Guest post by David Middleton
A framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific community.
These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.
–Thomas Kuhn, 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Vol. II, No. 2 p. 150
What is the current paradigm?
- Human activities, primarily carbon dioxide emissions, have been the primary cause of the observed global warming over the past 50 to 150 years.
- The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration had stabilized between 270 and 280 ppmv early in the Holocene and had remained in that range prior to the mid-19th century when fossil fuels became the primary energy source of the Industrial Revolution.
- Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are causing the atmospheric concentration to rise at a dangerously rapid pace to levels not seen in 100’s of thousands to millions of years.
- The climate sensitivity to a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration “is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C,” possibly even much higher than 4.5°C.
- Immediate, deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary in order to stave off catastrophic climate change.
- The scientific consensus regarding this paradigm is overwhelming (~97%).
Why is the paradigm collapsing?
- There has been no increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature since the late 20th century.
- Every measure of pre-industrial carbon dioxide, not derived from Antarctic ice cores, indicates a higher and more variable atmospheric concentration.
- The total lack of predictive skill in AGW climate models.
- An ever-growing body of observation-based studies indicating that the climate sensitivity is in the range of 0.5 to 2.5°C with a best estimate of 1.5 to 2°C, and is very unlikely to be more than 2°C.
- Clear evidence that the dogmatic insistence of scientific unanimity is at best highly contrived and at worst fraudulent.
The paradigm is collapsing primarily due to the fact that the climate appears to be far less sensitive to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations than the so-called scientific consensus had assumed.
One group of scientists has steadfastly resisted the carbon dioxide-driven paradigm: Geologists, particularly petroleum geologists. As Kuhn wrote,
“Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another.”
Petroleum geologists tend to be sedimentary geologists and sedimentary geology is essentially a combination of paleogeography and paleoclimatology. Depositional environments are defined by physical geography and climate. We literally do practice in a different world, the past. Geologists intuitively see Earth processes as cyclical and also tend to look at things from the perspective of “deep time.” For those of us working the Gulf of Mexico, we “go to work” in a world defined by glacioeustatic and halokinetic processes and, quite frankly, most of us don’t see anything anomalous in recent climate changes.
So, it should come as little surprise that geoscientists have consistently been far more likely to think that modern climate changes have been driven by overwhelmingly natural processes…
APEGA is the organization responsible for certifying and licensing professional geoscientists and engineers in Alberta, Canada.
This study is very interesting because it analyzes the frames of reference (Kuhn’s “different worlds”) in which opinions are formed. Skeptical geologists are most likely to view climate change as overwhelmingly natural. Skeptical engineers are more likely to view it as a matter of economics or fatalism. The cost of decarbonization would far outweigh any benefits and/or would have no measurable effect on climate change.
The Obsession With Consensus
In nearly 40 years as an Earth Scientist (counting college), I have never seen such an obsession with consensus. In geology, there are many areas in which there are competing hypotheses; yet there is no obsession with conformance to a consensus.
The acceptance of plate tectonics was a relatively new thing when I was a student. This paradigm had only recently shifted from the geosynclinal theory to plate tectonics. We still learned the geosynclinal theory in Historical Geology and it still has value today. However, I don’t ever recall papers being published claiming a consensus regarding either theory.
Most geologists think that granite is an igneous rock and that petroleum is of organic origin. Yet, the theories of granitization and abiogenic hydrocarbon formation are not ridiculed; nor are the adherents subjected to “witch hunts.”
One of the most frequent methods of attempting to quantify and justify the so-called consensus on climate change has been the abstract search (second hand opinions). I will only bother to review one of these exercises in logical fallacy, Cook et al., 2013.
Second Hand Opinions.
These sorts of papers consist of abstract reviews. The authors’ then tabulate their opinions regarding whether or not the abstracts support the AGW paradigm. As Legates et al., 2013 pointed out, Cook defined the consensus as “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic.” Cook then relied on three different levels of “endorsement” of that consensus and excluded 67% of the abstracts reviewed because they neither endorsed nor rejected the consensus.
The largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses AGW without minimizing it.” They provided this example of an implied endorsement:
‘…carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change’
Carbon sequestration in soil, lime muds, trees, seawater, marine calcifiers and a whole lot of other things have always been important for mitigating a wide range of natural processes. I have no doubt that I have implicitly endorsed the so-called consensus based on this example.
The second largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimize.” Pardon my obtuseness, but how in the heck can one explicitly endorse the notion that “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic” without quantification? This is the example Cook provided:
‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’
Wow! I contributed to Romney for President… Yet most of his campaign war-chest didn’t come from me. By this subjective standard, I have probably explicitly endorsed AGW a few times.
No Schist, Sherlock.
One of the most frequent refrains is the assertion that “climate scientists” endorse the so-called consensus more than other disciplines and that the level of endorsement is proportional to the volume of publications by those climate scientists. Well… No schist, Sherlock! I would bet a good bottle of wine that the most voluminous publishers on UFO’s are disproportionately more likely to endorse Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a documentary. A cursory search for “abiogenic hydrocarbons” in AAPG’s Datapages could lead me to conclude that there is a higher level of endorsement of abiogenic oil among those who publish on the subject than among non-publishing petroleum geologists.
These exercises in expertise cherry-picking are quite common. A classic example was Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009. This survey sample was limited to academic and government Earth Scientists. It excluded all Earth Scientists working in private sector businesses. The two key questions were:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
I would answer risen to #1 and my answer to #2 would depend on the meaning of “human activity is a significant contributing factor.” If I realized it was a “push poll,” I would answer “no.”
Interestingly, economic geologists and meteorologists were the most likely to answer “no” to question #2…
The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36).
The authors derisively dismissed the opinions of geologists and meteorologists…
It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.
No discipline has a better understanding the “nuances” than meteorologists and no discipline has a better understanding of the “scientific basis of long-term climate processes” than geologists.
The authors close with a “no schist, Sherlock” bar chart:
The most recent example of expertise cherry-picking was Stenhouse et al., 2014.
The 52% consensus among the membership of the American Meteorological Society explained away as being due to “perceived scientific consensus,” “political ideology,” and a lack of “expertise” among non-publishing meteorologists and atmospheric scientists…
While we found that higher expertise was associated with a greater likelihood of viewing global warming as real and harmful, this relationship was less strong than for political ideology and perceived consensus. At least for the measure of expertise that we used, climate science expertise may be a less important influence on global warming views than political ideology or social consensus norms. More than any other result of the study, this would be strong evidence against the idea that expert scientists’ views on politically controversial topics can be completely objective.
Finally, we found that perceiving conflict at AMS was associated with lower certainty of global warming views, lower likelihood of viewing global warming as human caused, and lower ratings of predicted harm caused by global warming.
So… Clearly, 97% of AMS membership would endorse the so-called consensus if they were more liberal, more accepting of unanimity and published more papers defending failed climate models. No schist, Sherlock!
What, exactly, is a “climate scientist”?
35 years ago climatology was a branch of physical geography. Today’s climate scientists can be anything from atmospheric physicists & chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, astronomers, astrophysicists, oceanographers, biologists, environmental scientists, ecologists, meteorologists, geologists, geophysicists, geochemistry to economists, agronomists, sociologists and/or public policy-ologists.
NASA’s top climate scientist for most of the past 35 years, James Hansen, is an astronomer. The current one, Gavin Schmidt, is a mathematician.
It seems to me that climate science is currently dominated by computer modelers, with little comprehension of the natural climate cycles which have driven climate change throughout the Holocene.
Climate scientist seems to be as nebulous as Cook’s definition of consensus.
What is the actual consensus?
The preliminary results of the AMS survey tell us all we need to know about the so-called consensus…
89% × 59% = 52%… A far cry from the oft claimed 97% consensus.
Based on BAMS definition, global warming is happening. So, I would be among the 89% who answered “yes” to question #1 and among the 5% who said the cause was mostly natural.
When self-described “climate scientists” and meteorologists/atmospheric scientists are segregated the results become even more interesting…
Only 45% of meteorologists and atmospheric scientists endorse the so-called consensus. When compared to the 2009, American Geophysical Union survey, the collapsing paradigm sticks out like a polar vortex…
In reality, about half of relevant scientists would probably agree that humans have been responsible for >50% of recent climate changes. And there might even be a 97% consensus that human activities have contributed to recent climate changes.
However, there really isn’t any scientific consensus if it is defined this way:
So… Why is there such an obsession with a 97% consensus? My guess is that it is to enable such demagoguery.
Thank you for such a clear essay. It’s a shame that it will not change the minds of the great unwashed green/left. I taught the “greenhouse effect to my students for some years; semi believed AGW as well.
Thankfully, this belief lasted but a brief time. All it took was a short length of 4×2 across the back of the head – it focused my thinking to the truth.
Well done 🙂
David a fabulous article, as a geologist myself, with similar experience, I have been screaming much the same things for years. There are so many parts of your article I would love to comment on but don’t know where to start.
This stupid notion of “consensus” is just so unscientific to be laughable.
The idea that peer reviewed publications are somehow correct is also nonsense, all that says is that the reviewer thought “this looks interesting let’s put it out there”.
Your comments on what is a “climate scientist” are very good and I couldn’t agree more, I have been asking this for years.
Computer models are also another gripe of mine, anyone who has tried to model the natural environment knows they only give a poor approximation of reality.
This really is a great article and as a geologist, it summarises everything I see as wrong with “climate science”‘ you should try and get it out more widely.
And also, again, as a geologist, political leanings don’t come into it, I am and always will be left of centre in my political beliefs, but bad science is bad science.
Again great article, sorry for the rambling.
Well, I freely admit that “I once burned out a clutch during a Paradigm Shift”……
For the younger folks; a clutch was once an essential part of evil fossil fueled motor transport vehicles, it was a necessary component to perform a “shift”, once you “burned it out”, you had to resort to “alternative transport”, i.e. you walked…..
Cheers, KevinK
Same thing happens when you run out of gas …you walk.
The warmunists are so intellectually impoverished – they don’t have a paradigms to rub together.
When I see the word paradigm, I think of two shovels…
I think that’s paradig’em.
Question #1 does not point to a theory but instead asks if our ability to observe global temperature is credible. It is questioning our ability to observe not explain.
Question #2 again does not point to a theory, but instead asks what is you opinion of a vague hypothesis. What does”significant” represent, what does “contributing” mean relative to other factors and so on. It’s basically a stupid question to ask a scientist. Like intelligent design belongs in a religious philosophy class these questions are a better fit in a political science class.
No Schist indeed.
In science a theory represents the apex, the highest form of explanation for observations after having been consistently and repeatedly proven, substantiated, supported, and documented. Theory of relativity, theory of evolution are good examples.
The survey does not ask about a theory but asks politically motivated questions instead to get to a imagined scientific consensus. Making me wonder what exactly is climate theory? It would be sad if climate theory was no more than arm waving and a vague potpourri of hypothesis cobbled together in super computers. Maybe someone could explain where climate theory is defined, again the scientific version of theory, not the Al Gore version of theory nor the “Let’s take a poll” version.
Yep. It’s the Family Feud version of a scientific theory.
A scientific ‘crisis’ occurs when there are in your face observations and analysis results that unequivocally indicate there are fundamental errors in the basic theory or theories. Scientific paradigms change and breakthroughs occur when a field enters a crisis.
It appears (there is multiple recent observational evidence to support the mechanisms and the assertion that the change has started) we are going to experience the once in 8,000 to 10,000 year solar change that causes Heinrich events, which is the same mechanism that initiates and terminates interglacial periods (a climate event of a similar magnitude to the 8200 BP cooling event or the 12,900 BP Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event). If I understand what is currently happening to sun, the correct new stellar model, how solar cycle changes modulate planetary temperature, and the mechanisms that regulate and change the level of atmospheric CO2 – Planetary temperature and atmospheric CO2 are going to abruptly drop.
An abrupt cooling change in planetary temperature is only possible if the majority of the warming in the last 150 years has due to solar changes rather than the increase in atmospheric CO2 and similarly a drop in atmospheric CO2 is only possible if there are much larger natural sinks and natural sources of CO2 than believed and if there is a non-fossil fuel source of low C13, CO2, which there is.
There is a mechanism related to the observational fact that the solar heliosphere density has dropped by 40% (the observational fact that the solar heliosphere density has dropped 40% was discussed at the November, 2013 AGU meeting) due to the solar cycle 24 abrupt change, that is delaying the cooling of the earth. This delay, temporary inhibiting of the mechanisms by which solar changes modulate planetary cloud cover and wind speed, has enabled the solar change to progress without cooling, hence when the inhibiting mechanism ends, there will be sudden cooling. In terms of the inhibiting mechanism the two hemispheres are different (it is a charge mechanism, the difference is caused by the difference in impedance of the continental crust as compared to the ocean/ocean floor and the relative different amount of continental crust and ocean floor in the two hemispheres, the massive movement of charge is the reason why the geomagnetic field intensity is now dropping at 5%/decade (ten times) faster than possible for a core base geomagnetic model.) High latitude cooling has started in the Southern ocean which explains the record Antarctic sea ice and indicates the mechanism that was inhibiting the solar modulation of planetary cloud is starting to abate.
It is important to remember there are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record where the same regions of the planet that warmed in the last 150 years warmed when solar activity was high and then cooled when the sun changed. The cycles or warming and cooling were not caused by cyclic changes to atmospheric CO2, there were caused by cyclic changes to the sun.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/05/is-the-current-global-warming-a-natural-cycle/
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Most probably 97% of climate scientists agree that funding for support of climate studies should be increased and that their budget in particular should be increased. Does that make the idea a good one?
You’ve identified the true cause of CAGW: climate scientist funding.
” 97% of climate scientists agree that funding for support of climate studies should be increased and that their budget in particular should be increased. Does that make the idea a good one?”
100% of IPCC environmental scientists say it’s a winner.
Climate scientists can also make money on a falling global temperature. The one thing that scares them is the infuriatingly stable temperatures we’ve seen since about 2002. As soon as we’re in an identifiable cooling trend, they will shift gears to catastrophic anthropogenic global cooling,CAGC. The politicians will change the threat, but the solution will be the same, Marxism.
“Every measure of pre-industrial carbon dioxide, not derived from Antarctic ice cores, indicates a higher and more variable atmospheric concentration.” …
http://s16.postimg.org/e721t7nrp/Stomata.png
Composite assembled from here.
There are issues with accurately determining past atmospheric CO2 concentrations. For example, Greenland ice is subject to wind-born dust deposition, which can and does bring carbonates, contributing CO2. Stomata are leaf “breathing holes” that admit CO2 to accomplish photosynthesis. If CO2 is higher, these holes become smaller and/or less numerous. However, the same stomata also promote the loss of plant water. And in a drought, these holes lessen to preserve plant moisture, even if it means plant metabolism slows. Desert plants are an example. Also, chemical methods of measuring CO2 over a century ago gave erratic and often erroneous results.
As for forming gas bubbles in ice cores, I have wondered if gas fractionation occurs between CO2 and N2 because of the greater affinity for CO2 to adhere (chemi-sorb) on ice crystals. Even so, I tend to think Antarctic ice bubbles give our best estimate of distant past atmospheric CO2.
A geochemist’s opinion.
Stomata studies can actually be controllled for precipitation and other non-CO2 variables.
Greenland ice cores and plant stomata yield much higher frequency CO2 signals than Antarctic ice cores; therefore have far higher resolution, albeit with lower signal to noise ratios.
In our business, we don’t discard noisy high frequency data because it doesn’t fit a paradigm defined by lower frequency data. This would be akin to pitching sonic & density logs because they reveal things not apparent in the seismic data.
I have posted a link to this article a number of times in different threads but it is so appropriate to this topic that I must post it again. It is an excellent read that explains, at least in some case, the bell curve of a scientific paradigm – how it becomes dominant and then how it yields to another paradigm. And, while it doesn’t mention climate science at all, it does deal with both hard and soft sciences.
I’m referring to a Dec 13, 2010 New Yorker article called “The Truth Wears Off – Is there something wrong with the scientific method?” http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/13/the-truth-wears-off
The article is excellent and would make a superb multi-article series here if Anthony or a mod gained permission from the author to repost it. I believe it deserves reading far and wide in the climate science community.
As a teaser, here are the first two paragraphs:
“On September 18, 2007, a few dozen neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and drug-company executives gathered in a hotel conference room in Brussels to hear some startling news. It had to do with a class of drugs known as atypical or second-generation antipsychotics, which came on the market in the early nineties. The drugs, sold under brand names such as Abilify, Seroquel, and Zyprexa, had been tested on schizophrenics in several large clinical trials, all of which had demonstrated a dramatic decrease in the subjects’ psychiatric symptoms. As a result, second-generation antipsychotics had become one of the fastest-growing and most profitable pharmaceutical classes. By 2001, Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa was generating more revenue than Prozac. It remains the company’s top-selling drug.
But the data presented at the Brussels meeting made it clear that something strange was happening: the therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily waning. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineteen-nineties. Many researchers began to argue that the expensive pharmaceuticals weren’t any better than first-generation antipsychotics, which have been in use since the fifties. “In fact, sometimes they now look even worse,” John Davis, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me”
If you can’t find it with any of the above you can google “The decline effect and the scientific method” it should be the first link. And if that doesn’t work, I archived it here:
http://www.webcitation.org/6SgCvSc3w
Enjoy – it is well worth the time…
I also like the argument that your kids should be vaccinated because I don’t want your unvaccinated kids to give the disease to my vaccinated kids.
Apparently you don’t understand the concept of community immunity.
As long as most kids are vaccinated, the unvaccinated get a free ride. But when too many go unvaccinated, then they are at risk. It’s not the vaccinated kids who are in danger, but those who aren’t vaccinated, once they become numerous beyond a certain low level.
Vaccines don’t always work in everyone and not everyone can be vaccinated.
I imagine that if a disease becomes endemic, it is also more likely to mutate and defeat our immunities.
There is nothing wrong with the scientific method. The problem is that it is so often violated and corrupted these days and indeed under attack.
In physics there is the “observer effect” where the act of observation will make changes to the phenomenon being observed.
For example, once we have measured some system in quantum physics, we know its current state and this stops it from being in one of its other states. This means that the type of measurement that we do on the system affects the end state of the system.
Just as the interference pattern phenomenon seen in the double slit experiment scales up from photons to large molecules – (and who knows – maybe even baseballs) – so also the observer effect phenomenon may scale up to cause the “decline effect.”
Reply to NOAAProgrammer and Catherine Ronconi:
The article is not an attack on the scientific method. It is a discussion of the failure of the paradigm today within which science is conducted – the process of scienctific research. The title of the article in that sense is misleading.
While the “observer effect” may scale up to explain some of the decline effect, there are other causes, rooted in human nature for why, as Catherine says, the scientific method, “is so often violated and corrupted these days.” The article does a good job of discussing the forces and factors that lead to that “corruption”. I quote that because I don’t believe the corruption is as wide-spread as perceived, even in climate science.
That is one of the benefits of familiarizing yourself with the article. Frequently when discussing climate sciene I find myself confronted with an “appeal ot authority” argument that goes something along the lines of ‘how could 97% of scientists be wrong?’ or ‘sure – the entire climate science community conspired to create a hoax’. With the examples in this ariticle, conspiracy, corruption, and hoax can be taken off the table. It makes clear that the problems in climate science are not limited to climate science. They are pervasive across many scientific areas of study. The reason they have polarized climate science is because of the politics and vast sums of money involved.
The focus of this WUWT piece is a paradigm shift in climate science. To the extent that’s happening, “The Decline Effect” helps explain why that may be happening, and the reasons go far beyond the reluctance of nature to conform to model forecasts. It presents a strong case for a paradigm shift in the scientific process as implemented today to help protect against human nature.
On publication bias:
Michael Jennions, a biologist at the Australian National University
On replicability:
Leigh Simmons, a biologist at the University of Western Australia:
John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University:
On selective reporting and a-prior beliefs:
Richard Palmer, a biologist at the University of Alberta:
On random results:
It’s not the method, it’s sample-selection-bias. Whenever you select a small sample it will be, by it’s very nature, biased. Notice the term “select a sample.” There is no criteria, except for absolute randomness, to obtain a sample that does not have some of the researcher’s proximal notions built in. Unfortunately much of the discussion on experimental design implies that you don’t need a purely random sample to provide evidence of an effect. There’s some truth to that, as long as your sample selection process is designed to exclude moderators, variables that may interact, etc., etc., but there’s been almost no discussion about how to avoid such impacts.
When you’re dealing with human subjects it’s pretty common for the second researcher to mimic the procedures of the first researcher who finds an effect. It’s the easy way to get published, and also very lazy. So we tend to have a bias toward the bias, and that’s the way that many dumb-ass ideas are perpetuated. In almost 40 years of working with humnan subjects I can count on one hand the number of effects that don’t get substantively diluted when the measurement is extended to a broader population.
And that’s all I have to say about that
I’ve followed the CAGW story for ~10 years and I get the distinct impression that climate scientists like Hansen, and those of similar ‘weightiness’ have grudgingly actually been on a journey of learning about climate from the most humble of beginnings. Hansen looking at Venus had an epiphany about how the world was going to warm. After his “discovery”, UN opportunist.- in.- chief Maurice Strong (high school ed. marxist) gave Hansen and his colleagues the job of determining the extent of damage caused by humans about 35years ago (he realized that to recruit them he had to have the cash put out by governments, UN etc and to hold “conventions” in exotic places and to fete and decorate with awards (the nobel com. were already in his pocket and of his ideology). They were ignorant of the large body of knowledge already possessed by geology, history, literature, glacial research, etc. They didn’t know that someone knew that there were periods of great warmth and great cold that had low carbon dioxide and high carbon dioxide respectively. They didnt know there was an LIA, MWP, and all the other cold and hot periods that needed to be gotten rid of. They appeared not to know about Hannibal’s soldiers and elephants crossed the Alps – a feat only possible during a warming period. They didn’t know that 1/3 of Finns died of starvation, the Thames, New York Harbor and even the Bosphorus froze over during the LIA. Pause brought them knowledge of ENSO, the sun, the PDO, AMO, in their desperation to muddle a rescue effort for their tattered climate sensitivity…… This has been a very expensive journey of discovery.
And someone has been sabotaging CRU and NOAA and NASA and NCDC and GISS and Al Gore and Obama by putting LSD in their water supply?
So they were government “experts” then?
Real scientists are fighting Marcuse (demand to be allowed to express minority views, then when your ideas are accepted by enough people, silence the opposing views; when these views disappear from public discourse, people will only harbor thoughts we (who are correct) want to be thought…this totalitarian crapist was given a professorship at UC San Diego!). Real scientists are fighting Alinsky (ridicule your opponents, show them no civil courtesy, get them to believe you have more backing than you have ((“97% consensus)), terrify people with threats, go after people not institutions, and hurt them).
These two men were bent upon destruction. Those of us who are healthy experienced people when we were growing up who were fair, even generous, and people who were unfair, who tried to get more from us than they gave us.
Most of the people at WUWT decided, sometime in childhood or adolescence or early adulthood that treating people fairly and even generously was a better course than advancing their own interests by taking advantage of people.
The UN IPCC is comprised of people who want to advantage themselves by disadvantaging other people. See Raj Pachauri…was he offering to marry his underling whom he was trying to convince to hop in the sack with him? He was on a mission to save the planet. Riight. How about saving the planet from dirty old men who want to ruin young women?
A quibble:
“It seems to me that climate science is currently dominated by computer modelers…”
As a software engineer I find the computer modeling done by climate scientists to be poor quality, exhibiting poor understanding of either the underlying physical processes or the difficulties of computer modeling. To call them computer modelers is a slur to my profession.
That certainly was not my intent. Generally speaking, the computer models are fine and reflect very well on those who designed them.
The problem is with GIGO and the non uniqueness principle.
David
Not sure I understand your comment “the computer models are fine and reflect very well on those who designed them”.
Given the models purport to represent physical reality, the strange (to everyone except modelers and true believers) focus on CO2 is laughable when compared to real-world data (i.e. temperatures). This isn’t GIGO, it’s a design problem. However, I do agree these (seriously flawed) models do indeed reflect on the modelers.
…maybe I missed the /sarc tag.
@Chip,
General circulation and other climate models are very good at what they are: Heuristic tools. They are learning tools. No one should have ever misrepresented them as predictive tools.
However, tho so-called consensus insists that the models are robust and demonstrate predictive skill… And this has become part of the AGW paradigm.
Its worse than that , the data quality control seems to range from bad to awful , so before they even get to the models they have issue with the data .
Very detailed article, preparing for a paradigm crash. Thomas Kuhn would have been happy.
Thanks David Middleton.
It was well worth the time. Thanks thallstd.
My daughter-in-law and two sons have thrown the “97% of scientists” line in my face. They’re smart kids, they don’t use drugs. But this is what the MSM spouts.
On the issue of abstract reviews, the scientific method would be to have panels of AGW skeptics and AGW proponents contemporaneously review abstracts and derive conclusions. For disagreements on what abstracts impute, conference calls should be made to authors to get their responses to
Question 1:, “Do you hold the certain or nearly certain conviction that your published research demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt that global warming since 1900 is mostly attributable to fossil fuel burning, or do you hold the opinion that your research is reasonable compatible with natural cycles of climate change being potentially the cause of most of the measured global warming since 1900?” (Answers of “I don’t know, I can’t really answer that question” get a new category,”Scientists don’t know.” and get thrown out of the 97% consensus.)
Question 2: Did you hear at any time that grants were being offered to show that global warming had adverse effects on the environment? Did you ever hear of grants being offered to show that global warming didn’t have adverse effects on the environment?
Question 3, 4, 5, 6 for the “beyond reasonable doubt” Yes answers:
Question 3: Have you applied for or have you taken an equivalent-paying job at an equivalent university located 600-1500 miles north of where you live or previously lived to protect your family from future global warming?
Question 4: Have you moved into a smaller home since 2000 to conserve household energy?
Question 5: Have you declined to use jet travel to attend meetings,on the grounds that you don’t want to contribute to fossil-fuel-burned climate disruption?
Question 6: Have you taken jet travel to attend meetings but felt bad about it?
“My daughter-in-law and two sons have thrown the “97% of scientists” line in my face. They’re smart kids, they don’t use drugs. But this is what the MSM spouts.”
Besides all the points made in this WUWT piece, the 97% consensus figure can be found all the way back to 1959, attributed to publication bias.
I highly recommend you review my comments above at March 18, 2015 at 8:01 pm and March 19, 2015 at 6:21 am (assuming that post makes it out of moderation with the same time stamp), especially this quote from the article cited from Michael Jennions, a biologist at the Australian National University:
A few observations (we formally published most of these conclusions in 2002 – we’ve known this for a long time):
1. CO2 is the basis for all carbon-based life on Earth – and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient.
2. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
3. Recent global warming was natural and ~cyclical – the next phase following the ~20 year pause will be global cooling, starting by about 2020 or sooner.
3. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales (published in 2008).
4. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society.
5. Green energy schemes (scams) are responsible for driving up energy costs and increasing winter mortality rates.
_________________________________
I suggest that most of the above statements are true, to a high degree of confidence.
All of the above statements are blasphemy to warmist fanatics.
It is truly remarkable how the warmists could get it so wrong.
Regards, Allan
(Petroleum Engineer / Earth Scientist)
Allen,
The Useful Idiots (and I don’t mean they are stupid people; look the term up in Wiki, HG Wells is referred to as one, for example) simply want a Grand Cause to go with that fulfills them psychologically. The people at the very top aren’t “getting it wrong” in my opinion – they don’t care what the truth is. They simply want to implement certain social changes, and global cooling is as good as global warming is as good as climate change – they really don’t care what the mechanism is, and whether that mechanism reflects reality or not.
+googol, especially your comment “The people at the very top…don’t care what the truth is”.
For Frodo
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/30/what-are-your-fears-about-global-warming-and-climate-change/#comment-1847727
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
“The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
– H.L. Mencken
David gave an eye-opening report. It makes you wonder why the fear-mongerers try to tear down WUWT. If google can be brought in line, maybe WUWT will “disappear”.
“Think Local”makes sense to me.Has the climate changed to become intolerable, whee you live? I’ve noticed that people are still flocking to Florida and Texas from New York, Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois. Global warming isn’t on their list of things to avoid.
Cali is dumping gigatons of water into the sea, instead of conserving it. Freshwater for drinking and growing food, flushed into the salty Pacific.
I thought Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four were warnings. The leftists are taking them to be play books.
If the paradigm is crashing, does the current media tidal wave of blatant AGW propaganda represent Miss AGW’s “death throes”? Somehow, I doubt that. The old girl has managed to survive for some 17 years after her “actually warming” life support system was removed by our ever mischievous Mother Nature. That which should have put a stake through her heart only seems to have invigorated the patient.
Hooray for geologists! The last bunch to get sucked into the black hole. Maybe we’ll tarry at the event horizon long enough to escape. Great article.
I don’t see that there was ever a truly Scientific Paradigm representing CO2CAGW in the first place. All I’ve seen is a gigantic Propaganda Op which is intentionally anti-scientific.
JPeden
You must not have been paying attention when reasonable scientific practitioners were drummed out (i.e. lost their jobs) of academe because they flouted the paradigm.
Or, most recently, when former US Vice President Al Gore proposed “punishment” for scientists disbelieving AGW.
Chip, you’re right about that anti-scientific practice, and that’s exactly what I’m saying about the allegation that CO2CAGW was ever a true Scientific Paradigm. For practical purposes, it was never Scientific. At best it was a “conjecture”, amongst the many we all could think up at any time for free, 24/7. [h/t dbStealey]
A former prime minister of Australia said something like (I don’t have the exact words anymore):
‘All respectable and qualified climate scientists think that climate change is caused by humans and we need to do something about it. ‘
She withdrew the comment when someone told her there are in fact, respectable top notch scientists who don’t think so.
The beast won’t die till Barry O. leaves the Whitehouse.
Then it will.
Great article and comment thread. And no trolls. They aren’t smart enough to comment on this article.
They are currently huddled in conference, planning their witty and incisive comments .
Excellent presentation by David Middleton leading to a good comment thread.
O/T, but WUWT is closing in on a quarter of a billion views. The quality of the comments reflects the level of intellect of the viewers. This reflects on Anthony Watts and WUWT.
Environmental Journalists belong to the Society of Environmental Journalists, where they meet and learn from each other, and from Democratic Party talking points. Talking points include 97%, endangered polar bears, anthropogenic global warming with rising sea levels, warming polar regions with melting ice and melting glaciers, and are not challenged because nobody among the environmental journalists reads any science whatsoever. They read the talking points because they are familiar and comforting.