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
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“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.)