Excerpt:
![Bill_Nye_Barack_Obama_and_Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_selfie_2014-998x665[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/bill_nye_barack_obama_and_neil_degrasse_tyson_selfie_2014-998x6651.jpg?quality=83)
So what harm does it do if Tyson makes up stories to fit his rhetorical needs? As an elite celebrity scientist who gets plum appointments, attracts a cult of personality, and hobnobs with presidents, he sets the tone for the rank and file on issues that do involve scientific substance.
Take a recent blog post from climate scientist Kate Marvel, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and more recently NASA, in which she proclaims, “I Am So Bored with the Hiatus.” The “hiatus” refers to the failure of global temperatures to warm significantly since the mid-1990s.
I’m not sure anything could better capture the adolescent, “be one of the cool kids” style of the Neil deGrasse Tyson era than to proclaim oneself “bored” and like-soooo-over-this about facts that don’t fit your favored scientific theory. The only way to top this would be to write it in emojis.
In fact, the “hiatus” is a really big problem for claims that mankind’s industrial production is causing the planet to heat up. Historical temperature records show a slight decline in global temperatures from roughly 1940 to 1970, which is why some scientists in the 70s were predicting a new ice age. By 1980, there was some wavering between predictions of global cooling and predictions of global warming, but warming won out and hit the height of its vogue in the late 1980s and the 1990s—not coincidentally, during a sustained period of slightly increasing temperatures. But global temperatures have now been flat for almost as long as they were rising.
The Climategate e-mails show that this has been a topic of great concern in private discussions among the warmists, with one of them asking his colleagues, “where the heck is global warming?… The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” They knew that they had hung their argument on rising surface temperatures, and they knew that they couldn’t explain the recent stasis in those temperatures.
But evidence that challenges the prevailing theory bores Kate Marvel, who brushes it off by declaring: “No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics.”
This is utterly superficial. The basic physics of the greenhouse effect are not the issue here. At issue is a whole series of more complex questions: whether the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is mostly attributable to human beings, whether that increase produces a large enough greenhouse effect to warm the planet, and whether any effect from carbon dioxide (which is actually a very weak greenhouse gas) might be offset by the enormous number of other factors in an extremely complex system. So to cite basic physics—a common trope of the warmists—is a glib and irrelevant answer.
Marvel goes on to assert that the pause in warming can be explained by “a massive increase in ocean heat content.” Well, all right, I suppose this is a plausible theory. But it is also a very new one—and only one of 52 different theories offered to explain the hiatus.
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Read the entire essay here, well worth your time. http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/17/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-science-of-smug-condescension/
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Another “great communicator”
Isaac Asimov: The Future of Humanity (1974)
http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/future_of_humanity.html
I have yet to find anything from Asimov that I didn’t like. Very thought provoking author.
Yep.
This speech is also very topical to agendas we are still enmeshed in today.
I find it interesting to examine how the agendas have progressed over time.
Asimov says:
“And you know, pretending is a good thing because if you pretend long enough, you’ll forget you’re pretending and you’ll begin to believe it.” :: ))
Do NOT buy his book “Treasury of Humour”. Other than this book I have thoroughly enjoyed Asimov’s writings.
Concur.
Never even hear of “Treasury of Humour.” Thanks for the tip.
…heard…
The mere fact that he’s having a selfie taken with Bill Nye destroys any credibility he might have.
++1 LOL
Who is that other guy with them?
I apologize to the original men who played Curly, Larry, and Mo. But I just could not resist making the comparison.
Dave! You too?
Pamela Gray,
I almost never click on a link that long. But I did this time.
Thank you! Now my mind is cleansed of all reality, and I can relax.
Now, about our pal Tyson:
http://s.quickmeme.com/img/6b/6b9cf0fdf09dbaaf7f77cf11ea9a82b0aa8da2f6f324337b5e5e2b938779d952.jpg
Perfect!
Just….. perfect!
Marvel goes on to assert that the pause in warming can be explained by “a massive increase in ocean heat content.”
============
Nice hyopothesis. Now do the actual science and show us this “massive increase in ocean heat content” otherwise it’s no different than:
the pause in warming can be explained by “a invisible pink unicorns farting in my back garden”
Your yard too?
IWTWT
Kate Marvel’s blog site doesn’t take comments, and the ocean heat content graph she offers has no physical confidence intervals. As a self-acknowledged true climate scientist, Dr. Marvel is certainly true to consensus climate science standards.
Of course, when AGW is axiomatic, confidence intervals are unnecessary because conclusions always follow only by logical deduction from the accepted basal truth.
Seen in this light, consensus climate science is not a science at all. It’s a philosophy. So, Dr. Marvel’s self-categorization is objectively incorrect, as evidenced by her own words and data. She’s a climate philosopher, and her field is AGW-studies.
Why should she give you the data? You’re only going to try to find something wrong with it…
0.02 degrees. No confidence interval. It’s pathological science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science
– The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
– The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
– There are claims of great accuracy.
– Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
– Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
– The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.
That and it is already an anomaly, subject to end point distortion. The toal OHC would make this change that looks quite monumental not even a blip. Science schmience
From “I Am So Bored with the Hiatus”:
“Talking about it without mentioning ocean heat content and natural climate variability is at best disingenuous and at worst insane, but not in a particularly amusing way.”
So now they are saying natural climate variability has some pull as well. Good to know.
Niel D Tyson could never even question the assertion that global warming is happening and will be catastrophic for humans because his whole livelihood, his income, his connections to Hollywood, would all dry up. So rather than promote science and the scientific method, and simply say I believe humans are impacting the climate negatively but I am still evaluating new data that comes in, he takes the anti-science stand of insulting anyone who questions the AGW theory even though the W in the AGW theory has not been there for a significant amount of time now. He makes me ashamed I ever studied science, because climate science has become the most openly and overtly exclusionary pocket of society we have now. Racism and homophobic people have been ostracized from our society, and rightly so, but the intolerance of the global warming science cult is not only approved by our media culture but it is encouraged. Its is accepted prejudicial behavior, rejecting people because they want to apply the scientific method to a science subject.
It will be interesting to see and hear the smug warmists try to explain away significant global cooling, the end of global warming. (P.S. Maunder like solar magnetic minimums last from 100 to 150 years. )
The warmists are trying to dumb down the conversation, to avoid discussing the observations and analysis results that supports almost no AGW warming, as opposed to dangerous AGW warming. The warmists cannot scientifically explain why there is a ‘hiatus’ in warming, there is no hope that they can defend their predicted dangerous warming. The planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes. The warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would be less than 1C therefore, if there was not a mechanism that inhibits AGW in the upper troposphere which explains why the predicted tropical region warming and 8km tropical troposphere hot spot is not observed.
Roy Spencer: GCM models predicted three times more warming in tropics than observed.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/02/tropical-ssts-since-1998-latest-climate-models-warm-3x-too-fast/
There are more than 10 fundamental observations and analysis (Humlum et al’s phase analysis of the CO2 changes vs temperature changes, lack of tropical region warming, no tropical troposphere hot spot, and so on) results that support the assertion that more than 90% of the warming in the last 50 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes, rather the increase an atmospheric CO2.
The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature
THERE IS NO ‘HIATUS’! It was warming and now there is no warming. Period. End of story!!!
“No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics.”
No serious scientist truly believes that the warmer-mystic-greenhouse-physics invalidates
real science.
The warmer-mystics may make the ‘greenhouse physics’ jump through their computer model hoops, but in the real world ol’ Ma nature don’t follow.
“I’m so sick in my spare time humouring thugs”, makes as much sense as Kate Marvel.
Except when referring to the Alarmed Ones, there is too much truth to the description.
They act like,lie like and attempt to intimidate like. Good chance they are, thugs.
Funny how the rules of society apply only to the rest of us, due process, impartial evidence based policy processes, honesty and ethics.. all good except when required of the Team IPCC ™ and their collaborators.
“No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics.”
Slowdown? It’s not warming at all! Climate science as promoted by the IPCC is bankrupt.
The window of opportunity has closed.
It invalidates high CO2 sensitivity and positive feedbacks, that is what the lack of warming does.
But these climate clowns keep flogging a dead horse. Will the real scientist please stand up?
Humor at the Wackipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson#George_W_Bush_misquote
No, there was a ‘new ice age’ concern because records showed a strong decrease from 1940 to 1970. Those temperatures were then adjusted by the Winston Smiths of Climastrology who live off of the tax dollars taken by force from hard working citizens.
I learned something new today. I have never heard of Neil deGrasse Tyson until now.
If selfies had existed in the Stalin era, Lysenko would certainly have been in some with the thug in chief.
Can we take down to the offensive pictures now? or minimize them
Video: Stand-Up Comic Relentlessly Mocks ‘Global Warming Scare Industry’ and Nails Al Gore Impersonation
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/17/video-stand-up-comic-relentlessly-mocks-global-warming-scare-industry-and-nails-al-gore-impersonation/
Doing a bit of flight planning the other day and I noticed this on the opening page:
http://www.noaa.gov/ Note the “hockey stick” graphic -and the scale.
they assume we are all second -graders…
Well I have thought about taking a “selfie” but every time, I tried, I didn’t like the subject matter, so I never pressed the button.
Why does the picture remind me of the one of an (apparently) inebriated Mann with an (apparently) inebriated Ed Bagley from several months ago?
(That was supposed to be a new comment and not a reply.)
Has anyone mentioned to the brilliant young NASA scientist, that the first law of thermodynamics (you know – basic physics), says that heat rises? (versus trapping heat in the deep oceans). Or is it global warming that makes these basic laws of physics just all upside down?…..
Scott while you are correct, that is not how heat gets to be submersed into oceans. There are circulations. Now, I agree that CO2 cannot and does not cause heat to go down into the oceans for a number of reasons. However, one example is the ENSO process, in which the Easterly trade winds blow the upwelling cool waters from the western pacific to the west. The cooler water reduces cloud cover. The sun warms the surface waters… and it piles up significantly higher on the western pacific where it plunges down deep. During El Nino, the water rises to the surface and travels eastward releasing the stored heat. This is known… and does not contradict the basics of physics.
Anyway – other than that, I am a climate skeptic and do not subscribe to “CO2 done it”…
Kate Marvel is quoted as saying “No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics.”
So is Kate just one of the Marvel Comic characters or just educated way beyond her IQ?
So Just what “Greenhouse Physics” is it that Kate Marvel believes is validated by surface warming or the slowdown in same.
Now solar energy attenuation by clouds, would cause a slowdown in surface warming, but that doesn’t have anything at all to do with “Greenhouse physics.”
As I understand “Greenhouse physics,” it has to do with the capture of surface emitted LWIR EM radiant energy, by so-called greenhouse molecules. Now I don’t doubt for a moment, that such capture occurs, and I don’t know personally, anyone who does doubt that effect is real.
But it seems to me, that “surface warming” happens BEFORE, the emission of that enhanced LWIR radiant energy; not AFTER.
And the capture of a surface emitted LWIR photon, is something that is performed by a single GHG molecule, not by any conspiracy of a group of GHG or any other molecules, so it is a phenomenon entirely internal to that molecule, and not a part of the collective atmospheric molecules, that exhibit the macro scale property of Temperature, and heating / cooling.
That single GHG molecule, that captures such a photon, and manifests that, in some internal excited state, must eventually disgorge that photon, and return to the ground state, and that would leave that molecule, as simply another member of a very large assemblage of molecules that collectively represent the Temperature of a gas.
So how does this GHG molecule divvy up the absorbed photon energy, into smaller pieces to somehow spread around, and why don’t those photon energies show up in the extra-terrestrial emission spectrum of the earth. The GHG capture seems to me to be just a transient event. But ! the re-emission of essentially the same energy photon, allowing for line broadening phenomena, results in an isotropic distribution of such re-emitted photons, and only about half of those, are headed back towards the surface.
So I don’t see much of a “heating” of either the atmosphere by such capture, or of the surface, by the return of something less than half of them to the surface.
The upward escape path, is favored over the downward return path, by line broadening effects, which reduce the probability of capture by an increasingly cold, and sparse GHG population at higher altitudes.
Now because of the capture of LWIR photons by GHG molecules, and then the isotropic redistribution of those photons, it is to be expected that the external spectrum should be deficient, in just those capture bands, and that indeed is the case.
What is missing from the extra-terrestrial spectrum, is just those captured and re-emitted photons, that returned towards earth, instead of escaping to space.
So no, I don’t doubt the GHG capture physics; I just can’t make it “heat” (verb) the earth surface.
Having 52 different theories doesn’t exactly engender a sense of a 97% consensus
They’re 52% to 97% sure they don’t know what’s going on?
Maybe OT, maybe not, but it seems that in the last few decades as soon as Man notices something and then figures out a way to measure it, then it becomes something that needs to be regulated. Stuff in the water. Stuff in the air. It may have been there for millennia. But given the proper theory (with a strong dose of politics) then “it” becomes something we must deal with NOW!
(Of course, there has been “stuff” that needed to be dealt with, but that’s the science with a strong dose of patience to allow the science to actually “settle’ comes in.)
“(Of course, there has been “stuff” that needed to be dealt with, but that’s the science with a strong dose of patience to allow the science to actually “settle’ comes in.)”
Should be:
(Of course, there has been “stuff” that needed to be dealt with, but that’s where the science with a strong dose of patience to allow the science to actually “settle’ comes in.)
Cosmos, Episode 2, 27:25:
“Some claim that evolution is just a theory, as if it were merely an opinion. The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.”
(Neil deGrasse Tyson then proceeded to dive his space ship into one of the hundreds of *hypothetical* lakes on Titan, while speaking of them as though there is no debate at all over their existence.)
Then, just a few minutes later …
Cosmos, Episode 2, 40:10:
“Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. We’re not afraid to admit what we don’t know. There’s no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all of the answers.”
An alternative perspective …
“When NASA scientists looked at radar images showing channels appearing to ‘feed’ into flat bottomed depressions, they thought they were seeing methane lakes fed by episodic methane rivers. But for obvious reasons NASA scientists have not noticed the similarity between radar images of Venus’ surface and those of Titan’s surface. They have no reason to associate these two bodies so remote from each other. In the radar image of Venus above, we see both flat-bottomed depressions and river-like channels, presenting a parallel to Titan’s ‘lakes’ too obvious to miss. In fact our prediction of ‘flat-bottomed valleys bordered by steep cliffs with scalloped edges’ turns out to be a perfect description of what we actually observe in the radar images of Titan. So we are not deterred by the confidence of NASA scientists: When Cassini takes a closer look at the north polar region in question, they will not find what they are looking for, except by straining credulity further.”
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060816methanetitan.htm
If you think NDT is an isolated example, then you’ve clearly never proposed a new scientific theory on the Bad Astronomy & Universe Today forum (now called CosmoQuest).