By Garth Paltridge
Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years. The pause now threatens to expose how much scientists sold their souls for cash and fame, warns emeritus professor Garth Paltridge, former chief research scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research.
Climate Change’s Inherent Uncertainties
…there has been no significant warming over the most recent fifteen or so years…
In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem … in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society’s respect for scientific endeavour…
The trap was set in the late 1970s or thereabouts when the environmental movement first realised that doing something about global warming would play to quite a number of its social agendas. At much the same time, it became accepted wisdom around the corridors of power that government-funded scientists (that is, most scientists) should be required to obtain a goodly fraction of their funds and salaries from external sources—external anyway to their own particular organisation.
The scientists in environmental research laboratories, since they are not normally linked to any particular private industry, were forced to seek funds from other government departments. In turn this forced them to accept the need for advocacy and for the manipulation of public opinion. For that sort of activity, an arm’s-length association with the environmental movement would be a union made in heaven…
The trap was partially sprung in climate research when a number of the relevant scientists began to enjoy the advocacy business. The enjoyment was based on a considerable increase in funding and employment opportunity. The increase was not so much on the hard-science side of things but rather in the emerging fringe institutes and organisations devoted, at least in part, to selling the message of climatic doom. A new and rewarding research lifestyle emerged which involved the giving of advice to all types and levels of government, the broadcasting of unchallengeable opinion to the general public, and easy justification for attendance at international conferences—this last in some luxury by normal scientific experience, and at a frequency previously unheard of…
The trap was fully sprung when many of the world’s major national academies of science (such as the … Australian Academy of Science) persuaded themselves to issue reports giving support to the conclusions of the IPCC. The reports were touted as national assessments that were supposedly independent of the IPCC and of each other, but of necessity were compiled with the assistance of, and in some cases at the behest of, many of the scientists involved in the IPCC international machinations. In effect, the academies, which are the most prestigious of the institutions of science, formally nailed their colours to the mast of the politically correct.
Since that time three or four years ago, there has been no comfortable way for the scientific community to raise the spectre of serious uncertainty about the forecasts of climatic disaster… It can no longer escape prime responsibility if it should turn out in the end that doing something in the name of mitigation of global warming is the costliest scientific mistake ever visited on humanity.
Full story here at: Quadrant Online
Science is great, science is wonderful but people such as Al Gore or anyone else who subscribes to the GW lie should be expelled by the scientific community. GW is based on lies and falsified data. This entire GW debate almost makes me want to vomit, I am so sick of the lies. Oh, and TWC needs to refrain from naming winter storms. Idiots…
Either they were lying when telling us that the science was settled or they weren’t very scientific about it. Either way all science is worse for it.
Science will be fine, thank you very much. Scientists who practice non-replicable “science” will not fare quite as well, despite what a few bristle-cone pines have to say.
I am constantly amazed that the professional working in climate ‘science’ cannot meet the standards in their published work which are consider the norm of a student handing in a essay .
While the author has a good point , for I guess that some who support ‘the cause ‘ in reality have little faith in the scientific validity of it. But know that having gone all in they have little choice but double down or lose the lot .
The hear no evil , see no evil , say no evil approach of the scientific establishment when to comes poor academic practice and worse personal approach of the IPCC and ‘the Team’ could end up costing is all a great deal .
But if science in general becomes to the public a untrusted joke because of AGW , it really only has itself to blame.
Science. The seeking of knowledge.
Has no reputation to lose.
Only the hubris of its proponents.
In the future this period of global warming alarmism will be compared to Lysenkoism. Many reputations will be in ruins. Hailing Dr. Homer Hansen.
Gareth?
This well thought out article is an excellent response to the article that J.Curry referred to yesterday, “The Death of Expertise”. Laymen are not stupid. They understand how the world works. The pressure to conform, temptation to “sell their souls”, etc. Experts who assume they should be given the final word in their area of expertise underestimate the sophistication of laymen. In fact, as Curry notes, independent researchers can make valuable contributions to science.
RISKS?
!!!
While it is important to remember the names and faces of the scientists at the heart of the CAGW swindle, I believe the mainstream/consensus media must also be held to account. The large number of so-called journalists who would happily grill any wavering politician are little more than bobble-headed admirers when encountering a climate scientist. And those same media outlets are crying the blues now that fewer people want to listen to their drivel.
Amen. I think the reputation of all science will be harmed, particularly academic science. Sadly, I think the hit to reputation is deserved. I think more academic science is done badly than we’d care to believe, especially in the handling of statistics and inference.
There is science and there is ‘climate science’.
The standards and ethics of the latter has brought the former into disrepute.
The 17 year hiatus/pause/whatever has demonstrated the current temperature cycle is no different from the many tens of thousands of other similar cycles seen throughout geological history.
The waste of money in the climate cause is truly incredible and what has it achieved apart from rising energy bills and ugly blots on the landscape?
I would like to send this essay to my Member of Parliament. Is that permitted?
He is a Financial Secretary (or some such fairly influential post) and is very numerate. He has a clear line to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and would be worth “cultivating”.
All this will not only harm science, but also the environment.
Took many years to build the environmental consciousness some, or most, of the people in the Western world and some other developed countries now have. Recycling, garbage segregation, curb emissions, etc… As soon as the myth is debunked, I am afraid what will happen.
I am afraid a lot of people will just shun whatever the correct environmental approach is. Many people might start seeing the truly good for the environment approaches as another worthless thing. It might all become in their minds either a lie or something that is an exaggeration.
Credibility to good things will now be trashed. There are so many negative things that might come out of this scam that mother nature should be able to sue everybody involved in this down to a couple generations.
In a few hundred years historians will look back and, as the 80’s are known for the fashion trends, the last two decades after 2000 will be known for the gullibility and exaggerated fears of the unaccountable. Ignorance and scares.
Far too late. What reputation? Science is dead, having accepted money to spew continuous propaganda since the ’80s, or, at the very best, failed to rise up and point out the fallacies published in Nature and Science and similar jourinals. Academia’s reputation is bit lower. Journalism is lowest of all, having maintained an inexplicable silence for the same period. People of integrity are few, these days, it would seem. ¿Why is that, I wonder. What happened?
The scientific establishment has long ago lost its credibility over the CAGW fiasco. It won’t be getting it back for a long, long time.
“rising energy bills and ugly blots on the landscape”
An example is Wolfe Island by Kingston Ont. Canada. What was beautiful has become ugly due to the many wind mills on the island. The power is very expensive, and intermittent.
dfbaskwill says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:20 am
Science will be fine, thank you very much. Scientists who practice non-replicable “science” will not fare quite as well, despite what a few bristle-cone pines have to say.
———————————————————————————————
Sorry, can’t agree. Science shouldn’t be “fine”. Too many formerly respected scientists and scientific institutions have colluded in untold damage to economies and people. Too many scientists who didn’t really know the subject bad-mouthed people who knew the subject far better but had the temerity to question the “consensus”.
I doubt that I’m alone in now questioning the motives and honesty of any scientist in any field proposing anything of any significance.
A root and branch cleansing of climate “science” is necessary, both for the future of the field but as an example to others. The rest of science should be humbled and so scared by the treatment handed out to climate wrongdoers that they wouldn’t dare be anything but scrupulous themselves.
And the honest but silent ones will only have themselves to blame. If only, when CAGW became such a powerful controversy, they had examined it for themselves or at least not acquiesced in the demonizing of those who were brave enough to remain sceptical, then science as a whole wouldn’t have become tarred with the same brush as the charlatans.
“…Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science” When entire science academies worked to obscure the revelations of Climategate, I do believe that that ship of fools has already sailed.
@Gareth>The trap was set in the late 1970s or thereabouts ….
There is even an earlier precedent, where scientific research was similarly distorted to assist a political agenda. In the 1930’s the Soviet Union promoted Lysenko’s disastrous Lamarckian genetic theories. Those who disagreed with Lysenko’s theory were imprisoned or killed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Today climate activists have achieved international control over scientific research on a scale that dwarfs Lysenkoism, impeding or stamping out any research that contradicts the “consensus” theory.
😐
While I agree with the central premise of the author’s essay, I would argue that private industry is also responsible to a considerable degree in regard to the corruption of climate science. Once the enormous amounts of money at stake became visible to the captains of industry, they set about diverting as much as they could of it into their own pockets. Adept at it, they themselves became cheer leaders for bad science because it was good for business.
Carbon credits – one more commodity for the financial industry to set up a market for and skim a percentage off the top.
Oil and Gas – they pumped the meme because it improved their competitiveness versus coal
Windmill and solar manufacturers – subsidies created entire manufacturing sectors that otherwise would have been insignificant
Power generation – they were gleefully “forced” to accept “green” power into their grids, enabling them to obtain permission from regulators to raise prices accordingly, substantially increasing revenue.
I could go on, the list of beneficiaries in the private sector is exceedingly long. Once those industries had their noses in the trough right next to the public sector scientists, the whole thing veered off into lunacy with politicians being tugged toward rank stupidity in terms of economic policy by enviro loons, science loons and industry loons alike.
Costliest scientific mistake ever doesn’t begin to quantify the magnitude of the problem.
dfbaskwill says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:20 am
Science will be fine, thank you very much. Scientists who practice non-replicable “science” will not fare quite as well, despite what a few bristle-cone pines have to say.
_____________________________________________________________________
You beat me to it. Just seems to take a long time for the reputation of scientists to decline.
Eisenhower warned about this fifty years ago in his farewell address. Unfortunately, most people just read the part about the military-industrial complex and stop there, rather than continue on to the warnings about the links between government and the ‘scientific-technological elite’.
The only solution is to cut all taxpayer funding of science, completely; let scientists do something useful that people are willing to pay for, or nothing at all. We won’t lose much, as most of the taxpayers’ money goes on generating dubious studies that are soon contradicted by other dubious studies.
Really? The loss of scientific credibility began with man-made global warming? Funny, I remember some pretty bad science in the Silent Spring, the ozone hole, acid rain, ethanol, solar energy, electric cars and the environmental list goes on. Not to mention all the hullabaloo over string theory, dark matter, dark energy and the Higgs boson. The science of economics is in complete tatters. Computer science has seen some huge disasters, a lot of them in big business, not just government. Medicine has seen some huge blunders (Eggs are bad for you! Or was it the bacon included in the test?). I think there’s more self promotion going on today than science. I wouldn’t trust a statement from a scientist further than I could spit it.
If this is the way it is going to go then there will be ‘blood on the floor’.
The cost of the entire farrago has been eye watering.
Meanwhile, some of us are just trying to work out how the climate system really works.
Motivated only by curiosity and our love of the natural world.
Unfortunately, the reputation of scientists was destroyed by Gore, et al years ago when he proclaimed the science settled. By and large, the scientific community said and did little in response. As a result, scientists have the same reputation as politicians and attorneys. The real shame is that this was all so avoidable.
Due to the nonsense “models” used in the cagw scam any time I see a study of any kind with forecasts using said models I have to be sceptical at best and at worst just think “pa rubbish,gigo…….
Contrary to popular opinion, it is not the “pause” that is the downfall of global warming climatology. It is methodological shortcomings in the research that are obcured by applications of the equivocation fallacy. Prestigious scientific institutions have disgraced themselves through failure to see through this fallacy.
The author is still waiting on the weather while ignoring skeptical exposure of fraud and peer review corruption, and it continued unabated in 2013, impossibly, but so. Defrauding whole cultures is a moral crime of the highest order, as is just following orders and actively playing along.
It is becoming clear to the public that the climate alarmists are shills of Big Green. They have a well-funded organisation to spread misinformation and the denial of the significance of natural climate forcings.
When climate scientists tied their future to enviro activists and politicians, they left the realm of science and entered the world of politically correct causes. Enviro’s and politicians believe the end justifies the means. For enviro’s it is a religion, for politicians it is power. So they convinced the climate science academics to sell their reputations for passing prestige and money. In the end it will come out negative for most, the tax payers, the environment, and the academics. However for some like Hansen and Gore, the “green” technology corporations, they have become rich, so the end was justified by the means, ugly as it was.
Gareth Paltridge said:
“The trap was set in the late 1970s or thereabouts when the environmental movement first realised that doing something about global warming would play to quite a number of its social agendas.”
______________________
Go deeper…
“The ‘Pause’ of Global Warming Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science”
Anthony, think what damage would have been done not only to science but all of mankind if we hadn’t had a pause at this time and the climate actually ends up not conferring such importance on CO2 50 years from now. We would have impoverished ourselves and when the pause finally did come, the big Ship of Fools that is the body of climate science would be congratulating themselves on having turned the tide and saved the planet. Science would be dead. There would be a special synod of scientific establishment that would mete and dole out grave punishments to skeptics who didn’t buy in by that time. Gareth says we are spending a billion a day!! This would have risen to 10 billion a day. I would be volunteering for the next trip to Mars.
Let us not lose sight of the terrible risk we were put at. Don’t let this all blow over as the rats abandon the Ship of Fools and rewrite their own personal histories. Greenpeace will give them lessons in this. Let’s not have any Truth and Reconciliation committees. This was far outside of any civilized parameters.
Gareth Paltridge:
I write to strongly support your article.
A decade ago Fred Singer organised a well-attended fringe meeting at an IPCC Meeting in The Hague. The speakers were Fred, Gerd Rainer-Weber and me.
My presentation concerned global temperature data sets and explained how the data was unreliable, inaccurate and not indicative of imminent crisis.
Near the end of that presentation I said,
“When ‘the chickens come home to roost’ – as they surely will with efluxion of time – the politicians and journalists won’t say, “It was all our fault”. They will say, “It was the scientists’ fault”, and that’s me, and I object!”
Since then I have seen nothing to change my view.
Indeed, things have gotten worse. For example, a recent scandal has removed the ability of AGW-sceptics to assert there is no evidence of AGW-sceptics practicing bad science procedures.
In the famous words from Dad’s Army, “We’re doomed, all doomed”, and I still object but to no avail.
Richard
Maybe climate scientists like Phil Jones and Michael Mann could learn from an old poem about ‘Truth’ by Arthur Hugh Clough. It contains the lines
I’d love to see an apology from some scientists or scientific organization, but I don’t think that will happen. Recall that science never specifically admitted that there are no canals on Mars, nor did they explain why that false belief persisted for such a long time. They simply stopped talking about the canals.
Gareth Paltridge has cogently summarized many of the thoughts I’ve had over the past six years–especially the relationship between global warming, scientists and social agendas. I have long held the opinion that with the breakup of the Soviet Union the people espousing socialism as the ideal form of government have thrown their saddle on global warming and are whipping their horse to the finish line–a one-world government. Given how many times the CAGW team has changed the goalposts in its attempt to hide the failure of many of its
predictionsprojections, it’s ironic that mother nature apparently isn’t cooperating with the most important goalpost of them all: Earth temperature. As a result, CAGW proponents are finding out that if they had started their sprint to the finish line 10 to 20 before they did, they just might have achieved their goal and we’d now all be under the boot of UN control. Another ironic aspect of the CAGW fiasco is that the team only has itself to blame for the late start. In the 70s the crisis du jour was global cooling, not global warming. To maintain any semblance of credibility, the team had to wait a decent period before it could make the switch. It looks like that wait might be fatal to the team’s ultimate goal. Hallelujah!“””””””” davidmhoffer says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:47 am
While I agree with the central premise of the author’s essay, I would
argue that private industry is also responsible to a considerable degree
in regard to the corruption of climate science””””””.
I would argue against this “considerable degree”, because I have sent my Earth
orbital and climate change analysis to hundreds of Warmist “climate scientists”
and almost none replied http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/eoo_paper.html .
They refuse to take a look, as soon as they notice the paper is “skeptic” – they
are simply obstinate….. It doesn´t matter, whether a study is peer-reviewed or not,
see Nicolas Scafetta papers….It is Warmist policy, not to answer skeptical papers.
Myself, I complained with Stocker in Bern about AR4…..they replied: Yes, there
is something to it, you have a point……but, quote: “action is not warranted”, thus
AGW is dead scared to look into the Earth orbit matter as the cause for decadal
and centennial climate change….
I worked my entire career in managing corporate R&D labs. I love and value real science. But…
How many “scientists” gladly accepted the grants, funding, publications, meetings……….
How many spoke out Against the abuses and overstatements? As a % of community?
How many “scientific organizations” gladly embraced the warming meme for politics?
Seems like the reputation of “scientists” deserves to be lowered, many notches……….
Good article, I too say science will be fine.
Those who disguise their advocacy in sciencey clothing will not fare so well.
The public has a nose for dishonesty and BS. (Bad Science)
While unsure, we are willing to give the “experts” the benefit of doubt, but when the consequences of having taken this expert advice are hugely damaging we are capable of being extremely unforgiving.
Science as an institution of uncertainty, has always been under attack.
The high priests and witchdoctors never left our societies, they have always resented having their grasp on the gullible pried loose, by sceptical thinkers with the freedom to speak.
The herd attraction to certainty is instinctive and comforting, we want to believe.
Human behaviour seems to cycle, from grimly pragmatic through to suicidal insanity.
The perception problem is it takes generations, exactly like those possible weather/climate cycles we are trying to decipher.
The horrible vision, the posted article gave me, ..
I forsee a time coming when those of us who have been extremely critical of the actions of modern scientists, particularly those of the “climate persuasion”, may find ourselves arguing on their behalf, against a lynch mob.
Always a possibility when you argue for fair play and civil discourse.
But I do maintain civilization is valuable.
davidmhoffer says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:47 am
“While I agree with the central premise of the author’s essay, I would argue that private industry is also responsible to a considerable degree in regard to the corruption of climate science.”
You are not wrong, of course, but don’t chastise industry for what it does best. If [your] business is production of energy and policies are being put in place to put you out of business, then you are going to also go into the green energy business and pick up subsidies and any other legal avenue to get your share. I don’t fault them. Industry responds to regulation. Making coal uneconomic in the USA and Australia leads to coal exports from their companies. You have to admire the versatility of industry. Also, at least a seasoned business is going to do this stupid deed most efficiently. Imagine what it would cost if a bunch of political scientists, environmentalists and their flacks were to go into the green energy business and we were forced to buy the energy from, say Greenpeas or World Wild Flights of Fancy organization.
David in Cal, you write “I’d love to see an apology from some scientists or scientific organization, but I don’t think that will happen.”
I suggest there may be a difference when it comes to CAGW. Claiming there were canals on Mars did not cost taxpayers any money. Suggesting CAGW is real has cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Taxpayers can be very unforgiving.
David in Cal says:
January 26, 2014 at 9:25 am
You’re quite right David, you there will be no apology. There are too many serious losers; all the worlds Scientific Bodies including the once respected Royal Society, most of the mass media including the never-respected BBC, the once respected Nobel Foundation etc. They can never admit they were wrong, don’t even dream about it, it is not going to happen!
So, as Max Planck famously said
Paltridge in his full essay may be too pessimistic about a resolution to the problem. There are now skeptical governments scattered about the world, and as Jo Nova recently reported, Europe is beginning to swing away from its investments in alternative sources of power. Governments will probably make changes slowly, to avoid embarrassment. However, with electorates increasingly resisting the economic pain of AGW activism, we may actually see research money directed in part to skeptical scientific studies. With a balanced debate–in which Nature has a say–mainstream science may come to assess any projected warming as most likely not catastrophic.
Joachim;
They refuse to take a look, as soon as they notice the paper is “skeptic”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is your assumption. You fail to consider that they did look, found your work to be without merit, and unworthy of response. Had you sent it to me, I might have responded, but I doubt you would be happy with my comments.
In any event, how publicly funded scientists responded to your missives has absolutely nothing to do with the role of private sector actors in persuading political decision makers in regard to climate policy.
BTW, his name is Garth, not Gareth.
Richard,
Don’t be such a pessimist.
I still have one foot in the real world and ordinary folk have known for a while that AGW doesn’t sound ‘true’.
They are cynics as regards the conduct of big government and their lackeys in the world of ‘science’.
Just as the printing of fake money is forestalling the inevitable worldwide period of deflation the shenanigans of so called ‘scientists’ have already become a source of mere amusement.
Yet, despite the debasement of currencies worldwide, despite the stupidity of so called ‘experts’, the world is becoming richer, population growth is approaching stability and in due course a voluntary decline, natural resources are becoming more abundant through new methods of extraction, life expectancies are increasing, the power of dictators to exert their will is declining.
History flows towards a better future overall despite setbacks along the way and AGW was just one such setback which will be looked upon as an amusing example of past institutional stupidity in 100 years time.
The main culprits will get away with it, unfortunately, but the history of humankind will press on regardless.
Separating science from the cause.. Selling social engineering as some sort of quasi science like political campaign.. How can we be wrong with so many of the right people involved..
The government uses green to increase revenue and provide less infrastructure wise.. Abandoning projects just involves slapping a return to nature sign on it.. Not paying this year just involves a little more study..
Green is a governmental fudge factor to make sure there is money left in the coffers for government raises, promotions and benefits.. The public’s needs and the workers needs on a green teeter totter..
Who is not willing to put their thumb on the scale when reality is bounded by collective bargaining..
How do we get them to pay more for less.. How can we borrow on their backs so we can sell the fact that we are borrowing on their backs..
To me.. The western world sold its ability to produce profit to China.. Our elite (and their children) have no other choice but to create a new green industry that allows them to feed on the public..
Why do they need cheap power when they are NOT manufacturing here anyway.. They dont..
But.. they do need to generate some sort of profit in their own back yard to keep themselves at the top of the local heap.. Green is pushed and pulled, soiled and sold.. Keeping the lights on by slowly dimming them..
The very people who sold your future are taking your past.. This is clear..
“In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem ”
Overstating? How about fabricating the climate problem? That’s much worse and with such wholesale global participation from every sector of academia and governments it is inevitable that
it will turn out in the end that “global warming” is the costliest scientific mistake ever visited on humanity.
Nothing else comes close.
It’s maddening that here in Oregon the push for mitigation is soaring.
There appears to be no limit to the crimes of public deceit.
The reputation of politicians, and the profiteers who bought them their office in exchange will remain intact.
I would draw comparisons between climatism and economics.
For example, both are quite closely linked to politics. A good deal of politics has been a battle of economic ideas. For its much shorter life, climatism has been intimately linked to politics.
Both grapple with “wicked problems” (as discussed by Judith Curry) and chaotic behaviour patterns. Both are data intensive and attract scientific disciplines for analysis, although for both of them predictive skill sits tantalisingly just out of reach.
A significant difference is that economists have learned hard lessons and come to understand their limitations. Climatism is only starting to get to get there.
We don’t talk about “economic science”, and I would expect the expression “climate science” to be dropped in the future, and “science” will be all the better for it!
Gary Pearse;
You are not wrong, of course, but don’t chastise industry for what it does best.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I wasn’t chastising them, I was pointing out their role. It has become customary on this blog to blame the “left” and “watermelons” for the current state of affairs. I’m pointing out that there is plenty of blame to go around and that the “right” and “capitalists” have equally bent the CAGW meme to their will.
Destroying this abject failure of science to overcome mythology begins with understanding who benefits from maintaining the myth, and that cuts across a wider swath of the populace than most skeptics seem to think.
The Global Warming/ Climate change fiasco is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on mankind. It has cost billions so far and will cost many more if it isn’t brought to an end soon. Further it threatens to destroy energy production in the world. Possibly prosecutions are in order. They should start with the people who started the hoax, Al Gore and Jim Hansen.
I like “Me” as the name for a winter storm. “Me just dropped 20 inches of snow in the Denver area.” Also “Myself” and “I”.
“Francisco says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:42 am
All this will not only harm science, but also the environment.
Took many years to build the environmental consciousness some, or most, of the people in the Western world and some other developed countries now have. Recycling, garbage segregation, curb emissions, etc… As soon as the myth is debunked, I am afraid what will happen.”
Fear not Francisco. I think most of us, rational beings, can determine the difference between mad subsidised industrial schemes to generate small amounts of high cost intermittent electricity, from genuine environmental issues, like recycling, energy saving, technical development of efficient industrial and transport systems.
Climate science isn’t really science – the evidence? Science can be tested but climate science cannot be tested. Any outcome is consistent with climate science. It cannot be falsified because climate science lives on faith.
And as long as the faith is useful it will not be exposed… yet those who don’t share the faith have far less respect for priests than true believers.
So there won’t be a crisis for the reputation of science. Just a gradual erosion of the respect for scientists.
And that could be good. Because most people have no idea what scientists do and only respect scientists for their technological wonders.
My prediction: The popular respect for scientists will be replaced by respect for engineers.
Science funded by politicians, what could go wrong?
jorgekafkazar says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:42 am
Far too late. What reputation? Science is dead, having accepted money to spew continuous propaganda since the ’80s, or, at the very best, failed to rise up and point out the fallacies published in Nature and Science and similar jourinals. Academia’s reputation is bit lower. Journalism is lowest of all, having maintained an inexplicable silence for the same period. People of integrity are few, these days, it would seem. ¿Why is that, I wonder. What happened?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once the wagers started flowing in, the rigging of the game was inevitable. Wealth, fame, power, social acceptance and moral absolution for all at the Church of Global Warming! Progressivism is and always has been in the business of selling indulgences. Their kiosks are everywhere.
BTW, Jorge, was that a deliberate misspelling of journals (“jourinals”)? Very apt!
Here’s a major UK university spending money on something called ‘sustainable chemistry’ and building a new laboratory which is apparently going to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2025. Who exactly benefits, I wonder?
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/estates/developments/csc.aspx
Science started leaving the path when it allied with government.
WWII had a lot to do with that alliance.
Stephen Wilde:
re your post at January 26, 2014 at 9:41 am.
Please accept my sincere thanks for your words of consolation.
I hope you are right, but I fear you are not.
Richard
Much of this could have been prevented if in 1988, congressional security would have as alert as post 9-11 levels. Hansen and Wirth would have been tasered, subdued and thrown in jail for messing with the building’s a/c.
They thought they had a period of natural warming coming that would allow them to get their agenda through. They made a mistake in over-hyping the warming and put their thumbs on the scales with their “adjustments” which, when caught, resulted in people being more skeptical of their claims. Now we are going into a period of natural cooling which has come before they were able to get their agenda fully implemented and that will be their undoing. I don’t think this will ruin the reputation of science as a whole, but it will make people more skeptical of claims from scientists who have a direct personal benefit from their own claims.
Judith Curry yesterday.
But what if we do get to 20 years, then what? What if surface temps cool? What about 23 years? Just what will it take for these people to reconsider their ideas?
——————-
It is my opinion that “science” is a method and a good one. That is, the “scientific method” when followed is one of our best paths to knowledge. That said, it is also my opinion that scientists have all the failings and shortcomings of the rest of humanity and often are less honest than the average used car salesman. I gave up any trust of a ‘scientist’ back in the 70s. I trust observed data, correct methods, and logic — not men.
As an aside, I think lousy science by the medical establishment is often far worse than even a M. Mann in publishing and promoting pure trash.
The complete article by Garth Paltridge is worth spending the time to read and absorb.
Well my Bingle responds to Dr Roy’s Gareth ? With the suggestion this might be retired Australian Climate scientist Dr. Garth Paltridge (handsome looking dude; just like our Dr Roy.)
So his essay is quite thought provoking, but maybe not so surprising.
A recent (2013) report in “Physics Today” on the ultimate career paths of USA Physics PhD graduates, was quite alarming.
The gist of it was, that 30% of US physics PhDs get a permanent job in physics; presumably in the general field of their specialty. 5% get temporary positions, then presumably change to doing something else (other than physics).
65% of such graduates, never get a permanent job working in physics, presumably, in the area of their thesis specialty; they are doomed to spend the rest of their careers, as post-doc “fellows”, at some institution or other. I assume that includes, universities, and both private, and government establishments.
I don’t recall the report going into reasons for this ; they just reported the results of their survey.
I can imagine reasons. Their thesis subject might have involved nothing that anyone is willing to pay money to know more about. Industry employs plenty of physicists, including PhDs, and if you specialize in the right area, you can plow a wide furrow for yourself.
A few years ago, I attended an enrollment orientation class for parents of new students, enrolling at San Francisco State University. Naturally, the parents quizzed each other, about what their little darlings were going to do at SF State. Two (different) parents, I spoke with, said their student was doing “ethnic studies”. SF has its School of Racism.
While wondering what my student would do with a degree in film and video, maybe in the movie industry; I tried to recall seeing any newspaper ads for a person skilled in ethnic studies. Well, or political science for that matter.
So I guess if you want to do your PhD on “string theory”, or “parallel universes”, good luck on finding a job.
On another physics related web site, that I stopped wasting time and effort on, about 10% of the questions are about string theory, or parallel universes. The questions and subsequent comments from the questioners, suggest that the person is not even competent in Euclidian plane geometry. Perhaps a quarter of the questions come from people who clearly haven’t done the pre-requisites to even get into a class, where their question might be discussed. So they clearly won’t understand an answer, if you gave them one. Answerers are “rated” in a popularity concensus voting system.
But back at Dr Garth’s essay; we have the unfortunate circumstance, that climate is unavoidably linked to the weather.
And who isn’t interested in the weather ? It is vital to know about it, and in particular to know what might be coming down the pike; well recently, what might be coming down ON the pike !
But how much should we pay for people to study questions, that they may never answer before they retire, on a fat taxpayer endowed pension.
That’s the beauty of “climate research” ; you can spend your entire career, having never gathered a long enough data base of information to establish significance of whatever it was that you studied.
Is it sensible that the late Dr Carl Sagan moved over to a parallel universe, having never gathered as much as one single binary digit of scientific observational evidence, of life (intelligent or not) ; outside of a thin shell perhaps +/- 25km about mean sea level, on planet earth. Perhaps there’s not much intelligent life, within that shell.
There are other things than climatism, that are putting the squeeze on the credibility and reputation of science.
I made this point to a friend of mine back in 2004 or 2005. He conceded to me that I was probably right about CAGW but that the message was important to protect the environment. I told him then that using a demonstrably false argument to sell the environmental point would turn and bight them on the backside badly. What will happen is people are going to turn on the entire message and turn antigreen when they realize just how much of a false message was used to sell them on this. Using a cyclic natural process to trump up a message is great for a short term goal but what do you do when the cycle turns? At that point your message is glaringly false and all you did in support of it becomes not just questionable but bad.
The Leftist Scientific Establishment & AGW
The problem is that the scientific establishment leans to the left, and when the leftist senator Tim Wirth said in 1993: “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing,” the scientists agreed.
And what is that “right thing.” Well, you could say that the “conscience” of the scientific establishment is represented by Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren, who in 1973 said this: “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States… [we] must design a stable, low-consumption economy.” He said this way before the global warming scare, in fact at the time Holdren was preaching de-development as a solution to global… cooling: http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/01/08/flashback-john-holdren-in-1971-new-ice-age-likely/
They have been pushing for draconian cuts in industrialization since the ’60s. It had nothing to do with global warming. Marice Strong, the ex UNEP Director, said: “Isn’t the only hope for this planet the total collapse of industrial civilisation? Is it not our responsibility to ensure that this collapse happens?” And Maurice Strong is considered by many to be the “father” of the global warming scare.
And a huge point about all the national academies of science getting on board with the warmists. With at least a strong super majority of the academy members leaning left, and accepting Senator Wirth’s declaration that AGW policy “is the right to do anyway,” there’s no reason why all of the academies then wouldn’t line up, en masse, in support of the leftist driven theory. So that’s just what all the academies and scientific organization did.
In addition, we can be reasonably assured that most scientists + politicos + journalists, in agreement with the notion that AGW policy was the right thing to do regardless of the science, accepted the 1989 dictim of Stephen Schneider: “We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” It’s scary really, to think that it’s all fabricated bs and lies, up and down the line. There’s a lot of layers of this onion that needs to be peeled back, but it’s a peeling that needs to be done.
They gambled and they lost. To get to the root of this you have to go all the way back to Kyoto. The US was going to adopt Kyoto, Enron was going to implement a national carbon exchange, and Al Gore was going to make a huge pile of money. Their undoing actually came when the US didn’t adopt Kyoto, we didn’t set up a national carbon exchange, Enron went under, and Al Gore had to get into the movie business.
Meanwhile we just had the highest year ever that was not associated with a positive ENSO event, a fact that no one at this website has really noticed, even Tisdale.
[highest? Mod]
Not to be repetitive, Obama and his AGW EPA are still firm believers. They are in charge.
CO2 is not the problem lack of jobs is. Try to pay your heating bills without a job.
richardscourtney says: January 26, 2014 at 9:21 am
In the famous words from Dad’s Army, “We’re doomed, all doomed”, and I still object but to no avail.
_________________________________________
Come on, richard, this is an international blog. Please don’t confuse readers with parochial humour, without explaining yourself.
Doomed and entombed. – Dad’s Army:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w7RIgs3eygo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dw7RIgs3eygo
ralph
Bah, no one uses RSS or even UAH temperature data due to its inherent bias. You people act as though satellite measurement is somehow “pure”. but the fact is that,
Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature.[1][2] The resulting temperature profiles depend on details of the methods that are used to obtain temperatures from radiances. As a result, different groups that have analyzed the satellite data have obtained different temperature trends. Among these groups are Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). Furthermore the satellite series is not fully homogeneous – it is constructed from a series of satellites with similar but not identical instrumentation.
and, as far as your total reliance on RSS values,
Here we show that trends in MSU (where RSS gets its data from) channel 2 temperatures are weak because the instrument partly records stratospheric temperatures whose large cooling trend offsets the contributions of tropospheric warming.
–It is clear that your reliance on this system for temperature data is so biased that it makes your argument worthless.
Once you’ve sold your soul to the cause. it’s harder n hell to get it back … and once it’s known your soul is up for bids, you become just a commodity … is it any wonder that those who’ve sold out on science so fear skeptics.
“I’m pointing out that there is plenty of blame to go around and that the “right” and “capitalists” have equally bent the CAGW meme to their will.” — davidmhoffer
Please don’t fall for the left-wing propaganda that all capitalists are right-wing. There are plenty of “capitalists” on the left. They just tend to be crony capitalists, which are the worst kind. Many of the largest companies, like GE, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc., are decidedly on the left. And I really don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the highly subsidized green companies in the U.S. just happen to be run by CEOs who were large donors and bundlers for the Obama campaign.
Keith says:
January 26, 2014 at 9:31 am
I worked my entire career in managing corporate R&D labs. I love and value real science. But…
How many “scientists” gladly accepted the grants, funding, publications, meetings……….
How many spoke out Against the abuses and overstatements? As a % of community?
How many “scientific organizations” gladly embraced the warming meme for politics?
Seems like the reputation of “scientists” deserves to be lowered, many notches……….
When academia implemented the ‘tenure’ system they removed ‘the stick’ however they forgot to remove ‘the carrot‘ and academic support was brought from those scientists who were happy to sell their ethics. Had tenure also been at the cost of zero increased remuneration or promotions as well as protection from being removed from post, then perhaps academic science may have retained more rigor.
Terry Oldberg says:
January 26, 2014 at 9:11 am
Indeed!
And at the risk of being repetitive (for there may be many readers that didn’t see this in a recent article here on WUWT), here are the main assumptions upon which “climate models” are based:
· The climate is unchanged without the effects of greenhouse gases
· The earth is flat
· The Sun shines day and night with the same intensity
· Energy exchanges are almost all by radiation
· Energy exchanges are “balanced”
· Energy exchanges are instantaneous
· No work is done on the system.
· “Natural” climate properties are not only merely “variable” but are also negligible
None of the above bear any resemblance to reality, so it isn’t a “model” at all and won’t produce accurate results.
We’ll chock it up to criminal negligence.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/the-scientific-method-and-climate-science/#more-101812
Science can only hope to recover its true reputation when this grotesque and vile growth is cut down, chopped up. it’s roots structure is dug out and all the residue destroyed by carbonisation and the land it infiltrated made fallow.
It’s breeders, nurturers and sycophants must be exposed at a global pillory and compelled to make sincere apology and recompense to their fellow man.
50 years ago or so, Carl Sagan made a mistake in his aerosol optical physics. He failed to account for a second optical effect. This led him to assert that the Venusian atmospheric lapse rate was from black body level surface IR being absorbed and thermalised in the atmosphere by GHGs, in that case CO2, and that the evaporation of condensed water in the atmosphere cause thermal runaway.
No competent scientist or engineer would think this**. Sagan, a political activist, pushed the risk of thermal runaway on Earth. This mistake was picked up by Houghton along with the claim that the Earth’s atmosphere is a grey body absorber/emitter. It isn’t. Houghton, a religious zealot, pushed the thermal runaway argument as a religious duty, to Thatcher etc, and created the IPCC. Thatcher lobbied for Kyoto but in 1993 apologised for her mistaken belief – she knew the science was wrong.
In 1974, Lacis and Hansen introduced Sagan’s wrong physics into atmospheric science and in 1981 published the first GISS modelling paper. This has an humongous IR physics error in Para. 2 and falsely claimed 33 K GHE by stating that the -18 deg C zone in radiative equilibrium with Space is in the upper atmosphere. It isn’t, being the weighted average of three zones. The real GHE is ~11 K now, about 2 K at the last glacial maximum.
Noe of the models can predict correct heat generation and transfer. This has been a 50 year mistake because of the hubris of some strong characters whop failed to check basic physics.
**Apply Maxwell’s Equations to the problem or do experimental measurement and you easel show that the black body emitter assumption is wrong, as is the interpretation of the Tyndall Experiment. Also add in the failure to interpret what a pyrgeometer outputs and there is no ‘back radiation’, no enhanced GHE.
There is so much more to science than Climatology!!!
This mess reminds me of the Bernie Madoff debacle. A lot of people who “should have known better” all assumed that someone else was doing the due diligence. All the smart people have some major face to lose, especially considering that all of the skeptics they have painted as troglodytes through the years turn out to have been right all along.
There is at least one other “trap” that Mr. Paltridge has overlooked. But this time the trap is one that the skeptics, rather than those on the payroll of governments, have fallen into, and they have done so time and again; the language trap. In the recent past, even though we saw it coming we accepted and used the term “climate change” instead of “man made global warming.” This time we have accepted, even adopted, the phrase “the pause.” Using this term in dissertations such as the one above inherently signifies an acceptance of, and lends credibility to, the thought that man made global warming is actually occuring. The entire idea of a “pause” in “global warming” needs to be brought to its proper light as nothing more than the apex of a naturally occuring sine curve in the graph of the temperature time line. Without at least a minimum awareness of how the other side uses and abuses language to its own benefit the skeptics are doomed to look like children tossing a tantrum to anyone looking in from the outside. We also see those of us on the skeptic side of things stumble over the term “climate change.” Can anyone really state that the climate is actually changing? If so, where is this occuring? Think about it; what region on the face of the earth is experiencing an actual change in its climate? How often have we heard or read it stated that sure we have climate change, the climate is always changing? Oh, yeah? Just where is this happening? The whole idea is nonsense. The climate is not changing! We have variations in temperature and we have variations in conditions. We have hot summers and cold summers. But we do not have climate change. Anywhere. Pay attention to language, guys!
In the US, the point at which the inquiring mind meets science is Middle School. Until AGW came along, no Middle School students had reason to believe that their teachers were corrupt as teachers. Since AGW came along, Middle School students in public schools have been aware that they are being taught dogma rather than science. They are aware that they are not permitted the full exercise of their critical faculties. They have been denied the splendid isolation of inquiry that was traditional in the hard sciences and, instead, have suffered the negotiated inquiry that is typical of public policy research.
No prominent figure in science or science education has taken a public stance against the widespread misuse of science as justification for policy decisions. None have explained that the science can be settled while the policy questions remain open. None have explained that today’s common practice of treating science and public policy as indistinguishable produces confusion about both science and public policy.
In brief, our Middle Schools have taught our children to be no less cynical about science than about public policy. They have struck a blow against those children who might love science for science’s sake. When those children become young adults and learn that a career in science is difficult and all consuming, they are not going to choose science as a career. They will not hold those who do choose science in high esteem.
Science will suffer for a long time because of the misdeeds of the AGW advocates.
RockyRoad:
re your post at January 26, 2014 at 10:44 am.
The models are wrong and they don’t work. There are several known reasons for this and probably some unknown reasons, too.
But your list of model faults is plain wrong. As you admitted, you have posted your misunderstanding before, and I am not the first person to tell you that your list is not true.
For example, the models do NOT emulate a flat Earth.
Proclaiming falsehoods does not help the AGW scepticism: it harms AGW scepticism.
Richard
“Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’ ”
Oh trust me… they’re worried. They’re not going to renounce their views, but they’re worried.
In early January, a strong impulse heat in the upper part of the zone raised the temperature of the ozone over the Arctic Circle, even at sea level, which is clearly visible. She disappeared even the ozone hole.Currently, the temperature dropped significantly.
In early January, a strong impulse heat in the upper part of the zone raised the temperature of the ozone over the Arctic Circle, even at sea level, which is clearly visible. She disappeared even the ozone hole.Currently, the temperature dropped significantly.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JFM_NH_2014.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JFM_NH_2014.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JFM_NH_2014.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f00.gif
[2x Dupe paragraphs and 3x dupe gif links? Mod]
Ayn Rand warned about how government funding of research invites corruption.
How right she was.
Sorry, but I wanted to show how Sun works on the polar vortex.
Turn over any science “rock” and a lot of bad behavior crawls out. Look at the poor state of the so called soft sciences (psychology, sociology, economics, etc.) where every time I hear the word “study” i think “crap”. Even in the previously venerable sciences like particle physics they have sold their souls for funding and tenure (for a windmill tilting view of this read “Bankrupting Physics” by Unzicker, Alexander).
Scientists have been used for the propaganda because the reputation of politicians and journalists was already in the tank. Now Scientists’ reputation is in the tank as well.
I think what’s left for the globalists / the regime is to talk through puppets; anyone they can bribe; classical controlled opposition, like the EU does by paying green NGO’s.
jai mitchell:
Your post at January 26, 2014 at 10:37 am begins saying
Allow me to correct that for you.
Bah, no one uses GISS or even HadCRUT temperature data due to its inherent bias. You people act as though surface measurement is somehow “pure”. but the fact is that,
RSS or even UAH temperature data is much less biased than GISS or even HadCRUT temperature data due to its almost complete measurement over the Earth by use of satellites.
I hope that corrects some of your great lack of understanding.
Richard
Good Lord! Why in heaven’s name did that go in the mod bin?
“I think what’s left for the globalists / the regime is to talk through puppets; anyone they can bribe; classical controlled opposition, like the EU does by paying green NGO’s.” ~DirkH
But NGO stands for non-governmental organization. If they are funded by the European Union, then they would not be called a non-governmental organization. Now why would any government want to call an organization which is devoted to behavioral and economic change in every country in the world a non-governmental organization? (;
NGO – only a government would think of that!
If human history can be used for assuming the present, most people need something to believe in. We have been privileged with a brief glimpse in human existence where science filled that void.
Thanks to extraordinary advances in the modern times, free circulation of information and leap in the population’s average education, not many confuse algore-politicians with scientists.
In the similar way the scientists still have a window to distinguish themselves. Hopefully less religiously than Hans von Storch, but that will also do http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html
Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
We skeptics all new that some day that Mother Nature would win the global warming battle. The facts are facts and that scientific mistakes that were made would be discovered and corrected. The problem, became one of ego and money, which delayed the inevitable – the truth would win in the end, and the end is near.
Pseudo science and propaganda, ignoring the truth. Then allowing money to dictate your outcome.
That was/is the problem.
Robin Edwards says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:39 am
I’d send him the URL for the “official” article at https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/01-02/fundamental-uncertainties-climate-change/ (It even spells his name right.)
Yes, the “the highest year ever” causes me to bend my neck and stare towards the sky.
Pippen Kool says:
”Meanwhile we just had the highest year ever that was not associated with a positive ENSO
event”
Ever? Really? You know the ENSO state and temperature from every year back to 4.6 billion years ago?
(LOL, the topic is overselling the science and you pop in and oversell the science. Priceless.)
What.a.great.post! It goes to show how much the ‘scientivists’ have corrupted a noble profession. There are those, for instance, in the UK MO who have sold their bodies and souls to the government in return of the baubles of over-long titles and bigger computers. They bask in the radiance of the politicians who are really only using them – like the prostitutes that MPs are so used to. Little do they know, once they have been used and their use is no more of value, they will be abandoned and cast to the winds. Scientivists have been used merely to allow failed politicians to make good the huge losses and debts they have incurred on their countries – in the UK’s instance, it’s well over £1.5 TRILLION of debt (not deficit, as many polis will try to deflect attention to).
The thing is, as the MPs are finding that gas wells don’t vote – but can be taxed, they are better than taxing to death the people who can.
“It can no longer escape prime responsibility if it should turn out in the end that doing something in the name of mitigation of global warming is the costliest scientific mistake ever visited on humanity.”
————
Mistake? AGW is warfare, not a mistake. It is a false-flag operation covering the infiltration of UN governance/communism into free society. They have won significant ground so far in the US with outposts like EPA and California Air Resources Board etc, and with entrenched operatives such as obama.
Even if the “science” of AGW fails, their foothold will remain. Just try getting rid of established bureaucracy. CARB mentioned above has been shown to be using falsified data in its jihad against diesel emissions, but that has not slowed their march.
And if the main thrust of AGW is deflected, they will come at us from another flank.
“Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years. The pause now threatens…”
And PLEASE stop calling it a “pause” – you are allowing the enemy to define the terms. It is natural variation. Calling it a pause subconsciously accepts the assertion that mm-global warming is real but just taking a break.
With this frigid weather, there are still people who believe in global warming?!? Sorry, I used to believe in global warming, but these temperatures just aren’t possible in a globally-warmed atmosphere. They are saying -20 possible, with -40 windchills in Chicago. Glo-BULL warming my butt.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to paint all scientists with the same broad brush. It’s true that “climate scientists” have been hoist on their own petard, and regular readers of Retraction Watch understand that the peer-review process has its problems. But I believe many scientists recoiled at the pronouncement that “the science is settled,” even climatologists who knew better at the time and surely know better now.
Is it just possible that there are [too] many scientists doing [too] much science? The scientist currency and the science currency has been debased. This is the result of over production of the scientist currency. When a real currency is debased and has lost most of its value, the solution is usually to ditch the previous currency and bring in a brand new one revalued. How are you going to do that to the scientist currency?
Dave says:
”Unfortunately, the reputation of scientists was destroyed by Gore, et al years ago when he proclaimed the science settled. By and large, the scientific community said and did little in response.”
Some “scientists” (like those @ RC) even backed him up:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/
”How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought.”
The author did point out a few errors which he characterized as “minor” and says:
”For the most part, I think Gore gets the science right”
It’s unfathomable that any scientist could be that naïve, but there it is for all to see.
Meanwhile we just had the highest year ever that was not associated with a positive ENSO event, a fact that no one at this website has really noticed, even Tisdale.
Mod says: “highest?”
Let’s see, which are the years that usually beat 2013:
98 high ENSO positive event.
02 ENSO positive event starting in the year, more than 6 months.
03 preceding 02/03 ENSO positive event
05 high ENSO positive event
06 ENSO positive event starting in the year, 3 months
07 preceding 06/07 ENSO positive event
09 ENSO positive event starting in the year, 6 months
10 high 09/10 ENSO positive event
2012 is the highest year with La nina conditions, and it breaks into the top ten in some rankings.
And 2013 is the highest year with no ENSO event at all, and it breaks into the top 5 in some rankings.
With 2013 as a base, I suspect with the next El Niño we won’t need to look all the flat graphs that usually begin with the 98 El Niño.
Others that will lose credibility: The Nobel Prize organization; organized, Capital-S “Skepticism,” aka pseudo-skepticism or scofticism.
MarkG says: @ January 26, 2014 at 8:55 am
….The only solution is to cut all taxpayer funding of science, completely; let scientists do something useful that people are willing to pay for, or nothing at all. We won’t lose much, as most of the taxpayers’ money goes on generating dubious studies that are soon contradicted by other dubious studies.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I said the same thing a few days ago.
People seem to think the only science is government funded science yet in the USA funding only really started about 1950. For example in 1940 the total expenditure was under $70 million or about 1 percent of present-day expenditures, when adjusted for inflation.
Scientists in mass have betrayed the public trust especially scientists in Academia. They do not deserve one red cent more!
PS: A third that will have egg on its face: the two recent green popes and their church. For that matter, all warmist / alarmist ecclesiastics. Oh, and a fourth, the royal family.
They all thought this was a fail-safe “motherhood” issue they could use to gain cred with. Ha ha.
Zeke says:
January 26, 2014 at 11:31 am
“NGO – only a government would think of that!”
A better term is QUANGO for Quasi-NGO; but I use NGO as it’s the established (Orwellian) term.
jimv said @ January 26, 2014 at 10:59 am
Do you really think the Köppen-Geiger climate boundaries are fixed for ever and ever, amen?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Koppen_World_Map_%28retouched_version%29.png/1280px-Koppen_World_Map_%28retouched_version%29.png
Theo Goodwin says at January 26, 2014 at 11:01 am… Yes children are no longer taught science in schools.
But you have no idea how bad it is.
This is a past paper for higher standard 16 year olds studying Physics in the UK.
Most of this is not science. And the rest is too dumbed down for a 16 year old.
You may not believe how bad it is so I’ll copy one question as a teaser.
PPS: #5: the UN. #6: progressive political parties.
Pippen Kool:
Your post at January 26, 2014 at 12:04 pm
It seems you are saying that if natural climate behaviour such as ENSO did not exist then AGW would exist.
Is that a correct understanding?
If I have understood you then you are presenting bollocks (again). The climate behaves as the climate system decrees and not as you desire. That is why global warming stopped 17 years ago.
ENSO is a real effect. Live with it: everybody has to live with its effects.
But effects of AGW? Nah, there are none of those that anybody has found to date.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
January 26, 2014 at 11:30 am
Good Lord! Why in heaven’s name did that go in the mod bin?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Mr M*tchell’s name auto trips moderation.
richardscourtney said @ January 26, 2014 at 11:30 am
I find myself asking the same question from time-to-time. I suspect that no-one knows, that it’s just a bug in the algorithm that does the binning. Even more mysterious was a brief (48 hour) period recently when I couldn’t post at all.
Robin Edwards says January 26, 2014 at 8:39 am:
“I would like to send this essay to my Member of Parliament.”
I just have.
Pippen Kool says:
January 26, 2014 at 12:04 pm
“Meanwhile we just had the highest year ever that was not associated with a positive ENSO event, a fact that no one at this website has really noticed, even Tisdale.”
NCDC says temperature in NOV was 13.69 deg C.
Der Spiegel, based on NASA data said 1988 it was 15.4°C.
http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/image/show.html?did=13529172&aref=image036/2006/05/15/cq-sp198802801580159.pdf&thumb=false
Which is perfectly compatible with retrocausality; because 1988 looked at from 2014 is probably much cooler than it was in 1988. I estimate that 1988 is today around 13.44 deg C – so 1988 has cooled down by around 2 deg C within 25 years. If this trend continues, 1988 will be at 5.4 deg C in the year 2100! We will wonder how we survived back then!
“Garth” not “Gareth”.
Even Ma Nature is thumbing her nose at the Politically Correct CAGW alarmists. Tuesday is the US State of the Union address and Ma Nature has scheduled the coldest day of the week just for Obama’s speech. The day will have a high of 17° F @ 4:00 pm. Winds 10 to 15 mph with a wind chill as low as 6 below in the morning for when Congress walks into the building. The temperature is 25 degrees below normal for that day.
Hopefully even the most brain-dead of Congress Critters might notice it is NOT ^%$# WARM, unfortunately I don’t think it will penetrate past the $$ signs in front of their eyes.
M Courtney: (re: Exam question) I got as far as “A farmer plans to generate all the electricity needed on her farm,…” and nearly choked at the PC in the question…
M Courtney: Further to the Exam question: “A farmer plans to generate all the electricity needed on her farm,…”
OK: If it’s a question of “all”, then there is no option. It has to be what is the most continuous supply – the cheaper biogas generator. But I guess I would not have got all SIX marks for that.
Scott Basinger said @ January 26, 2014 at 12:21 pm
As has been pointed out by several others. Anthony has met Garth even when in Hobart several years ago 🙂
Science will be fine?
let’s see, is that pharmaceutical science you had in mind? Perhaps you speak of the non-political purity of fusion research? Maybe it is Monsanto’s guys you referred to – who not only control the data, the code, but even the right to research their products! Just think of what tobacco companies could have done with the same entitlement. Oh but the military always get it right, right? Remind me – How much was spent on star-wars gambits since the teflon president ?
The only thing doubly blind about science are the people that believe the reports they read. But in case you think I speak of laymen, look in the mirror oh scientists and science fans.
Years ago (pre star-wars) as I completed my honors degree in Chemistry, a prof I had in an elective psychology course tried hard to pull me into their “science”. While discussing possible projects for my study, he let me in on the results of one they had just run. They wanted to evaluate how willing a range of different scientists were to entertain and test new ideas by scientific means and standards. It took some doing but they came up with a workable set of scenarios to do the evaluation. They chose researchers from different fields, a control group of ordinary lay-folk and as a baseline they chose a group of theologians and religious leaders. They, he said, were assumed to be the most resistant to change. The ran the study, looked at the results, figured something was really wrong and ran it again. Still confused they tried a different city. All the results came out the same. Those religious leaders were more likely to be open to, & test new ideas by scientific means than the others. Lay-folk came in second and the vaunted researchers were the most entrenched and resistant to change of the lot.
The explanation? After spending so much, training for so long, with careers on the line – the cognitive dissonance hurdle was too great to ever allow anything but the version of truth they now owned. They were the gate-keepers and guardians. For them, truth had served it’s purpose quite well.
That people, the lay-folk that science – no, scientists were to serve, are awakening to reality is a good thing. That each generation seems to need to re-learn the (for us grey-beards) obvious, is a strange combination of amussing, sad, and yet a sense/place of purpose for commenters on this blog.
Lets keep each other sharp.
Forwarded to Drudge as a “Tip”. IF EVERYONE HERE WERE TO DO THE SAME, this excellent piece might get some wide exposure.
“The ‘Pause’ of Global Warming Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science”
Unfair. Most people know this is not science. It will only destroy the reputation of Astrology’s cousin, climatology.
Harry Passfield said @ January 26, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Careful; I have known several women who farmed. One in particular had a problem with someone stealing her firewood. When complaining to the local policeman had no effect, she took matters into her own hands. The whole fireplace side of the cop’s house blew up! She’d plastered a detonator and half a stick of gelignite inside a log 🙂
[The mod’s quickly replace all firewood they may have “accidentally” taken, moved, or misplaced from Gail’s Comb’s woodstack. Mod]
Um, I think there’s a typo in Prof Paltridge’s name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Paltridge
davidmhoffer says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:47 am
“Costliest scientific mistake ever doesn’t begin to quantify the magnitude of the problem.”
—————–
The magnitude of the problem grows exponentially when one considers the US now has 20+ years worth of miseducated Public School and College students/graduates as well as a majority of Teachers and Professors, …… all of which have been nurtured to believe in the flim-flam scam of CAGW …. and it will not be an easy chore to re-nurture 3+- generations of the populace.
It will take years n’ years to retrain/replace the CAGW teaching Teachers and Professors and in the meantime, guess what? Said miseducation continues.
Pippen Kool says January 26, 2014 at 12:04 pm:
Hmmm. Pippen, at my mature age I find that I have just achieved the 30th (or so) year of the tallest year I have ever achieved in my lifetime (thus far). Now, I am either – by your reckoning – going to become a giant, or – by my rational reckoning – at the peak of my height and will not grow any more.
I contend, we are not in a pause, we are more likely at a peak.
It is worthwhile to once again post the statement from Eisenhower’s farewell address that directly addressed this issue..
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
____________________________________________________
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Harry Passfield says at January 26, 2014 at 12:29 pm… Correct. You won’t get 6 marks for the right answer as the right answer takes only two sentences.
1 Reliable energy or freeze to death.
2 Dead farmers are not sustainable.
The rest f the paper is about as bad. It starts with how to insulate a house. Which is nice to know but is that the level of physics knowledge you expect for a 16 year old?
Remember, this is the higher paper not the basic exam.
And some schools in England and Wales do combined science: Chemistry, Physics and Biology all mixed into one subject worth two GCSEs.
My country’s industrial policy has been murdered by its education system.
When there are billions of dollars of free money handed out with no accountability for results and these are given out with no strings attached decade after decade and all you have to say to get you share is “it is worse than we thought” and blame all weather events on man generated greenhouse gases ,who would turn down such a lucrative offer . The problem is that we the taxpayers vote in these liberal and democratic Policymakers who dole out this free money for this questionable and flawed science, while we are too busy watching the football games or worshipping the celebrities or participating in all the consumer black Fridays If we want change we must change first ourselves and then actively stop all this free money by voting in new policymakers. Any thing that comes from free money or subsidies often becomes corrupted .
There are three broad spheres modern society, which has sprung from the West but is pervading the entire world by now, is based on.
– science
– business
– politics
There is a delicate balance between them and they should be kept apart as much as practicable if they are to attain their very different individual goals, which are truth for science, profit for business and justice for politics. History has taught us if any of them was impeded, especially by the other two, it was a serious setback for society as a whole.
Therefore in a broad sense it is best to handle them in a way checks and balances is implemented in constitutional political systems, where legislative, executive and judicial branches of power are supposed to act independently while checking each other.
Much is told about the interrelation between politics and business and the ills following from the fact if one overpowered the other, so I would rather not extend to that direction right now, but would stick to relations between science and the rest.
First of all, science is not a small thing in our world. Proper business methods or the right political environment can improve productivity up to two or threefold, but only science can bump it a thousandfold or more. That is, in this respect it is in an entirely different ballpark than the other two. In this sense it is the most important one, but it is also vulnerable, because lacks all direct devices of power like money or statutes, guns and verdicts.
Still, both politics and business need science badly to promote their respective ends. We have ample experience by now that the best way to do it is to leave science alone. For science, on its own is utterly useless, it is neither profitable nor just. The only reason it deserves funding from both businesspersons end taxpayers is the occasional spinoff, which may prove to be invaluable for either everyday life, extending power or both. However, in science one can never know in advance what contribution may come out of any individual line of enquiry. When Austrian botanical physiologist Friedrich Reinitzer has observed in 1888 that cholesteryl benzoate had two distinct melting points, at 145.5°C it melts into a cloudy liquid, and at 178.5°C it melts again and the cloudy liquid becomes clear, and later that year on his notice Otto Lehmann, a physicist, has found crystallites in the intermediate phase, they certainly did not have LCD displays, tablets or smartphones in mind.
Therefore I would restrict leeway in taxpayer sponsored government funding of science along with tax deductible contributions from business to gross sums marked out for sponsoring research with no further labels whatsoever. Its distribution between fields should be the internal business of scientific institutions, never to be interfered with in any way from the outside. The only restrictions being all results are to be published and made available to anyone and whoever in science claims her research produces useful results as opposed to true ones, commits a major offense.
Of course, anyone, including government and business are free to hire experts, basically in engineering roles, who, having access to the scientific literature, are supposed to turn bits and pieces found there to useful solutions or advice. However, these roles are to be kept apart from genuine scientific ones strictly, including lack of feedback to funding, as their end differs.
The flawed system started during WWII and refined in the course of the Cold War is a misunderstanding, it should be discontinued ASAP.
crosspatch says: @ January 26, 2014 at 10:20 am
…They gambled and they lost. To get to the root of this you have to go all the way back to Kyoto.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually you have to go back a lot further than that.
This has been in the planning since the 1930s and even before.
John Dewey was one of the Founding Members of the American Fabian Society.
Sounds a bit like Agenda 21 doesn’t it?
H. G. Wells was another early member of the Fabian Society.
So the educated elite socialists have had the idea of changing the world and creating “a new world state” for over a hundred years and have been quietly working towards that goal for a century.
Pippen Kool says:
January 26, 2014 at 10:22 am
Meanwhile we just had the highest year ever that was not associated with a positive ENSO event, a fact that no one at this website has really noticed….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is because you are incorrect. The Climate Optimum had warmer temperatures.
A more recent paper looking at glaciers in Norway.
The authors of BOTH papers state that most glaciers likely didn’t exist 6,000 years ago, but the highest period of the glacial activity has been in the past 600 years. This is hardly surprising with ~9% less solar energy.
Ladies and gentlemen including Antony Watts
The worst fraud and great , ,muddy disease of cherry- picked and politically falsified data, that most of you have been cheated and fooled to sink into and to smear up yourseves with and to slosh and throw around from the ship of fools of the denial moovement….
……..is the classical LENIN poker dogggggg- ma of “Psi-” and the proudly commercial political Perpetuum Mobile for the flat earth blind believers in the scriptures………, your confusing of heat and temperature.
To my enlightment and standards, that typical behaviours is ugliest Blasphemia.
I repeat……!
Because:
It is severely typical of the Perpetuum mobile advocates and inventers that they sell Voltage for being current and effect for instance, and pressure and even vacuum for being energy, and temperature for being both warming and heat (or lack of the same)
That very characteristic style on board of the ship of fools or sitting up together on The Grand Waggon of monoculture on the broad way where the coachman is mad………
………..does show up very regularly here at the WUWT..
Just think of that all you fools and blind believers here, who have submittet to the false doctrines of Heat = Temperature.
And further that Ice Area = Ice Volume.
What a ridiculously superfiscious wiew for the fanatic blind believers assembled on the ship of fools who call themselves “sceptic”.
My wife has told me for years that the amplifier has been invented. Thus, Why can`t I simply “amplify” that electricity from the net, and make it much stronger so we don`t have to pay so high electricity bills?
“Wife, your hair is long but your understandings……..” I say then.
In that way I keep her under strict control and regiment. I have to chop, but she is very eager on sawing, and of heating even before it is dry. And I have bought her very fine saws and shown her also how to oil also when sawing wood.
But some time ago a jolly editor of the astronomical magazine wrote that “Since pressure is energy, Vavuum is also energy (you know those idiotic rumors..)” and prooved it by stating that “E = m C^2” and explained the universe by that means.
That was jolly editorial bluff of course, because pressure is not energy..
If presure being energy, if temperature being heat or “warming” or lack of the same, then I shall brush the cat and just lift my hand a bit and touch a lead that goes over into to the 5 Kilovolt lead there out in the street, and cash the electrical bill from Hafslund, the company.
Or I can do it even easier. I can take a transformer and transform and “amplify” that 240 volts here in the house up to 5010 Volts, connect it to Hafslunds only 5000 volts out there through a rather thick copper lead,…. and cash from Hafslund instead of paying for them..
Conclusion:
Neither voltage nor pressure is energy, and temperature is not heat or heating. What kind of silly fools is that, who ride that silly crooky political decision on that ship?
Thus it is highly due for Roy Spencer and for Anthony Watts to stand up here slaying the slayers further in regard to that trixing with the data and hiding of the decline, and make a cathastrophy also of that quite obvious Climategate, Himalayagate and Amazonegate of temperature = heat.
And further because:
Every now and then the University have festivals. Then they walk barefoot on a long bed of red hot charcoal to show The People that temperature is not equal to heat.
If making festivals, which he indeed should, I suggest to Anhony Watts that he arranges that very magic show. A long bed of red hot charcoal on the University grounds, and walk barefoot from the one end to the other. There ought to be a bitty of water at the other end for the case that you have walked to slowly resting too long on each step, But that is really all you need.
Walking barefooted on red hot charcoal is very impessing, but it is quite elementary because temperature is not heat.
I have to know about this and many people have, because I have to handle red hot irons and charcoals with fingers. The art of having “Blacksmith fingers” is to know of the difference, and to be further quite experienced with temperature and heat.
The old Blacksmiths went to Hell too early, else they could have been here and told us the truth. But if we know them right, they were refused in Hell because they knew too much about heat and temperature.
Thus, care to learn and to grasp the difference of heat and temperature in time all of you, because when coming Hell it is too late.
When or if you are out in the forest or at the shores and you have a fire, you have to pick and throw back red hot charcoal right with your fingers. Further in the house, at the chimney and at the stove you have to know of and to be ready for the same quite quickly and at any time..
Thus politically sick and fanatically decided and missioned confusion about this is actually dangerous and actually devlish.,
Is n`t that so Anthony Watts?
They were silly quite exactly on that point in the Cernobyl reactor also, wherefore it blew up, Simply because of dia- lectic materialism learnings also on temperature and heat.
We hate it.
Until that is thorroughly grasped and brought to your religious consciousness by deep meditation and worshipful prayers and exercises, stay off from any discussion of eventual global warmings and heatings.
Temperature is measured and discussed in terms of Kelvin or Celsius or even Farenheit degrees, As you all can see I discuss it further in terms of glow- colours radiation and light, but for that you need Spectrum.
For Spectra, you can check up by the reflection in a CD- disk whether it is a continous or a dis- continous spectrum. The sun, the incandescent lamps, the candles, red hot irons and coals have got continous spectra. LED and furter fluorescent light and Aurora borealis has not. Explain why that is so..and be aware of the difference.
On eventual dis- continous spectra we must further discuss material sciences and quantum mechanics different from Dia- lectic materialism.
For my further personal, quite necessary obedient and worshipful studies, I have a small incandescent lamp standing up on a 2 mm iron wire with an adjustable power supply under it to make myself really aquainted and convinced and calibrated to what I rather ought to disuss..
Further, you need candles. The candles should allways stand on a proper metal disk for safety, like all orderly folks did with the old kerosene lamps and with Aladdins oil lamp that even works wonders if properly brushed up.
Those large copper and brass and even silvered discs hanging on the wall in the museums, that were to be polished quite shiny for every christmas, were for candles and for the oil and kerosene lamps before the invention of electrical light. Combined with white Stucca or white painted canvas under the ceiling, they made the whole situation quite bright by so called “back- radiation”.
I have secured and I use the large old copper discs furher in the lab and at the forge and wherever there is danger of fire , for my Pyro- trope and pyro-phile activities, because that is what they are meant for. Spiritus lamps etc should only be lit, standing on those large old metal disks.Aluminium is further a really very proper metal for the same purposes. Also learn abourt fireproof stones in nature and artificially made. Mankind would not have survived the stone age without proper enlighted ideas of heat and temperature
Secure those really fashionable basic alchemistic remedies, . conscider them and use them, then you can discuss heat and temperature even as convincingly as I can.
Berényi Péter
the farmer first plows the soil, then plants the seed, then later he harvests, threshes and grinds.
THEN – after he has demonstrated the virtues required to achieve his values – only then does he bake and eat. This is how it works in the real world. Get to know it. Deal with it.
So- NO FREE MONEY FOR NOBODY NOHOW. There is no such a thing. It’s a mystical notion.
Parasitism may well be sustainable – but civilization is the process of liberating men from other men. Supernatural money such as you wish to redistribute – it means stealing from the productive.
That route has but one destination. It goes nowhere else. I’ll take liberty. Stop talking about giving away money that is not yours and you might not be part of the disease that killed civilization.
Genosse M.Courtney
I have a recepy also for philological pedanteria.
Your severe religious and political problem together with others I think, is that you have set on a recent anti- scientific system of sales propmotion and political propaganda rather for naive laymen out there where the eath is quite flat,…..
……..able to actively exchange temperature for warming and heat, and to sell that propaganda to the public in order to cheat them.
It is as characteristic as extreemly well known trick that further goes hand in hand with the selling of surface for being content, volume, and weight.
Such hat- tricks , when also quite obviously highly and professionally trained,…..
…….does betray and disqualify what I can only recognize as the typical Party and its KADRE missionaries.
I call it Dia- lectic materialism, Wissenschaftliche Sozialismus, Cernobyl style, Communist manifesto with o, Chicago Gangsters, or Palast der Republik. / thinktank / asbestos palace behind the iron curtain right at the Stalin- alley.(now taken down because it was not sustainable)
no pause in seeking more funding:
Chris Turney’s boss Sherwood involved:
27 Jan: J-Wire: Jerry Barach: Australia working with Hebrew University on climate change
The University of New South Wales has been involved in a joint project with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dealing with greenhouse gases.
The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence?
That is an issue on which science is making progress, but the answers are still far from exact, say researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the US and Australia who have studied the issue and whose work which has just appeared in the journal Science…
(Prof Daniel) Rosenfeld wrote this article in cooperation with Dr. Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Dr. Robert Wood of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. Leo Donner of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…
http://www.jwire.com.au/news/australia-working-with-hebrew-university-on-climate-change/40049
Science Daily: Picture of how our climate is affected by greenhouse gases is a ‘cloudy’ one
Date: January 26, 2014
Source:Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Journal Reference:
1.D. Rosenfeld, S. Sherwood, R. Wood, L. Donner. Climate Effects of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions. Science, 2014; 343 (6169): 379 DOI: 10.1126/science.1247490
Recently, however, researchers have been able to create groundbreaking simulations in which models were formulated presenting simplified schemes of cloud-aerosol interactions, This approach offers the potential for model runs that resolve clouds on a global scale for time scales up to several years, but climate simulations on a scale of a century are still not feasible…
While it is unfortunate that further progress on understanding aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate is limited by inadequate observational tools and models, achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested. The level of effort, they say, should match the socioeconomic importance of what the results could provide…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140126134615.htm
Other JJ (posting at January 26, 2014 at 11:56 am) –
Anthony and the moderators require that we each choose a unique handle and stick to it. I have been posting on this site under the handle “JJ” for several years. You need to change your handle.
This is the fourth time in the last week I have made this request. Mods, please communicate the rules to the recalcitrant. TYIA.
JJ
Harry Passfield says: @ January 26, 2014 at 12:24 pm
M Courtney: (re: Exam question) I got as far as “A farmer plans to generate all the electricity needed on her farm,…” and nearly choked at the PC in the question…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well this (female) farmer looked at windmills and gave them a big thumbs down and is considering the bio-methane generator…
But I agree what an idiotic question.
And in honor of the real physicists.
Down load Songs from 1947 by Arthur Roberts
http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/roberts/roberts1947.htm
The Cyclotronist’s Nightmare (or Eighty Millicuries by Half-Past Nine) is a favorite of mine. (Those guy can really sing!)
Bob Tisdale says:
January 26, 2014 at 10:07 am
The complete article by Garth Paltridge is worth spending the time to read and absorb.
Bob,
Concur. Garths essay is thought provoking.
I’m headed out for a long walk. I’ll read it again when I get back.
Mac
Carbomontanus says at January 26, 2014 at 1:28 pm…
Such complete b*llocks that he must be taking the Michael.
But he may be trying a Lew-style research experiment on sceptics; if so, he should try earlier in the thread.
Yet I must rise to the bait for I am weak:
Degrees Kelvin?
Gail Combs, please accept my apologies for any offence inadvertently caused.
I saw nothing wrong with the farmer being feminine. That didn’t burn me.
My complaint about British education was:
1 It’s not physics.
2 It’s too simple for a 16 year old.
3 It teaches that the right answer is cultural not physical.
You have said to me before that you are a farmer but I had not realised how my comment could be read.
Please accept my apologies. This was not about gender in my mind.
I’m afraid it’s not solely science who is responsible, it’s actually Governments, media organisations and big business.
Governments are supposed to be capable of challenging all experts in a realistic manner. Not every politician can challenge every expert, but the body of expertise in national Governments and Parliaments should be capable doing precisely that. If they can’t, they are not fit for purpose in representing the people.
Media organisations are supposed to hold those in power to account. To do that, they must be skeptical about everything. When they become advertising agencies for political messages, they are responsible for misinformation, misdirection and altering profoundly the checks and balances which are a feature of stable and functioning societies.
Big business is amoral about truth. If it can make money through distorting reality, it will do so. By convincing Governments to give them no-risk free bets in ‘renewable energies’, they were responsible for crass misallocation of public finances for spurious reasons.
It takes a powerful constellation of action across the globe to challenge and defeat an enemy comprised of scientists, governments, media behemoths and multinational corporations.
The fact that it is going to happen is one of the most remarkable events of the 21st century.
The whole set of 20th century global societal structures proved themselves totally unfit for purpose.
It opens the door for radical, peaceful revolution through incontrovertible proof of catastrophic, unacceptable failure.
Richard
you said,
Thermometers do not measure temperature. They measure the difference in thermal expansion of glass and e.g. mercury which must then be inferred to obtain indirect indications of temperature at a few places which are then mathematically interpolated to obtain inferences of global temperature.
RSS or even UAH temperature data is much less biased than GISS or even HadCRUT temperature data due to its almost complete measurement over the Earth by use of satellites.
which just goes to show how far you are really reaching if you want to compare the utilization of satellites in a constantly decaying orbit and their master’s algorithms that produce a temperature reading.
And pretend that this is somehow equal in weight to a DIRECT measurement of surface temperature, utilizing equipment that can (and has!) been continuously re-evaluated and whose verifiable results show actual temperatures.
your pro-coal bias is showing. . .
I certainly hope that the destruction of sciences integrity does not last for centuries as Professor Paltridge fears and I do not think it will.
Once genuine consensus is achieved that it was all an orchestrated beat up by a coterie of self interested, self important, scientific spivs and spin doctors if a representative sample of the dirtbag conspirators are publicly outed and held to account for their arrogant and dishonest behaviour then the damage should be contained.
Bring on the formal commissions of enquiry in various jurisdictions ( forget the UN though) and bring on the recommendations of criminal and civil charges for fraud for the worst of them. The rest can just be sent to a long period of counselling or take early retirement. We will then be able to press the flush button and the words “climate scientist” be consigned to the historical sewage treatment plant.
gnomish says: @ January 26, 2014 at 1:31 pm
…. That route has but one destination. It goes nowhere else. I’ll take liberty. Stop talking about giving away money that is not yours and you might not be part of the disease that killed civilization.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I will add to that that money/wealth stolen by governments is always wasted on bureaucracy. Much better if the wealth is left in the hands of those who earned it to do as they wish. Many of us donate to our colleges… or did.
M Courtney says: @ January 26, 2014 at 2:04 pm
Gail Combs, please accept my apologies for any offence inadvertently caused.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I was pulling your leg. I have a warped sense of humor and that question tickled it since we had been looking at alternate energy.
Gail Combs,
Thank Goodness.
For a moment there I feared a feud with you was forming.
That wouldn’t have ended well for me.
Mark and two Cats:
“Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years. The pause now threatens…”
And PLEASE stop calling it a “pause” – you are allowing the enemy to define the terms. It is natural variation. Calling it a pause subconsciously accepts the assertion that mm-global warming is real but just taking a break.
—
Not really. The word “pause” has special connotation when it comes to the climate change debate! (do I need to rant again?)
We in real science never had a problem. Those with the mistaken belief it was possible to immerse a sphere heated to stable temps in vacuum,
into a frigid nitroge/oxygen bath phase change refrigerated by water,
on the other hand,
are finding it difficult to not have themselves laughed at to such scorn their opposition’s catcall
is to dare them – dare them – to predict which way a thermometer will move.
Oh yeah
“and have that sphere’s surface energy sensors show it got warmer by 91F/33C for it ”
is supposed to be line 4 above
Bill
jai mitchell says:
“your pro-coal bias is showing. . .”
That, coming from someone whose alarmist bias trumps everything, is the epitome of irony.
What is a ‘pro coal bias’, anyway? If being pro coal means desiring lower utility bills, and more harmless, beneficial CO2 for plants to use, then I am also ‘pro coal’.
Too bad about you. You want higher electric bills, poverty, and mass starvation. Well, to each his own.
I get it: you hate humanity.
If someone was paying me a 3-figure salary to build computer models that provided “what if” scenarios of climate catastrophes that might arise given certain assumptions, I’d build as many of those models as they wanted. There is really nothing wrong or illegal about that.
My mistake would rest with the fact that I saw that my work was being portrayed as something real or factual in a whole host of lay publications, and I did nothing to set the record straight. Models are just models. They are only as good as the theories and assumptions upon which they are based. Data is the lifeblood of science, and there never was any good data to support the models or the theories. That’s the big chicken now roosting on a lot of fragile eggheads.
It is not “the pause” that destroys the reputation of science.
It has been destroyed in the moment when “science” became irreproducible, when raw data and methodology were hidden, when past records in history started to change.
When one looks at history and does not recognise it from year to year it is bad. When relative positions in a graph change, when temperatures of past year cool and cool and sea level gets up and up:
http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/23/german-review-sea-level-rise-way-below-projections-no-hard-basis-for-claims-of-accelerating-rise/
When ARGO data does not show warming and needs re-calibration to show it, when Envisat data changes post mortem and so on.
The pause only drew attention to it, helped put a spot of light on it, and what one saw was not pretty.
You may choose to support those who wish to spend no money on science at all, but if some is spent, neither try to tell how it should be allocated, nor allow the government to do so, that’s all.
BTW, if you prefer to live in a country where no science is done, that’s a bad choice, IMHO. But it is up to you, of course. As for “stealing from the productive”, I wonder how productive the Liquid Crystal Display industry would be without an obscure Austrian botanist stumbling upon a weird material with double melting points 126 years ago. Think about that.
M Courtney says:
January 26, 2014 at 2:46 pm
Gail Combs,
Thank Goodness.
For a moment there I feared a feud with you was forming.
That wouldn’t have ended well for me.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, I would have sicced your Dad on you since I am on this side of the ocean. Or worse, one of my old English caving buddies.
(My husband also had a good laugh out of that example.)
There’s a standing joke that the US Constitution is a great document, and a helluva lot better than what the USA has right now. Similarly, science is a great idea, and a helluva lot better than what we have right now.
“””””…..LesH says:
January 26, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Science will be fine?
let’s see, is that pharmaceutical science you had in mind? Perhaps you speak of the non-political purity of fusion research? Maybe it is Monsanto’s guys you referred to – who not only control the data, the code, but even the right to research their products! …….”””””
So why pick on Monsanto’s “guys” ? Last time I checked, guaranteeing the exclusive rights (via patents) of inventors, to the fruits of their inventions is one of the 17 things that the US Congress is actually authorized to involve itself in.
As for controlling the code virtually all software licensing agreements (you can’t actually buy the software to own) prohibit the licensee, from modifying or reverse engineering their code, or editing it in any way.
Patent laws are quite benign, when compared to the largesse of copyright laws, which guarantee would be guitar strummers the right to collect fees for their noises, long after their demise. Inventive patent holders on the other hand, now have to pay (a subscription fee essentially) to maintain the continuing patent protection of their invention, which is only protected for a very limited time; less time than it takes to verify that some climate change might have happened.
George Steiner says:
January 26, 2014 at 11:59 am
Yes, there are quite a few graduate departments of science that need to be closed. In addition, there are quite a few graduate departments of science education that need to be closed.
“””””…..Jbird says:
January 26, 2014 at 3:00 pm
If someone was paying me a 3-figure salary to build computer models that provided “what if” scenarios of climate catastrophes that might arise given certain assumptions, I’d build as many of those models as they wanted. There is really nothing wrong or illegal about that. …..”””””
Gee ! with that kind of salary ; plus 60 cents, I can buy a McDonalds senior coffee, with two free refills.
M Courtney says:
January 26, 2014 at 12:15 pm
Good example. It contains so much propaganda that one can hardly find the problem.
Of course the realities of farming, as opposed to agri-business, are such that every genuine farmer chooses the item with the lower initial investment. Farmers do not have the luxury of thinking about long term investments.
The reputation of science hasn’t suffered.
The reputation of pseudo-science believers who demanded everyone acquiesce that a sphere, heated to full temp in vacuum,
then immersed in frigid nitrogen/oxygen bath, that’s phase-change refrigerated by water,
on the other hand,
has plummeted to the point the catcall of real scientists is to dare them to predict which way a thermometer will move.
Theo Goodwin says at January 26, 2014 at 3:21 pm
True. It is all unrealistic.
But the point is that children are taught to think this way. This is what 16 year olds are told is most important.
To progress in life they must give the right answer under the life-altering pressure of a an exam.
In the labs where I currently work, when people apply to us straight from university, they need to be very impressive to overcome the lack of value we ascribe to their qualifications.
My gosh that was fast. Sorry, I posted once, saw it up and – oh well whatever – everyone sees – I double posted.
Berényi Péter says: @ January 26, 2014 at 3:13 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are taking it that science would have no support at all. It is not a government support or no support – either/or. That is the logical mistake that everyone keeps making. Money given directly is 100% of the money going directly to the beneficiary. Money via taxes is a small fraction of that. (1/3 wasted, 1/3 to interest, 1/3 not collected)
88% of US households give to charity
The average household gives $2,213 a year.
Then take a look at tax money, heck we can not AFFORD to give even a dime to science or anything else and the IMF agrees:
The amount of waste in the federal government.
Do you think people who understand the federal debt crisis want to see money go to corrupt universities and scientists? Think again. They had their change and they blew it.
Time to take back and cut up Mommy’s credit card.
ja1 m1tchell:
I am replying to your ridiculous post at January 26, 2014 at 2:12 pm which is addressed to me.
It includes these pearls of your wisdom
The “DIRECT” temperature “measurements” are few, not randomly distributed, and change in number and in place from year to year. The global temperature is inferred from them using a variety of assumptions. The resulting derivations of global temperature cannot be verified because
(a)
there is no definition for ‘global temperature’ so each team which determines it does that in a different way which is often changed
and
(b)
there is no possibility of calibrating their results.
For more information to reduce your immense ignorance of these matters please read Appendix B of this Parliamentary Submission
The decay of satellites is simply observed and corrected for as is demonstrated by the fact that GPS systems work.
Importantly, I am interested in your saying to me
I don’t have a “pro-coal bias” as can be seen by my recent comparison on WUWT of advantages of new coal-fired power stations and new gas-fired CCGT power stations.
But that is not why I am so interested.
I was not aware of the technology for coal-firing satellites and I would be grateful if you were to tell me where I could obtain information on it.
Richard
Why do you think the scientific establishment leans to the left? If the smartest layer of humankind thinks something to be true I would not dismiss it easily and euphemistically
on grounds of political affiliation
For the last couple of years I have been highly critical of science as it is being practiced today .
But this time as the comments are all running along the line that all science is corrupted, I am going to defend some science and scientists.
Science disciplines can be divided roughly into three main basic categories whilst acknowledging that in the sub sections of the main science disciplines there is some overlap in the below categories.
1 / “Creative science” which is basic and essential for human welfare and existence.
2 / “Neutral science” which is the pure advancement of knowledge but which rarely provides useful outcomes for humanity except to satisfy our inherent human curiosity.
3 / “Destructive science” which never provides or creates anything of use or value to our socity and civilisation
Of interest here is that the importance of each category and the funding and promotion they get is in almost direct inverse proportion to their essentiality to our human existence and survival and the structure of our civilisation.
Examples of each
1 / Creative science;
Agricultural research ;
Now there might be a some seriously bad science in plant breeding and I personally know there is from the anecdotes of the researchers themselves. But the true picture of agricultural science’s and scientist’s performance is exemplified by the hard numbers of the global food crop production data.
The plant breeders, the plant geneticists, the analysts of the various plant products are the scientists who have ensured that as the world population rapidly grew in numbers from the 3 billions at the end of WW2 in 1945 to the 7 plus billions of 2014, a period of only some 70 years or less than the average westerner’s lifetime for a doubling of the human kind’s numbers, those food crop plant breeders and researchers through their science and on the ground efforts have ensured that global food supplies have more than kept up with the increases in the global population.
The production of the basic food products has actually exceeded the needs of the increased global population leading to a fall in real terms in the prices that grain and other producers receive for their products to about a third of what they received some 50 years ago.
And yet agricultural research is now having considerable trouble recruiting new scientists into it’s ranks against the glamourous and much better paid climate and other science disciplines,
A situation that in a way ensures that only those who really want to do Ag science go down that path which in turn probably ensures that Ag science is of a much better quality than most of the high status glamour sciences.
A second creative science absolutely essential to our civilisation is that of water and sewerage scientists and engineers, probably one of the least glamourous of all sciences in the eyes of most of the public and probably looked down with scorn by the climate scientist s who are getting all the publicity, kudos and funding.
There are quite a number of other science disciplines that are absolutely essential to our civilisation and it’s survival and advancement but these two examples are a couple of the most basic and most underrated and most ignored at our cvivilisation’s peril of all sciences.
Each Agricultural and water scientist and engineer in my opinion, are worth most of the entire phalanx of thousands of climate scientists in their real and actual value and essentiality to the survival and prospering of our global civilisation and society
2 / Neutral sciences
I would rate astronomy and cosmology as probably the two most nuetral disciplines although there may be othere. But hey both of those try to expand on and satisfy our inherent curiosity as to where our universe and therefore where we came from and where we and the universe are eventually going to.
There is much else that cosmology has also created particularly in incredibly accurate timing systems upon which our entire global communications system are now critically and totally dependent on to even keep operating.
3 / Destructive sciences.
Well as so many have pointed out in the comments, there is only one main contender along with a few secondary contenders for that title.
Climate science is now possibly the most destructive science that has ever appeared in the annals of mankind.
There is nothing of any perceivable value to yet emerge from the current version of climate science that has cost the people of this world probably over a trillion dollars worth of treasure, wealth and resources. a science that has led to the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of the poorest in the land as they can no longer afford the costs of energy, a cost that was foisted on to the public by a totally corrupt cabal of climate scientists to solve a problem which they had not and still have not shown or proven to exist in any way at all. And a science that has led to severe and totally unnecessary social divisions within entire societies.
A corrupted science that has created wide ranging mental trauma and totally unjustified fears amongst a large percentage of the population over a supposed and claimed future catastrophic event for which they, the climate scientists never ever had any substantiated proof or evidence of, just hypothetical rantings based on nothing but some unproven, unverified, un validated compuer programs created and promoted by biased self aggrandising so called climate scientists who in most cases never even had any qualifications that were relevant to the climate science they were espousing.
Their contribution to society and civilisation is entirely negativeand has been highly destructive to society and to the very science they claim to part of and represent.
It is even worse as some so called climate scientists have advocated that mankind be forced back to the caves from which we have as a species spent so much in blood, sweat and tears over the last 120 centuries to climb out of and begin the long climb up the ladder of civilisation.
Then there are the various oceanographers, an off shoot of climate science. A science discipline which seems like climate science to have nothing good to say about mankind or civilisation but concentrates solely on their supposed and claimed horrors of the oncoming disasters of sea level rise, destruction of corals, ocean acidification and etc and etc, none of which after some 30 years of promoting of these supposed and predicted mankind produced ocean destruction has shown the slightest signs of eventuating.
Then there are the Arctic ice loss Cassandra’s in climate science.
The list goes on and on.
Climate science and all the associated Cassandra like, mankind hating climate science and climate scientists are the worst and most destructive elements of civilisation and society that this world has ever seen from science, a formerly highly regarded and respected profession that we all had assumed until the last couple of decades, was there solely to advance both cilvilisation and mankind’s personal and collective well being.
This was inevitable when the climate hooligans started borrowing against the account good science had built up over a century of marvels.
The problem is, children are never genuinely taught the scientific method. They think it consists of a) rejecting anything having to do with religions of the past, b) using technological sounding jargon, and c) utter submission in thought, word, and deed to the self-proclaimed arbiters of Science. And, by Science, I mean the inchoate deity which, in their minds, rules over the natural world.
I am surprised nobody has mentioned the worst fallout which is likely to follow the defrocking of the Climate clergy. Pseudoscience already runs amuck. People spend billions annually on quack medicines, vitamins, healing crystals, and magnet therapy. Many have stopped vaccinating their children and drinking unpasteurized milk, among other assorted lunacy. When the hucksters hawking such wares can point to this fiasco and derisively intone, “yeah, those scientists really knew what they were talking about with global warming, didn’t they?”, there will be an explosion of primitivism, and an atavistic retreat to Dark Age mentality.
Costliest scientific mistake ever doesn’t begin to quantify the magnitude of the problem.
Well said, David.
Many people have missed the fact that the entire CAGW hypothesis has benefitted industrial interests galore, largely in the commercial/public energy sector that the “theory” nominally excoriates.
The demand for energy is highly inelastic. Indeed, as the fundamental scarce resource, the sine qua non of modern industry and civilization, one literally cannot substantially reduce the demand for energy without driving humanity back to the 18th or 19th century. Energy companies can and will meet that inelastic demand no matter what idiocy is legislated because any alternative would spell a depression that makes the Great Depression look like good times. In the meantime, any legislation that causes them to raise prices, especially in a generally non-inflationary time, simply increases their marginal profit.
Duke Energy (for example) doesn’t care about whether they provide energy generated from coal, fission, or solar sources. What they care about is making a healthy profit on the energy they sell from any source. Which they do. How are they hurt, how is their business impacted by CAGW panic and hysteria? It isn’t. They just make more money.
rgb
Daniel G. said:
January 26, 2014 at 2:50 pm
Mark and two Cats:
“Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years. The pause now threatens…”
And PLEASE stop calling it a “pause” – you are allowing the enemy to define the terms. It is natural variation. Calling it a pause subconsciously accepts the assertion that mm-global warming is real but just taking a break.
—
Not really. The word “pause” has special connotation when it comes to the climate change debate! (do I need to rant again?)
————
You are free to rant all you want (for now), but when the general public hears “pause…”, I’ll wager they fill in the blank so: “pause in mm-global warming”.
It isn’t about niceties in nomenclature, it’s an assault upon our freedom and way of life, and the opposition are using language as an “assault-weapon”.
But rant away whilst you can, before the warmunists win the war and revoke your ranting privileges.
Prior to Climategate, and the climate research shambles, there was an automatic assumption of trust – people trusted the word of scientists, unless evidence emerged that such trust was misplaced.
The effect of the climate disaster will be people shall start with a presumption of distrust – which is a real shame, because if a real threat emerges, people will not trust the word of scientists when they describe the threat.
M Courtney says: @ January 26, 2014 at 3:30 pm
…In the labs where I currently work, when people apply to us straight from university, they need to be very impressive to overcome the lack of value we ascribe to their qualifications.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When I ran a lab I wouldn’t even consider anyone under the age of 35. The kids had work ethics that were non-existent, knowledge that was minuscule and egos that were immense.
Carbomontanus says:
January 26, 2014 at 1:28 pm
__________________
Your ramble triggered memories of Act 5, Scene 5 from the bard’s tale of my ancestors.
I’m being kind.
consequences! the political forces of most of the western world have adopted AGW for
control purposes over their citizens by scaring them with endless increases in heat, rising
seas, etc. etc.
Now is it possible, that we may be entering an ice age. Solar cycle 25 may well determine
the outcome of that possibility.
The politicians have spent billions to fight AGW. If they are wrong are they perhaps criminally
responsible when we find the alternative energy they have tried to force on us does not meet
the needs of a colder world. In addition, a colder world produces less food can we feed
seven billion + people ?
The result is not pretty. Think about it!
Many admirable points on this thread, but one thing seems to be missing:
The entire global warming meme ultimately is an expression of tyrannical, exploitative politics. It’s always been only a device for robbing productive people of the fruits of their labor and suppressing human rights. Never was this more apparent than in the UN’s Christina Figueres’s statement that “democracy is bad for climate.”
The origin of CAGW can be laid at the feet of enemies of liberty and capitalism. The so-called “scientists” who tout it were always extreme leftist-reactionary politicians first, scientists second – that is, if they could ever be called “scientists” at all. They were never committed to the scientific method, only to ways to advance their authoritarian, kleptocratic, perverse, hate-driven agenda.
Orwell, 1984: “there is truth, and there is untruth … to be in a minority of one doesn’t make you mad”
As for science having been replaced by scientism, that was identified by Atiyah decades ago. Now all that’s left is to defeat the cult of death and look for the scientific equivalent of a “good german”.
What isn’t mentioned here is the opportunity costs, where certain people’s careers were pretty much trashed? If you think that’s not a problem, go back to the climategate emails, where you can see the collusion to keep the bad science and exclude anything that disagreed.
For real michaelspj.
Scam science is the destructive waste of entire human lifetimes’ pursuit of research and reality based reveals from scientific endeavor that are the whole reason we instituted a government.
Not so morally bankrupt and ethically challenged frauds can simply run wild as rampant peddlers of falsehood,
simply because it’s a new day,
and the new day’s stream of falsehood should be generated to keep that spot taking money for lying with friends in “THE CAUSE”.
“Science” is now a term that, sadly, will journey down the euphemism treadmill.
Sad, too. Because if actual science and scientific debate had taken place regarding AGW we wouldn’t have as polarized a society, as expensive a set of ineffective policies, nor would the West have exported as many jobs as it did to the East, sacrificing a viable middle class in the process.
Those insisting others accept their assertions because s/he “is a scientist!” and “a consensus of scientists agree!” should have been rejected prima-facie as making flimsy appeals to authority. And the politicization of science by self-important blow-hards should have been rejected by their peers.
It wasn’t. Now all will pay.
Alan Robertson says:
Carbomontanus says:
January 26, 2014 at 1:28 pm
__________________
” Your ramble triggered memories of Act 5, Scene 5 from the bard’s tale of my ancestors.
I’m being kind”
I was thinking “Unabomber”.
Some of these apparent environmentally friendly activities on second look may not be worth the effort. What difference does it make for example if plastic takes hundreds of years to break down in a landfill? Rocks take hundreds of years to break down 😉 Why is it if a human discards a piece of paper its called garbage, but trees discarding leaves that essentially consist of the same fibers, that’s ok? I ride my bike past a body of water that has a shopping cart in it. A duck sits upon it while preening. To the duck it’s a structure similar to a stump, to a human its nasty and must be removed (which it was).
There is more to science than just observation. You have to consider what someone tells you and immediately look for the flaws. That’s what I do and I have been very successful in my endeavors.
The Quadrant, a conservative magazine, has a circulation of around 5000. Too bad. Not many people will hear what Prof. Paltridge has to say.
On the other hand, the British parliament seems grumpy about the corruption of science due to the demand for publication in peer reviewed journals. The result is a bunch of journals that nobody reads and which publish mostly crap. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/inquiries/peer-review/
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/sep/05/publish-perish-peer-review-science
People are beginning to notice; especially about pharmaceutical research. If you google for ‘pharma research corruption’ you get lots of hits. I’m not sure whether Global Warming will ruin the reputation of science but there is plenty of evidence that the people in power are beginning to see that there is a problem with science and may (hopefully) demand some kind of action (other than the Harper Government ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’ approach that is).
richardscourtney says: “It seems you are saying that if natural climate behaviour such as ENSO did not exist then AGW would exist.
Is that a correct understanding?”
Perfectly.
And why a moderate El Niño in 2010 is so close to a super El Niño in 98. And why probably any El Niño in 2014 or 2015 will beat both.
The good doctor did not once mention the benefits of Carbon Dioxide. I have not found one comment on this thread yet on the benefits. My eyeballs will loose the ability to focus before I’m through reading them all to check if Carbon Dioxide benefits do get a mention.
michaelspj says: @ January 26, 2014 at 4:00 pm
What isn’t mentioned here is the opportunity costs…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is even worse when you consider that our political leaders DELIBERATELY took a wrecking bar to western civilization and SMASHED IT.
President Barack Obama’s top science adviser, John Holdren co-authored books that called for a campaign to “de-develop the United States”
Pascal Lamy, former WTO Director-General asks “Can we balance the need for a sustainable planet with the need to provide billions with decent living standards? Can we do that without questioning radically the Western way of life?”
However I think the worst of the bunch is President Bill Clinton. Remember Clinton is real big on Interdependence.
Up until Clinton a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. This has effectively hidden the results of his policies. While the real unemployment in the USA is ~23% heading towards 24% and has been increasing since 2007, the news reports it as 7.3% (oct 2013) down from a high of 10.0% in Oct. 2009.
Clinton set-up the foreclosure mess when he signed five banking laws repealing the depression era laws restricting banking, making banks give loans to the unqualified but did not regulate Credit Default Swaps. The result was Banks that were TOO BIG to fail and the AIG credit default swap bailout aka the Bank Bailout.
Clinton pushed through the World Trade Organization and got China membership.
WTO states:
The problem is WHO is the US government/Clinton working for when they do the negotiations? The international corporations? 2.8 Million U.S. Jobs Lost Since China Joined WTO: Study and U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen More Than 50% in effect we are competing with China and India in wages. This Chart is for _Jim and shows the increase in payroll taxes while corporate taxes and tariffs (excise taxes) decreased.
And it gets even worse because Clinton also gave away America’s technological edge.
garymount says: @ January 26, 2014 at 5:23 pm
The good doctor did not once mention the benefits of Carbon Dioxide….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is probably because we have been screaming about the benefits until we are blue in the face.
I think this paper say it all: Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California
Considering the jury is still out as to whether we are headed for glaciation or just a very cool 40,000 years or so, that paper should scare the bovine fecal material out of any one with half a brain.
Otherwise head over to http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
garymount says:
January 26, 2014 at 4:35 pm
“What difference does it make for example if plastic takes hundreds of years to break down in a landfill? Rocks take hundreds of years to break down 😉 “
Indeed! Not breaking down is a GOOD thing. When something “breaks down”, it can leach toxic residues into the ground.
“Since that time three or four years ago, there has been no comfortable way for the scientific community to raise the spectre of serious uncertainty about the forecasts of climatic disaster… It can no longer escape prime responsibility if it should turn out in the end that doing something in the name of mitigation of global warming is the costliest scientific mistake ever visited on humanity.”
…the costliest scientific mistake ever visited on humanity so far.
Science when practiced is fine
Establishment (political base) science, government autocrats, ambitious academics and the academic welfare pretenders, not so much.
people such as Al Gore or anyone else who subscribes to the GW lie should be expelled by the scientific community algore was never even remotely qualified to join the scientific community, with measured,-able intellectual and character deficits.
garymount says:
You might like “Carbon Is Life” by Yours Truly: http://bunyagrovepress.com/content/carbon-life
“jai mitchell says:
January 26, 2014 at 2:12 pm
And pretend that this is somehow equal in weight to a DIRECT measurement of surface temperature, utilizing equipment that can (and has!) been continuously re-evaluated and whose verifiable results show actual temperatures.
your pro-coal bias is showing. . .”
No such DIRECT measurement of surface temperature has ever been taken by any standard device installed anywhere in the world. None! Never has and never will.
Also, I hope you don’t use Aspirin, y’know the active ingredient was discovered by accident in coal!
“The ‘Pause’ of Global Warming Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science”
Bull shit, don’t make me laugh.
Just the title is a nod to the AGW fraudsters.
A better title opening would have been “AGW risks…” to start with.
“Destroying the Reputation of Science”
It isn’t the reputation of science that is at stake here….
It is the reputation of politicians, AGW proponents and all those riding the AGW gravy train who jeopardize the loss of their reputation, last but not least the pro AGW media.
(IMO they already lost it but who am I)
The most important and significant loss of reputation however is that of the individual tax payer the modern. well informed and well educated citizen who has been funding this gravy train and who has paid for all the costs of the useless projects, tax hikes and blown up energy bills that will hunt them for years to come while their declining buying power forces them to risk their necks driving the little coffins called eco cars.
And what about the victims of the bio fuel madness that promoted famine and uprisings all over the world, the loss of freedoms in the West.
It’s nice to write a piece about the loss of reputation of a bunch of “scientists” who sold their soul and their scientific integrity for a few bucks but that’s only a very small part of the story.
My view? If you you want to make an article about the negative impact of the real world observations and the alarmist and fraudulent AGW propaganda please tell the entire story.
What is at stake here isn’t the reputation of science or trust in science because people have lost trust in science a long time ago.
What is at stake here is the entire future of humanity, our way of life, our freedom, our financial and economic systems, our prosperity and our civilization.
What is at stake here is capitalism and freedom.
Wake people up to warn them for the real shit that will shake the world.
We will be confronted with the biggest depression since 1929 very soon and crises will go global.
History tells us that a period of economic depression is directly followed by war and with gigantic amounts of arms stockpiled over the years I expect a slaughter house that is going to dwarf all the slaughter houses of the past century.
This string of events will flush the entire AGW scam from the face of the earth just like the endless discussions in the UK about having a EU referendum yes or no.
One of these days we will wake up to a totally different world and only a few of us will survive the next slaughter house because it has been prepared for years to come and our insane estabishment, the same bunch of crooks behind the AGW scare have decided that 95% of the current world population has become OBSOLETE.
The reputation of science? just stuff it.
Read here about the reputation of science according to NASA and watch the slide show and when you’re finished read the information on the next link.
Have a nice day.
Space Ship Earth
The crew are:
– plundering the ship’s supplies
– Tinkering with the temperature and life support controls
– Still looking for instruction manual
– Engaging in bloody skirmishes in every corner of the vessel
– Increasing the size of the crew by 2 million PER WEEK
P. Creola
http://www.slideshare.net/johnkhutchison/future-strategicissuesandwarfare
http://green-agenda.com
That’s my 2 cents opinion about this posting.
I must know a different breed of people. My Democratic friends believe with all their hearts in CAGW. There just isn’t any room for doubts. It is bedrock to who they are. It is part of the reason why they feel superior to other people. And, even if CAGW is not as bad as claimed, it is still very bad and all the migation and green stuff has to go on just the same. And, even if they finally stop voting based on CAGW, and the govt runs out of money for green stuff because they have to give moeny to other, more powerful supporters, they will vote for the identical politicians anyway, the same ones who pushed CAGW. By then the pols will be pushing some other big govt solution to a non-existent problem.
This has very little to do with science.
You guys just don’t get it.
– – – – – – – – – –
Garth Paltridge,
A very relevant essay. Thank you.
Even before AGW exaggerating ideology infected science, the public was already well aware of many examples of hoaxes, bad science and psuedo-science in the >500 plus year history modern science.
If anything, the non-scientific CAGW exaggeration serves to strengthen the reasonable view that applied reasoning (science) is only as good as the application of basic integrity to the reasoning. Reasonable public members now know what they already knew before the scientifically flawed AGW came along; that many scientists can fall far short of integrity in their applied reasoning.
No doom and gloom for the future of science. Just business as usual for reasonable men with integrity. : )
That said, however, it is important that the full details of the whole history of the non-scientific CAGW exaggeration and the details of its irrational ideology be accurately chronicled to mitigate against future re-occurrences like it in science.
John
26 Jan: UK Independent: Tom Bawden: Exclusive: Climate scepticism blamed as Owen Paterson slashes spending on global warming
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will spend just £17.2m on domestic “climate change initiatives” this financial year, a 41 per cent decline on the previous 12 months, according to its response to a freedom of information request.
The figures will fuel fears that the Environment Secretary’s personal climate-change scepticism could be exposing the UK to a higher risk of flooding and other global warming consequences…
Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute, said: “These shocking figures should worry everyone in the UK…
Maria Eagle, shadow Environment Secretary, said such a steep drop in domestic climate change initiatives “reveals an incredible level of complacency about the threat to the UK from climate change”…
The spending now represents just 0.7 per cent of the department’s total budget for the year, down from 1.2 per cent last year…
This month, Mr Paterson was asked in Parliament whether he agreed with David Cameron’s “suspicion” that climate change was partly to blame for the ferocity of the recent storms – and he failed to answer…
Guy Shrubsole, a Friends of the Earth campaigner, said: “By cutting Defra’s work to protect the UK from climate change and extreme weather events, Owen Paterson has shown that he’s unfit for office. He continues to put more people and their livelihoods at risk.”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-climate-scepticism-blamed-as-owen-paterson-slashes-spendingon-global-warming-9086397.html
24 Jan: AP: John Heilprin: Cameron, Bono link poverty, climate at AP debate
to eradicate poverty must be linked to climate change, saying that rising temperatures will have widespread effects on everything from food supplies to education.
Panelists at two separate sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — among them Bill Gates, Al Gore and U2 frontman Bono — underlined the importance of the issue. The United Nations is also making climate change a priority at Davos this year, pushing for a U.N.-brokered internationally binding climate treaty in Paris in 2015.
At a debate sponsored by The Associated Press, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the next U.N.-led campaign to eradicate extreme poverty must make the climate a top priority…
More than one billion people live in extreme poverty by the World Bank’s definition, living on less than $1.25 a day.
“We do need to prioritize, but I would argue if we do want to help the one billion, we need to put in climate change,” Cameron said…
“Extraordinary things happen in Davos — no more extraordinary than an Irish rock star complimenting a Conservative British Prime Minister for his leadership in the fight against extreme poverty. Anything can happen,” Bono said, before turning directly to Cameron. “Thanks dude. I’m a top-line melody guy, and I will try and help with the assignment. But I have a feeling it’s people not in this room that are going to execute it.”…
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bono-cameron-talk-poverty-climate-ap-debate
While science may suffer a knock in the short term, perhaps in the long term this episode of public policy debauchery will reinforce Eisenhower’s prescient warning: “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Once the warm turns and CAGW is discredited, such members of “the anointed” who continue to parrot the dogma will look like fools, and the saying, “If you learned it in school, it’s probably a lie,” will gain in popularity.
Theo Goodwin said @ January 26, 2014 at 3:21 pm
What complete and utter claptrap!. The reverse is generally the case. Tractors, harvesters, irrigation equipment are all capital-intensive investments that are purchased on the basis of lowest annual cost over their anticipated lifespan. Farmers are used to thinking long-term. A walnut orchard won’t come into full bearing for 25 years for example. TIme to break even on apples used to be 16 years when I started 30 years ago. What makes you think farmers are stupid?
26 Jan: WebCommentary: Paul Driessen: Risking lives to promote climate change hype
Yet another global warming expedition gets trapped in icebound ideology
Will global warming alarmists ever set aside their hypotheses, hyperbole, models and ideologies long enough to acknowledge what is actually happening in the real world outside their windows? Will they at least do so before setting off on another misguided adventure? Before persuading like-minded or naïve people to join them? Before forcing others to risk life and limb to transport – and rescue – them? If history is any guide, the answer is: Not likely.
The absurd misadventures of University of New South Wales climate professor Chris Turney is but the latest example…
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.)
http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=driessenp&date=140126
Joel says:
My Democratic friends believe with all their hearts in CAGW. There just isn’t any room for doubts. It is bedrock to who they are. It is part of the reason why they feel superior to other people. And, even if CAGW is not as bad as claimed, it is still very bad and all the migation and green stuff has to go on just the same.
Why, I do believe Joel has just described jai mitchell and Pippen Kool to a ‘T’.
Science is irrelevant to them. Empirical evidence does not matter in the slightest; in fact, it gets in the way. And scientific truth? Pf-f-f-ft. That’s only for skeptics.
The only thing that matters to the climate alarmist cult is their True Belief.
The weather is becoming intemperate. At what point will the missing heat reveal itself?
The Chief Scientist in Australia (appointed by the previous Federal Government) has once again recently plumbed for politics over science – and in the process assisting in the ongoing loss of respect Aussies have for a lot of scientists ….esp those sprouting predictions hither and thither and collecting the cash, government jobs and awards …..
No. The MAIN blame for the Great Lie falls on the gatekeepers-turned-enablers, the world’s scientific societies, which impugns science-as-a-whole (or rather, institutionalized as opposed to idealized science), as Paltridge wrote:
You don’t need to worry about “Science” in general.
“Climate Science” on the other hand is toast.
Patrick said:
January 26, 2014 at 6:46 pm
Also, I hope you don’t use Aspirin, y’know the active ingredient was discovered by accident in coal!
————
The active ingredient of Aspirin was first discovered from the bark of the willow tree in 1763 by Edward Stone of Wadham College, Oxford University. He had discovered salicylic acid, the active metabolite of aspirin. Aspirin was first synthesized by Felix Hoffmann, a chemist with the German company Bayer in 1897.
Paltridge over-reaches in his rhetoric. Science will live on as long as humans are curious about how the physical world works.
Physics, chemistry, heck even randomized control trials are doing fine as scientific enterprises. As for climatology, well its practitioners have some work to do to convince me that they are practicing science.
That brought to mind these quotes:
Those measurements are impugned by their warm-divergence from the measurements of the little-known, new, high-quality network of weather stations in the US.
The absence of global warming for 17 years raises the strong possibility that variations in the Earth’s average temperature, variations in rainfall, variations in the number of tropical hurricanes, the extent of sea-ice and all the other supposed indicators of climate change are merely driven by a natural cycle, whose anthropogenic component is negligible or non-existent.
If global temperatures continue to fail to rise or actually fall, the so-called deniers will be recognised as having been correct in their dismissal of the claims by activist climatologists and those politicians and social engineers, whom their claims served.
The widespread practice, within the media of suppressing dissenting views to the orthodox belief in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming will be revealed as having been nothing more than an attempt to suppress the truth and to promote the various lies upon which the media sought to enable the political agenda justified by the public acceptance of the false theory.
It should not be forgotten that several prominent climatologists and politicians sought to actually criminalise dissent as well as suppress publication of sceptical criticism of the catastrophic anthropogenic climate change theory.
If the absence of global warming continues, how should those in responsible positions who called for criminalization of sceptics and censorship of their beliefs, be dealt with?
Should those who have advocated totalitarianism, in support of a lie be allowed to continue their hold upon the levers of power?
The Pompous Git says:
January 26, 2014 at 7:41 pm
Of course there are farmers and there are farmers. I think of farmers as entrepreneurs who inherited nothing and started with nothing. Among those farmers, you can point to a fence constructed from wood and they will not recognize the owner as a farmer.
Disagree completely of Title “The ‘Pause’ of Global Warming Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science”, because I never associate two parameters that a ascends linearly (amount of CO2) with another which rises more or less erratically (temperature) is science is mere statistical correlating with each other without clearly show the cause and effect.
“””””…..Mark and two Cats says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Patrick said:
January 26, 2014 at 6:46 pm
Also, I hope you don’t use Aspirin, y’know the active ingredient was discovered by accident in coal!…..”””””
Don’t know about today, but in the mid 1960s, 85% of all the aspirin in the world, was manufactured by the Monsanto Company; they sold it by the rail car load. Same stuff as Bayer; just costs less (a lot less).
“As for climatology, well its practitioners have some work to do to convince me that they are practicing science.”
Heh, still practicing ? When, then, are they going to start doing it…..
Professor Paltridge gets to the nub of the “modelling problem” quite early in his article noting that the size of clouds ( and I suggest other meteorological and oceanographic phenomena) is much smaller than the model mesh. I came across a similar phenomenon using CFD to model the potential flow (frictionless fluid) around ship hulls and in early test runs found model convergence but with impossibly high wave heights at the free surface. The problem was that the mesh size in high fluid surface curvature locations ( i.e. ships wake waves) was too big and the model just clunked its way to a junk solution. Finer mesh and hey presto sensible solutions just like the physical model tests. And that was in a system where the constituent elements of the Navier Stokes equations are very well understood ( it is frictionless water being modelled). What freakling chance do these dumb clucks have with a chunky, clunky model made up of fudge factors applied to what appears to be CO2 voodoo.
To get an idea of what is happening imagine a rope lying on the ground and you pick up one end and flick it up and down propagating a wavelike pulse along its length. Now imagine the rope is replaced with light plastic chain. Materially the same result. Now imagine the links are not say 50 mm ( 2″) long but 500 mm ( 20″) the wave shape will be distorted and clunky perhaps with higher (sharper) peaks but say shorter wavelengths.
What intrigues me is how these modellers don’t get this given the plain and obvious defect in the results vs reality.
Joel has it correct : It is bed-rock to who they are. These people will take their CO2 causes global warming to their graves. When the glaciers advance again on Chicago, it will be because of CAGW.
You can get Paltridge’s book, The Climate Caper, for under $10 here:
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Caper-Fallacies-Global-Warming-ebook/dp/B004BKIAS4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390809873&sr=1-1&keywords=climate+caper
Amusing! CAGW pseudo scientists (e.g. Hansen, Mann, Schneider) should find a new job better suited to them: janitor. It’s time for real science to step in & for the decennial witch hunt perpetrated upon skeptics to come to a halt (see the Copernicus – PRP – gate).
Tried to persuade a friend (hobby farmer) that he was better off buying a Kubota rather than the cheap Chinese knockoff for 50% of the price. He bought the Chinese knock-off. It fell over on the equivalent slope of having one wheel on the ridge of a ploughed field and one wheel in the valley. This destroyed the motor. He’s now contemplating litigation against the new distributors who are refusing to honour the warranty. My “real” farming neighbours purchase Kubota, Case, Fiat etc.
The only wood in our fences is tannelised pine fenceposts. Some are now in their 40th year of service. We used to get 10 years from poles we cut for ourselves.
The article has a glaring error.
Proving that man made global warming has been oversold is absolutely provable. To claim it is impossible is ridiculous and factually wrong.
The lack of mid-tropospheric hotspot, the fact that the mediaeval warm period was hotter than today with much less CO2, the fact that projections are consistently 3 times the observed level, the fact that it hasn’t warmed in 17 years despite rising CO2, the fact that outgoing longwave radiation goes up with surface warming, the fact that CO2 lags 800 years behind temperature in the climate record…all prove the theory is wrong according to current data.
I’m surprised the article, so good in every other aspect makes this elementary error.
We probably will not be able to prevent the big economic crash and the wars that will follow but the seeds that will bring down the entire financial system that hunts us have been planted providing us with Capitalism 2.0. Exactly what we’re going to need.
As for the future of capitalism, it will be bright a.o. thanks to the Bitcoin financial infrastructure, please read this correct, the financial infra structure.
It is just as revolutionary as the invention of the introduction of the pc, the internet and e-mail for that matter.
I have taken some time to look at this system, downloaded a wallet, bought some coins, put up some applications for example to buy stuff from e-bay and… it works.
Just imagine buying stuff from e-bay without the use of a credit card or Paypal at virtually no transfer fees…..
Transferring 500 euro from Germany to Morocco for example will cost you 40 euros with Western Union and almost 15 euro with Paypal.
With the Bitcoin infrastructure it will cost you 2 cents….. A huge financial incentive for this technology to go viral.
This technology is what’s going to make banks obsolete and already eliminates the position of Western Union and PayPal but there is much more.
Bitcoin 2.0, read “smart money” will open the doors to capitalism 2.0 has the potential to burn the bogies hunting us right now.
Some views: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/creator-netscape-praises-bitcoin-compares-it-invention-pcs-and-internet
I know, the guy who makes the sales pitch is an AH but just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPmkeio3jJQ
And this:http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9193-bitcoin-20-aka-ultra-coin-the-derivative-layer-above-bitcoin-that-allows-virtual-money-to-control-real-things
Here we have the tools to undermine centralized control and it’s power structures.
Pause of Global Warming?
There are people who thing we’re having one of the top three cold winters ever in the making:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/next-polar-plunge-could-be-win/22527373
and
Joe Bastardi’s latest video report from Bell Weather, looking at weather maps form a long time ago like the “brutal winter” map from 1718 and the water temp maps from 1917/18 letting the AGW proponents know “they have walked into something I have been studying for years”.
http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-january-25-2014#
It will be a tough job to sell Americans the AGW BS after a winter where they have run out of propane for heating their homes: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/26/22455731-prolonged-cold-blast-worsens-propane-shortage-across-midwest?lite#
Yes, I know weather is not climate…
To paraphrase McNalty (The Wire) ”if you play with shit you get dirty”.
US bombing sovereign nation when markets are falling???? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-26/markets-are-falling-which-means-its-time-us-bomb-sovereign-nation#
Makes you wonder what Obama will do when AGW is frozen solid.
Anyhow I hope the Chinese and the Japanese for that matter don’t follow suit.
So many reputations to think about
About dreams of peace, doves, nature, harmony and unintended consequences: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2546218/Birds-released-Vatican-gesture-peace-immediately-attacked-vicious-seagull-crow.html#
Apart from the” reputations” at stake here totally of topic but IMO hilarious.
R. de Haan says: ….
Yes, unfortunately you are correct.
As I said in my comment Clinton made sure China now has the military technology.
The Globalists are all yammering on about Interdependence but I very much doubt if China is with the program.
See: Geopolitics, Currency and Trade Wars: Why The Risk of World War Is Rising
Right now China Plans To Seize South China Sea Island From Philippines, Says “Battle Will Be Restricted”… It seems the Obama administration may have to ‘not take sides’ in another fight soon. sounds like we have another “”Peace for Our Time” (Neville Chamberlain and later Jimmy Carter with Iran)
– Gee thanks Clinton
“What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” ~ Thucydides
And Clinton made sure of the growth of Athenian (Chinese) power.
“Mark and two Cats says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:11 pm”
Well yes and no. The effects of “willow bark” have been known for thousands of years. It was just not understood why. The product “Aspirin” was derived as you say, but it was a byproduct, an accident, when looking for dyes (Purple as I recall was a resultant colour) from coal tar. Some food dyes were derived from coal tar (Synthesized now). Soap, Knights Coal Tar, with anticeptic properties (I used this in the 70’s). So with coal being concentrated sunlight and plant matter its not inconcievable to be able to extract these compounds from it.
The Pompous Git says: @ January 26, 2014 at 7:41 pm
…What makes you think farmers are stupid?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A stupid farmer becomes a bankrupt farmer in very short order.
Farmers are realists that is why they have been the target of all the hayseed and other jokes. Politicians always want to sell the next BIG SCARE so they do not want anyone with brains poking holes in their con.
rogerknights says: @ January 26, 2014 at 8:04 pm
…No. The MAIN blame for the Great Lie falls on the gatekeepers-turned-enablers, the world’s scientific societies, which impugns science-as-a-whole…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That needs to be repeated with the peer-reviewed science journals and universities added.
ALL of science gets a well deserved black eye out of this.
John says: @ January 26, 2014 at 8:51 pm
….If the absence of global warming continues, how should those in responsible positions who called for criminalization of sceptics and censorship of their beliefs, be dealt with?
Should those who have advocated totalitarianism, in support of a lie be allowed to continue their hold upon the levers of power?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The holders of power and their propaganda machines, the MSM will continue on to their next Big Scare for manipulating the masses. The problem for them is decreasing reliance on the MSM, blogs like this one and the increasing awareness that we are being consistently lied to.
Foreclosure Gate, Fractional Reserve Banking and the Fed had both the left and the right up in arms. 80% Favor Auditing the Federal Reserve and 72% Favor Free Market Economy Over One Managed by the Government and “think small businesses are hurt more than big businesses when the government does get involved.”
Rasmussen Reports December 20, 2013 Gallup reports that 72 percent of Americans see big government, not big business or big labor, as the biggest threat to the nation’s future — the highest number since the question was first asked in 1965.
Seems voters are not as dumb as I thought.
It was in or about the ’70s when the big push to have every village idiot get a degree started. Along with that, many not-so-bright folks with poor employment prospects stayed on for advanced degrees. I saw some of the ‘best and brightest’ get big salaries in Silicon Valley with a Bachelors and those who did not get such offers decide to stay in school (often on Daddy’s Money and sometimes on Uncle Sugar’s Money…) The flood of Student Loans for all did for education what Home Loans for all did to housing. LOTS of folks with little or no real interest in Science going into research.
At the same time the “Social Sciences” were turned into propaganda operations. (I, in a terrible mistake, took Sociology for 6 units… it was all “get whitey and men are evil oppressors” seasoned with “corporations are evil”. Did learn more about the joys of socialism, though …) And the “Search for Relevance” began in the “Me Generation”.
Now stir and wait…
A load of mediocre Ph.D.s with a Search For Relevance in their boring little institutional lives, needing more Uncle Sugar money to pay off their school loans and finding happiness in the joys of tossing poo at corporations and anything capitalist / industrial. All being led by nice Socialist Cheerleaders in their attack on all things western / industrial.
Very easy at that point for Science to be seen as just another social system to be bent to the Better Good of enforcing a “Manufactured Consent”…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=manufacturing%20consent&kl=us-en
There has been an ongoing and persistent planned effort to influence, and then control, most methods of social influence. This is not speculation. It is in the Communist Manifesto. ( I had to learn it in school… ) It is VERY important to read your Marx if you want to understand what is happening. Communism did not go away, it just avoided the spotlights. Socialism is just Communism Lite (in that it isn’t “international” so much as “national and other divisions”, and has tried to find more “Third Way” forms with a partial compromise on ownership and corporations – but most of the manifesto and ideology stays the same…) So take a look at any of the major social systems, and you find “Socially Aware” or “Socialist Leaning” leadership and management casts. This is NOT by accident nor is it reflective of the society at large.
So Academia and Media are significantly influenced by the required Social Studies and related classes they must take. The leadership are selected in ways that assure “the right type” of person gets the nod. They, then, manufacture the consent that gets things moving “in the right direction”. Eventually layers of government and “NGOs” are salted with “friends and fellow travelers” and they get bent to ‘the cause’. Notice how many Foundations set up by very conservative rich folks get taken over by very non-conservative management and turned to non-conservative ends? This, too, is not an accident.
Somewhere back in the ’70s I vaguely remember a discussion of the “need” to make the legal profession more “Liberal” (in the American Progressive Social-Liberal sense, not in the British sense that is more like the American Libertarian sense). Since then, lawyers have clearly shifted to the “left”.
The process is ongoing today. Watch what Obama is doing in salting the Supreme Court with hard core Progressive Liberals and the swapping of department heads and more. Even making the military rules into a Social Agenda instead of focusing on effective fighting force.
So really, in that context, is it any surprise that truth is no longer the first purpose of Science? Especially government funded science? That the Social Agenda and Manufacturing Consent comes first?
Unfortunately, I have no “fix”. I’ve just observed the process for the last 1/2 century. ( I first became aware of it at a young age…) Watched as one after another, the support structures of a free society were shifted to “centrist / balanced” and then once a quorum was aboard, the conservatives were ejected (or just replaced with progressives upon their departure). In the 1950s the media were much more conservative. Similarly Law and lawyers. Similarly the NGOs of the day and Foundations. The society at large has not changed nearly so much as those centers of influence. This is not accidental. One side is persuaded to “play fair” and the other plays by a different set of rules… the end game is a shift of control.
I can’t say if it is some grand organized plan (though I think that unlikely) or just a subtle and necessary artifact of the ideology. Simply put: It is quite likely that those attracted to the Socialism message are also more prone to “networking” and “noble cause corruption” and don’t see what they are doing as, in any way, bad. A social norm can be stronger than any conspiracy. It is quite likely that, through preferential association and preferential selection of career path, the Progressive Drift concentrated in those fields and then a feedback self-selection process happens. I, for example, bailed out of Sociology once I realized it was not at all the Social Anthropology I was hopping to learn, but was instead Applied Socialism 101 with enforced Progressive Norms. I was given bad grades on conservative opinions and good grades on progressive opinions, for example… So “people like me” don’t become Sociologists… But then folks “called” to that bent then tend to gather their own around them once in positions of power.
In any case, the effects are the same.
In the end, what it comes down to is this:
Socialism and the philosophical base on which it is built holds that all else is secondary to the social needs of the people and that “truth” is what all agree it will be. All is bent to the social ends and needs. Real honesty in science can not exist in that context.
So I’m not at all surprised at the “corruption” of Science, especially the “soft sciences”, as the Progressive / Socialist influence has increased (and it has increased a lot in “Climate Science”). It is entirely to be expected. I’m also not surprised that most of the “Skeptics” came out of the Engineering, Geology, Physics, Chemistry, Meteorology and other ‘hard sciences’. That’s the path taken by those who abandoned their Sociology classes 😉
I might also add an honorable mention for the other hardheaded pragmatists of the world. Farmers and Managers. Per the ‘early stats’ on the survey a few days back, lots of management and hard science folks showed up in the skeptics count. Farmers have always been hard to convert, thus the purges and collectivization of the Communists. Something about nature and reality determining if bellies are full or not, dogma be damned…
Since Real Science has a search for truth at the core of it, reconciling it with Social Needs and Norms has always been an issue for Progressive / Socialists. The outcome of this particular effort at social direction (via The Big Scare of Global Warming) may well determine how much Real Science survives and how much Science just becomes a handmaiden of public policy “for the good of the people”… If it ends up just another Social Science branch of Government, you can kiss the search for real truth goodby. Judging from much of what gets published, in many cases that is already the case
OK: If it’s a question of “all”, then there is no option. It has to be what is the most continuous supply – the cheaper biogas generator. But I guess I would not have got all SIX marks for that.
If we assume that this is a propoganda quiz, then you’re right. However, it’s entirely possible that this is part of the trick question. Does the student realize that average means sometimes it’s higher and sometimes it’s lower? Does the student understand that at times this may mean the farm has too much energy, and at other times it doesn’t have enough, and no way to get more?
Frankly, the question seems like a no-brainer… even if the average was flat with no swings on the eco-friendly generation, saving that much money on the biogas generator is still the better bet for the farmer. The farmer is concerned with the farm, not some nebulous “maybe the temperature will rise 2 degrees long after I’m dead, and that probably won’t have any impact on my sons anyway” arguement.
Gail Combs said at 4:21am “increasing awareness that we are being consistently lied to”.Perhaps “spied upon” as well, adding to your point?
E.M.Smith:
re your rant at January 27, 2014 at 5:11 am:
I hope you will understand if the rest of us return to the subject of this thread and ignore your embarrassment.
Richard
and I see our EX CSIRO man had to wait till he was an ex employee of that Tarnished institution to be able to speak honestly…just as so many others have had to do
retire or go elsewhere or be harassed n fired for being honest.
richardscourtney says:
January 26, 2014 at 11:04 am
Then I stand corrected and apologize for the harm to I’ve caused AGW scepticism!
It won’t happen again.
jai mitchell says:
January 26, 2014 at 10:37 am
Satellites do not measure temperature.
==============
Is this yet another GISS employee blogging on the taxpayer dime? Last I looked electronic thermometers do not measure temperature either. They measure the voltage of a thermocouple,
And according to wilipedia:
The main limitation with thermocouples is accuracy; system errors of less than one degree Celsius (°C) can be difficult to achieve.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple
Which doesn’t stop GISS from reporting the average temp of the earth to tens of a degree, even though the number of stations reporting over the years is far from continuous, especially the large fall in stations reporting from Siberia at the time of the greatest reported increase in warming.
Well yes and no. The effects of “willow bark” have been known for thousands of years. It was just not understood why.
Thanks, you saved me the trouble. And not just willow bark tea — people can actually become allergic/sensitive to aspirin (salicylate), but it is found in greater and lesser quantity in most foods. See the following list:
http://salicylatesensitivity.com/about/food-guide/vegetables/
Note that many of the foods thought to be broadly protective of things such as colon cancer or heart disease are high in salicylate, and probably constitute the moral equivalent of the baby aspirin a day physicians currently recommend to the over-30 crowd who are past the primary risk of Reyes’ syndrome. Of course many of the vegetables and fruits have other protective elements — antioxidants, bioflavanoids, roughage — as well. So eat your vegetables and fruits; don’t suck down coal tar.
Seriously, do we have to reach this far to find reasons to love coal? Personally, I think it would be lovely if we could leave the coal mostly in the ground unburned, and look forward to the day we can do so — mining it is dirty, expensive and dangerous, and once you burn it it’s gone and takes a few hundred million years to “recycle”. Even more so oil — one day our descendants will be very sad that we used up most of the readily accessible cornucopia of raw, ready to process organic molecules and then burned it when it is so very useful to make stuff with. Or maybe not — with enough, cheap enough energy people might care less, since energy is all that is required to run reactions backwards and build the molecules from scratch, but it is a lot cheaper to start with petroleum IIRC.
That doesn’t mean that I think we should lie to anybody about CAGW and the possibly overblown risks of atmospheric CO_2, or that we should try to shut down all coal burning power plants tomorrow, only that I sincerely do think that we as a civilization should look aggressively for alternative energy resources that don’t involve burning things, especially things in comparatively finite supply that have other uses. Don’t confuse two issues. One is the objective scientific question: “Will increasing atmospheric CO_2 to 600 ppm cause a global climate catastrophe?” (Note well that I do not even assign a cause to the increase.) The other is: “Is it economically, politically, and socially desirable to stop burning coal as a primary source of electrical energy, and to eventually transition from the burning of petroleum products (diesel, fuel oil, kerosene, gasoline) as a primary energy source of heat and the motive power for transportation?”
One can consider these two questions entirely separately, and can even contemplate different answers for different time frames in the future. The scientific question is currently open. It is entirely plausible, even probable, that increasing CO_2 to 600 ppm will cause some increase in global average temperature, although empirically the increase is likely to be less than the various GCMs are predicting as the GCMs are failing and are likely to be significantly flawed and both overestimate climate sensitivity and underestimate the range of natural variability and the natural contribution to past warming. It is an open question as well even if some warming occurs whether or not it will be “catastrophic”, and one cannot even rule out global cooling in the absence of a believable predictive model capable of quantitatively and temporally explaining past global climate variations such as
the MWP, the LIA, the recovery from the LIA, and more broadly the entire Pliestocene.
The political/economic/social question I think has a fairly clear answer. There is a risk of future catastrophe associated with burning carbon for fuel, but there is the absolute certainty of contemporary catastrophe if we stop. We are already paying a substantial penalty in human misery and death (as well as lining the pockets of those very corporations that sell us energy that are being “demonized” in the political sell) because draconian measures are being proposed and implemented before the scientific question is even resolved and well before any alternative technologies are sufficiently developed to be plausible alternatives.
That could easily, and even rapidly, change — there is a lot of research being conducted, and a new battery technology was announced yesterday that could plausibly bump the energy density of batteries by close to an order of magnitude compared to gold-standard the lithium oxide batteries of today. There are even multiple approaches capable of yielding factors of five or more, some of them potentially less expensive than lithium oxide and mass producible with minimal memory effect. This may put battery technology well within an order of magnitude of being as energy dense as gasoline, and differences in conversion efficiency could reduce the gap still further.
This is the primary reason I don’t think anyone — even the most devout of CAGW believers — should panic. Every single time the pundits of the past have predicted “inevitable” global disaster in the last 200 years, they have proven wrong. Various apocalyptic churches and cults predict the Rapture and Armageddon, but it fails to come to pass. Nuclear holocaust was supposed to knock us back to the stone age — but didn’t, at least not yet. Global pandemics (possibly due to bioengineered terror weapons) are still supposed to wipe out — but haven’t. Pollution was supposed to poison us and turn the entire planet into a wasteland — but life expectancy continues to rise, and if anything we are gradually bringing pollution under control with a hat tip to the same need to balance human fortune and misery against the control measures in developing countries. Overpopulation was supposed to turn the entire world into some sort of rabbit warren and precipitate mass starvation and other disasters — but the exact opposite has happened — food production has easily exceeded population growth, medical advances have stayed ahead of the disease curve, and slowly but surely mere education is pulling the world out of the rapidly reproducing impoverished dark ages and into the slowly reproducing comparatively wealthy present. One could actually envision world population peaking around 10 billion in the next 30 years and then dropping for a century or so to an eventual equilibrium of perhaps half of that — if we turned our attention from perpetuating energy poverty by panicking over coal-based energy to directly trying to fix world poverty and ignorance and misery — all of which require cheap energy!
So please, don’t conflate the two issues. There is the scientific question of what the global climate will look like in fifty or a hundred years quite independent of the moral and economic question of how we should best direct our resources in the present towards the resolution of long term problems. The problem of world poverty is, perhaps, within our grasp to solve and solve decisively in 20 to 30 years, if we concentrate our energy (both literal and metaphorical) there. The problem, if any, of burning carbon for fuel IMO should be addressed, as burning coal for energy is not a good truly long term basis for human civilization even if we are on the brink of the next ice age regardless of CO_2 level. But at the moment, the best thing to do is continue to actively invest in research into economically viable alternatives, and wait for capitalism and common sense to do their thing when and as they are discovered and developed to where they make purely economic sense. With or without subsidy, solar energy is quite close to being competitive with other sources of fuel-based energy. There is a lot we can, and probably will, do with both Uranium and eventually LFTR (Thorium) fission, where the latter will take order of ten thousand years to exhaust. Fusion, well, it’s always a possibility. But one can imagine any number of breakthroughs (such as an order of magnitude difference in battery energy density!) that would be game changers — enable solar power to function as a standalone source in much of the world, enable electric cars to be built that have range of 300 to 500 miles and that can be rapidly recharged. In the past, such breakthroughs seem to occur faster than the predicted disasters that they ameliorate because there is a lot of “energy” in human creativity driven by a strong incentive to do good and get rich while doing it (in equal measure:-).
I personally trust that creative energy. Let’s worry less about catastrophic SLR in 2100 (especially in the absence of anything vaguely describable as even unusual SLR today) and worry more about the 1 to 2 million people, most of them children under five, who die every year of respiratory disorders in India alone caused by the use of “biofuels” (a.k.a. dried dung, charcoal, wood or chaff) in closed mud huts for the purposes of cooking and heat. Elimination of dirty biofuels in the third world requires some mix of clean burning stoves, natural gas, or electricity produced as cheaply as possible, that is to say, by coal. Let’s worry less about “climate change” and more about providing water that is safe to drink and thereby eliminating the roughly two million deaths a year from diarrhoea caused by drinking water contaminated with fecal parasites, most of them the very young and the elderly. Clean water requires cheap energy, cheap energy at the moment is pretty much coal.
This is the true tragedy of the CAGW fiasco. When the cold war ended, the prospect for anything but comparatively minor wars faded. The Military-Industrial complex Eisenhower so eloquently warned us about risked being marginalized once they didn’t have a good reason to receive half a trillion or so a year of government money to build bombers and ICBMs and to maintain a huge fleet of expensive war machinery. A few good small wars stretched out their period of relevance and got them a bolus of a couple of trillion dollars to keep the wolf from their door a bit longer, but we are once again living in a nearly peaceful world.
We could actually take advantage of this stretch of, well, peace on earth to actually promote good will towards men, and take actions against global poverty and misery that would actually make future wars even less likely (at the substantial expense of the giant multinational corporations that thrive on cheap third world labor that would largely disappear if the countries involved became prosperous). Instead we have a new “war” — this time on the very means that those countries must rely on to lift themselves out of poverty, the fundamental resource, energy itself.
Anybody here think this is a coincidence?
rgb
ozspeaksup said @ January 27, 2014 at 6:40 am
IIRC Garth did speak out when he was working for CSIRO and received a bollocking for it.
Then I stand corrected and apologize for the harm to I’ve caused AGW scepticism!
It won’t happen again.
Good, because Richard is quite right — your list is wrong in almost every detail. You might want to read through the documentation of an actual GCM before reposting about their flaws — CAM 3 documentation is openly available on the web here:
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/atm-cam/docs/description/
You will note that this GCM very clearly simulates a round, tilted earth, orbiting the sun in an eccentric ellipse, and has specific components to compute the real time changes in energy/state to the entire surface and atmosphere of the earth, decomposed into areal cells and vertical atmospheric cells, at a moderate (probably far too large, IMO) granularity, and with the explicit treatment/inclusion of all sorts of physics — clouds, convection, radiation, albedo, surface height, ice vs water in the ocean. Look at all of the “model physics” that is included!
They may well omit some physics that is important, but probably not from malice or intent. They may well get some physics wrong, as we simply don’t understand things like clouds and aerosols very well, or how the solar magnetic state might impact the climate. They may well not do the computation sufficiently precisely, because it is enormously expensive to do the computation at the current level of precision — note well that this like other GCMs essentially integrate the Navier-Stokes equation for the entire coarse-grained atmosphere (this is a nonlinear partial differential equation so difficult that mathematicians cannot even prove that solutions generally exist for it). It IIRC advances the solutions at a time-granularity of five minutes — measuring out the century in five minute steps describing the change in every stack of parcels over each surface cell covering the planet. This is not “instantaneous”, nor is it in any possible sense sloppy, ignorant, malicious, misleading, or anything else you might use to describe it implying some sort of evil intent. And CAM is probably not even the most developed or precise of the GCMs (although it is essentially an open source GCM, so you can download it and, with an enormous amount of effort, get it to build and run and then fix it if you don’t like it the way that it is).
It might, of course, still be wrong. Lots of sophisticated models turn out to be wrong. That’s why they call it research — if we knew the answers and could already predict the future precisely we wouldn’t have people working to improve them. The only real problem with GCMs is that they have been treated like some sort of modern Delphic Oracle even as they have been systematically failing all sorts of consistency and accuracy checks. Basically, sophisticated as they are they simply don’t work very well.
This is a hard problem. If it weren’t for the immense political weight that has been placed on their predictions (and yes, the possibility that confirmation bias has crept into their tuning, something that is so easy to have happen when you have strong prior beliefs and are tuning a set of parameters to fit a training set when the parameters are highly covariant and there is a large possible solution space that can “work” (so why not choose the one that conforms most strongly to your prior beliefs?)) it would hardly be surprising that the GCMs aren’t working well yet, and people would be far more willing to tweak them and change them so that they agreed with observation, almost entirely at the expense of the “catastrophic” warming the currently largely still predict.
rgb
ferdberple says:January 27, 2014 at 7:10 am
I do not pretend to understand the modern satellite methodology of measurement, but I have extensive experience with thermocouples and process control. I found in the mid-80s that I needed to control many steps in a photolithographic IC process, NMOSIII with submicron linewidth, to +/-0.1°F in order to control the linewidths I was responsible for to +/-0.1microns 3-sigma. I used type-J thermocouples, made my own, calibrated each to 32°F and 212°F and was able to get the results I needed for process control. NIST was so impressed they incorporated some of the methodology into the SOP for SEMATECH.
Tenth of a degree F readings are possible, I could not get the physical results I did without them.
Trap?
It wasn’t a TRAP it was TEMPTATION.
Being Human, their flesh was weak so they succumbed to the siren song of fame, fortune, power and glory.
It’s why so many cannot bring themselves to admit, on even the most obvious points, that they were wronged AND that they lied at least to themselves.
It’s actually good that this has been exposed to such a wide audience. Perhaps some now will begin to take a look at some of the earlier forays by science into the manufacturing of evidence and the hiding of the truth in the name of “settled Science”.
I can think of a couple of areas. 1)evolutionary theory 2) paleoanthropology
Just a review of nutrition and all it’s confusing results and industry paid for studies. would be upsetting enough.
Science has already been hijacked by big business & politics. Just look at the pharmaceutical industry that publishes 100% positive papers on its own drugs! Monsanto who publishes safety studies that always find its products safe! None of these industries have any scientific credibility any more and no one listens to them. same as the MSM, no one listens to them either, it is a complete waste of time to watch dog a pony shows. same with the war on Syria, eventually everyone catches on. The IPCC is no different, they are just being paid by political masters, just like the government departments who falsify the numbers to read anyway their political masters wish. As a material researcher at a couple big companies, there is even political data hiding and false presentations done at this level…..Several others are correct here, once lost, it is damn difficult to get back your credibility. This is an opportunity for bloggers and alternate media, health and science websites to gather this community to themselves, just like WUWT has done! A Sorry state of affairs, but it all points back to the morality of the nation. Of course that was flushed down the toilet long ago. How can anyone feel for these people, who constantly lie? sooner or later the system crashes or is turned on its head by revolution, should be interesting. At least China and other countries have serious consequences for liars and criminals, once this is not the case, the country is sure to fail as no one cares anymore about liars and their corrupt systems.
What do you mean by “risks destroying the reputation”? It has shown me how corrupting agendas can be and how easily corrupted big science and big grant is. It shows how difficult it is for any line of inquiry that goes against the status quo can be. It explains why research into Low Energy Nuclear reactions was almost totally frozen for so many years despite its unspeakable benefit to humanity. It shows how vacuous the left its, and how worthless their credential monopoly is. The imposition of ideology to control true science makes me sick. I am so very glad that I declined to play their games and allow them to grant me credentials in my youth. I want no part with any of them.
rgbatduke says “We could actually take advantage of this stretch of, well, peace on earth to actually promote good will towards men, and take actions against global poverty.”
I salute you, sir – but fear that concepts such as that food production will continue to exceed population growth, medical advances will continue to remain ahead of the disease curve and world population will eventually reduce with increased prosperity are just too laissez-faire (aka right-wing) to appeal to the more left-wing parties and greens. They, ironically, find themselves the main proponents of the new “war” you describe, by wealthier countries on the means that poorer countries need to lift themselves out of poverty. And there is just no way to be sure that human ingenuity (“creative energy”) will always prevail – relying on this is essentially an act of faith, similar to the CAGW creed; it’s also rather depressing to think that the climate models demonstrably failing will not stop such a “war” – just open everybody’s eyes to what is truly going on.
There must surely at some point be a “peace pipe” moment where the opposing parties sit down and are reconciled. What is to bring this about – is the real need for political leadership, such as by FDR in the 1930’s?
“Monsanto who publishes safety studies that always find its products safe! None of these industries have any scientific credibility any more and no one listens to them.”
Here we have the argument that anyone who supports the development of superior crops, such as Golden Rice or high yield cotton, is in the pay of big Monsanto. But there are many dissident scientists who have done the work and made a genuine improvement to human life, and these are ruthlessly lied about and attacked by Greenpeace and other big political international NGOs. As Patrick Moore has pointed out, they not only oppose life-saving Golden rice, but also insist on pushing failed, fantasy solar and wind on Africa as well.
It is important to keep in mind that environmentalists have a long tradition of opposing agricultural development and disease prevention in all of its forms, as Norman Borlaug found out.
Science, per se, is beautiful and demanding in its rigor, The Scientific Method.
Often this rigor has been abandoned for fame and/or money .
This time the sellout is so huge that the reputation of scientists (and politicians) has been ruined.
Scientists should sit down and shut up for awhile, IMO.
Richard Phillips
A large portion of “climate science” is not science at all, but badly inspired guess-work. It is driven by money and governmental ignorance. I quite recently submitted some notes critical of turbines, biomass and a circular from the Grantham Institute to all MPs, to the chief scientist at the DECC, asking for errors of fact to be detected. No errors notified, but all the matter was totally contrary to HMG policy, based on “need to fight Climate change”. Out masters in HMG have for ever been ignorant of science, and unable to analyse the garbage presented to them by the “warmist” lobby.
David in Cal says:
January 26, 2014 at 8:33 am
Amen. I think the reputation of all science will be harmed, particularly academic science. Sadly, I think the hit to reputation is deserved. I think more academic science is done badly than we’d care to believe, especially in the handling of statistics and inference.
I think you are 95% correct! Almost everytime I hear about a new study in popular media, it is bassed on statistical correleation. I can usualy pick appart the study in <5min. These so called Scientists are nothing more than Yes Men for Hire.
A purpose behind the computer simulation’s of climate is to provide evidence that man’s adding CO2 to the atmosphere is causing the climate to warm. But so far these simulations of climate, if they provide any evidence at all, it is that CO2 does not affect climate. The simulation results are wrong so if they provide any evidence at all it is that the models behind them are wrong.
Apparently a general circulation weather prediction program has been modified to predict climate. Code has been added to include CO2 based warming so that is what the simulation results show. Thescomputerer simulations beg the question so their results are really quite useless. Apparently Nature is not bound to follow the results of these useless simulations.
The theory behind AGW is that CO2 added to the atmosphere by man is causing the radiative thermal insulation properties to increase. Furthermore, the warming caused by CO2 causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which further enhances the warmeffectfecr. But that is not what really happens. The dominant greenhouse gas in atmospherehere is H2O and it provides negative feedbacks to the addition of greenhouse gases so as to minimize the effect that added greenhouse gasses might have on climate. H2O is also a coolant. More heat is transfered off the surface of our planet by H2O via the heat of vaporization then by LWIR absorption band radiation. More H2O in our atmosphere means that more heat is transfered which provides a negative feedback to the addition of CO2. More ignornour atmosphere means more clouds. Not only do clouds reflect solar radiation but they radiate more efficiently to space in the LWIR then does the clear atmosphere that they replace. Clouds provide another negative feedback. The insulation effect causes warming in the lower atmosphere but cooling in the upper atmosphere where earadiatesites to space in the LWIR according to theory. Cooling in the upper atmosphere causes less H2O to appear which counteracts the effect of adding more CO2. This is another negative feedback.
If a gas is a good LWIR absorber then it is also a good LWIR radiator. The so called greenhouse gases share their sensible heat with other gasses in the atmosphere. This heat is moved around by conduction and convection. If there is rally any heat trapping going on then it is by the non greenhouse gases that do not give up energy by LWIR radiation to spaefficientlyiently as does the so called greenhouse gases.
The theory of AGW caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere does not conform to reality and if anything that is what the IPCC’s climate change models show but the IPCC does not admito admitt that because they might loose their funding.
Much more than ‘science’ it is Scientism that thankfully is, and assuredly should be, damaged by the global warming farce. Science is nothing more than a technological methodology–its great for building a better mousetrap. Scientism is a body of naturalistic and empiricalistic presuppositions which are maintained as both rigidly unexamined, and utterly unassailable–which is to say, in effect, its a damned cult…
Until some time passes following the point at which a majority of scientists own up publicly and consistently to the fact that, apart from technological questions, science is not a particularly strong approach to obtaining meaningful answers to important questions–especially questions with any potential bearing on the essential nature of the human person, origins, socially prescriptive norms.
Knowing what electricity does is wonderfully useful (with some hazards)–forgetting that science can’t ever possibly tell you what electricity actually is, or exactly how or why it arose, leads toward the foolishness of Scientism.
Zeke says: @ January 27, 2014 at 10:44 am
“Monsanto who publishes safety studies that always find its products safe! None of these industries have any scientific credibility any more and no one listens to them.”
Here we have the argument that anyone who supports the development of superior crops, such as Golden Rice or high yield cotton, is in the pay of big Monsanto….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First let me say I think Golden rice is a great idea.
Second
Do I have a problem with the idea of GMOs? No, the problem I have with GMOs is TESTING and CONTROL.
There is the possibility of Horizontal Gene Transfer: Recent evidence confirms that transgenic DNA does jump species to bacteria and even plant and animals
However my real problem is I do not trust the big Ag corporations especially after Monsanto had Pinkerton agents trespass on farmer’s land to take samples and sue because they found GMO genetics in corn from farmer saved seed. Remember that corn is wind pollinated and field-trials have shown pollen can travel a distance of up to 650 m, that is almost a 1/2 mile. Sure makes it easy for Monsanto to target farmers not buying their seed. Just go after the neighbors of the guy who does.
Then there was the Starlink mess:
Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s lawyer was named deputy commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While at the FDA he ruled GMOS are “substantially equivalent” to their non-genetically engineered counterparts. The FDA uses a consultation process to work with developers of GE foods to help them meet the safety requirements. The consultation is voluntary. Even Monsanto states “There are not currently any human clinical trials used to test the safety of GM crops.” So Americans serve as guinea pigs.
The safety of GMOs is based on “Independent scientists and the companies that develop biotech crops conduct[ing] tests for food, feed and environmental safety. Scientists at regulatory agencies review this data and are responsible for regulating the crops” Of course when you have the The Amazing Revolving Door – Monsanto, FDA & EPA it makes it very easy to get a pass. Also see Mapping Out The Revolving Door Between Gov’t And Big Business In Venn Diagrams
And to add the icing to the cake. FDA says CRO Cetero faked trial data
Not to mention Epicyte: Contraceptive Corn
Another indication that “Science” as a whole is implicated in the Great Lie is the endorsement by 100-odd Nobel laureates of CAGWism. (I don’t have the link to their statement at hand.)
Just as putting the modifier ‘social’ on it means you are no longer in the world of justice, putting the word ‘climate’ before science modifies it to the same extent.
“””””…..Gail Combs says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Zeke says: @ January 27, 2014 at 10:44 am
“Monsanto who publishes safety studies that always find its products safe! None of these industries have any scientific credibility any more and no one listens to them.”
Here we have the argument that anyone who supports the development of superior crops, such as Golden Rice or high yield cotton, is in the pay of big Monsanto….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First let me say I think Golden rice is a great idea…..”””””
Gail, I’m really interested in YOUR opinions, as a Farmer, and one, that does the home work..
I used to work for Monsanto, at their Central Research Labs, in St Louis County Missouri.
Didn’t do a jot of chemistry or biology. Just digital electronics, and early LED technology. They appeared to me then, to be a very responsible company. I believe that was all pre GMOs.
My understanding of the GMO seed situation, is that those plants are supposed to be sterile; which is why the need for new seeds from Monsanto each year. This is supposed to prevent cross fertilization, and transfer of whatever genes to other plant species. That’s the theory.
Do you know yourself, as a farmer, or do you know of cases you trust, where Monsanto’s GMO plants have gone AWOL.
In “Jurascic park” , we learned that the sterile dino brats, laid fertile eggs anyway; Nature will find a way.
So is that what is happening out in the Monsanto GMO fields ?
Gail says, inre: The remark that GMOs “contribute negatively to poverty alleviation and food security and positively to the stock market.”
I have examined the quote by this PhD in its entirety. It is a remarkable example of pretzel logic, in which he complains that greedy businesses and arrogant scientists believe that they can develop strains that are highly drought and stress tolerant in the foreseeable future. But in the next breath he claims that research should be publicly for future generations to unlock this closely held secret of nature.
Here it is in his own words.
Conclusion: With the right hand the PhD denigrates a private company who works in this direction, claiming they are lying greedy businesses, and with the left hand he motions for grant money to produce results for a “future generation.”
Is this what he meant? Let’s test it with his further statements. Again, here he accuses private companies of “using” the promise of drought tolerant strains for greedy deceptive reasons: “These goals have been used by the proponents of currently available genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under the control of big business, who propose that GM crops will alleviate poverty soon while in fact currently available
ones mostly contribute negatively to poverty alleviation and food security and positively to the stock market. The holders of intellectual property rights for present day GM crops keep teasing us about the potential of GMOs resistant to abiotic stresses and the like while doing nothing about developing such crops for this generation.
And his conclusion: “These are simply not easily exploitable in a business market and are accordingly not on their agenda. Basic research in this area is being funded almost exclusively by public funds.”
His argument, as well as much of yours, is that it is being accomplished by a private company with a profit motive. He is appealing for grant money, that is, “public funds,” to be sent as much as you can, as often as you can.
I think there may be other experts and scientists we might also like to listen to in the matter, now that we have unpacked what Ossama El-Tayeb, Professor Emeritus of Industrial Biotechnology at Cairo University, Egpyt had to say about the need for grants.
Correction: But in the next breath he claims that research should be publicly funded for future generations to unlock this closely held secret of nature. Thank you.
Now a bit of historical perspective on purchasing seed each year:
When newly developed, high yield seeds for corn and wheat were first introduced to farmers in the US, it took some time for the farmers to accept the new varieties. The reason they were leary of the newer varieties is because they had to buy the seed each year. They thought this was an enormous burden, and of course not according to tradition! Many stuck to older cultivars. Norman Borlaug’s uncle approached it this way: he planted a trial field to see if the yield would make it worth buying new seed each year. He then made the calculations based on observations and decided that the increase in yield would absolutely be worth purchasing the new seed each year.
This is not a new argument. It has long been customary for a company that develops a cultivar to be able to sell it.
This is not the case with Golden Rice, though. Golden Rice is GM to divert the micronutrients from its green stem to the rice itself. This could save many lives. And whatsmore, Golden Rice can be planted using seed from the last years crop. So there again the evil profit motive which is so visceral in anti-GM activists does not apply to Golden Rice.
CO2 is not alone in having dramatic effects at low concentrations. Compare to the level of it’s sister molecule, carbon monoxide, which kills in the 600 ppm level and at the present levels of CO2, if it doesn’t kill you, it gives you a hell of headache.
The question often arises, have there been studies on GMOs?
“A recent paper by independent Italian scientists noted there have been 1783 studies on safety and health issues related to GMOs over the last ten years alone, including many publicly funded studies, confirming the safety of GMOs. The literal avalanche of GMO safety studies, short term and long, have prompted more than 100 of the world’s independent science bodies to conclude that foods made from genetically modified crops are as safe or safer than conventional or organic varieties.”
And yet we are often told that there are no studies, and humans are being used as guinea pigs. But if that is not true…
“… who is behind this bizarre declaration? ENSSER, for those not familiar with it, is an organization with a mission. Its members believe—this is faith and not science—that the debate over GMOs is over, that the technology is harmful and should be banned or restricted out of existence. Its members are among the most high profile anti-GMO activists in Europe. Remember the pictures of rats supposedly twisted into cancerous monsters after eating GMO corn that were blasted across cyberspace and onto ‘laugh-out-loud’ pop shows like Dr. Oz? The rats were props for humans, according to the notorious 2012 Gilles-Erich Séralini study that stands as one of the most discredited experiments in scientific history. Séralini is a signee of this statement, along with co-author Nicolas Defarge, who is ENSSER’s Deputy Chairman.” “
Pippen Fool says:
“CO2 is not alone in having dramatic effects at low concentrations. Compare to the level of it’s sister molecule, carbon monoxide…”
Say what?! What “dramatic effects”?? There are none.
If we needed proof of Pippen’s anti-science nonsense, this is it. Earth to Pippen: different molecules have completely different effects. Otherwise, why have different molecules?
Neither Pippen nor anyone else has ever been able to post any verifiable measurements showing the effect of CO2 on temperature. Why not? Because there are no such measurements!
That alarmist nonsense is simply a baseless assertion, intended to take the place of quantified, verifiable measurements of the claimed ‘effect’ of CO2 on global temperature.
Without measurements, opinions like that are hardly science, are they?
No, those baseless opinions are simply the True Beliefs of the Acolytes in Algore’s Church of Globaloney.
These are the ocean surface temperatures using hadsst2gl and it shows there are two step ups straight after each strong El Nino highlighted with horizontal lines.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1979/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987.5/to:1997/trend
The reason why ocean temperatures are still high and affecting global land temperatures too, despite La Nada conditions is down to energy still slowly releasing from the last strong El NIno. It is obvious since this last strong El Nino that ocean surface temperatures are gradually declining. It shows the jumps were nothing to do with CO2 and despite the increasingly amounts of it after the strong EL Nino, if were warming ocean surface temperatures at all, would show slowly increasing ocean temperatures instead. The opposite is happening due to residual energy from the strong El NIno still in the ocean currents.
To provide scientific confirmation using scientific method that climate science never uses, in support of this observation ocean temperatures will continue to decline while no strong El Nino occurs. Ocean temperatures will only increase in future with a step up straight after a strong El Nino. While these scenarios are occurring this behavior has nothing to do with CO2.
Still cant believe any true scientist would support land surface temperatures to satellite. It is like preferring public pay phone in the street to a mobile phone. Satellite is much greater advanced technology, it covers all the planets surface that it goes over and is more accurate. It is incapable of having data positions changed and cherry picked with very limited use. With surface temperatures like HADCRUT4 has, if warming is not occurring just cherry pick some different stations to try and influence the wanted goal. The less cooling this change had while trying to hide the decline is far too much for only the Arctic region where data was previously absent.
Station surface data covers much less than 1% of the land surface and all these could be replaced in a different 1% and would still get different trends. Alarmists like this tool so they can cherry pick with freedom and try and influence their goals. That’s why they don’t like satellite data despite it being far superior because they cant control the cherries.
Pippen Kool:
In your post at January 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm you say
Sorry, but NO!.
At the present levels of CO2 it doesn’t give anyone a headache.
Your headache has the same cause as the voices you hear, and it is not CO2.
Richard
Pippen Kool says:
January 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm
“CO2 is not alone in having dramatic effects at low concentrations. Compare to the level of it’s sister molecule, carbon monoxide, which kills in the 600 ppm level and at the present levels of CO2, if it doesn’t kill you, it gives you a hell of headache.”
Go and learn some science.
http://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/learn/carbon_monoxide_kills.aspx
“What is carbon monoxide poisoning?
Carbon monoxide poisoning occurs when you breathe in even small amounts of the gas.
When you breathe in carbon monoxide, it gets into your blood stream and prevents your red blood cells from carrying oxygen. Without oxygen, your body tissue and cells die.
Levels that do not kill can cause serious harm to health when breathed in over a long period of time. Long term effects of carbon monoxide poisoning include Paralysis and brain damage. Such long term effects occur because many people are unaware of unsafe gas appliances and subsequent gas leaks.”
It is nothing like CO2, which doesn’t become toxic until at least 5% (50,000 ppm), you breath out about 4% CO2.
Ordinarily, carbon dioxide is not poisonous. It diffuses from your cells into your bloodstream and from there out via your lungs, yet it is always present throughout your body.
Symptoms of carbon dioxide toxicity include high blood pressure, flushed skin, headache and twitching muscles. At higher levels, you could experience panic, irregular heartbeat, hallucinations, vomited and potentially unconsciousness or even death.
@Pippen Kool
Are you presently sitting in an office or your lounge-room and are currently suffering from headaches?
Just asking, as because the levels of CO2 in those environments are probably well over 600ppm.
Zeke said @ January 27, 2014 at 2:15 pm
And now a bit of current perspective.
The purpose of farming is not to maximise yields, it’s to maximise profit. If we wanted to maximise potato yields we’d all be growing them organically. I have easily exceeded double the yield compared to growing them on NPK from the bag. Unfortunately, that does not easily translate into more money at the bank. Most potato farmers in Tasmania contract to the factory at a price that could never justify the additional cost of organic fertiliser.
We recently decided to extend the moratorium on GMO crops here (apart from poppies). Should GMO crops be allowed, then we would in all likelihood lose most, if not all of our markets because our current markets demand GMO-free produce. New markets are not easily come by. It took Tim Reid over a decade to persuade Japan to accept our apples. It took the government the stroke of a pen to wipe that out by allowing New Zealand apples be imported into Australia even though, in the teeth of fierce opposition, we haven’t allowed those apples into Tasmania.
Several years ago we sanctioned a GMO canola trial on the proviso that the trial crop would be located where it could not contaminate regular canola crops. While the location was fine, there was “accidentally” spilled seed by the roadside in “strategic locations”. This was discovered when the local council sprayed off the weeds and the canola being Roundup-ready failed to die.
Of course you may have some magic recipe for finding new markets at no significant cost. If that is so, I suggest you get down here pronto. You’ll make a fortune! I’m not holding my breath, though 😉
BruceC said @ January 27, 2014 at 4:12 pm
I think it’s me that’s getting the headache 😉
@Pippen Kool;
Current OH&S (Occupational Health & Safety) guidelines for co2
Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL)
The current OSHA standard for carbon dioxide is 5,000 parts of carbon dioxide per million parts of air (ppm) averaged over an eight-hour work shift. This may also be expressed as 9,000 milligrams of carbon dioxide per cubic meter of air (mg/m3). NIOSH has recommended that the permissible exposure limit be changed to 10,000 ppm averaged over a work shift of up to 10 hours per day, 40 hours per week, with a ceiling of 30,000 ppm averaged over a 10-minute period. The NIOSH Criteria Document for Carbon Dioxide should be consulted for more detailed information.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-123/pdfs/0103.pdf
Sorry if that link doesn’t work, google , ohs co2 levels and click on 1st link;
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-123/pdfs/0103.pdf
I am curious about the potential political fallout. It seems to me that the liberals have been beating the conservatives up for a while now (perhaps it is a matter of perspective). This may be exactly what the doctor ordered to bring back a balance in the amount of respect given to conservatives.
It will be a sledgehammer to demonstrate the failure of an agenda driven position that swept the liberal mind into a moral frenzy.
Pippen Kool says:
January 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm
“…which kills in the 600 ppm level …”
A tiny sliver of metal through your heart can kill you, too. By your logic, we need to get rid of all exposed metal on the Earth, as it might kill it.
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is fatal above 300 ppm. What’s your point, Trippen?
Mark
@BruceC
I can tell you that Hospital oxygen pure oxygen for breathing, contains 5% CO2 to stimulate the breathing reflex even when the patients are unconscious. It is probably the Bicarbonate buffer and pH of blood that regulates subconsciously to very accurate levels.
People faint and die in man- holes in the street if they go down without having checked CO2 first.
The same is a danger in potatoe- cellars. And there was an accident on a ship, where the CO2 fire extinction went off in the engine- room with people down there.
I have worked with flies. Drosophilæ and others in the agricultural highscool. You simply “gas” them from a bottle of CO2, They fall down and lie on their back and you can count them with a soft brush in a small box, CO2 being heavier than air and cowering them. On taking away the CO2 they wake up and fly on in 10- 15 seconds as if nothing has happened.
Then you can have them under Eter, that narcosis works like for other animals, it takes time for them to wake up.
And for killing them we used etylacetate. Then they fall down and don`t wake up again.
The drosophilae are living on fermenting sweet fruits. and you can have them in glasses on meshed, sweet pears for instance. They seem attracked by the smellings, and swarm around the fruit dishes and wine bottles and barrels in the autumn. They definitely live well in the larvae- stadium in a substrate of 30 promille at least, beat that. And what they can take of CO2 before going to sleep, I don`t know.
But down in those man- holes there is a lot of life and whole Økosystems of insects and spiders, so one can really wonder.
Drosophil’æ are quite easily captured and kept in glasses under Gaz- textile cower for ventilation. In order to disturb / interfere with …… meetings and / or seminars, you have a glass full of drosophilæ and discretely let them out in the room.
It seems that many insects have a direct sense for CO2. Mosquitoes for instance do not go after “sweet blood” but after CO2. It is a signal substance for rot and for biological combustion, and that of course does interest many insects.
Carbomontanus says:
January 26, 2014 at 1:28 pm
You claim that heat and temperature are confused on this site, but you fail to tell us where and by whom.
Evidently you don’t discern the difference between back-radiation and simple reflection. But you presume to lecture us concerning our understanding of heat and temperature. Are there not enough posts here that use the terms “latent heat” and “sensible heat”?
Likewise, your reference to “blacksmith’s fingers” takes no account of the time function involved in the conduction of heat to your finger as you toss the hot coal back into the fire. Your assumption that it’s just about heat vs temp is wrong because you omit skin-insulation/time. And when walking on coals you omit also the cooling time between steps.
It appears you’re trying to tear down the skeptical side, but if you can’t grasp the science then you’re grasping at straws. In fact, it’s difficult to even count the things you got wrong in that post.
Pressure isn’t energy? Vacuum isn’t energy? Voltage isn’t energy?
Voltage is electron pressure, which is potential energy which can be released to do work. So pressure and vacuum must be energy too, since they can be released to do work.
But your misunderstandings go much deeper than that. What’s this about buying electricity at 240/110V and transforming it to 5000V to sell back to the power company at a profit?
Did you forget about the current? Current x voltage = power.
Power in, minus losses = power out = no profit there for you my friend.
So please, stick around on this site and you’ll be sure to learn more good science than bad.
Well said!
Paula
To all and everyone
On Genosse Slacko
Here we have the Party teaching us science again.
“rgbatduke says:
January 27, 2014 at 7:13 am”
I was simply pointing out that an extract from coal (Coal gas/tar products was big business once) was discovered to contain the same ingerdients as “willow bark” and was sold, once isolated and refined, as “Aspirin”, now synthesised and better for the user. Unless of course the information I have read about the “history of aspirin” is wrong (NOT wikipedia). It stands to reason that trees of the distant past also contained the same compound and were eventually fossilised in to coal. Coal formed ~400million years ago. Was there a “willow” tree back ~400yag?
Mining is dirty, so too is farming. But it has to be done!
Carbomontanus:
At January 28, 2014 at 2:53 am you write in total
No, Slacko attempted to help you by removing some of your great ignorance.
I decided not to make that attempt because I thought the task was too great for me to accomplish. Your reply to Slacko indicates my decision was right.
Richard
another KADREgenosse from the party, a certain “richard” is hurrying to his help.
KADREgenosse Richard, also from the Party, is hurrying to his help.
Sterile seeds from a Seed company is simply to prevent the grower from saving the seeds from the new growth plants and planting them for the next year’s crop.
If one removed all of the “engineered” produce, etc., out of the Supermarket shelves, coolers and freezers ……. those Supermarket shelves, etc., would be pretty much bare of edibles.
And remember, don’t plant your onions too close to your potatoes, they will cry their eyes out. 🙂
And ps, …. I believe that Pippen Kool was actually saying that …. if the carbon monoxide (CO) was at the present levels of CO2, … then it (CO) would gives you a hell of headache.
And whether it would or not I have no urge to find out.
Garth Paltridge
Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years. The pause now threatens to expose how much scientists sold their souls for cash and fame, warns emeritus professor Garth Paltridge, former chief research scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research.
Climate Change’s Inherent Uncertainties
…there has been no significant warming over the most recent fifteen or so years…
From the beginning of that the hype was wracked up even more, the warnings of doom and gloom ever more shrill as those with responsibilities for producing temperature measurements began a full scale assault to hide that warming was not happening – if not for the sterling work still being produced by so many showing the fraudulent science of the hockey stick, the site and record manipulations and such we would still be in the dark. Those at the once great science institutions continue to lie that global warming is happening to support those actually producing the faked data – charlatans all.
But worse than this, is the destruction of the once emipirically well known basic science on the properties and processes of heat and light and gases which was introduced into the general education system to promote this AGW science fraud of “backradiation from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”. This will have severe repercussions as a whole generation already believes that a trace gas has magic powers..
This is a science fraud being perpetuated at the highest levels of science and it begins with the AGW/Trenberth/CERES et al energy budget. The missing heat Trenberth should be looking for is that longwave infared radiant heat we actually feel direct from the Sun which he has excised from this energy budget in order to give it to “backradiation from the atmosphere by greenhouse gases”. That is why we call it thermal infrared, to distinguish it from shortwave infrared which is not thermal; thermal from the Greek meaning “of heat”. In its place they make the ludicrous claim that shortwave from the Sun is heat energy and heats matter of land and water at the surface.
These charlatans are well on the way to educating the next generation into being unfit to understand optics and thermodynamics and more because they have produced teachers at university level now who think our atmosphere is empty space, and who wouldn’t get the joke that this means they have no sound in their AGW world, they wouldn’t hear it..
The AGW/Trenberth/CERES et al’s energy budget is a fraud because they have taken out the direct longwave infrared we feel as heat from the Sun in order to give it to their “backradiation by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” claim, ergo, the backradiation by greenhouse gases is a fraud.
It doesn’t get simpler than that to show this is a science fraud and was created by someone who knew real physics.
They have corrupted empirically very well known science on the difference between heat and light from the Sun as still taught traditionally.
And the traditional teaching direct from NASA page given below contradicting them is proof of their science fraud.
This direct from NASA page is proof that “backradiation by greenhouse gases” is not possible in traditional well known by years of empirical testing and application real physics, because, it shows up the AGW trick of taking real world measurements of longwave infrared heat downwelling direct beam from the Sun and pretending that this comes from backradiation from the atmosphere, with the deliberate lie that visible from the Sun is heat and doing the work of heat.
No one who knows that all the heat we feel direct from the Sun is the invisible longwave infrared and knows that visible light is not heat can be conned by this.
Here it also shows that the AGW/Trenberth/CERES measurements are selectively excising the real world measurements of longwave infrared radiant heat from the Sun:
“Wikipedia:
“…The total amount of energy received at ground level from the sun at the zenith is 1004 watts per square meter, which is composed of 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation.”
Since AGW claims only “shortwave in” and says of that its shortwave infrared is only an insignificant 1% – what has it, AGW/CERES/Trenberth done with the rest of the infrared from the Sun measured at ground level?
It pretends it comes from “backradiation from the atmosphere” …
The AGW Trenberth CERES energy budget claiming real world direct beam measurements of longwave infrared from the sun is “backradiation by greenhouse gases” is a deliberate science fraud just like all the manipulations of temperature data. That is a fact.
The direct from NASA page giving traditional empirically well known science teaching shows us this was done.
You, generic, cannot ignore this if you consider yourselves scientists.
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
Carbomontanus:
At January 28, 2014 at 9:30 am your post says
No, I don’t know where the party is being held. Are you supplying the beer?
You should provide me with at least one drink because it was YOU I was trying to help.
Richard
Samuel C CFogar says:
“And ps, …. I believe that Pippen Kool was actually saying that …. if the carbon monoxide (CO) was at the present levels of CO2, … then it (CO) would gives you a hell of headache.”
If you had been following Pippen Kool’s comments over the past few months, you would know that he simply does not understand… much of anything about science.
To all and [everyone] including Anthony Watts
Honestly, I cannot see any “pause” of global warnings or heating for the last 17 years, as long as sea level is rising quite undisturbed and steadily, [and] the world’s ices both on land and at sea by volume nota bene is melting away even as undisturbed and steadily as the steady rise of the Mahuna Loa curve.
Both being major and quite huge global endotherm processes.
Rumors of the global warmings having made a pause rather seems to me to go together with [active], ignorant and / or crooky politicaly dishonest and arrogant confusion of temperature and heat, and of surface and volume. Thus quite more easily understood and described in terms of that formula or “model” understanding or theory.
@ dbstealey says:
you would know that he simply does not understand… much of anything about science.
———————–
Even a broken clock gets it right twice per day.
And there is a couple posters hereon that says the same thing about me.
They don’t like to be proven wrong, ya know. It messes with their mind.
That’s why I would like to see Obama push the pendulum out even farther in his SOTU speech tonight.
Mencken said, “Liberals have many tails and they chase them all.”
Carbomontanus:
I am taking the ambitious action of attempting to remove some of your ignorance.
In your post at January 28, 2014 at 5:04 pm you write
Warming is an increase in temperature.
Cooling is a reduction in temperature.
Addition or subtraction of heat may or may not provide a change in temperature.
You can check this for yourself using a thermometer, a drinking glass, water, and ice cubes.
Put the thermometer, water, and ice cubes in the drinking glass then stir and wait a few minutes for it to stabilise. After that, monitor the temperature as the ice melts. Heat from the surroundings is added and it melts the ice but the temperature does NOT rise.
The ice and water gain heat but do NOT warm.
As the experiment I have suggested to you will inform you, amount of ice does NOT inform about temperature. And globally, ice is growing in amount (n.b. GROWING not shrinking) because of increased Antarctic ice.
The Mauna Loa curve is of atmospheric CO2 concentration and is not of heat and not of temperature.
Discernible global warming (detectable at 95% confidence) stopped at least 17 years ago according to each data set of global temperature. Live with it.
Richard
[snip – inappropriate video -mod]
To all and everyone
“Warming is an increase in themperature
Cooling is a reduction of themperature”
= a false statement, in other words a staing of false- ness.
Do I have to follow it further?
Politically correct “science” is NOT Science. Politically correct “leaders are NOT LEADERS.
Citizens who cannot or will not learn, read and UNDERSTAND may not be around too much longer. The Global Warming Scam is not the only deadly global scam going on currently. There is the “the war on terrorism”, bio-engineered pandemics, “vaccination”, depopulation and everyone’s favorite “health care”.
I live in Florida and I can tell you that the temperature where I live is neither hotter nor colder than it was when I was a kid 50 years ago. And non-biased data from the boondocks supports me in that conclusion. They show that global temperatures have stayed constant over the last 100 years.
http://www.trionfopublishing.com/images/ashton.gif
http://www.trionfopublishing.com/images/reboly.gif
http://www.trionfopublishing.com/images/vytegra.gif
The biased data which show a increase in global temperatures are from areas near cities which produce heat because people like to stay warm during the winter.
These miniscule areas where people live are hardly representative of the entire planet. The warming near the cities is not due to CO2. CO2 can not hold onto heat. As anyone who lives on Mars can tell you. CO2 global warming is unique to Venus where the conditions are entirely different from the conditions on Mars and the earth. It is not the CO2 which hangs on to the heat on Venus but the sulfuric acid clouds which shroud the planet. The sulfuric atmosphere on Venus is so dense that CO2 rises. On the earth it falls. Venus hardly rotates at all, so its atmosphere does not mix up the gases as on earth which has seasons. There is no CO2 greenhouse effect on the earth. None. Zip. There is none on Mars either even though the atmosphere is close to 100% CO2. This is because Mars rotates and has seasons like the earth so CO2 on Mars can not hold onto the heat due to the convection in the atmosphere.
http://www.trionfopublishing.com/news_page_25.htm
Pause? Yes there is a Pause because we are entering an interglacial period due to the position of the earth’s eans relative to the sun. But man and CO2 have nothing
to do with it.
Global temperatures have been constant for the last 100 years.
@Ernest
are you PERINDE ATQVE CADAVER to those instructions?
The ideas of CO2 rising on Venus and falling down on earth?
It is as naive and silly and scientifically illiterate as the idea of salt falling down to the bottom bif you have dissolved salt in a glass of water.
The CAGW hoax is rooted in the calculations of “yearly average surface temperatures” via use of the historical near-surface temperature Records dating back to 1870 when only 19 locations were recording temperatures, all of them on Army Bases and all of them east of the Mississippi River. Said locations increased during the next 50 years with the majority of them being per se, “staffed” with local citizenry using Mail Pouch, John Deere, etc., thermometers affixed to fronts of General Stores, etc., etc. Thus, said Temperature Record is highly questionable to its accuracy to within +- 5 degrees F.
Said temperature records were not much interest to anyone until post-1960’s/70’s when research was begun of/on climate. It was at this time that “yearly average surface temperatures” began being calculated via said temperature records. Said “averages” were easily calculated from the most recent records of the past 20-25 years. And as each previous year’s average temperatures were calculated there had to have been guesstimate, estimates, extrapolations, interpolations, smoothings and adjustments …… and thus Hansen et el could now probably tell you what the exact temperature was on the banks of the Little Bighorn River when General Custer met his maker or the temperature in the O.K. Corral just after all the gunsmoke cleared out.
References: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/pa/history/index.php
@Carbomontanus
The theory of CO2 global warming was developed to explain the very hot conditions on Venus. It is based on the assumption that there is a canopy of CO2 over the dense atmosphere of sulfuric acid gas which reflects infra-red radiation back into the atmosphere – much like the glass in a greenhouse. Such a canopy can form on Venus because there is virtually no convection – due to the very slow rotation of the planet. Venus rotates so slowly that a Venusian day is longer than a Venusian year. On Venus CO2 rises because it is lighter than H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) which constitutes the lower part of the Venusian atmosphere. It is thought that there is no water on Venus but the pressure in the atmosphere is so high that liquid water could exist even though the surface temperature is hotter than your oven on clean.
There is no greenhouse effect on Mars even though the Martian Atmosphere is almost 100% CO2 because the rotation of the planet causes enough convection in the atmosphere to allow heat from the sun to escape into space. A Martian day is about as long as a day on the earth.
All the water on mars is frozen and the poles are so cold that it freezes the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. By the way, CO2 does not form a liquid when it heats up. It goes directly from a solid to a gas – it sublimes – because it is incapable of storing heat energy like the H20 on earth and the H2SO4 on Venus.
There would be no CO2 greenhouse effect on the earth even if it rotated as slowly as Venus because CO2 falls in our atmosphere – hence it can form no green house canopy. When you blow up a balloon with your breath which contains CO2 the balloon falls because the air from your lungs has CO2 in it which makes it heavier than the atmosphere. If the earth did not rotate then all of the CO2 would fall (because it is heavier than nitrogen and oxygen) and it would all be absorbed by the oceans. The only reason why there is any CO2 in our atmosphere at all (and the only reason why plants can live on land) is because the convection in our atmosphere (wind) keeps some of the CO2 mixed with the other gases.
On Venus 96.5% of the atmosphere is CO2 3.5% is N2 and only .o15% is SO2. Upper atmospheric winds on Venus top 200 MPH but the average wind speed at the surface averages around 10 KPH, There is plenty of wind to enhance mixing by diffusion by convective mixing. A major reason why the surface of Venus is so much hotter than that of the earth is that the surface pressure on Venus is more than 90 times what it is on earth.
@trionfo
Thanks for your effort and your long and detailed essay.
That is full of quite basic errors and misconsceptions of physical chemistery however, so I would very much like to know rather exactly where you have it from.
The idea of convections macroscopic balloons of air going up and down causing the lapse- rate, and that CO2 “Climate gases” are a false understanding of it,………
…….. was found at “Dipl Ing “Heinz Thieme , former “Tecnical assesor” at the railroads in Leipzig, teaching us of the “gas laws” and “laws of nature” and all that.
I can say for sure and deefinite that the person hardly knows german examen artium of physics, thus can be no “Dipl Ing” . He could not even have entered that study in any legal way.
Thus rather obviously a STASI officer from the late DDR, planted in that technical judge position.With fraud diplomæ from Mittlere reife and highschool allready. Accusing the priest daughter Angela Merkel Dr. Ing on physical chemistery from the Planc Institute in the same old DDR Leipzig for being “perhaps religious” ( =a severe ban-word of anyone in the late DDR) on climate.
Those adiabatic balloon moovemens causing the lapse- rate and not Climate gases and IR and quoite especially not CO2 at all,…….
………..are quite elementary disqualified experimentally. by
§1,the worlds fleet of weather balloons for the last 80 years….
§2,by the stabiliyty of hot air balloons, and
§3, by the stability of airplanes with large wings.
I saw DATA of the Venus atmosphere and I am a physical chemist able to interprete it. The gases SO2, O2 and H2O show up on ppm- level on the ground, in proportions equal to H2SO4, which start to decay at about 380 celsius, and condense back into that material again at 50 Km heighth, where the temperature is low enough for it
Also remember and do respect the fameous lead chamber process of sulphuric acid production from your quite compulsory public school pensum of elementary chemistery, and you will understand it.
And do rather demonstrate personal respect first for that kind of compulsary learnings and enlightmenty, else you rather are to be listed alongsite with Joseph Postma and that Technical “Assessor” of old Leipzig as a red gardist engineer from the Party on the Railways and on the Cernobyl factories.
(if the railways go offt rack or the reactor blows up because the engineer from the Party was both unqualified and drunk, the engineer is holy and immune you see, and it takes a proper technical “assessor” and “Dipl Ing” with false papers from the same bloody party “academy” thinktank school to “Judge” why it went off tracks and blew up.)
Then on CO2 being a heavier gas that falls down in the air and in the atmosphere, ……
That very fameous teaching in the climate denial and spindoctor moovement is as false as telling us that a dissolved Salt such as the very heavy patrticles of Caesium iodide would sink and fall to the bottom if dissolved in a glass of water. Even the extreemly heavy gas xenon does not fall down in the atmosphere unless you get up into very thin air well above 60 Km. Furher up in the “Thermosphere” the atmospheric components do separate more according to moecular weight, and the lightest Hydrogen escapes into space because its thermal translation molecular speed exeedes that of satelites in orbit..
That heavy gas CO2 falling and sinking down is bullshit and does betray severely unrealistic and uncritical quacky learnings of the very field. It betrays the STASI Cerbobyl and Party Assessor style of learning and managing and of explaining things.. Just as for instance a Joseph Postma or Nicola Scafetta over there. The typical, progressive pupils of Mussolini and of Red Gardism.
Theese elements of gas- separation we discuss by the Ultracentrifuge that exposes heavy natural gases to 2-300 000 g, a fact that should also have been guessed and conscidered first..
natural gases mix by thermal diffusion making partial osmotic pressures very much stronger than Newton gravitational forces acting on the singular gas atoms or molecules .
Because a gas is not a classic solid state substancial powder or sandstorm or dry dust material that settles in air and in our gravitational field. Van der Waals forces of very much stronger kind is acting on atomic and molecular level, and can first be overwon in the Ultracentrifuge or by chemical bond forces.
On what rather flies and what sinks and settles:
What keeps a thing flying is its flywing area, and what keeps it sinking is its weight. The wing area is pi r^2 for a ball, and its weight is 3/2 pi r^3 times density. Thus, the Bumble bee flies indeed because it is small enough.
The possible aerodynamic lift comes out like r^2 / r^3, which gives 2density/ 3r.
That will fly indeed regardless of density if only r is small enough.
Thus even the stone will fly, dust is blown up. Even the lead ball will fly. even the osmium and even the Radon- atom Rn will fly and not fall down.
Those atoms and molecules simply are small enough all of them.
Thus correct your really very rotten and quacky basic root ideas of air and of gases and of matter, that rather do betray you,(May it be dia- lectic materialism again?) Do rather point out your very personal teacher Professor and schoolbook katechism where you have it from.
Because, The elephant does not fly because it is too large with a too high density, but small enough animals without wings can fall down from any height without getting hurt at all.
Pollen and bacteriæ as dense as any animal do fly worldwide with the winds and gas molecules of any kind is very much smaller than that.
Foggy drops 1 micron on an average do not fall down and settle from the air. Larger raindrops fall out of the clouds, Large hails fall rather fast. But snowflakes with very much larger wings fall quite softly and slowly. and do quite obviously blow with the winds.
Very fast winds in the USA can make roofs and even cars fly.
Gas molecules are 0.1- 0.2 nanometers by size from wich you can calculate the wing area and divide through molecular mass.
Try rather and look to nature and conscider reality.
@willhaas
I have heard that also twice at least from the denialists surrealists.
Pressure is not energy.
Another industrialized fraud for sale, of rather elementary and compulsary grasping of physics and of nature.
@willhaas
The pressure on Venus is 90 times that of earth because the mass of its atmosphere is 90 times the mass of earth‘s atmosphere.
Although pressure does cause heat I don’t think that it can account for the tremendous amount of heat on the surface of the planet. Neither can the greenhouse effect if there is convection in the atmosphere.
The fact that Venus is covered in a shroud of clouds which are 76% sulfuric acid suggests that the heat on Venus may be internally generated by volcanoes.
This could account for convection in the atmosphere and would predict that the convection would be mostly vertical rather than horizontal as it is on Mars and the Earth.
Carbomontanus says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:56 pm
“iThus, the Bumble bee flies indeed because it is small enough.”
—————-
Cheers, …… that was a “goodern”.
@all and everyone exept trionfo
Trionfo is getting desperate now,….
@Carbomontanus
For a physical chemist you don’t seem to know much about thermodynamics. Pressure is the manifestation of molecules bumping into things transferring their kinetic energy into what they bump into. Any high school chemistry student knows that much. If you don’t believe me try feeling the bottom of your bicycle pump next time you pump up your tricycle tires. It will be hot.
@willhaas
“New evidence from a satellite orbiting the planet suggests that its volcanoes may be active and could be the source of fluctuations in atmospheric sulphur dioxide. Most of the sulphur dioxide on Venus is hidden below the planet’s dense upper cloud deck, because the gas is readily destroyed by sunlight. That means any sulphur dioxide detected in Venus upper atmosphere above the cloud deck must have been recently supplied from below.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2242164/Could-volcanoes-Venus-spewing-sulphur-dioxide-atmosphere.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
“Taylor says that the high levels of sulphur dioxide in the venusian upper atmosphere are also almost certainly due to recent volcanic eruptions…‘This year there have been long discussions about how important volcanoes are for climate,” he says, ‘I conclude that they make a major contribution.‘ Over the next few billion years, Taylor says, Venus’s volcanism will subside, and the planet will begin to lose much of its heavy atmosphere, leading to a lower surface temperature more like that of Earth.”
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100830/full/news.2010.435.html
@Carbomontanus
Bumble bees have nothing to do with it. I remember my college Zoology teacher describing a bumble bee as the equivalent of a flying tank. Its muscles pull down its wings deforming its carapace which bounces back flipping the wings back up again. Ronald Regan described the helicopters that the Soviets used in Afghanistan as “flying tanks.” Both the bumble bee and the Soviet flying tank would drop like a rock if they were not kept aloft by internal combustion – known as respiration in the case of the bumble bee.
@Carbomontanus
Van der Waals forces are very weak and short acting. They play virtually no role in the intermolecular forces of gases. At least on the earth. They may play some role in the physics of the Venusian atmosphere which is very strange. The Venusian atmosphere has 90 times the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere but it is only five times its height so the lower part of the Venusian atmosphere may behave more like a liquid than a gas.
@Carbomontanus
Not in the slightest. But I have a question for you.
According to the history channel, the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period breathed an atmosphere which was 10% richer in oxygen than our own. The earth’s atmosphere at that time was 30% oxygen. It is now 20% oxygen. So what happened to all that extra oxygen? Well, according to the history channel’s paleontologists an asteroid hit the earth burning up all of the forests. Now, the last time I studied chemistry I seem to remember the equation O2 + wood + heat = carbon dioxide + water. So after the asteroid hit and burned up all the forests in the world we had an atmosphere which was at least 10% CO2. Our atmosphere is only 0.04% CO2 today.
Now, my question to you is where did all of that extra CO2 go to? And why did the earth not morph into another Venus?
@willhaas
What you are telling me about Venus does not make any sense. You are saying that the CO2 on Venus is in a highly compressed state. Gases in compressed states are low in heat energy. Compressing a gas is an exothermic process it releases heat from the gas. When you compress CO2 it releases heat into the atmosphere. The reverse is an endothermic process. When you let the CO2 out of a CO2 cartridge or cylinder the cartridge gets very cold because the CO2 absorbs the heat from the atmosphere.
If the CO2 is compressed on Venus then something – like some other gas- must have absorbed the heat it released when it was compressed. And if the CO2 is as hot as they say Venus is then it should not be in a compressed state.
It does not add up.
trionfo:
The gases of a planet’s atmosphere are all in a “compressed state” because they are in a gravity field. They would fly off into space if they were not in a “compressed state”.
Think of it this way. The gas at the bottom of the atmosphere is compressed by the weight of the gas above it. And that is also true for gas at any height up the atmosphere (which is why pressure changes as you go up).
Richard
@richardscourtney
The atmosphere of Venus has 90 times the mass of the atmosphere of the earth so you would expect there to be 90 times more atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus than on the surface of the earth. 90% of the Earth’s atmosphere is within 10 km of its surface, whereas 90% of the atmosphere of Venus is within 50 km is of its surface. So you have the equivalent mass of 90 earth atmospheres compressed into a height which is only 5 times the height of the earth’s atmosphere. That is very a compressed state.
But Venus is also extremely hot. It melted the Russian probe that tried to land on it. Now heat causes gases to expand. According to the Ideal gas law
PV = nRT
Where P = pressure of the gas
V = volume of the gas
N = the number of moles of the gas (a mole is 6.02 x 10^23 molecules)
And R is a constant.
Rearranging this equation we have
V = nRT/P
Which says that the volume of a gas will rise as the temperature increases, providing that the pressure remains constant.
Now CO2 is not an ideal gas, but it seems to me that if all that heat in the atmosphere of Venus
is in the CO2 then its volume should be very much greater than it is. The molecules can move freely out into space. Why don’t they?
trionfo:
re your post at February 1, 2014 at 10:51 am.
You claimed that the atmosphere on Venus is not “compressed gas”. I explained that it is, and I am pleased that you now agree it is.
You now ask me
Nobody has suggested that all the heat in the atmosphere of Venus “is in the CO2”. It is in all the gases of the atmosphere.
I don’t know why you think the atmosphere of Venus (or its CO2?) should have greater volume.
And the atmosphere does not move “freely into space” because of gravity (which is why the atmosphere is “compressed” near the surface).
I strongly suggest that you read some text books on elementary physics because it is not possible here to reduce your confusions and immense lack of pertinent knowledge.
Richard
@richard
I never said that the atmosphere on Venus was not compressed. I said Just the opposite. I wrote:
“the pressure in the atmosphere is so high that liquid water could exist even though the surface temperature is hotter than your oven on clean.”
I was addressing the common misconception that CO2 stores heat. To make the point that the atmosphere on Venus is 96% CO2 reinforces this misconception. It implies that it is the CO2 which is absorbing the heat since 96% of the atmosphere is virtually the entire atmosphere.
This misunderstanding on how the green house effect works produces an unfounded concern about the percentage of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere.
The green house effect theory is based on CO2 reflecting infrared radiation back into the atmosphere of Venus (toward the planet) the way the panes of glass in a greenhouse reflect infrared radiation back into a greenhouse. The way CO2 does this (according to the theory) is by forming a closed canopy of gas.
But if there is convection or if other gases dilute the CO2 it would not be able to form a canopy and the heat could escape the same way heat escapes from a greenhouse when you open the windows or jalousies of the greenhouse. If the jalousies of a greenhouse are open then it will always be the same temperature inside the greenhouse as it is outside the greenhouse.
@richard
I am not confused. I am puzzled.
I am puzzled as to why the heat on the surface of Venus does not escape since there is convection on the planet. I am also puzzled as to what is storing the heat since CO2 does not store heat and the amount of sulfur gases on the planet is miniscule.
But heat may be, in fact escaping. The reason why the surface of Venus is so hot may be due to the internal production of heat by the planet.
The lack of craters on the surface of Venus as if the surface has been “wiped clean” by lava and the presence of sulfur containing gases at high altitudes in the atmosphere of Venus suggests that this may be the case.
I had no faith in climate science or any science since watching the ‘scientific’ conclusions of NIST regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was the death of science, and everybody knows that buildings do not fall that way from upper floor fires. Science is the art of talking so intelligently that nobody is able to tell that you don’t have a clue about anything you are talking about.
@Davol
“Rett i dass!” we say. That means “Down the toilet!”.