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
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 @ur momisugly 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.