There’s some pretty extraordinary stuff in this interview with Caleb Rossiter who was recently dismissed as an associate fellow for writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal critical of warming claims.
From “The College Fix” by Dominic Lynch
If one would have asked statistician Caleb Rossiter a decade ago about global warming, he says he would have given the same answer that President Barack Obama offered at a recent commencement address.
“He castigated people who don’t believe in climate catastrophe as some sort of major fools,” Rossiter says of the president’s speech, adding he would have agreed with the president – back then.
But Rossiter would give a different answer today.
“I am simply someone who became convinced that the claims of certainty about the cause of the warming and the effect of the warming were tremendously and irresponsibly overblown,” he said in an exclusive interview Tuesday with The College Fix. “I am not someone who says there wasn’t warming and it doesn’t have an effect, I just cannot figure out why so many people believe that it is a catastrophic threat to our society and to Africa.”
For this belief – based in a decade’s worth of statistical research and analysis on climate change data – Rossiter was recently terminated as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington D.C. think tank.
…
“I think they believe … that you give legitimacy to the ‘denialists’ if you debate them,” Rossiter adds. “I think that’s a terrible idea. … At IPS, like many other places, people don’t want to debate it because they have this funny statement that, and Mr. Obama repeats it every time he opens his mouth, ‘the debate is over.’ I have never heard a more remarkable statement in my life about anything.”
…
“So there is really two big statistical questions: what caused the little warming, and what effect did the warming have on these other climate variables?” he said. “I am a pretty decent statistician, I have taught for many, many years. The data that support the headlines are very, very weak, very, very notional, and simply not logical.”
“You couldn’t have this many terrible effects from a half a degree rise in global temperature. It’s probable that there are some, but it gets a little boring because it’s always weak data, because that is the nature of a tremendously complex system.”
Over the years, he’s broken a few students’ hearts when they learn of this truth.
“I have had students who are very strongly pro-the global warming movement in my classes, of course, because most young people have heard this already,” he said. “And when I have them actually do the study, and take apart an IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] claim, sometimes they break into tears, and they say ‘I can’t believe this is the only class I’ve ever been in in which anyone has ever told me there is even an issue.’”
College Fix contributor Dominic Lynch is a student at Loyola University Chicago.
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Konrad,
True environmentalism is at the top of an asymptotic curve. Any further progress requires immense monetary and human resources, for a negligible gain.
If the mainstream enviro groups are hurt as a result of their promoting the carbon scare, they deserve to lose membership and funding.
“…sometimes they break into tears…” The old cognitive dissidence. Everyone constructs a world view and clings to it for dear life. An example: those of us who grew up in families that went to considerable lengths to promote the myth of Santa Claus only to discover from school mates that it was all a lie. That trauma has, I believe, caused me to be a life-long contrarian questioning everything I hear from whatever source. I don’t want to be fooled again. Upon first hearing of CAGW some years ago red flags popped up all over even before learning any of the science. Sounded like BS to me.
“unless progressive means anti-civilization, anti-humanity and anti-science.”
Unfortunately, that pretty much sums up the “progressive” position in recent decades.
“Hasn’t really worked in any of the major religions. They are nothing but collections of failed prophecy, but their adherents (most of the population of this world) still believe they may happen “any day now”.”
It would be nice if those who take pride in knowing nothing about religion, would refrain from making comments about religion.
Konrad says:
June 20, 2014 at 8:33 am
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The vast majority of the major environmental issues were solved decades ago.
In recent years the environmental movement has been nothing more than hyped up scare stories with little to no basis in fact. Pursued for the twin purposes of hindering capitalism and raising money for those who run the environmental movement.
MarkW says: June 20, 2014 at 10:26 am
The vast majority of the major environmental issues were solved decades ago.
________________________________
Nonsense – we just exported them to China, along with all our blue-collar jobs.
In fact, the problem was not just ‘not solved’, it was actually made much worse, because China is happy to pump out twice the emissions as the USA or Europe would have done for the same industrial output.
So Green economics have impoveraged the working classes, and increased emissions – a lose-lose result, that so typical of Green fantasy economics.
R
ralfellis says:
June 20, 2014 at 11:11 am
—
Since you admit that environmental problems in the US have been solved, than you agree that Greenpeace and the other so called environmental agencies should just close up shop here. In Europe as well.
As to jobs being exported, you can thank our beloved govt for that. They’ve made it too expensive to do business here. Between regulations that do no good, taxes, etc, why would any manufacturer voluntarily stay here?
Mr. rafellis,
The Air in North America is clean, certified by Mr. Obama’s own lapdog EPA in all the 2500 or so counties here in the USA, except for a half dozen or so counties in and around Houston and Los Angeles that have not yet managed a total successful cleanup.
The waters are almost clean, but not yet pristine over the USA. Burning rivers, like once upon a time in Cleveland, are now urban legends of another time. There are no longer any rivers which once were open flowing sewers. It will take a few years for the rivers to scour their water courses clean, but it is happening.
North America despite being an advanced civilization, produces no NET CO2 either, a non toxic, non-pollutant; and bio absorbs lots blowing in on the prevailing winds from Eurasia. It is the very antitheses of ‘progressive’ thinking, that seemingly worships anti humanity, anti-civilization, non-rationality, and Lysenkoist, party-line, pseudo-Science.
Let us Celebrate your and our mutual environmental success. Close up shop here, and and open up in China where such does NOT exist. There is environmental work to be done there.
Since you don’t, you are apparently nothing but a polemic for an overgrown bureaucracy. Either that or a rigid Marxist “watermelon”, that cannot admit that socialism, where there is no corruption by the Profit motive, has not produced an Utopia, but rather a dystopia to be avoided.
“..sometimes they break into tears” The same thing happened to me when I was told that Santa Claus didn’t exist.
Jeff Alberts says:
June 20, 2014 at 7:13 am
Will Nitschke says:
June 20, 2014 at 1:01 am
“In one respect the failure of prophesy will breed skepticism, which is healthy. On the other hand we’ve had 50 years of failed prophesy relating to environmental doom and the movement has only grown during this period.
Hasn’t really worked in any of the major religions. ”
You should have said, “Hasn’t really worked in any of the OTHER major religions”
” ‘the debate is over.’ ” What’s wrong with this statement? The debate is over for now at least. The Team are hunkered down with their fingers in their ears chanting “la la loo lee lee” over and over. Their spirits are broken. Oh, yeah, they are praying and throwing salt over their shoulder to entreat a super El Nino warm up, but this is even more convincing that the theory has died.
Regarding the tears of students whose statistical work resulted in them not believing the CAGW BS, they should be tears of joy and relief and a certain satisfaction in slaying the beast by one’s own hand. In saner times (when they are not handing out Nobbley Prizes and Presdigitateous Awards for felonious ethics, getting elected president, statistics illiteracy and lying to people) , this Rossiter fellow would be receiving awards for his teaching prowess. What a wonderful multi-dimensioned education! Teaching a subject by having the students tear down a theory that 97% of a science’s practioners plus the stats teacher himself, believe in with all their hearts! Rossiter’s students turned him into a CAGW skeptic. How good is that!
Plus: it points the way forward in trying to salvage education.
“If one would have asked …” should be “If one had asked”.
”
stas peterson says:
June 20, 2014 at 3:49 pm
Mr. rafellis,
The Air in North America is clean, certified by Mr. Obama’s own lapdog EPA in all the 2500 or so counties here in the USA, except for a half dozen or so counties in and around Houston and Los Angeles that have not yet managed a total successful cleanup.
”
Some goals are just unrealistic. A little over 20 yrs ago, I used to interact with someone of the leftist eco persuasion whose job included dealing with some of the air pollution problems and standards. Once, she was quite miffed at the EPA because the air standards could not be met under any circumstances. It seems that no one there bothered to understand that naturally occurring ozone was significantly in excess of the new or proposed standard. Even eliminating all humans from the region and banning all human activity there could not force mother nature to abide by some retarded bureaucrat’s notion of what the ‘air quality’ should be.
Speaking of uncertainties:
IPCC AR5 TS.6 – Key Uncertainties
Wow, what an eye opener. Allow me to paraphrase.
“Hey, all you skeptics, guess what? You were/are correct! (Aren’t you usually?) When it comes to major climate systems virtually certain to make a critical difference, to have major influence, (clouds, precipitation, wind, tropospheric warming, stratospheric cooling, ocean temps >700m, carbon/heat >2000m, circulation, abrupt climate changes, sea levels) there is a high probability – that we have not got a clue!!”
“Oh, and by the way, we find no evidence connecting AGW and drought, cyclones, or similar extreme weather.”
“We also have pretty much no idea what the Antarctic ice sheet and ocean interface are up to.”
“Sorry ‘bout that true believers, politicians, and media hypers.”
IPCC AR5 TS.6
Paleoclimate reconstructions and Earth System Models indicate that there is a positive feedback between climate and the carbon cycle, but confidence remains low in the strength of this feedback, particularly for the land. {6.4}
Say what?! IPCC has low confidence in the CO2 feedback strength and has felt that way for a while! ???
IPCC AR5 TS.6
In Antarctica, available data are inadequate to assess the status
of change of many characteristics of sea ice (e.g., thickness and volume). {4.2.3}
On a global scale the mass loss from melting at calving fronts and iceberg calving are not yet comprehensively assessed. The largest uncertainty in estimated mass loss from glaciers comes from the Antarctic, and the observational record of ice–ocean interactions around both ice sheets remains poor. {4.3.3, 4.4}
In some aspects of the climate system, including changes in drought, changes in tropical cyclone activity, Antarctic warming, Antarctic sea ice extent, and Antarctic mass balance, confidence in attribution to human influence remains low due to modelling uncertainties and low agreement between scientific studies. {10.3.1, 10.5.2, 10.6.1}
IPCC AR5 TS.6.3
• In some aspects of the climate system, including changes in drought, changes in tropical cyclone activity, Antarctic warming, Antarctic sea ice extent, and Antarctic mass balance, confidence in attribution to human influence remains low due to modelling uncertainties and low agreement between scientific studies.
{10.3.1, 10.5.2, 10.6.1}
There is no evidence to blame any of these aspects on human activity.