and Bachelor of Arts with High Honors from Eastern Washington University.
Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality training in Chicago was for volunteers. The training was free – the 1500+ who attended paid for their own travel and lodging. No one paid Al Gore anything, and he bought the meals while we trained. There is no vast cabal of AGW flacks paid to write on WUWT – don’t flatter yourself. The good doctor of philosophy was wrong. BTW, his login didn’t present his identity or bona fides. Neither did the hilarious and impotently vitriolic, racist screed from sex-with-watermelons obsessed academic Tucci78.
Really subtle racial slurs, Tuch’ – are you proud of this?
Dear @CRS, DrPH – Perhaps you were projecting in accusing me of being a secret employee paid to write hostile warming screed on WUWT. It would not be surprising – given similarity of your login names – that the good doctor of philosophy CRS (wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean, say no more) is a second voice for you, Courtney, Richard S. Isn’t it also plausible because you continue to infamously appropriate a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) you did not earn – as in your listing on the ICSC’s “Climate Science Register, your signature on the “Manhattan Declaration,” or on the dissent letter to the Kyoto Protocol addressed to the Hon. Paul Martin, and so forth. According to info from a google search on your login name, you actually earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a DipPhil – a Diploma in Philosophy – from Cambridge, correct? Why do you need to exaggerate your credentials?
It is true that I provided links to authoritative scientific studies on warming as proof of AGW. But citing them is not the logical fallacy, ‘Argument from Authority,’ because making decisions about requires unbiased, specialized authoritative knowledge outside typical expertise (including yours and mine), and because I am citing scientific information that represents the consensus in this field (citation below). You and I are intelligent and have experience with scientific topics and information, but we are not trained, experienced and practicing climatologists. Citing clear documentation of a 97% agreement by the experts in this complex scientific field is NOT a logical fallacy. If 98% of structural engineers told you a bridge was NOT SAFE, and 2% said the others were dead wrong, trust us, it IS SAFE – would you drive across that bridge?
You can believe what you like @richard, but in the recent, valid and transparent academic studies I cited, that reviewed thousands of peer-reviewed and internationally published scientific papers by climate scientists, 97-98% of the scientists said that climate change was real and caused by a number of human activities. The warming effects of manmade greenhouse gasses are unequivocally scientifically validated as a primary cause of the world-wide temperature increase. I have given you many examples in the links I provided in previous posts. I provided links because the info is long and complex, and because, as you know all too well, it is difficult to provide one single cause for AGW because all of the causes are systemic, and because that is not how science works. Science doesn’t “prove” knowledge, it interprets it. Scientific information cited on WUWT is trumpeted as if any single example that can be interpreted as if one contradictory exception to warming disproves all of it. That is not true because that is not how real scientific work is done.
Facts are, to be credible; your camp does have to come up with scientific work that providing a better explanation for the prevailing global climate data sets that all climate science is using, a better explanation than the dominant, prevailing view – the 98%, remember? Just citing exceptional, short-duration examples, institutional/global conspiracy theoretical fantasies, and venomous name-calling won’t prove you right. Only solid, conventionally presented scientific work that is replicable will be accepted. If any of the cases the ‘deniers’ have made to date could stand up to typical professional standards, it would have been included in the work done over the past decades on this topic. Your work isn’t good enough – get to work!
Gentlemen, no one wants our children and grandchildren to live in the planetary future we see in front of us, if we are unsuccessful at dealing with what we have created. That is why Al Gore, the Climate Reality staff and over 1500 volunteers who paid their own way came to Chicago for three days, from all over the US and the rest of the world. Is there a movement on the ‘denier’ side that can summon those numbers of volunteers from around the world, that much positive energy focused on helping all of us. On WUWT, the nasty, superior, petty, childish and undeserved comments – the “Gore-bots”, the Amway taunting, the stupid mistaken assumptions, painting Al Gore as a greedy villain, all of the disgusting petty vitriol spewed on this site – will have no effect on us. If we are wrong and you are right, we will celebrate that you found the solution to a huge global nightmare.
GET A CLUE! NO ONE LOVES GLOBAL WARMING – EVERYONE WANTS TO STOP IT!!
REMEMBER:
The UN IPCC and Mr. Al Gore were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their service to mankind.
Join the global effort to find a solution. When you have a credible replicable scientific solution indicating that AGW is not real, you will be famous, rich world-wide heroes, beloved by billions world-wide. You could win the Nobel too.
If you believe it, get to work and prove it!
James B, Chicago
Fallacy – Argument from Authority:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html
(Reply: You accuse Richard Courtney [a published, peer reviewed author] and others of sockpuppetry. Let me assure you that as a moderator, we have ways of verifying if that accusation is true. It is false. ~ mod.)
At 3:04 PM on 13 August, the sexually perverted James B (Honi soit qui mal y pense, putzele) blunders:
Meaning that this schmuck is as the beasts that perish with regard to the colloquialism “Watermelon” in reference to ostensible ‘viro clowns whose real priority is the advancement of vicious authoritarian government destructive of individual human rights and the market economy in which those rights are manifest (said market being the mechanism on which a division-of-labor society depends both for its moral justification and its prosperity), carrying the connotation of:
What, the use of the word “watermelon” is in your fascistic fatuity nothing more than an inveterate race-card player’s dogwhistle denigrating negritude?
Cop a clue, you contemptible ignoramus.
@James Baldwin B – you should spend less time in indoctrination and more time in research. That “97-98%” figure (at least you are honest enough to include the falsely reported figure and the accurate figure) has been thoroughly trashed – by the authors of the papers themselves!
You may be everything you claim to be. But then knowledgeable on the subject is not one of the things you are.
Among many mis-statements, “James B” writes:
“GET A CLUE! NO ONE LOVES GLOBAL WARMING – EVERYONE WANTS TO STOP IT!!”
Like much else he writes, that is a false statement. I personally love global warming, which is natural and normal. I do not want it to stop. A warmer world is a healthier, better-fed world with a more diverse biosphere.
And following your long rant about how you are an unpaid volunteer, you mention that “I’m an architect and green building and corporate sustainability professional…”
I don’t believe you. I think if you are a building architect, that you are paid. And thus, you are making self-serving comments.
This is the internet’s “Best Science” site. We want verifiable scientific facts, but your comment was all assertions. That is what you have to use for your arguments, because there is no empirical, testable scientific evidence to support the AGW conjecture. If “carbon” causes any warming, its effect is too small to measure.
If you want to be a member of the Algore Chicken Little Brigade, that is your business. But if you are going to comment here, produce some testable evidence to support your arguments. True Belief just isn’t enough.
James B:
I read your silly and abusive drivel at August 13, 2013 at 3:04 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/#comment-1388918
A suggestion was made that you had a conflict of interest and you were requested to refute it.
You have refuted that accusation – thankyou – but your refutation declares a different conflict of interest; i.e. you say
OK, so you make a living from ‘green’ and ‘sustainability’ scares so you have joined a propaganda organisation to promote the false scare of AGW. I give you credit for admitting that.
But I condemn your usage of Alinsky propaganda techniques in your post; i.e.
1.
You begin by making the untrue accusation of ad hom. attacks against you then provide a barrage of ad hom. attacks on this site and those who refuse to swallow your propaganda.
2.
You pretend that you have provided evidence – indeed, you say “proof” – when you did not. And later you admit that “Science doesn’t “prove” knowledge”.
3.
You have failed to provide one single scrap of evidence of AGW despite repeated requests, and have failed to admit that you have no such evidence (nobody does).
4.
You assert that our “side” has “to come up with scientific work that providing a better explanation for the prevailing global climate data sets that all climate science is using” when – being scientists – we only have a responsibility to falsify the explanation being used.
5.
You use the logical fallacies of appeal to authority and appeal to the mob.
6.
You pretend some kind of moral activity on behalf of “the children” when – in reality – you are promoting a false scare which supports your paid employment.
Frankly, reading your despicable screed gave me the same emotion as cleaning something nasty from the instep of my shoe.
Richard
Moderator –
Thank you for that correction. I apologize to you Mr. Courtney.
James B
Thank you for comparing me to a great leader in Chicago, Saul Alinski, a great compliment.
Once again, Mr. C, your ineffective actions are reactive and tactical: superior dismissive comments, then repeating the same counter attack, without the heart or stones to engage in any good faith inquiry.
Your engage in the false logic of another Ad. Hom abusive attack with: OK, so you make a living from ‘green’ and ‘sustainability’ scares so you have joined a propaganda organisation to promote the false scare of AGW. I give you credit for admitting that.”
I do not admit that. I claim the foresight to pursue and earn LEED professional credentials in 2004, and now use it in design and teach it. The green building sector is the fastest-growing building market in the US and many other countries. The training I did is called CLIMATE REALITY with good reason – to inform people of what is real about climate change so they can make up their own minds.
I wrote in my first post who I was, where I was and why. I made my position clear. Then I put my professional information on the table at your request. For you or anyone to be indignant now is only drama and posturing – seems there is a bit of that on WUWT.
I challenge you to follow my example, and acknowledge your own significant professional conflicts of interest. The ones in listed my post are freely available on the internet. I note that they are conveniently absent from your post. Bottom line – you are not a disinterested party. Will you own it?
As for your misrepresenting your academic achievements, and appropriating an academic degree that you did not earn, that is a matter of public record.
James B.
Chicago
Oh please forgive me, Ma Tuch la Gooch – I missed the reference – hahahahahhaaaa!
I was wrong – it was only a red-baiting slur, not a racial one. I confess, its all true.
You have style I grant you that you hyper-syllabic yiddisher tukhes lecher…
Best –
James B.
At 5:15 PM, “Liberal” fascist Alinsky-suckler James B cackles with psychotic pointlessness, exulting in his own stupidity:
Yeah, you did, didn’tcha, jackwad?
For the sake of accuracy (not that a professional grifter like you – a “green building and corporate sustainability professional in Chicago” battening on the ‘viro Big Lie propagated by socialist political predators perpetrating pillage – is ever interested in that quality), my family roots trace back to Sicily and Holy Mother Church. As had been observed by economist Thomas Sowell in his work Ethnic America (1981), we just tend reliably to work and play well with the Children of Abraham.
And frankly, you grasping fraudsters being what you are and therefore manifestly too stupid and lazy to puzzle out invective in the dialects of il Mezzogiorno, I’ve enjoyed exploiting the wealth of pungencies brought to these United States by the Ashkenazim as yet a more readily appreciable way of expressing in public discourse the hatred you and your feculent ilk so richly warrant.