Walt Cunningham, on video, follows.
There are few people on Earth as carefully vetted, as rigorously trained and as highly respected as America’s Apollo astronauts. They risked their lives in advance of science on behalf of all mankind.
CFACT organized an all day global warming conference at Warsaw’s Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, together with some fantastic partners from Poland and Germany, which ran parallel to the UN’s COP 19. CFACT provided headsets for simultaneous translation for the more than 250 Poles who attended with our international delegation to the global warming summit.
Colonel Walt Cunningham was lunar module pilot on Apollo VII, the first manned Apollo flight to space. Colonel Cunningham explains why America’s space pioneers are shocked and dismayed by today’s politicization of science to serve the global warming agenda. They call for the elimination of bias from scientific inquiry and a return to the rigorous application of the scientific method.
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I think Simon is being duplicitous. I sort of agreed with a kernel of his original post, namely that Cunningham didn’t offer any of the most recent evidence refuting AGW,(although the demeaning language did make me think it was more than that).
His responses to other comments however, blew his cover, that he isn’t merely saddened to see Cunningham fumble, or fail to offer cutting edge refutations. He writes: “Look at it this way. Approx 1% of our atmosphere is greenhouse gases. That 1% raises the average temp of the earth by about 18C. C02 is a dominant GHG. Now increase the level of this gas by about 1/3.”
This is the “red scarf” trick. Greenhouse gases may make up 1% of the atmosphere, but the statement that we are raising this by 1/3 is a lie. Only the co2 element is rising by 1/3, and that represents currently only 0.04% of the atmosphere.
So he is dissembling here, whilst failing to recognise the importance of what Cunningham is saying, that the prevailing climate hypothesis before the “scare”, was built upon solar, oceanic and orbital influences, and that in order to challenge this, new evidence, new observations must be offered that falsify the previous position, and that most importantly, they have failed to do this.
This may be “obsolete” in Simon’s mind, but it is something that is absolutely fundamental in bringing the argument back down to Earth, and in winning the media campaign.
It is interesting to look at why sceptics are loosing the media battle as Col Cunningham suggests, why the media swallow everything the alarmists put out.
I think the answer can be glimpsed in the movie “Day after tomorrow.” There is a scene, just as the sky is falling, when the politician turns to a scientist and asks half rhetorically, half accusatory “Why didn’t you tell us about this.” The scientists spits back, “We kept telling you, but you took no notice.”
The scene works because it plays to the mental picture the audience has of the world. Scientists are the unadulterated purveyors of science, which is objective, honest and truth, while the politicians are self serving or serving of big business and money. The scientists were proved right and the politicians were manifestly and demonstrably wrong.
So if you take the battle to the media you are effectively replacing the politician in the scene with somebody else, probably of weak and feeble repute, and saying “Your science is wrong. . .”
I ask you, who are the public or media going to believe?
Simon says:
November 25, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Pretty much every genuine sceptic accepts the role C02 has played in the observed warming. I think you will find Anthony Watts, Chris Monckton, Judith Curry, Fred Singer (the list goes on), all acknowledge that part of the warming is due to our increasing the level of C02 in the atmosphere. They just don’t accept it is going to be a major problem for our future.
When you see clips like this that essentially deny any influence man has had on the planet you just have to scratch your head and wonder how they got past the man at the door. Genuine sceptics must cringe with embarrassment when they hear statements like “it’s just a trace gas.”
Simon says:
November 25, 2013 at 7:35 pm
TRM
Look at it this way. Approx 1% of our atmosphere is greenhouse gases. That 1% raises the average temp of the earth by about 18C. C02 is a dominant GHG. Now increase the level of this gas by about 1/3.
It is not rocket science to appreciate it is going to have an affect. As I said real sceptics actually get this… They just don’t think it will have a catastrophic impact.
Actually the claim is it raises the temperature around 33°C, from -18°C to 15°C.
Well, then, show exactly how that trace gas carbon dioxide raises temperatures – it has never been shown.
But note well, that -18°C figure is for the Earth without any atmosphere at all – not for the Earth without ‘greenhouse gases’, that is the first fib in this claim.
Without water vapour the temperature of the Earth would be 67°C, which means, the most abundant ‘greenhouse gas’ lowers the Earth’s temperature by 52°C to 15°C.
The Earth would not be colder without greenhouse gases, it would be considerably hotter. Think deserts.
To continue claiming that “warming is due to our increasing the level of C02 in the atmosphere” is not a sceptical position, it is a belief contrary to the empirically well known physics of the natural world around us.
What is clearly seen in this is that persons unknown have misappropriated that -18°C figure and taken out the Water Cycle, claims built on this deceit are not science and hence all we get is unsubstantiated claims; repetition of a lie does not make it true.
@John Whitman
“As I read the CFACT report and listened to the video of Cunningham, I wondered if, of the rational virtues that a man can practice to have intellectual integrity as a scientist, is there one virtue that all others depend on?”
Honesty is the foundation of all virtues. All the scores of human virtue circumambulate this mighty standard, the Upright Pillar. Without honesty all efforts eventually fail. As for CAGW, this too shall pass.
Simon is just a warmist TROLL.
In Britain in the 19th century nice middle-class Simons joined the clergy while their smarter brothers became engineers, scientists, capitalists.
In the 21st century confounded, even by something so simple as the workings of an internal combustion engine, Simon feels confused, technologically lost at sea and so, being too liberal and socially sophisticated for the Church of England, opted for the Church of Green.
Never good at math or physics Simon opted for a soft arts degree, reads the Guardian and works for the BBC. He loves his kids and really believes the world is ending because of the combined evils of capitalism, consumption and carbon dioxide.
He lives in the countryside but doesn’t much like the smell of cow dung and he would hate to live next door to the ‘socially inferior’ mechanic who nevertheless knows how Simon’s car engine works (and most annoyingly) is clever enough to fix it when it goes wrong.
How am I doing Simon?
– – – – – – – – –
Crispin in Waterloo but really in Ulaanbaatar,
Nice to receive your thoughts in reply.
I can see a scientist honestly supporting a consensus without the will to question it. That does not make him dishonest, but to me it does make him lack independence.
Or perhaps it is neither independence nor honesty as the key virtue scientists need to understand reality; namely, the key virtue for science. I could also argue that it is integrity that is the central fundamental virtue for scientists to use to achieve validated understanding of reality. Integrity as in a consistent integration of status, thoughts and public actions over applicable time periods.
Or perhaps all such virtues being equally weighted should be considered as well.
John
PERSONAl NOTE => I am curious about you being in Ulaanbaatar. Why?
Don’t know where this one percent has come from regarding greenhouse gases. One percent of gases refer to the rest that are not nitrogen and oxygen (99%) These are not all greenhouse gases and water vapor the largest percentage in the atmosphere of any greenhouse gas is not included here. Water vapor varies between 0% desert and 4% tropics and is on it’s own greater than one percent overall in the atmosphere. (2%)
Significant warming of the ocean can only occur by increasing solar radiation penetrating it because LWR increasing a fraction of a percent would take thousands of years to do anything like the same thing. Which will warm up 100m water first? Retaining energy a bit longer down to 5 nm surface water on a 24 hour period or warming 100m water over 12 hours? One is solar energy and the other LWR from CO2. I laugh at the people that think the 5nm surface one is the culprit.
J. Swift
“In Britain in the 19th century nice middle-class Simons joined the clergy while their smarter brothers became engineers, scientists, capitalists.
In the 21st century confounded, even by something so simple as the workings of an internal combustion engine, Simon feels confused, technologically lost at sea and so, being too liberal and socially sophisticated for the Church of England, opted for the Church of Green.
Never good at math or physics Simon opted for a soft arts degree, reads the Guardian and works for the BBC. He loves his kids and really believes the world is ending because of the combined evils of capitalism, consumption and carbon dioxide.
He lives in the countryside but doesn’t much like the smell of cow dung and he would hate to live next door to the ‘socially inferior’ mechanic who nevertheless knows how Simon’s car engine works (and most annoyingly) is clever enough to fix it when it goes wrong.
How am I doing Simon?”
In all honesty pretty badly. If you want a summary that is accurate. I am politically neutral. Have voted for both sides. I don’t have an arts degree. I fix my own cars. I live in town and like to believe I give everyone a fair chance irrespective of whether they are a mechanic or a doctor. I am practical. Maybe this stuff says more about you?
More importantly….I think extremists on both sides of this debate need to be held to account. This talk was boring and of no value to anyone except the non thinkers. You could drive a truck through the points he made.
The only reason “global warming/climate change” is being pushed so hard is because it helps empower the socialist agenda. Here is another aspect of that that I hadn’t thought of, the push to make people live in higher density housing. It is big in California of course:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/do-single-family-homes-threaten-planet
Simon,
Dang! Apparently I was about to have you explain where you found the atmospheric hot spot, how energy transfers directly from outside the atmosphere through the atmosphere, through the surface of the ocean to the deep ocean via some CO2 mechanism, and an explanation of how your sides scientists still have cred even though their predictions fail at a ridiculous rate.
And then I went and proactively answered one of the biggest arguments that your side constantly throw out there. That argument is “What can reducing CO2 hurt?”
Now all that information that those of us willing to look at both sides are missing out on all of your clarifications that the Mann’s, Gore’s, and Hansen’s of the world don’t seem to be able to articulate.
Sitting here in deep emotional regret…
Our local greenies demonstrated recently in Armidale NSW., no cars more trains????????????
They are just scared aren’t they and politically motivated. Then we had a tornado hit near where we lived and destroyed one old house, luckily the elderly woman was unhurt. Trees were uprooted etc., screaming climate change etc. However, would you believe the Bureau of Meteorology recorded 364 tornadoes to hit the Australian mainland since European colonisation, and that tornadoes were not exactly a rare event! Cyclones of course are a different matter up Norther as it is a monsoon region.