Dr. Caleb Rossiter – The Debate is finally over on “Global Warming” – Because Nobody will Debate
I am deserting from the Climate War. I will never write another climate article or give another climate talk, and I’ll bite my tongue and say oooooooooooom when I hear or see the sort of exaggerations and certainties about the dangers of heat-trapping gasses that tend to make my blood boil at their absurdity. For a decade I’ve been a busy soldier for the scientific method, and hence a “skeptic” to climate alarmism. I’ve said all I think and know about this repetitive, unresolveable topic. I’ll save hundreds of hours a year for other pursuits!
This is not like my pledge to my wife after a marathon that “I’ll never do another one.” This is real. There is simply too little room for true debate, because the policy space is dominated by people who approach this issue not like scholars weighing evidence, but like lawyers inflaming a jury with suspect data and illogical and emotional arguments.
The believers in human–induced catastrophic climate change, strongly represented among the liberal and radical left of American and international politics, have won the mainstream media and government battle for the conventional wisdom, but lost the war for policy change. None of the governmental and few of the institutional and individual actors who claim to fear climate change will take real steps to reduce their use of energy, choosing instead to put on phony shows of “green-ness” and carbon-trading shell games. So it’s over, on both fronts.
I guess I should be happy, since in the other two areas, and blogs, in which I expend professional and personal blood, sweat, and tears (the American empire, and school “reform”) I am usually in agreement with the radical left, and never win. I nod my head happily when reading the Nation magazine and listening to Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, yet am sadly on the losing end of the policy fights in my areas that they describe. Politicians and well-paid reformers continue to double down on the disaster of nearly 30 years of the blame-the-teacher, mistest-the-student regime, and U.S. arms and training for dictators have reached new heights under every president from Carter to Obama.
Finally, I’m a winner, but for all the wrong reasons. The leaders of the big governments who control global policy aren’t avoiding change because they disagree with the conventional wisdom. They’re avoiding change because it would be politically uncomfortable for them. Thank goodness, because the change they’re mouthing would be more than uncomfortable for developing countries. It would be a disaster, de-industrializing them and taking decades off their citizens’ life expectancy.
* * *
Climate Claims and Fears Can Drive You Crazy
I never expected to be in the Climate War. I have enough wars to fight as an anti-imperialist and an activist supporting development and democracy in Africa against a U.S. policy of backing dictators and American corporations. Only by chance did I get drafted for climate duty. About 10 years ago, when a graduate student in my class on international research statistics wrote a required analysis of any peer-reviewed study in the field, she chose a journal article on some aspect of climate science. Her paper reported data and conclusions about human-induced global warming that were so weak and illogical in their own terms that I gave her a poor grade, noting: “You can’t have read this study carefully.” She protested, and brought me the article, and indeed I saw that one of the most respected names in climate science and climate policy was writing flights of fancy and getting them published in refereed journals. I raised her grade, of course, but not all the way to an A, because she had been so smitten with the credibility of the author and the journal that she forgot to check his logic.
Read the entire essay from Caleb Rossiter here. http://www.calebrossiter.com/Last%20Climate.html
h/t to WUWT reader “David” in Tips and Notes
Caleb Rossiter got fired because of his globalwarming opinons, which we covered here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/12/professors-fellowship-terminated-for-speaking-out-on-global-warming-in-the-wall-street-journal/
Another essay from him was also carried on WUWT:
Caleb Rossiter – opening eyes to the uncertainty of global warming claims
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Caleb Rossiter, thx for
‘For a decade
I’ve been a busy soldier for the
scientific method, and hence a
“skeptic” to climate alarmism. I’ve
said all I think and know about
this repetitive, unresolveable
topic.
____
Thx for withstanding. But there’s the stronghold named ‘Anthony Watts’
The case, ‘the unresolveable topic’ ain’t settled at all.
The real problem:
The onslought’s defeateted, the focus wanders
to ever new ‘Armageddons’.
/the real battle of armageddon was fought in the bronce age + just lingers on as pure folcroristic ‘tale taling’/
Hans
tale taling
read ‘tale telling’
Armageddo aka Megiddo
palaestiniians, putin, ukraina –
the beat goes on.
Thanks for sharing time
As one Caleb to another, I will say (without reading the entire essay), that you cannot back away from something that is in-your-face.
A half-century ago I am certain teachers in China would have liked to back away from the Great Leap Forward, and attend to the specific truth their heart wished to study, but along came the Cultural Revolution and they were dragged by the very students they had taught from their classrooms, and mocked and derided, and sent off to work on the farms.
None of us came to the Climate Wars. The war came to us.
OK, question:
can one withdraw from a “war” if the opposing folks do not?
This climate war will follow you (us) through higher prices and increased regulation wherever you (we) go.
Just sayin’.
[snip . . as you say . . mod]
Fair enough!
For the most part I can agree with his characterisation of “catastrophists” (which at times is simply brilliant).
I am a bit surprised by this remark – “the University of Alabama at Huntsville’s satellite wave-length dataset requires significant and judgment-laden adjustments, by the protagonists themselves!”
Really? What is so subjective about that set?
If you read through to the end of his article, you come to his conclusion, which is that he’s given in to peer pressure and doesn’t want to lose what’s left of his leftist university professor friends.
So he’s decided to stay quiet and live a lie rather than question his ideology.
Just one more admission, from an honest man who realizes he can no longer be honest, that it is not possible to be a leftist and to be an honest man at the same time.
Yes, and it deserves quoting so that Caleb Rossiter receives well-earned ridicule.
“I’m gonna miss a lot of it – the excitement of learning about modeling, paleoclimate, satellite sounding, the 100,000 year cycles, how ice cores can provide temperature estimates, and the fun of watching students grapple with the possibility that everything they have been taught about climate change in college might be wrong. But I’m not gonna miss the stress of being the odd man out in my lefty think-tank, or of being in agreement with my usual foes. All I can say is, to people in both developed and developing countries, I hope I’ve helped just a little bit by being part of the resistance to the plan to de-industrialize your economies. So far, so good — not because we skeptics convinced anybody about the dangers of emissions, but because people remain convinced of their benefits.”
Read carefully that last bit; it’s pure arrogance: “We never educated the masses; they remain ignorant and stubbornly cling to their fossil fuels.” Good riddance!
Fool. Trooly clooless.
“…that it is not possible to be a leftist and to be an honest man at the same time.”
A-freakin-MEN
“…that it is not possible to be a leftist and to be an honest man at the same time.”
The quoted assertion is pure bollocks.
It is evidence that the rightist who made it is not honest.
Richard
In some religious communities, an apostate is subjected to ‘shunning’, a form of social isolation. If the heretic enters a room, others in the room will turn their backs. I wonder if Caleb Rossiter throwing in the towel is not, at bottom, a reaction to being shunned by his left-wing peers. Do you think he’ll be readmitted to their society? Not, I suspect, unless he formally recants and admits the error of his skepticism.
Like others, I thought at first that this piece was by our host. I’m sure he’ll correct this impression once the sun is over the yardarm on the West Coast.
/Mr Lynn
And I have, see my comment below.
WOW, I too almost went into anaphylactic shock, Anthony. Somehow me thinks Celeb Rossiter will likely read something so off the charts he will be compelled to …………. say something …… There is no debate because it is now a run away fraud train systematically dismantling our energy infrastructure , sounds like we are under assault if you ask me.
Declaring Victory in the Climate Wars is premature.
Please read Jennifer Marohasy’s cogent comments on the issue:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/07/three-facts-most-sceptics-dont-seem-to-understand/
Even in Australia, where we’ve recognised the cost-benefit irrationality of the Carbon Tax, kicked out the lying rent-seeking scoundrels, abolished the tax and removed 30 Government Departments implementing Climatism, we’re just losing slower.
We still have 3 Commonwealth Government Departments working to change the climate, the Government proposes to implement its ‘Direct Action’ scheme, most State Governments are still hostages to Political Science, nearly every Local Council is relentlessly implementing inappropriate and onerous anti-Thermogeddon regulations, and the previous Liberal* Government’s Renewable Energy Target Scheme on track to cost us another twenty-nine billion dollars the country doesn’t have.
Our science priorities are still ‘an eco-pop wish-list of bland mediocrity on a dead-end road.’ **
Our Government-funded Science organisations are still practicing motivated science, changing the data not the theories.
‘Victory’ doesn’t mean just paying less Danegeld.
* Australia’s right-wing party for historical reasons, is known as ‘the Liberal Party’. Sadly, they’re roughly as right-wing as the Democrats.
** Joanne Nova http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/this-is-your-science-brain-on-100-government-funds-sociology-and-small-minded-enviro-research/
Authorship has often been a puzzle with posts on this blog, but after a while one begins to spot the clues fairly easily. Caleb’s post appears to be a special exception, with the mystery level dialed up, well, not to eleven, but at least to five or six.
That said, I’ll miss Caleb’s posts. He’s a competent writer with interesting things to say, and I presume he continues to hold forth at his own website.
Will Caleb be listed as MIA or as a POW?
Just wonderin’.
I’m getting less interested as well.
For me the jury came back in and recorded a verdict of ‘not guilty’ AGW was at best responsible for a minor and inconsequential amount of global warming. The science IS settled. Not guilty m’lud.
And all the barometers of MSM opinion and so on are showing a marked downshift – three articles in the Daily Telegraph’s ‘earth’ section,this week, not one blaming climate change. Widespread ridicule of warmists all over the blogospere.
The science of climate is still interesting, but its not urgent anymore.
Politically, the game has shifted to ‘even if it were true, these measures make no sense at all’
Anthony, you really have to ask yourself if the first 50 comments or so would have been as inane as the ones here under unthreaded comments. Seriously. Sure, there’d have been a few, but people are much more inclined to support each other’s inanity when they can do it in a crowd, and that’s what threaded comments are, a crowd.
Under unthreaded comments, I swear I’d have been looking forward to reading more of Caleb Rossiter’s decision-making process, etc. I finally got to a comment along those lines, but had pretty much checked out by then.
The quality of the WUWT comments has been higher than on any other site I visit, consistently, until now anyway. Authors are routinely taken to task, not with taunts and snipes, but with facts and logic. That will now still possibly be there, but buried in the inevitable clutter that threaded comments will generate.
Heh, in the second paragraph I checked the authorship. The fourth paragraph gave it away. Not Antnee.
People go mad in herds, and recover their sanity one by one. Caleb Rossiter will not enjoy still being carried by the herd over the cliff, so I expect he’ll be back at his duty station squalling defiance soon enough. Else he’ll go mad watching the herd go over the cliff.
=================
Given the Snails Pace at which Climate Science moves, it really does no good to fret and worry about it. It’s like those media marathons where some Celebrity dies or a plane goes down, where they re-run the same thing every day, … and occassionally, bring out a new tid-bit, with the exception that the “tid bits” in Climate Science don’t come out on a daily basis, but on a yearly or decadal basis.
In my own debates on other blogs, I find myself posting up the same referenced material, over and over and over. It never does any good. The Advocates of CAGW are “Religious” in nature, and they will either refuse to believe you, or, they will dismiss your argument proclaiming that your references are “junk science” or “political musings” … funded by the Koch Brothers of course.
So … he’s sitting it out. …. for a while! He says never again … but then goes on to write an essay chok full of arguments. When new arguments come out, … in about 5 years, he’ll write another essay, encompassing some of the same old arguments, and including the new. You just can’t walk away from this. … I’ve tried, and you can’t.
Worth watching;
http://vimeopro.com/southhouse/theglobalwarmingwar
AFAIK Anthony never ran a marathon, so it was pretty obvious from the beginning it wasn’t him.
Thanks, A. What a thriller!
Sometimes I feel like Caleb Rossiter: “I’ve said all I think and know about this repetitive, unresolveable topic”.
But data keeps on coming out, and it is worth showing.
Sir, with respect, I must say that if a scientist (any scientist) knows full well that something is wrong, misrepresented, or in the case of the CAGW agenda – down right fraudulent – it is surely beholden (kind of like the hippocratic oath) to fight on for the scientific method and truth?
I fully and completely accept that it is hard, and likely with little or no reward for many – but at least you can sleep well in the knowledge you did not roll over and resign to the bigotry of ‘the team’ and fraud that will surely ultimately result in many deaths (especially if cooling does occur and the energy poverty levels continue to increase).
That said, I know it can be hard struggling against the tide and of course, everyone does have a limit. If you must retire from the debate, please know that the remaining skeptics are truly grateful for your efforts and contribution. Thank you and Good luck for the future.
Apologies to everyone who thought I was the one “stepping away” While there are days when I have considered it (due to the abuse I take), today is not one of those days. Thanks to everyone for their concern.
I’ve added Caleb Rossiter to the head title to make it clearer.
BTW anyone who has ever met me or seen a photo/video of me surely must no that I don’t possess the physique of a marathon runner.
In a 1941 speech Winston Churchill said, “Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Rossiter has decided that his other battles deserve his attention more, which is his prerogative. However, I doubt that the attacks in those battles ever involved him losing his job.
His experience suggests the climate wars are much nastier, as some of us are aware. It also suggests, if we lose that war all his plans for development in Africa will fall to the failed green agenda. His battle against traditional imperialism will fall to what Paul Driessen, correctly identifies, as eco-imperialism.
Have you ever tried debating the village idiot? Well the climate change fanatics are a village of idiots. They don’t understand science, they don’t understand natural history, they have no clue about climate and they have no idea the climate models just don’t work.
You can’t debate them. Debate involves logic, reason and facts. They have none of these on their side.
“Have you ever tried debating the village idiot? Well the climate change fanatics are a village of idiots.”
Confucius say, “Argue with an idiot and two idiots are arguing.”
And there you have it. Mr. Rossiter apparently has friends who are “limited” (as are we all, in ways big and small) and he would rather tolerate them in silence than run them off. It is ultimately a losing proposition though. Sooner or later, what you shut out and ignore leads to someone noticing you don’t take them seriously and don’t think their opinions on some topic count. That leads to confrontation and arguments. Then they drift away, if you are lucky, or smack you upside the head, if not, and stomp off.
“The Roman Catholic Church, of which I am an adherent, is yet to issue an Encyclical on our treatment and attitude to our material existence.”
When that happens, Nemesis will mutter to itself, “Good–they’re All In. Now’s I’ll pull the rug out from under them.”
Dean From Ohio: You beat me to the point. How these ostensibly intelligent denizens of academia can miss such an obvious truth is beyond me. Groupthink, I guess. Or doublethiink. (Credits to George Orwell).
Mostly I agree with our own Cabel (Above).
But I understand Rossiters POV.
How do you engage in rational discussion with people who openly lie?
The CAGW Team ™ IPCC, are exposed as serial liars, deliberate manipulators of data and propagandists.
“We have to lie to you, for your own good, you stupid peons”.
Pretty much sums up these “Science communicators” stance.
I mean it is possible to engage with seriously misguided people and come to an understanding, but this UN motivated banditry is insane and relentless.
Essentially I end up talking to myself, as the circular logic of the true believers is still industrial strength.
It is gonna take freezing in the dark for these ideologues to realize the blessings of modern technology.
How do you negotiate with a crazed parasite?