By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
To those of us who have dared to question on scientific and economic grounds the official story on global warming, it is a continuing surprise that there is so little concern about whether or not that story is objectively true among the many who have swallowed it hook, Party Line and sinker.
For the true-believers, the Party Line is socially convenient, politically expedient, and financially profitable. Above all, it is the Party Line. For those who think as herds or hives, it is safe. It is a grimy security blanket. It is the dismal safety in numbers that is the hallmark of the unreasoning mob.
But is it true? The herd and the hive do not care. Or, rather, they do care. They care very much if anyone dares to ask the question “But is it true?” They are offended, shocked, outraged. They vent their venom and their spleen and their fury on those of us who ask, however politely, “But is it true?”
Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down.
They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.
The question arises: can science function properly or at all in the absence of true religion and of its insistence upon morality? For science, in searching for the truth, is pursuing what is – or very much ought to be – a profoundly moral quest.
Yet what if a handful of bad scientists wilfully tamper with data, fabricate results, and demand assent to assertions for which there is no real scientific justification? And what if the vast majority of their colleagues cravenly look the other way and do nothing about their bent colleagues? What you get is the global warming scare.
As every theologian knows, the simplest and usually the clearest of all tests for the presence of a moral sense is whether or not the truth is being told. The true-believers in the New Superstition are not telling the truth. On any objective test, they are lying, and are profiteering by lying, and are doing so at your expense and mine, and are bidding fair to bring down the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, flinging us back into the dumb, inspissate cheerlessness of a new Dark Age.
Nothing is done about the many lies, of course, because the many lies are the Party Line, and no one ever went to jail who safely parroted the Party Line.
“The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus! A 97.1% Consensus! Doubters Are As Bad As Holocaust Deniers! Global Temperature Is Rising Dangerously! It Is Warmer Now Than For 1400 Years! Well, 400 Years, Anyway! Tree-Rings Reliably Tell Us So! The Rate Of Global Warming Is Getting Ever Faster! Global Warming Caused Superstorm Sandy! And Typhoon Haiyan! And 1000 Other Disasters! Arctic Sea Ice Will All Be Gone By 2013! OK, By 2015! Or Maybe 2030! Santa Claus Will Have Nowhere To Live! Cuddly Polar Bears Are Facing Extinction! Starving Polar Bears Will Start Eating Penguins! Himalayan Glaciers Will All Melt By 2035! Er, Make That 2350! Millions Of Species Will Become Extinct! Well, Dozens, Anyway! Sea Level Is Rising Dangerously! It Will Rise 3 Feet! No, 20 Feet! No, 246 Feet! There Will Be 50 Million Climate Refugees From Rising Seas By 2010! OK, Make That 2020! The Oceans Will Acidify! Corals Will Die! Global Warming Kills! There Is A One In Ten Chance Global Warming Will End The World By 2100! We Know What We’re Talking About! We Know Best! We Are The Experts! You Can Trust Us! Our Computer Models Are Correct! The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus!”
And so, round and round, ad nauseam, ad ignorantiam, ad infinitum.
Every one of those exclamatory, declamatory statements about the climate is in substance untrue. Most were first uttered by scientists working for once-respected universities and government bodies. For instance, the notion that there is a 1 in 10 chance the world will end by 2100 is the fundamentally fatuous assumption in Lord Stern’s 2006 report on climate economics, written by a team at the U.K. Treasury for the then Socialist Government, which got the answer it wanted but did not get the truth, for it did not want the truth.
Previously, you could count on getting nothing but the truth from the men in white coats with leaky Biros in the front pocket. Now, particularly if the subject is global warming, you can count on getting little but profitable nonsense from your friendly local university science lab. They make the profits: you get the nonsense.
The central reason why what Professor Niklas Mörner has called “the greatest lie ever told” is damaging to civilization arises not from the staggering cost, soon to be $1 billion a day worldwide. Not from the direct threat to the West posed by the avowedly anti-democratic, anti-libertarian policies of the UN, the IPCC, and the costly alphabet-soup of unelected busybody agencies of predatory government that live off the taxpayer’s involuntary generosity. Not from the dire environmental damage caused by windmills and other equally medieval measures intended to make non-existent global warming go away.
The damage caused by the Great Lie arises from the fact that just about the entire global governing class has found it expedient or convenient or profitable to adopt the Great Lie, to peddle it, to parade it, to parrot it, to pass it on, regardless of whether anything that it says on the subject of the climate has any truth in it whatsoever.
The fundamental principle upon which Aristotle built the art and science of Logic is that every individual truth is consistent with every other individual truth. The truth is a seamless robe. Religion – or at any rate the Catholic presentation to which I inadequately subscribe (practising but not perfect) – is also built upon that fundamental principle of the oneness of all truth.
Science, too – or at any rate the classical scientific method adumbrated by Thales of Miletus and Al-Haytham and brought to fruition by Newton, Huxley, Einstein, and Popper – was also rooted in the understanding that there is only one truth, only one physical law, and that, therefore, every truth unearthed by the diligence of the curious and hard-working empiricist or theoretician must, if it be truly true, be consistent at every point and in every particular with every truth that had ever been discovered before, and with every truth yet to be discovered.
It is in the understanding of that central principle of the remarkable oneness and self-consistency of all truth that men of true religion and of true science ought to have become united. For there is an awesome beauty in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all.”
The beauty of the truth is sullied, the seamless robe rent in sunder, if not merely a few individual scientists but the entire classe politique not merely of a single nation but of the planet advantages itself, enriches the already rich and impoverishes the already poor by lying and lying and lying again in the name of Saving The Planet by offering costly and environmentally destructive non-solutions to what is proving to be a non-problem.
The very fabric of the Universe is distorted by so monstrous and so sullenly persistent a lie. Those scientists who have been caught out trampling the truth, and those universities in which it has become near-universally agreed that the best thing to keep the cash flowing is to say nothing about the Great Lie, are by their actions or inactions repudiating the very justification and raison-d’être of science: to seek the truth, to find it, to expound it, to expand it, and so to bring us all closer to answering the greatest of all questions: how came we and all around us to be here?
We who are not only men of science but also men of religion believe that the Answer to that question lay 2000 years ago in a manger in Bethlehem. The very human face of the very Divine was “perfectly God and perfectly Man”, as the Council of Chalcedon beautifully put it.
We cannot prove that a Nazarene made the Universe, or that any Divine agency takes the slightest interest in whether we tell the truth. But, for as long as there is no evidence to the contrary, we are free to believe it. And it is in our freedom to believe that which has not been proven false that the value of true religion to true science may yet come to be discerned. For our religion teaches us that truthfulness is right and wilful falsehood wrong. We cannot prove that that is so, but we believe it nonetheless.
Science, though, is not a matter of belief (unless you belong to Greenpeace or some other Marxist front organization masquerading as an environmental group). It is a matter of disciplined observation, careful theoretical deduction, and cautious expression of results. The true scientist does not say, “I believe”: but he ought, if there is any curiosity and awe in his soul, to say “I wonder …”. Those two words are the foundation of all genuine scientific enquiry.
Yet the global warming scare has shown how very dangerous is science without morality. The scientist, who takes no one’s word for anything (nullius in verba), does not accept a priori that there is any objectively valuable moral code. He does not necessarily consider himself under any moral obligation either to seek the truth or, once he has found it, to speak it.
Science, therefore, in too carelessly or callously rejecting any value in religion and in the great code of morality in which men of religion believe and which at least they try however stumblingly to follow, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Yea, truth faileth (Isaiah, 59:15). The Great Lie persists precisely because too many of the scientists who utter it no longer live in accordance with the moral yardstick that Christianity once provided, or any moral yardstick, so that they do not consider they have any moral obligation to tell the truth.
That being so, we should no longer consider ourselves as laboring under any obligation, moral or other, to pay any particular heed to scientists seeking to meddle in politics unless and until they have shown themselves once more willing to be what al-Haytham said they should be: seekers after truth.
Two hundred and forty-six feet of sea-level rise, Dr. Hansen? Oh, come off it!
A merry Christmas an’ a roarin’ Hogmanay to one and all.
Monckton of Brenchley says: December 28, 2013 at 3:05 am
And many thanks to you for thoughtful post and spawning such an interesting thread, plus for your courageous stance against the negative culture of CAGW.
But morality stems from understandable cultural evolutionary processes, which have resulted in religions plus other social entities. To act morally does not therefore have to via belief, nor is morality the exclusive domain of religions, and it can be scientifically shown to be an evolutionary advantage. This is the real reason why (in the longer term) it tends to triumph.
There is danger in resting the ultimate case for truth (and fighting CAGW) on religion and belief. Both religions and secular memeplexes share the same characteristics; this is ultimately what prompts comparisons like the one you make in your own post (‘they have gotten religion’). Both entities have upsides and downsides, and while CAGW may have net downsides, using a different (religious) memeplex as an ultimate bulwark against CAGW simply transfers the problem to a similar social entity, which isn’t gauranteed to remain net beneficial.
Truth stands on its own feet and works because it is the most successful strategy; it needs no props from religion. It would be far better to apply the knowledge from cultural evolution that will tell us how both religions and secular memeplexes like CAGW work; then use this knowledge to fix or manage those that have net downsides .
Lord Monckton,
You said upthread: “The furtively pseudonymous “climateace” lists the nonsense on my Wikipedia bio, complaining that I have said I can cure various diseases. No, I have said I am researching a possible cure for various infectious diseases. I only said that much so that potential patients could come forward. Several of them are now better, so researches continue. Does “climateace” really wish that these cures had not taken place?”
Having seen a clip on the dreaded BBC where you say that your rememdy has cured HIV, malaria and multiple sclerosis (the last of which has not be demonstrated as infectious yet) along with a printed report that you claim to have cured colds and flu, I would like to know how true these things are? Are there any results that should be communicated to the medical world now. After all, it would be morally wrong to keep this to yourself when millions are infected with HIV and a cure is desperately being sought.
Margaret Hardman says: December 28, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Notice Margaret did not answer a single question with one piece of data, just pronouncements.
That is precisely what I expected when I said they were like Adam Berlingo, he did exactly the same thing, he came he pronounced from authority, provided no data other than rehashing IPCC dogma and the left on his high horse.
It is all they have to offer.
They are great “talkers” and come across as reasoned and reasonable, but actually offer nothing, I find it very sad.
But it is new method of “attacking” a post.
Margaret Hardman quibbles that I had said she believes in “multiple lines of evidence” for catastrophism when she says she believes in “multiple lines of evidence” that Man has had a measurable effect on global temperature.
Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the global warming of less than 0.7 K since 1950 has any anthropogenic component. So small a rate of warming (equivalent to 1.4 K/century) is well within natural variability: in the 40 years 1695-1735, at the end of the Little Ice Age, temperature in central England and inferentially worldwide rose at a rate equivalent to 4 K/century.
Even if there be a small anthropogenic component – and few of us here would deny that possibility – it does not provide any justification for the serial telling of lies by the scientific and political establishment that was the subject of the head posting, and still less justification for the profitable catastrophism that is evident among scientists, academics, governments, and journalists. If Ms. Hardman does not in fact take the catastrophist view, perhaps she would say so in terms and explain why, in that event, it matters at all even if Man has had a small effect on global temperature.
I notice that Ms. Hardman does not attempt to assert that any of the several dozen official lies I briefly mentioned is not a lie. It provides still less justification for the profitable catastrophism that is evident among the governing class.
Ms. Hardman goes on to deny that I had mentioned quasi-religious superstition in the head posting. But here is what I said: “Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down. They have gotten religion, but they call it science.”
Ms. Hrdman goes on to say it does not follow that absence of religion necessarily leads to absence of morality. Yet I did not say it did follow. She persists in missing the main point of the head posting, which was that on the climate question many scientists are acting immorally by making up scare stories without sufficient foundation, and that the belief that there is a moral obligation to seek and to tell the truth is just that – a belief. Men of religion hold that belief, and, in that sense, even an agnostic may recognize that religion has a utility. But it is all to evident that many of the “multiple lines of evidence” of which Ms. Hardman continues to fail to mention a single instance are based on untruths, some of them calculated and deliberate, and all of them profitable.
Ms. Hardman then wanders off the point by asking whether I condemn crimes committed within the Catholic Church in historic times (for some reason she seems happy to indulge crimes committed in other churches or religions, or crimes committed by unbelievers, who killed more in the 20th century than any other group in that or any age).
Ms. Hardman does not like my statement that “The trolls have had a more than usually decisive spanking in this thread.” A troll is someone – paid or unpaid – who attempts to derail a thread by malicious disruption or by the recitation of flat untruths, or by mentioning that they have “multiple lines of evidence” without quite getting round to specify any of them. The trolls know who they are, and we know who they are.
Ms. Hardman’s own pretext for not being specific is as follows: “There are a good many hypotheses presented [on this site], but none of them appear to be part of the complete weft of science and its laws and principles as they are commonly understood. This isn’t quoting the majority – it is looking at science as a whole.” Hand-waving will not do. If Ms. Hardman thinks Man has had a measurable influence on global temperature, then let her state her evidence for her belief. She may or may not be right in her belief: on the evidence I have studied, the matter could be argued either way. But on this site anyone who tries to argue for one side or another by referring vaguely to “multiple lines of evidence” without naming even one of them is marked down as a troll. So come on, Ms. Hardman: list your evidence – and not the IPCC reports, for they are not peer-reviewed in any acceptable sense of that term. You say the evidence is “watertight”: so, please also explain why you regard it as watertight.
Next. Ms. Hardman says she has seen “plenty of evidence” that “most of the models are doing just fine”. Perhaps she would be kind enough to provide a list of all runs of all models, identifying clearly all those runs that have predicted as their central estimate that there would be no global warming for nigh on 13 years (or even, on the RSS dataset, 17 years). I do not know of any, but perhaps she can enlighten me.
I have looked at the output of the 34 models relied upon by the IPCC in its Fifth Assessment Report, for which I was an expert reviewer (though, unlike in true peer review, the authors of the report were not obliged to take any account of anything any of the reviewers said). That output, summarized in figs. 11.33ab of the second-order draft, predicts that global warming will occur at a near-linear rate equivalent to 2.33 [1.33, 3.33] K/century from 2005-2050. However, there has been no warming at all in the nine years since 2005. At all points, the trend-line on real-world, observed temperatures falls below the least predicted trend. Worse, as of the last month for which data are available, the global lower-troposphere anomaly data have fallen below the outputs of all of the models displayed in Figs. 11.33ab. As things now stand, none of the models is “doing just fine”.
Ms. Hardman objects that I and others ask for evidence rather than the mere recitations of superstitions belief that Warren provided as a substitute for rational scientific discussion. Well, she had better get used to the idea that science is not a belief system.
Finally, Ms. Hardman asks, “Upon what do you feel you are able to judge one’s moral beliefs?” We are expressly forbidden to judge that. However, when a small coterie of politicized, profiteering “scientists” whip up a scare by telling lies, a few dozen of which I summarized in the head posting, it is legitimate to draw the conclusion that they do not share the belief of men of religion and of goodwill everywhere that telling lies is morally wrong, and that there is a moral imperative to tell the truth. True science, like true religion, seeks the truth: and, to the extent that it genuinely seeks it and fairly and honestly speaks it, it behaves morally.
Unlike religion, however, science is not a belief system. These days, there are a few scientists who do not even believe there is a moral obligation to seek the truth, and there are many more who choose to look the other way when they see the immoral few putting the reputation of science at risk with their increasingly desperate falsehoods.
That is why the catastrophist lies that Margaret Hardman seems so uncritical of are still so sedulously peddled to this day. However, as she and others will learn in due time, the models that provide the chief pretext for the lies have failed because the immoral few incorporated within them laws, principles, data, and equations that were not at all scientifically justifiable or plausible. As Dick Lindzen said in the UK Parliament a couple of years ago, the probability that the weather in 2050 will be warmer than today is 0.5. If he is right – and, on the evidence to date, his central estimate is spot on – look at figs. 11.33ab of AR5 and see just how far askew the models may yet prove to be.
Thank you for this article Lord Monckton. I hope that you had a very Merry and Happy Christmas.
I don’t understand the need for a religious discussion on this thread. Chris Monckton has written an excellent analysis of the warmist politics but the introduction of religious views only allows the warmists to use it as a red herring.
Religious views are based upon faith in the unseen. Whether or not they are valid is something everyone must decide for themselves but it is certainly not an issue that science can resolve. The leftists/warmists like to use peoples’ religious views to make ad hominem attacks on anyone who disagrees with them about any non-religious issue, such as climatology or economics.
I had an extended discussion on the subject of climatology with a philosophy professor who was a socialist and a warmist. Until she met me, she had never encountered anyone except one student who disbelieved the warmist mythology. She was quite shocked and amazed that someone like me with a PhD in economics was a skeptic. She said her student who also disbelieved in the warmist mythology did so because her minister told her not to believe it.
Chris, it’s up to you and the other religious people who are also skeptics, but I think we should leave religion out of this debate.
Monckton of Brenchley says: December 29, 2013 at 3:40 am
“True science, like true religion, seeks the truth: and, to the extent that it genuinely seeks it and fairly and honestly speaks it, it behaves morally. ”
Regarding true science, I agree. The enterprise of uncovering reality (and communicating said reality too, because science cannot really progress without communication) is sabotaged by any falsehoods. Hence practising true science is also moral, in that uncovering and communicating truths about our environment and existence, free of falsehoods, is ultimately an altrustic act.
But there is no such thing as a true religion. Religions are just orthodox cannons of self-sustaining narratives, and while they generally hold some altrusitic values these are all different, and many hold much too that is at best arbitrary and at worst damaging. Most religions and those who practised them are long forgotten, but their tenets are arrived at primarily by differential selection, not a search for truth, though each one has called itself ‘true’. They tend to have their own (non-agential, non-sentient) agendas, and insomuch as they have an (evolutionary) purpose, this is social alignment, itself a huge benefit yet generally encompassing a range of behaviours not all of which would be viewed as moral by, say, a competing religion. In other words their truths are relative, though promoting falsehoods would generally be a selective disadvantage.
Secular memeplexes, even those originally spawned by science like CAGW, evolve in the same manner as religions; they are also self-sustaining narratives. This lends insight into the ‘relative truths’ that come into play. Like you Christopher, I do not believe that many scientists should be doing what they are doing in the name of CAGW. Yet while some folks in any large human enterprise are dishonest, for many adherents be they scientists or layfolk it is precisely the ‘morality’ imposed by their belief in the CAGW culture that is pressuring them into their actions. This is not ‘an excuse’, but if we do not look at the known science that lends insights into how these social phenomena work, we will never understand how truth landscapes can change or how entities like CAGW can get so out of control and so damaging; hence we will never be able to reign them either.
Outside of true science there are no absolute truths, and science can ultimately explain the social phenomenon of CAGW just as it can explain everything else.
James McCown says: December 29, 2013 at 8:41 am
I can see where you’re coming from. Yet from my perspective the common social mechanics of CAGW and religions would bear much more investigation and likely reveal very useful insights that might help in reigning CAGW. For the reason of this commonality and also for those you give, I do however agree that backing resistance to CAGW dominance via religious morality, is not optimal and best left aside.
andy west 2012 says
Outside of true science there are no absolute truths, and science can ultimately explain the social phenomenon of CAGW just as it can explain everything else.
henry says
so how do you know the science is true?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/24/monckton-of-meteorology-and-morality/#comment-1512916
(note how the nazi’s used their “true” science, “eugenics”, to justify genocide)
HenryP says: December 29, 2013 at 9:32 am
The culture associated with Eugenics was a memeplex, same as CAGW is a memeplex. Both leave true science far behind, and do so via differential selection of allied narratives, which is the same mechanism that supports religions. Eugenics was loosely allied to right-wing politics in various countries and later became strongly coupled to Nazisim and anti-Semitism, especially in Germany as you note. Much science on difficult and complex fronts consists of faltering steps; Eugenics was spawned from the study of evolution, which has come a hell of a long way in 150 years but still has fundamental issues to resolve (e.g. the decades long selfish-gene versus group / multi-level evolution debate), and obviously had made much less progress by the 1930s. In short you can’t always know the science is true in such complex domains until very long in retrospect. Doesn’t mean the truths don’t exist or that science can’t uncover them, but huge caution and healthy skepticism should be exercised when folks start applying the apparent results from these complex domains into driving societal behaviour. That in itself is a sign that science may have gotten left behind and instead spawned self-sustaining narratives, which can arbitrarily evolve. Something from a much less complex domain, e.g. encouraging clean water usage having discovered the cholera bacteria, is a lot more connected to reasonably uncovered reality and very much more unlikely to go wrong or spawn arbitrary cultural evolution.
Richard D says:
December 28, 2013 at 5:20 pm
Well, let’s look at feedbacks.
Positive Feedback is a response of the system is in the same direction as the initial disturbance, thus exaggerating the disturbance. Examples: Blood Clotting, Childbirth
Negative Feedback is a response of the system is in the opposite direction as the initial disturbance, thus counteracting the disturbance. Examples: Thermoregulation
Popular climate science calls for positive feedbacks. This is junk science with no basis in reality not unlike much psychology and virtually all sociology.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I described the +ve climate feed-backs in my OP.
They are not made “junk” science” via a wave of the hand.
It is established science, built on for ~150 years.
It is the case that feed-backs are overwhelming +ve.
It also has to be the case or how would the Earth ever have got out of an Ice Age?
Ever been in a warm period even.
Think about it… The Earth is in a just favourable orbital zone around a Sun with just the right temperature/irradiance from our star.
We have just the right atmospheric GHG’s to keep us at a nice 15C ave temp rather than –18C.
When the NH moves to a less favourable orbital characteristic the planet cools. So we go from just right to too cold (NH at least).
Is it not common sense that the greatest natural feed-backs are +ve?
If there were more –ve ones we would tend to oscillate between just a little warmer than IA conditions and colder than IA conditions. At best.
Maybe It’s a part of the mystery of why we seem to have this “Goldilocks” syndrome as an inherent part of the Universe.
@Andy West
This blog (WUWT) is mostly about discernment of good and bad science. But just as there is good and bad science there is also good and evil religion. I did find some links that puts the eugenic laws from Hitler as having originated from Nordic mythology / religion, going back to the times of the Vikings
However, If you define religion as: seeking God’s face and asking Him to show you which is the way (to do good) and you define science as doing tests and measurements and evaluations to find out what to do (to do good), then it should not take you very long to figure out that science and religion are two paths that both must lead to the truth (science)/Truth (true religion).
just to share with you how that process of pursuance of truth begins, see my own 2013 Christmas story.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/12/10/my-own-true-christmas-story/
Lord Monckton writes excellent counter-attack @3:40 above. Thanks for setting the record straight.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AC Osborne says:
“Notice Margaret did not answer a single question with one piece of data, just pronouncements. That is precisely what I expected when I said they were like Adam Berlingo, he did exactly the same thing, he came he pronounced from authority, provided no data other than rehashing IPCC dogma and the left on his high horse. It is all they have to offer. They are great ‘talkers’ and come across as reasoned and reasonable, but actually offer nothing, I find it very sad.”
AC, the same can be said of TB, who has now appeared on this thread. TB is about as far from a scientific skeptic as the others you mentioned.
Skeptics look at every new claim with a jaundiced eye, because human nature is duplicitous. There is an element of self-aggrandizement and self-serving in most new scares, whether it’s Alar on apples, or African killer bees, or catastrophic AGW. Skeptics are here to help weed out the unsuportable claims — and the climate alarmist crowd hates that! They would much rather that everyone take their assertions at face value, instead of looking at likely motivations.
TB and the otyhers come from the position of believing that “carbon” is evil, and that it must be either regulated and taxed, or if possible, eliminated. But in reality, “carbon” can only be taxed, and taxed heavily. But has any tax ever gone down, or gone away? If a “carbon” tax is ever implemented, it will grow, and grow. Recall that the income tax was promised to be capped at 1% of income. How’d that work out? Just like the Social Security promises. A “carbon” tax will be no different. Worse: the totally corrupt UN will connive to get its sticky fingers into Western wallets [while leaving the Russians, Indians and Chinese completely alone].
Skeptics are the only honest kind of scientists. Those like TB, who have a preconceved notion based on a true belief, are convinced that the rise in CO2 from 3 parts in 10,000, to 4 parts in 10,000, will lead to unstoppable global warming and climate catastrophe.
But there is no scientific evidence that supports their belief. None at all. In fact, all the evidence shows that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T, not vice versa. Real world evidence also shows that while harmless, beneficial CO2 continues to rise, global temperatures are not following. The planet is simply recovering from the LIA — one of the coldest episodes of the entire 10,700 year Holocene. Global warming is not accelerating; quite the opposite: it has stopped. Naturally, after the LIA cold spell the planet will warm back up. But there is no empirical evidence showing that human emitted CO2 has anything to do with it.
If the climate alarmist crowd would look at all the real world evidence from a scientifically skeptical position [the only honest way to look at it], they would realize that 100% of their predictions have been wrong! The planet’s behavior is not at all unusual. If anything, it has been exceptionally benign over the past century and a half. The entire AGW claim is nothing but a giant head-fake, by people with an ulterior motive. None of the scientific evidence supports their wild-eyed claims — which amount to: “Take our word for it.”
I suppose it is asking too much for someone like the anonymous “TB” to think like an honest skeptic. All of his posts come from the point of view of a True Believer; someone who has arrived at his conclusion, and now he must find anything that might support his conclusion. But like Warren and PJ Clarke, he cannot find any empirical, testable evidence to support his conclusions. All of their comments amount to nit picking and cherry picking. They completely ignore and avoid discussing the real world, empirical evidence that skeptics post.
President Eisenhower was right, the government scientific community has lost its moral compass, as has the academic community, and most professional bodies. They have been bought and paid for. Scientific truth is no longer a priority. Big money has corrupted the lot of them. And the few courageous ones who express the truth are quickly marginalized, or eliminated from employment outright. I don’t know the answer. But TB, Warren and PJ are certainly symptoms of the rot.
Corruption, cheating, as a means of getting ahead isn’t limited to the financial world. Unfortunately, scientism isn’t illegal. No one gets fined or sent to prison. Too bad.
HenryP says: December 29, 2013 at 11:11 am
I’ve read WUWT almost since its inception and value very much the activity of discerning good from bad science here. I agree too that religions can support productive and unproductive behaviours. But I can’t really agree regarding the definition of seeking God’s face because I see not the slightest evidence for a God. I do see evidence that the characteristics of religions are what one would expect from cultural evolutionary processes, along with lots of evidence that folks have once thought many things are worhsipful, such as ancestor spirits as represented by skulls, animal spirits, the sun, the moon and a whole host of arbitrary characters including the planet itself as represented by Gaia. But I will read your story with interest, and in the spirit of Christmas return one. This is my climate-sceptical novellette ‘Truth’, which featured on Judith Curry’s review of Cli-Fi works last Christmas:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/273983
(free download at the book portal Smashwords in various formats)
andy west
because I see not the slightest evidence for a God
henry
You think it is reasonable to believe that everything you see around you came forth by accident? Life did not come forth by creation (a plan) but by accidental evolution. You believe in Murphy’s law (Murphy’s law = given that there is a chance that something will happen, then, if there is enough time available, eventually it will happen). You refuse to accept that the creation of the whole universe was part of God’s plan for us to be born. Now I will ask you: never mind the question about how life came into being and how incredibly small the chance is that you are alive today, just by looking, for example, at the amount of sperm cells in one ejaculation. What about the next question: where does matter itself come from? Where did all the atoms that form the person that you are and the earth that you are living on and the air that you are breathing,came from? If you believe there is no God, then obviously in the beginning there must have been absolutely nothing. Good for you if you believe in the BigBang theory. But the question still remains: where did all the matter that forms the universe, originate from? You see what the problem is? It does not make sense to believe that there is no God because it is not logical. In fact, if you believe there is no God, you are actually saying that you believe that out of absolutely nothing and guided by absolutely nobody, an incredible intelligent and intellectual person (like yourself) with a material body came into being. Now, for you to believe that such a miracle could have happened, you must actually have a much bigger faith than that of a person simply believing and admitting that there is a Higher Power, a God who created him for a specific plan and purpose!
Lord Monckton
Since you remind us of what you said when you failed to mention that you really meant a quasi-religious superstition, perhaps I can quote the whole section:
“Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down.
They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.”
You very clearly compare science with religion, to the point of ramming it home four times in the second paragraph. That you now want to back out of it hardly limits the impact of that paragraph. The previous one does not say the scientists have a quasi-religious superstition. You say their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from… It is hard to believe you did not mean that scientists had gotten religion but they call it science.
You also state “Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the global warming of less than 0.7 K since 1950 has any anthropogenic component.” In another comment upthread you say: “Talking of which, “Warren” says 99.8% of scientific papers “support” anthropogenic global warming. Well, I support it myself.” Welcome to my world.
You further state: “I notice that Ms. Hardman does not attempt to assert that any of the several dozen official lies I briefly mentioned is not a lie. It provides still less justification for the profitable catastrophism that is evident among the governing class.” Others have done that, not that you seem to acknowledge their efforts in correcting you. If you need to resort to a Gish Gallop then be prepared for people to ignore you.
You feel I missed the main point. I don’t accept your point and several official investigations have shown that your point is misguided. Nevertheless, you chose to use the idea of religion providing morality on which to hang your piece and I chose to criticise the religion = science = religion assertion that you made, whether you now choose to try to argue otherwise. I was not the only one who explained that morality is not the preserve of religion and I pointed out that religion has sometimes had a different view on morality. I also do not feel you proved the point that religion is seeking the truth. It would appear through history and through many cultures that many religions are not seeking the truth at all but imposing a truth that they would prefer their adherents to know.
Then “Ms. Hardman then wanders off the point by asking whether I condemn crimes committed within the Catholic Church in historic times (for some reason she seems happy to indulge crimes committed in other churches or religions, or crimes committed by unbelievers, who killed more in the 20th century than any other group in that or any age).” According to http://atrocitology.com/ax01.html, the biggest death toll of any event was World War II. Hirohito was an adherent of the Shinto religion. Hitler was, by his admission, a Catholic. Stalin was by his admission atheist. You assume I am happy to indulge other crimes – I never said that. I was making the point that morality often bends to the will of the religious observer rather than exists as an unbreakable set of rules.
I notice the temptation to quote out of context is unbearable: “You say the evidence is “watertight”: so, please also explain why you regard it as watertight.”. My comment was “When presented with an argument supported with evidence, usually from peer reviewed science, the consensus on this site is to find reasons to disbelieve it no matter how watertight that evidence is.” My point is that when shown the science, the consensus on WUWT is to choose go beyond reason to run contrary to it.
Next: “Ms. Hardman objects that I and others ask for evidence rather than the mere recitations of superstitions belief that Warren provided as a substitute for rational scientific discussion. Well, she had better get used to the idea that science is not a belief system.” I know that. It was you who said it was a quasi-religious superstition. Without evidence.
Having watched your lectures, read you papers, read your posts and seen how you deal with criticism, I expected nothing more nor less than I got. I don’t think, other than hand waving, you have demonstrated that true religion, whatever that is, is seeking the truth. I don’t think you have demonstrated that scientists lack morals. You have made claims in the past which have been unfounded. If you were such a seeker after the truth as you claim, then perhaps you would publicly acknowledge, for instance, that you did claim to have a cure for a variety of diseases in the same paragraph that you told Warren that you were researching it.
You do not have an imperative to agree with me, nor I with you. But you do, since you put yourself on the side of those seeking the truth, have an imperative to acknowledge error and correct it. I am content with the conclusions I have made.
HenryP says: December 29, 2013 at 12:42 pm
I think we are wildly off topic now so better stop 0: However, the physical laws in our universe make life inevitable, and there is nothing whatsoever accidental about evolving upwards from primitive replicators, which occur spontaneoulsy in nature according to above laws. As for the substitution of God for the Big Bang (or whatever natural origin) in order to get those laws, be ‘He’ in the form of the Sun, the Moon, Gaia, an Elephant, a guy with a beard, an omnipotent invisible power, or all the other things hominids have worshipped in the past, then whatever floats your boat 😉 I’m happy to admit that the ultimate origin is currently unknown.
I commented above that Lord Monckton had posted an excellent rebuttal to Margaret Hardman, and now Margaet has responded with another tedious polemic, which as usual has nothing to do with scientific veracity, or actual science. I was unable to finish it for that reason.
If Margaret wants to discuss the central issue in the entire alarmist/scientific skeptics’ debate, she can start here.
The alarmist argument is, and always has been, that a rise in CO2 will trigger runaway global warming, leading to climate catastrophe. But the real world is busy debunking that notion. Honest folks would admit by now that their CAGW conjecture has been falsified because there is no verifiable, testable evidence to support it; some already have admitted that the CAGW conjecture has been falsified. More will follow, as the planet continues to demonstrate that there is nothing unusual or unprecedented occurring. The alarmist crowd is diminishing due to the lack of any supporting evidence.
But the True Believers will never admit what everyone else sees: that none of their dire predictions have been borne out by reality. When 100% of their predictions are shown to be wrong, only blinkered fools will keep on insisting that Black is White, Ignorance is Strenth, and Catastrophic AGW is Right Around the Corner.
Meanwhile, skeptics will continue to show people that the real world continues on as it always has, without any scientific evidence that human activity makes any measurable difference. All of the available empirical evidence shows that human CO2 emissions do not matter, either at current or projected concentrations. We are, after all, talking about a minuscule change in a tiny trace gas, from 3 parts in 10,000, to 4 parts in 10,000, and it is doubtful that we will ever see 5 parts in 10,000.
Margaret gets all wound up over other folks’ religion… not realizing that she is a captive of her own religious belief. There is not one iota of verifiable, testable evidence to support the rapidly dwindling alarmist clique’s belief system, which by now is entirely faith-based. All of the available evidence supports the Null Hypothesis [nothing unprecedented or unusual is happening]. The alarmist belief in runaway global warming is now equal to the most wild-eyed 1600’s religious fanatics. They have no testable, measurable evidence whatever. Only their True Belief.
If something is not measureble or quantifiable, it is not science. If Margaret only understood that much, the scales might begin to fall from her eyes. But I, for one, am not holding my breath. Her CAGW religion is an extremely powerful opiate, and Margaret’s withdrawal pains could be very uncomfortable.
Heh. 🙂
andywest2012 says:
“Secular memeplexes, even those originally spawned by science like CAGW, evolve in the same manner as religions..”
As I see it, the polytheistic roots of modern western religion are based on ancient Armenian and Babylonian planetary and solar “gods” of weather astrology. Ironically they lost the science that could help unravel the “Great Lie” of CAGW long ago.
It’s so easy to repeat what clever philologists, western scholars, and academics say on the internet. Plus, it spares you the effort of reading the text yourself, or ever having to put it into practice. Try this for a month: Good thoughts, good words, and good actions. Then try this: Let your love be sincere and without any pretense. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Do not be wise in your own opinion. In honor give preference to one another. Always pray, and never lose heart.
The point of belief and faith is a change of heart, and a change of life. And the reason for that is that you will live for ever, for all of eternity.
But there are a lot of wordsmiths who have all the answers, bless their scholarly hearts.
Warren says:
December 27, 2013 at 5:39 am
“Margaret Hardman: you will have zero impact on dbstealey by referring him to the IPCC reports.”
Margaret H:
“Agreed.”
dbs: Agreed. ☺
FYI, Warren, I’ve read AR-1 through AR-4.
AR-1 [Since you didn’t know: AR = Assesment Report, Warren] was pretty straightforward and science-based. Later AR’s, not so much. AR-4 was a jumble of input from NGOs and QUANGOs like the WWF. It was thoroughly corrupted by money and politics. I expect AR-5 to be even worse.
Later AR’s especially did not allow primary input from true scientific skeptics. How can you have what amounts to a quest for knowledge, when you disallow the majority of scientists: skeptics?
And don’t give us any “consensus” nonsense. There were more than 31,000 co-signers of the OISM Petition, opposing Kyoto. Alarmist groups have never been able to come anywhere close to that number.
The truth is that numerous professional societies have been hijacked by a small cohort of activists with an agenda. That may not be surprising to students of human nature. What is surprising is the credulity of their acolytes, who get spoon-fed the narrative, and swallow it unquestioningly.
Cognitive dissonance keeps them from asking the hard questions, like: why are global temperatures flat to declining for almost two decades, when the supposed cause – CO2 – steadily rises? The only credible answer so far is that CO2 simply does not have the claimed effect at current concentrations. Where does that leave the “carbon” scare? Why are you still scared?
Burying your head in the sand is not something very many would consider scientific. Instead, start asking the hard questions. If you do not get a credible, common-sense answer, then be skeptical! But apparently that is too uncomfortable for some folks. Fortunately, they are in the minority. Only a handful of them on this site are still trying to wing it. Not nearly as many as there used to be.
Whenever big money is involved — and this scare involves more than $100 billion since 2001 — people start figuring angles. And the prospect of more easy loot turns them into ravenous hyenas. We are observing human nature at its worst. For many of us, that is very easy to see.
dbstealey says:
December 29, 2013 at 5:47 pm
FYI, Warren, I’ve read AR-1 through AR-4.
AR-1 [Since you didn’t know: AR = Assesment Report, Warren] was pretty straightforward and science-based Later AR’s, not so much. …
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Right. Especially non-science-based when compared with arguments like “we’re just recovering from the Little Ice Age”.